Facebook Asset Customization Hack 2020: How to duplicate a Facebook Ad and Retain Social Proof
You know this situation from the grocery store: miraculously, most people automatically line up at the checkout with the longest queue.
Or imagine you’re on vacation and feel like having an ice cream. You have a choice of two ice-cream parlors. In front of the first ice-cream parlor, there is a queue of people waiting for their ice-cream and in front of the second ice-cream parlor nobody. Which ice-cream parlor will you choose?
The reason for these seemingly automatic actions can be described with two words: social proof.
Social proof describes the phenomenon that people often do the same thing that others do. In psychology this behavior is called herd instinct and among marketers simply referred to as social proof.
And what does this have to do with ads on Facebook and Instagram?
A lot. Because you can take advantage of this phenomenon on your Facebook and Instagram Ads — in the form of likes, comments and shares.
Ads with many reactions are “proofed”, automatically appear more interesting and therefore show higher click and conversion rates in most cases. And this, in turn, has a positive effect on the ad auction, where creatives are the decisive success factor.
The formula is relatively simple.
Ads with social proofs influence the Estimated Action Rates and this in turn leads to a higher overall value. In other words: You win more auctions.
“Social proofing” has been a popular tactic with most advertisers for many years. For this reason, Facebook introduced a feature in the Ads Manager at the beginning of 2019 that allows you to retain the social proof directly when duplicating campaigns, ad groups or ads.
But this way of social proofing has one disadvantage: it is not really reliable. Despite checking the checkbox, it’s not uncommon for all the likes or comments to disappear when duplicating an ad — annoying.
And then, of course, there is the “old” way of social proofing: Instead of duplicating an ad and checking the box, the existing post or original ad is accessed via the post ID.
However, this method of social proofing has also had a disadvantage up to now: If an existing post is used via the post ID, the ad is not optimized for all placements (and thus not for stories, for example).
Fortunately, Facebook expanded the functionality of Asset Customization in late 2019. For a few months now, it has been possible to upload different creatives for different placements even for existing posts.
And in this way, the advantages of social proofing can be combined with the benefits of asset customization. Now let’s take a look at how this asset customization hack works in detail.
How to combine Facebook asset customization and social proofing in 2020
The bad news right at the beginning: The way shown here creates additional work for you as an advertiser. But sometimes the performance of your ads is just like in the gym: No pain, no gain.
And believe me: It’s worth it!
#1 Step: Create a new ad only with Feed Creative
To combine Asset Customization and Social Proofing, you need to create a new ad in Ads Manager…
…and upload one asset optimized for feeds there (e.g. an image or video in 1:1 format).
Important: To be able to access the post ID later, you may only upload one Feed creative and no further texts or headlines.
When uploading several creatives (e.g. 9:16 Story Creatives) as well as when using the “Multiple Text” function, the original post can no longer be accessed via the post ID.
#2 Step: View the Facebook post with comments
After you’ve created your new ad (as described in the first step), you should pause it immediately after publishing it.
Okay, then what’s the point?
The goal of the first step is simply to create a new “original post”, which we will later use for social proofing.
After you’ve published and paused your ad, you can view the “Facebook post with comments” by clicking the arrow icon in the upper right corner.
#3 Step: Copy the ID of the post and paste it into the display name
When you view the existing Facebook post with comments, a new tab opens with a URL that is structured as follows
https://www.facebook.com/1434792486735XXX/posts/XXXXXXXXXXXX
The last part of the URL is the ID of your post. We need this ID for the social proofing of your ad.
Pro tip: Copy this ID and paste it into the name of your ad. This way, you can easily access the ID at any time and don’t have to view the Facebook post with comments every time.
#4 Step: Create a new ad and insert the post ID as an existing post
Next, create a new ad in Ads Manager or duplicate the ad you just created. For this ad, select “Use Existing Post”…
…and insert the ID of the existing post just created in “Enter Post ID”.
Note: So far, these steps are like the “old” way of social proofing.
Pro-Tip: I always recommend to create a new ad and insert the ID there and not to overwrite the original post (which you created in the first step) with the ID. This way you can always access the original post or ad and easily test different variants (other text, images, etc.) of it by duplicating the ad again and starting again at the first step.
#5 Step: Use the possibilities of Asset Customization and upload more creatives
By selecting the ad you created in the first step as an existing post, Facebook will always use this post when your ad gets delivered in the feeds (on Facebook and Instagram). All reactions and comments are collected under this post. “Social proofing” — done.
But what’s still missing: the optimization of your ad for other placements, especially for Stories. After you’ve selected the existing post, you should therefore in the last step in “Edit Placement”, “Select a placement to edit”…
…upload a picture or video optimized for Stories (or further placements).
The result: an existing post which is used for social proofing, for which we’ve uploaded story-optimized creatives using Asset Customization, or possibly for further placements too.
One final tip: Asset Customization now makes it also possible to use different media formats for one ad on different placements. For example, you can use a static creative for Feeds (as an existing post) and a boomerang or video for Stories (with an animated swipe up) — a pretty good combination.
Conclusion
Do you know the moment when someone looks up into the sky and others automatically do the same?
Social proofing is real.
In 2020, you should therefore continue to use this (admittedly not new) tactic for your Facebook and Instagram ads and take the detour via existing posts and Asset Customization. This additional effort in “social proofing” your ads is worth it, because this way the collected proof will never get lost again.
Finally, the question remains how the continuing shift of feeds in stories will affect social proofing? After all, there are no publicly visible reactions in Story ads. One possible way: build reviews and customer feedback into your Story ads. But this is a topic for another article.
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