Facebook Ads Campaigns with Engagement Objective – when is it worth using?

Activity is an fascinating advertising target, as we most often use it in support of other types of campaigns. In a nutshell, its main task is primarily to get as many shares as possible inside the Facebook platform itself. Under the heading of “Activity” for example, we will find such actions as page likes, activity regarding a post (i.e., its likes, comments, and shares) or reactions to an event. However, this type of campaign hides many more uses that are definitely worth knowing.

When to select a campaign under activity generation? 

A campaign with this advertising objective is worth choosing especially at the moment when we have already built adequate recognition of our brand and we now want to increase user interest in our company, but also in the offerings we have.

Using this type of campaign, we can encourage our audience to watch our site and respond to the content we have prepared by leaving reactions, commenting and sharing. By selecting the Activity goal, we also have the opportunity to increase the number of responses to a Facebook event, the number of messages or views of a video. 

This campaign is also highly recommended when we are regularly active on our social media profiles. For example, if we manage to create an extremely engaging post then there’s a really good chance that users will observe our account, in anticipation of more equally interesting content.

The campaign is also highly recommended when we have a regular activity on our social media profiles.

However, in a situation where we share typical sales posts with which we want to generate motion to our site, this advertising objective may not work in this case. Of course, we can link our site in the content of the post, but the main task of this campaign is to get likes or comments, and the activity itself does not translate into generating as many visits to the site as possible.

Configure a campaign with a target Activity

When we start to create our campaign, as soon as we select the Activity goal, Facebook prompts us with its recommended uses. It distinguishes between the already mentioned messages on Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, video views, activity regarding a post or conversions. So we can see that Activity is not only a goal in itself, but is de facto a group of several sub-goals. The selection of one of them is possible at the ad set level. Importantly, each of them will affect, among other things, the variety of available features or the appearance of the ad itself.

The first sub-goal we can highlight in this campaign is Messages. Its task is to encourage as many people as possible to contact our brand in Messenger, WhatsApp or on Instagram. Due to privacy rules in Europe, currently the only available ad type we can choose is “click to transfer to message”. The – sponsored message – function is not available with us. Due to the rules related to GDPR, we will also not find started conversations in the results. Currently, the only option to optimize this type of campaign is link clicks. What’s more, it is also important to remember that if we want to choose a destination such as Instagram or WhatsApp, we must first link our fanpage to these accounts.   

The next and probably the most well-known and most frequently used sub-target is Engagement. It is meant to encourage users to watch a video or interact with our post or event. Post promotion is a very good solution if we want to increase audience engagement inside the site. As you know, the organic reach of Facebook posts is visibly declining, due to algorithms that tailor content to users’ current interests. If a person has not taken any action on our fanpage recently, it is very likely that they will not see our future posts. Therefore, promoting them will help us increase our reach and enhance interaction with our audience through likes, comments, shares, as well as clicks on “See more,” opening a photo or going to our profile. It is worth remembering, however, that unfortunately we have no control over exactly what activity users will perform under our post.  

The case is very similar for Facebook event promotion. The goal of our campaign will be to increase its reach by reaching people who are most likely to attend or click that they are “interested.” Keep in mind, however, that we need to create an event and publish it before setting up the campaign.

The last type of activity we can choose within the Advertising sub-target is video views. However, we should be very careful here and remember to select “Total plays” in the ad optimization. This will make Facebook look for those people who are most likely to play our video for at least 15 seconds (if the video is shorter than 15 seconds, then total plays will be counted when the entire video is viewed). Leaving the option “2-second continuous video lighting” after some time, we may find that our video generates a fair amount of activity, but in reality these will most likely be passive views, as most users will only see 2 seconds and then scroll on.

Conversion is the third type of sub-target we can use for a campaign. Its task is to encourage users to become active on our site. It’s worth thinking about using this option when we are redirecting to a site other than ours and don’t have the ability to install Facebook Pixel on it. This can happen when we advertise on a portal that allows you to search for services in a particular industry (such as Booksy). In such a case, this type of campaign may work better than campaigns with a Traffic or Sales goal.

With Activity, we can also encourage our users to use our application. However, it is worth remembering that if we want to use this option, we must first register it with Facebook. Only when we have the application connected to our account can we proceed to configure the campaign. When setting it up, we must also choose the event we want to optimize our campaign for, such as the start of a free subscription. However, this cannot be an event related to an in-app purchase – this type of event is only available under the Sales objective.   

The last sub-target that Facebook offers us as part of the campaign for Activity is the Facebook Page. Its task is to generate Facebook fanpage likes. However, we should be particularly careful about this type of activity. On the one hand, it is a good tool for building a community at the beginning of our journey. However, likes alone do not carry any particular business value if they do not translate into engagement under organic posts in the future. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon that fans gained in this way, do not significantly contribute to the fanpage and do not convert. That’s why it’s important to properly profile the audience most likely to engage with the brand in the future and not just be casual observers.

We will now look at the available methods for optimizing impressions in a campaign on activity. Before choosing one of them, first of all you need to know what you want to achieve by running an ad campaign. 

Optimization for ad impressions for ads:

• Activity about the post – ads will be displayed to people who are most likely to like, share or comment on the post
• Unique daily reach – the ad will be displayed to a person no more than once a day
• Extra views – the advertisement will be displayed as often as possible
• Response to event (for an event) – the ad will be displayed to people who are most likely to respond to our event
• Total plays (for video) – the video ad will be displayed to people who are most likely to watch the entire video, as long as it is less than 15 seconds long. For longer videos, the ad will be optimized for display to those users most likely to watch at least 15 seconds
• 2-second continuous video views (for video) – the ad will be optimized for display to those most likely to continuously watch at least 2 seconds of the video, when at least 50% of the video pixels are visible on the screen

Optimization for ad impressions for the site:

• Conversions – ads will be displayed to people who are willing to take a specific action on the website 
• Target page display – ads will be shown to those users who are most likely to view our website or instant material associated with the ad
• Link clicks – ads will be shown to those most likely to click on them
• Unique daily reach –  the ad will be displayed to a person no more than once a day
• Extent of views – the ad will be displayed as often as possible

Optimize for ad impressions for Facebook page:

• Page likes – ads will be displayed to the right people to help you get more page likes at the lowest price

Optimize for ad impressions for messengers:

• Conversations – maximize the number of conversions by displaying ads to people who are most likely to strike up a conversation with you via messengers
• Link clicks – ads will be displayed to people who are most likely to click on them

Optimization for ad impressions for apps:

• Events in the app – ads will be displayed to people who are willing to take a specific action in the app at least once
• Link clicks – ads will be displayed to people who are most likely to click on them
• Unique daily reach –  the ad will be displayed to a person no more than once a day

Summary of campaign with target Activity 

A campaign with activity goal is a good option when we would like to increase the reach of our posts or expand our Facebook fan base, in order to build trust in our company or subsequent organic efforts. It will certainly work well at the beginning of our activities, when we are at the top of our marketing funnel, as well as being a great support for other campaigns lower down in it.

Activity campaign is a good solution when we want to increase the reach of our posts or expand our fan base.