If Alex Schultz, Meta’s CMO and VP of analytics, had his way, the term “performance marketing” would be retired.
To designate certain strategies and tactics as driving performance implies that other tactics, like brand marketing, don’t perform – and that’s simply not the case, Schultz says, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
Marketing is “100% a continuum,” he says.
It’s not like people are born at the bottom of the funnel. They typically learn about a product or service and consider it before taking an action.
WhatsApp is a good example. Although WhatsApp’s user base is growing in the US, it’s still far more popular in other countries. To drive awareness for WhatsApp in the US, Meta has been spending on traditional brand placements, including TV ads and billboards.
“The most important thing we can do is drive top-of-funnel awareness and consideration, and then the rest of the funnel takes care of itself,” Schultz says.
And now that more people are aware of the app, Meta is starting to layer in direct response ad tactics, such as download ads.
Meta’s next push for WhatsApp, which Schultz says is coming soon, will include the whole shebang, from branding to DR, and focus on one US state (he didn’t share which) “to see if we can really accelerate the growth.”
“But there isn’t a line [between] brand and performance – it all performs,” Schultz says. “It’s silly when we say they’re separate things.”
Also in this episode: Addressing bugs in Facebook’s ads platform, why we’ll probably soon start seeing more titles that combine marketing functions with analytics, how Meta dealt with the fallout from Apple’s ATT, the rise of AI-powered ad products, why Schultz prefers media mix modeling to multitouch attribution and what paper planes have to do with SEO.
