In June, Meta gathered elite performance marketers from across the country to share their bold vision for the future of digital advertising.
The message was clear: performance marketing is evolving rapidly, and to keep pace, brands must embrace signal-rich strategies, lean into AI, develop omni-channel optimization and build with incrementality. This is all good news for Kargo. Our team walked away energized by the opportunities ahead for mobile-first, retail-ready marketers.
Here are the major takeaways and tips on how brands can take action now.
Meta continues to stress the importance of powering your optimization signal by sharing meaningful business data through tools like Conversions API (CAPI), offline conversions, and app signals. Bottomline, Meta has to process millions of signals each minute and can only optimize if fed accurate, high-quality data.
As privacy-first ecosystems evolve, Kargo supports our partners in closing the loop between ad exposure and real-world results, online and off.
Meta emphasized their evolution and continued advancement of their value optimization (VO), allowing advertisers to customize and optimize what performance really means to the business. Whether its larger cart sizes, optimizing for higher margined products, or down-the-line lifetime value (LTV) considerations, Meta is building with value as top priority.
Consistently testing and leveraging VO as an evergreen portion of the media mix is critical. In fact, our tests have shown implementing VO in evergreen media can lead to +19% ROAS, +27% CVR and increased average order value of +10%!
As a trusted partner, Kargo will also be working with our clients to become first testers of these margin based optimizations.
Meta's new capability for omni-channel optimization, which just released to general availability, is showing early promise, and the call to action is clear: test ahead of the holidays.
Kargo has had the opportunity to test the omni-channel optimization beta early and based on strong results, we are already helping brands adopt it as an evergreen portion of their media strategy. We take omni-opimization a step farther by combining our feed tech and local inventory solutions to ensure proper delivery of the right products, to the right people, in the right location at the right time.
One major fashion retailer saw a +19% overall lift in ROAS and -21% drop in CPM after adopting omni-channel optimization powered by Kargo’s dynamic enhanced overlays. With concern of overindexing on offline sales, this case actually saw the majority in lift from web sales, with +24% ROAS. Clearly, omni-optimization is the rising tide that lifts all boats.
The metric repeated multiple times throughout the week is that reels now represent over 50% of time spent on Instagram. Given this compelling statistic, Meta reiterated the power of creator content, stating it as a must in your media mix when advertising, especially when looking at performance data for reels.
We reviewed Meta’s new Partnerships Catalog Ads Alpha, a feature that enables advertisers to upload creator content to the feed and test that content, image or video alongside their feed products. In early testing with a luxury apparel and footwear brand, we’ve seen promising results.
Kargo’s Product-Level Video (PLV) allows brands to fulfill this directive by combining high-impact design with commerce-driving content. PLV gives advertisers the ability to leverage and connect the performance DNA of creator storytelling to media buys. One of our clients saw +15% incremental ROAS compared to the next best ad creative.
Perhaps the most encouraging signal from Meta: a continued doubling down of incrementality.
With deeper third-party measurement integrations (Northbeam, TripleWhale, Adobe and more on the way), Meta is empowering brands to optimize based on true lift. While they understand that brands may want to optimize against last click and are even building features to allow advertisers to optimize on those 3rd party integrations, they emphasized the limitation of that window. This is particularly true with the tech savvy younger demographics, who are statistically 2x less likely to click on ads but still very likely to convert.
We’re aligned with Meta on incrementality, running platform lift studies, building campaigns around testing and optimization, and supporting geo-based experiments when needed. In a recent test with a luxury retailer using incremental attribution optimization, we saw a 17% lift in CTR and a 125% increase in new customer orders.
And last, but certainly not least - Meta is rolling out an AI powered report card, which will be dubbed your Opportunity Score. Found inside Ads Manager, a simple 0–100 rating will show how optimized your campaigns are based on Meta’s best practices.
The higher the score, the better your setup is for performing against Meta’s benchmarks. You’ll also receive clear, ranked recommendations to improve results, whether it’s better targeting, creative tweaks, or signal enhancements. Think of it as a real-time performance health check, designed to help you spend smarter and move faster. Kargo is working closely with our agency partners to help download and interpret these recommendations on a consistent basis and execute on them, offering support through our technology, creative enhancements and full funnel capabilities.
Performance marketing on Meta is getting smarter, more connected, and increasingly powered by AI. From optimization to measurement, AI is reshaping how campaigns are run.
This allows free markets to shift their focus on strategy and creativity. With H2 approaching and all the buying potential it holds for brands, Kargo is here with bold creative and full-funnel strategies to keep you in a position to succeed.