Monthly Archives: March 2023

An advertiser of a brand or any marketing team of the company invests a huge amount of their marketing budgets in digital advertising in current times. However, if they are not tracking the right metrics, then they won’t be able to compute the efficiency and effectiveness of their advertising campaign deliverables. Without tracking the right metrics, an advertiser seems to be wasting his time, efforts & financial resources.

In this blog post, we will highlight the importance of tracking the right metrics for effective advertising and provide a step-by-step guide to help you get started.

Why is it important to track Metrics for a Digital or Online Advertising Campaign?

It is important for an advertiser to track the right metrics [Cost Metrics and Performance metrics]  for the advertising campaigns for several reasons:

1. Measure the Performance of the Advertising Campaign

Tracking important KPIs or metrics helps an advertiser to measure the performance of the advertising campaigns. These defined performance indicators will further help them to monitor the discrepancy between the planned and actual performance. Primary KPIs of the campaign can include Return on ad spend (ROAS), Building Reach & Frequency, and Maximizing conversions [purchases, App installs]; whereas Secondary KPIs of the campaign can include controlling various cost & performance metrics such as CPC [Cost Per Click], CPA [Cost Per Action], VTR [View Through Rate], CTR [Click Through Rate]. By tracking these metrics, an advertiser can identify which campaigns are performing well and which ones need improvement.

2. Optimize Campaigns

Tracking metrics also helps an advertiser to optimize the campaign. Optimization includes steps such as pausing non-performing creative assets or audiences, changing the budget distribution among the existing campaigns, etc. By analyzing and extracting various performance reports, an advertiser can identify areas or metrics that need to be improved in a campaign. 

For example, if an advertiser’s KPI is to build more reach and frequency; then he could optimize or pause the creative assets that have low VTR or high CPMs. Further; can make channel exclusions from the line items to improve VTR. Optimizing the campaigns in this manner will help an advertiser to achieve the desired goals at optimum utilization of the budget allocated to campaigns.

3. Make Data-Driven Decisions

Regular tracking and analysis of performance metrics help campaign manager to make data-driven decisions about their advertising campaigns. By properly examining the collected data, an advertiser can make informed decisions about how to adjust the campaigns to achieve their goals.

For example, if a campaign manager finds that his campaign’s CPC [cost per click] is too high, he can adjust the bidding strategy to reduce the cost per click. Further, can pause the keywords or ad sets that have CPC and lower results. Hence by making such data-driven decisions, managers can ensure that they are allocating the budgets and financial resources effectively and getting the most out of the advertising spend.

What are the Steps that an advertiser needs to follow for an effective tracking of Key campaign Metrics?

Now as we discussed the importance of tracking metrics for effective advertising in the initial part of the blog, let’s dive into a step-by-step guide to help a campaign manager to get started.

Step 1- Define Your Campaign Goals

Before an advertiser starts to track metrics, he needs to define the campaign goals. Different campaign goals might include-  increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving sales, and building more reach.

It is very important that the campaign goals should align with the overall business objectives and should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Once advertisers define their goals, they can determine which metrics to track to measure the campaign’s progress towards those goals.

Step 2- Identify the Campaign’s  KPIs [Key Performance Indicators]

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the metrics that an advertiser will use to measure the success of their advertising campaigns. It is important to establish a planned KPI before the start of the campaign; so that at the end of the delivery; a campaign manager can evaluate the campaign’s success by measuring the discrepancy between Planned V/s actuals.

Some common KPIs include:

Click-through rate (CTR): the percentage of people who click on the ad after seeing it.

Conversion rate: the percentage of people who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.

Cost per click (CPC): the average cost of each click on your ad.

Return on ad spend (ROAS): the amount of revenue generated for each dollar spent on advertising.

While choosing the KPIs, an advertiser should ensure that they are relevant to their business’s goals and are actionable. The goals should be measurable because the performance numbers will help the campaign managers to optimize the campaign and evaluate the growth of the campaign.

Step 3- Set Up Tracking

Tracking is extremely important in advertising campaigns as it allows an advertiser to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions to optimize the desired results and KPIs. Below are some of the important aspects to be considered while setting up 

A. Use Tracking URLs

One way to track the advertising campaigns is by using tracking URLs. A tracking URL is a unique URL that an advertiser needs to create for each ad campaign. It includes parameters to track data in Google Analytics or other tracking tools.

For example, if an advertiser is running a Facebook ad campaign, he can create a tracking URL for that campaign that includes the campaign name, the source (Facebook), and the medium (paid social). There are custom or additional parameters such as content, a term that can be used to track additional details of a campaign such as keywords, audience, creative details, etc.

B. Conversion Tracking Set Up

An advertiser can set up conversion events to track the events such as purchases, leads, form submissions, etc. Like, he can use Google Ads conversion tracking to track actions that people take on your website after clicking on one of your ads. For example, with Google Ads conversion tracking set up, you can see which one of your Google Ads advertisements generates the most sales on your online store.

The conversion tracking code will track when a specific user completes a specific action on the specific website (e.g., makes a purchase) after clicking on one of their ads. An advertiser will be able to then see how many conversions each ad campaign is generating and can further use that data to optimize their campaigns.

C. Integrate Ad Platform [Facebook, Google]  with Your Analytics Tool [GA, Shopify]

Many advertising platforms, such as Facebook, DV360, and Google Ads, allow an advertiser to integrate your ad account with your analytics tool (e.g., Google Analytics). This integration allows you to track data from your advertising campaigns directly in your analytics tool.

To set up the integration, an advertiser first needs to connect the ad account to the analytics account and enable auto-tagging. Once the platform has set up the integration, the campaign manager will be able to see data such as clicks, impressions, and conversions for each

Step 4- Analyze the  Data

Once appropriate tracking is set up, an advertiser can start collecting data on their advertising campaigns. Further, to analyze the data effectively, an advertiser needs to use different data visualization tools, create reports, and identify trends and patterns. Google Data studio or formerly known as Lookerstudio is one of the famously used data visualization tools. Graphical and tabular summarized representations of collected data will help in better analysis and optimizing the campaign. 

A. Use Data Visualization Tools

Data visualization tools, such as Looker BI or Tableau, can help an advertiser to interpret the data by creating visualizations such as graphs and charts. These tools can help in identifying the trends and patterns in the data and make it easier to communicate your findings to others. Also; weekly and monthly comparisons will be easy with these tools. These tools can be easily integrated with Google ads accounts or Google Sheets. 

B. Create Reports

Creating reports helps an advertiser to summarize the data and communicate the findings to the related stakeholders. One can create reports using tools such as Google Data Studio or Microsoft Excel. The basic primary and secondary KPIs should be included in the reports along with the important cost & performance metrics such as CPC, impression, spends, and CPA. 

C. Identify Trends and Patterns

It’s always recommended that a campaign manager should regularly analyze the data and study the trends and patterns of performance before making any optimization call or decision. 

For example, an advertiser observed a trend that their ads are performing better during certain times of the day or on certain days of the week. By identifying these patterns, they can adjust their targeting or bidding strategy to improve the overall results.

Step 5- Make Data-Driven Decisions

Once data is analyzed; a campaign manager needs to make data-driven decisions. Decisions or optimization strategies should always be backed by data or numbers. Because this will help campaigns in achieving the planned KPIs and reduce discrepancies between actual and budgeted. Here are a few ways to use your data to optimize your campaigns:

A. Adjust Your Targeting

If an advertiser or campaign manager finds that their ads are not reaching their targeted audience, then they can adjust with the targeting parameters such as age, geography, HHI, Device, Platform, Placements, etc.

For example, one may sometimes find that a campaign is not spending to the extent of the allocated budget because the potential reach of the audience is less. In that case; one can expand the target audience by expanding geography, age, HHI, parental status, etc. This will increase the potential reach of the campaign and it might generate more results.

B. Tweak Creatives Assets

If a certain creative has good CTR [Click Through Rate] but a low Conversion rate; then there is a possibility that there is a misalignment between the creative communication and offers available on the website/Landing page. Hence, a campaign manager should always experiment with different headlines, images, descriptions, and CTA [Call-To-Action] to check which

combination is performing better.  Also, different creative formats such as static images, videos, carousels, catalogues, Gifs, or HTML images should be used for different conversion events & audiences.

C. Optimize the Campaign’s Bidding Strategy

If the campaign reports show that the cost per click (CPC) or cost per impression (CPM) is too high, one can adjust the campaign’s bidding strategy to reduce unnecessary costs. 

For example, a campaign manager might need to adjust their bidding strategy based on the performance of each ad and target audience. If the cost per purchase from a specific campaign or ad set is very high; then an advertiser should use the Cost cap strategy or Tcpa bidding strategy to cap the max cost that will be spent for a specific purchase or conversion from that specific campaign.

D. Allocate Budget/ Spends Wisely

By analyzing the data, one can determine which campaigns are generating the best return on investment (ROI). Hence, a campaign manager should regularly re-shuffle budgets among the best ad sets as per the performance [in case of ABO or manual budgeting]. This will help the campaigns in delivering the best results.

E. Regularly Experiment and Test

Finally, don’t be afraid to experiment and test different strategies. It was often recommended to experiment and take quick calls on the campaign performance. By testing and analyzing the results, one can continually optimize your campaigns and improve your ROI. 

For example- Facebook has recently launched the Advantage+ shopping campaign which is a completely automated campaign. E-commerce clients should try this campaign to enhance the overall performance and reduce CPA. 

Similarly; one can experiment with new audiences, and targeting. This will help a campaign manager to understand what is performing well. 

Conclusion

Effective advertising requires tracking and analyzing the right metrics to ensure that the campaigns are generating a positive ROI. By following the steps outlined in this blog above, one can set up tracking, analyze the data, and make data-driven decisions to optimize the campaigns.

Lastly remember to identify the KPIs, set up tracking, analyze your data, and use that data to make informed decisions about your advertising campaigns. By doing so, one can achieve better results and maximize your advertising ROI.

With the rise of businesses that envision building their online presence, digital marketing becomes inevitable for them to stand out among the fierce competition fighting for the attention of their audience. Display and Video 360 is one of the many DSPs that enable advertisers to do that.

When N-Number of Advertisers is competing using over 50 DSPs, the fight for the desired spot on the desired website/app is something that happens at an unimaginable pace. In this situation, it is beyond question that advertisers will demand value for each buck that they have spent through the Demand Side Platform with a clear bifurcation of the charges paid to - Publisher, Supply Side Platforms, Exchanges, Demand Side Platform, Agencies, and other involved entities. Therefore, it is important that they have complete visibility of what they are billed for.

But how can this be ensured? How can the advertiser have maximum visibility of what is their Budget Spent? What is their Media Cost? What are the Fees that are levied on them by advertisers by Display Video 360 or other Partners?

Here are some details that will help answer these questions and understand the Billing Part of Display Video 360 more:

The first level of Top to Bottom Hierarchy is a Billing Profile which is created when a Partner is created in the Google Marketing Platform. It includes the following details:

Partners can check which advertisers use the billing profile from the Assignment Section and the Invoices can be checked from the Billing Summary Section.

All of these settings are prerequisites, but what might actually interest the advertisers is where can they keep a tab of their Costs and Fees once their Campaigns have started churning out the Monies, i.e. WHERE CAN THEY CHECK THE INVOICES?

Answer to this Billing Summary. It can be accessed from Advertiser>Advertiser Settings>Basic Details>Billing Profile>Billing Summary.

THIS IS THE KEY which can unlock all the information for the relevant Advertiser Stakeholders.

The billing Summary consists of the details of Transactions, Invoices, and Other Settings.

In the Transactions tab, the advertiser can see details of all the transactions that have been conducted through the Billing Profile. It is available in Summary View and Detailed View that can be adjusted according to the date range.

The Detailed View resembles the Bank Statement containing the Date, Details of the Transactions, and Amount of the Transaction.

Summary View bifurcates the Particulars into Costs, Payments, Adjustments, and Taxes.

A question that might arise here about what do Adjustments refer to?

Adjustments refer to the amount that is credited to the Payment Account by the exchanges  in case of one of the below reasons:

 In the Invoices tab, the advertiser gets a dump of all the invoices that have been raised and processed in the past. Besides the Document Number, the Advertiser can get visibility of the following details of the Invoices in a tabular format - Status, Due Date, Issue Date, Document Type, Client/Payer, Invoice Amount, Amount Paid, Outstanding Balance, Advertiser ID, Advertiser Name, Campaign ID, Campaign Name, Insertion Order ID, Insertion Order Name, Partner ID, Partner Name, Purchase Order - and use the same as filters to find the Invoice they are looking for.

Here, Campaign ID, Campaign Name, Insertion Order ID, and Insertion Order Name are available only when the Invoice is detailed at the said levels.

In the Payments Setting Tab, the Advertiser gets visibility of

Now that the Advertisers know from where the invoices can be accessed, it is natural that they are going to compare the same with the actual cost incurred in the campaigns. This happens because there are multiple components that form a part of the invoice which might not be split into different particulars.

So here is how a comparison can be drawn between the numbers available in DV360 and the Invoices generated in Billing Summary:

Go to Insights>Offline Reporting>Standard>Billing report Template and generate the report for the same duration as that of the invoice using the following:

Dimension: Partner/Advertiser

Metrics: Media Cost, Billable Cost (Media Cost + Additional Fees), Media Fee 1, Media Fee 2, Media Fee 3, Media Fee 4, Media Fee 5, Media Cost Data Fee, and Platform Fee

Once this report is extracted, the same can be compared with the Amount in the Invoice minus the Refund & Adjustments, and Taxes.

Please note that the Platform Fees, Ad Serving Fees, and other Partner Fees are not disclosed on Open Resources. They are determined to post a discussion with the Agency and Sales Team from GMP.

Digital advertising space is purchased and sold automatically using programmatic advertising. Real-time ad inventory purchases are made using software and algorithms, and the best appropriate audience for a given ad campaign is determined using data and analytics.

Using real-time bidding (RTB) technology, programmatic advertising enables marketers to place bids on impressions as they become available. By providing advertisements to the appropriate individuals at the appropriate moment, this approach enables advertisers to quickly and precisely target the proper audience.

Programmatic advertising is used for advertising which includes display ads, video ads, mobile ads, and native ads. It offers several benefits, such as increased efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and scalability. 

Advertisers can optimize their campaigns in real time by monitoring performance metrics and adjusting their bids accordingly.

Programmatic advertising is expected to continue to grow as advertisers look for more efficient ways to reach their target audience.

What is programmatic advertising?

Programmatic advertising is a strategy that relies on data to purchase, place, and optimize online ads automatically. This approach utilizes real-time bidding systems and algorithms to target specific audiences and deliver highly relevant ads on the right device at the right time.

By utilizing data on user behavior, demographics, and interests, programmatic advertising enables advertisers to effectively reach their target audience. Additionally, it enables more flexibility and control over ad targeting and placement, as well as real-time monitoring and analysis of campaign performance.

Some common examples of programmatic advertising include display ads, video ads, mobile ads, and native ads. Overall, programmatic advertising has become an increasingly popular method of digital advertising due to its efficiency, scalability, and ability to generate better ROI compared to traditional advertising methods.

How does programmatic advertising work?

Programmatic advertising is a method of buying and selling digital advertising inventory through automated processes using algorithms and software. 

Here are the steps involved in the programmatic ads

Buyer Persona: Publishers and marketers gather information on their audiences, such as demographics, interests, and browsing patterns.

Ad Inventory: Publishers provide their website or mobile app ad inventory for programmatic advertising networks to purchase.

Auctions: Using a demand-side platform (DSP), advertisers place bids on available ad space; the highest bidder wins the auction.

Ad serving: The ad is served to the user based on their data and the targeting criteria set by the advertiser.

Real-time optimization: The programmatic system continuously optimizes the ad campaign in real time based on performance data, such as click-through rates, conversions, and engagement.

Display, video, native, and mobile ads are just a few of the ad formats that can be employed with programmatic advertising. It enables advertisers to efficiently, cost-effectively, and at scale reach their target consumers. Also, it offers publishers a quick and effective option to sell their ad inventory, increasing their profit.

How cost-effective is programmatic advertising?

Optimizing ad spends while reaching the target audience is possible for advertisers through programmatic advertising. The cost-effectiveness of this approach is influenced by various factors, including the advertiser’s goals, budget, and targeting criteria. Compared to traditional advertising methods, programmatic advertising has the potential to deliver better targeting, higher engagement rates, and lower costs per conversion.

Despite its benefits, programmatic advertising has some drawbacks, such as ad fraud, brand safety concerns, viewability issues, and ad-blocking. Advertisers should carefully monitor their campaigns and collaborate with trustworthy partners to ensure that they are achieving the best possible return on investment.

In conclusion, when utilized correctly and with appropriate tools and partners, programmatic advertising can be a financially beneficial option for advertisers.

What are the best ways to reach your audience through programmatic advertising?

Retargeting: A form of programmatic advertising known as retargeting focuses on visitors who have already interacted with your brand or been to your website. You can raise the likelihood that these users will make a purchase or take another desired action by retargeting them with relevant adverts.

Lookalike Audiences: Programmatic advertising enables you to generate audiences that are similar to your current clientele. the aforementioned, the aforementioned, and the aforementioned, the aforementioned, and the aforementioned.

Cross-Device Targeting: Programmatic advertising allows advertisers to focus on specific users who use tablets, smartphones, and desktop computers. By doing this, you can be sure that users will see your advertising regardless of the device they are using.

Real-Time Bidding: A crucial component of programmatic advertising, real-time bidding enables advertisers to make real-time offers on ad inventory. By doing this, you can maximize your reach and your targeting options while also getting the best pricing for your ad placement.

Programmatic advertising uses data to improve the performance and delivery of ads. Advertisers can increase the efficacy of their campaigns by using data analysis to examine audience behavior, ad placement, and other variables.

Brand Safety: By employing tools that track ad placement and make sure that ads are not shown on improper websites or next to bad material, programmatic advertising may help assure brand safety.

Closing Thoughts:

In conclusion, programmatic advertising is an efficient and effective method of reaching your target audience through data-driven and automated processes. By utilizing options like retargeting, lookalike audiences, cross-device targeting, real-time bidding, and brand safety measures, advertisers can optimize their campaigns and generate better ROI.

However, it is important to monitor campaigns and collaborate with trustworthy partners to ensure that programmatic advertising is a cost-effective option. Overall, programmatic advertising is expected to continue growing as advertisers seek more efficient ways to reach their target audience.

The future of tech is shifting towards becoming more Privacy-centric. It is evident from Apple’s actions post-launch of iOS 14, where the users are able to opt out of in-app ad tracking and perhaps have more control over the data they share publicly. 

Consequently, the targeting options for Facebook ads will also be limited, resulting in fewer opportunities for campaign managers to conduct granular targeting of iOS users. This, in turn, will lead to a reduction in content personalization, causing businesses to worry about lower returns on investment and higher advertising costs as a percentage of their spending.

In response to this issue, Meta launched ” Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns” ads that leverage AI (Artificial Intelligence) and automation to maximize marketing returns.

Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns simplifies the process of launching and managing shopping campaigns on Facebook, allowing the campaign manager to make more informed decisions with less time spent on mundane tasks

How do Advantage+ Shopping campaigns make advertisers more efficient?

In Facebook managers, Shopping ads advertise specific products from a website using dynamic product feeds. This type of feed is an inventory of all the products or services, specially designed for e-commerce clients as it automates the ad-creation process and allows up to 150 creative combinations at a time.

Previously. advertisers had to manually create and test different targeting options for the audience, platform, placement, and creative format.

However, the new Advantage+Shopping Campaign combines full-funnel marketing approaches into a single campaign, thereby eliminating many manual campaign creation steps.

Thus Advantage+ Shopping campaign helps in reaching more targetted audiences with greater efficiency. Moreover, to optimize conversions, the campaign adjusts and automates settings at every level - from budget and targeting to placements and creatives.

How to Set Up Advantage+ Shopping in Facebook-Ads Manager UI?

Step-1

Choose the ‘Sales’ objective type in the new Meta interface. In the case of the old interface, the ‘Conversion’ objective needs to be selected.

Step-2

After selecting the ‘Sales’ objective, Meta will provide two campaign setup options:- 

1. Create a manual Sales campaign
2. Create Advantage+ Shopping (automated campaign). Select this option and hit Continue.

Step-3

Advantage+ shopping campaign requires limited inputs by the advertiser during the setup.

For the rest, the algorithm itself will take care of targeting, placements, and budget allocation.

In the below screen, you will notice that the campaign was created using these preset inputs. An advertiser can view all preset settings by clicking ‘See all preset settings’. 

This is a view-only mode, which means that an advertiser can’t change these preset settings.

In case of required changes in specific settings, an advertiser will have to switch back and create a manual campaign instead.

After all the default campaign setup settings are reviewed; an advertiser should name the campaign for quick identification.

Step-4

As, Sales objective is selected; it is necessary to have an active Meta Pixel installed on the website that sends the ‘Purchase’ event. Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns optimize for ‘Purchase’ events by default.

Step-5

In the next phase; one can add the desired location targeting. Only country-level targeting options are available in these campaigns. This is the country where one wants to sell their products. Single or multiple countries can be selected.

Note- In these types of campaigns; advertisers don’t have the option to target other demographics such as age or gender. Targeting by interests is also not an option. Limiting these audience targeting options is Meta intentional as the objective is to provide freedom for the machine algorithm to find as many customers as possible within your targeted location. Alternatively; if  an advertiser would narrow the audience by age, gender, or interests, then they  would be limiting results

Step-6

In Advantage+ Shopping campaigns; Reporting provides options to receive additional analysis and insights into the campaign. As there are limited targeting controls; an advertiser would still want to know how their existing (custom audiences) vs. new (prospecting audiences) are converting. Some input is needed to break down reports between new and existing customers.

Step-7

To select the Retargeting (existing) audience; Click ‘Go to account settings to open the Ad Account settings page. Or navigate to ‘Ad Account Settings’ from the Business Manager menu.

An advertiser will find a specific section to either create a new custom audience or select from existing custom audiences. All audiences that are added here will be identified as ‘Existing customers’ in the reporting interface of your campaign.

Note As Retargeting audience; an advertiser can add various custom audiences such as customer lists, website visitors, Insta & FB engagers, and Video viewers. One can use whatever list is relevant for your business to report on as ‘existing customers.

Step-8

Post adding custom audiences for remarketing; an advertiser further can set a budget cap to spend on your existing customers in Advantage+ campaigns. 

This option will help an advertiser to control % of the budget that Meta will allocate among new (prospecting) audiences and custom (existing or remarketing) audiences. If the budget cap is not selected; there is a possibility that Meta could be allocating more budget to existing customers instead of finding new customers.

Set your desired ‘Existing Customer Budget Cap’.Note that Meta advises only set a cap if an advertiser needs to prioritize new user acquisition at a lower cost per acquisition.

Step-9

After allocating the budgets; the next step is to choose the attribution setting for the campaign. This setting will impact the performance and reporting of campaigns. Because the event manager will use data as per the conversion event and attribution window selected in reporting.

By default; most of the meta ad accounts select the ‘7-day click or 1-day view’ attrition window setting in the campaign. This will maximize the number of signals that Meta can use to optimize your campaign. 

On the other hand; If advertisers observe lots of visitors and conversions happening on their website on a daily basis, then they can even consider setting it to ‘click’ only attribution.

Step-10

Last step after fixing the audience and delivery setting is to create ads by adding some creatives. If an advertiser is the first time creating Advantage+ Shopping campaigns; then Meta will suggest importing ads based on historical data. One can see an overview of suggested ads to import.

Meta’s suggested ads are ads that have proven to generate good conversions at a lower CPA based on historical campaign performance trends. Hence, Meta suggests importing all eligible existing ads so that it can automatically test the creatives and deliver the best-performing ones.

Also, customized ads can be later added at the ad level just like manual shopping campaigns. In advantage+ shopping campaigns; an advertiser can test up to 150 creative combinations in one campaign to deliver the best-performing ads to the highest-value shoppers.

Select the ads you want to import and click Import All Ads

Audience & Geography Performance Breakdown Reporting 

Reports help in analyzing the performance with delivery insights. If custom audiences [Retargeting] audiences are used in a campaign setup;  an advertiser can get breakdown results by ‘Audience Type’. 

This breakdown option allows one to view results by new and existing customers/audiences. This means that an advertiser can know how many purchases came from New customers vs. people in your custom audience segments (Existing customers).

Audience Breakdown report has below three audience reporting:-

1. Existing Customers: This column in the report presents total conversions or purchases from audiences that are included in the Custom Audiences and added to your campaign.
2. New Customers: This column indicates conversions from people outside your Custom Audiences. [Prospecting audiences]
3. Unknown: This column indicates results when the ad was delivered to people while your existing customer segment was still empty. These people may have been new or existing customers.

Note- The conversion reporting attributed to new and existing users is estimated. Existing customers may be mapped to New Customers when they aren’t matched during your custom audience setup. For E.g. Someone purchased from your website in the past, but if the audience isn’t added to a customer list or isn’t included in your website custom audience is due to privacy-related tracking limitations.

Further; when an advertiser is running Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns in multiple countries (E.g. You’ve added both Belgium and Netherlands as targeting countries during the campaign setup.), one can also get a breakdown report by ‘Audience Type and Country’. This way you can easily report on performance by audience type and country.

Advantages of Automated Shopping Campaigns-

1. Advertisers can use this almost fully automated campaign available to increase conversions at a lower cost per purchase. The campaigns work as per AI/ Algorithm set by Meta.
2. The campaign setup is quick and easy. Also; 125 creatives can be used in one campaign and there is no requirement of creating different adset targeting different audiences. But, at the same time an advertiser must be aware of the defaults and monitor closely if that setup works for your business. 
3. Advertisers already seeing lots of purchase activity will probably benefit more from this campaign type than niche advertisers having smaller budgets to let the AI take over.

Hence; advertisers should start experimenting with this type of campaign today and see how it performs for the business. Also; they should keep analyzing if any manual changes or targeting are required as per the breakdown reports. If there is a hypothesis; that a particular age group or audience is performing better; a separate manual adset should be prepared later. This will help in giving more budget exposure and control on the targeting that is resulting in better conversions at lower cost metrics such as CPA, CPM, or CPC. Also; it seems that in the future Meta will probably expand its automation processes and upgrade new changes in campaigns to further optimize conversions.