More brands should be testing audiences the same way they test creatives.
Here's what I mean.
After iOS 14, when audiences on Meta and other platforms became much less effective and going broad became best practice, the line of thinking became:
"Creative is the new targeting."
There's truth to this. Creative testing and shipping a ton of assets per month should be a priority for brands.
But, I think we may have jumped the shark on this.
Do you really trust Meta's algorithm to get your ads in front of all of the right people?
Or are they just getting you results that are good enough to get you to stick around and keep testing? Their incentive is to get advertisers to spend more.
On top of that, creative production is expensive. Whether you're going for high-production value or paying UGC creators to make assets for you, it's easy to run up a bill.
If you're going to invest all that, you should give each asset the best chance possible to get in front of all relevant customers. Why should we be okay with burning through assets with a 1/10 hit rate?
This is where audience testing comes into play.
Sure, test broad campaigns. In many cases, they'll work well. But also test alongside interest stacks, lookalikes, and precision audiences enriched with aggregated first-party data (what we do at Proxima).
This approach will get that same creative in front of as many of the right customers as possible, leaving no stone unturned.
I want to make one thing clear.
It's not audience testing OR creative testing.
It's audience testing AND creative testing.
The two should happen in tandem. Creative iteration is table stakes, and audience testing is about getting the most out of that creative and scaling more efficiently.
What do you think of this take? Happy to answer any questions based on what we're seeing at Proxima.