Rolling Reach And Other Metrics For Scaling
This episode is like a Meta scaling “early warning system” masterclass. Andrew, Brad, and guest Kurt Bullock break down why so many media buyers hit a plateau (even when ROAS looks “fine”) and how to diagnose it before performance rolls over. The core idea: Understanding CPMR to give you a clearer view of whether you’re actually expanding into new pockets of the market or just recycling the same people harder and harder.
They walk through how Meta’s rolling reach report works, a sliding-window version that’s more useful for ongoing decision-making, how to interpret overlap, and what to do when the numbers signal saturation (creative diversity, different angles/personas, bidding/exclusions tests, quiz-style funnels, etc.).Kurt also shares on the tool he's developed with the Foxwell Founders Community that automates these reports.
Key takeaways
What's actually happing if your scaling spend while your rolling reach is flat.
What comes next when ROAS looks stable… but your net new reach % is dropping
The difference between rolling reach vs net new reach… and which one will predict your ad fatigue.
How tracking this metric will help you spot when delivery is getting expensive due to audience fatigue.
Are your “winning” campaigns winning because they’re good… or because they’re overlapping like crazy with what’s already working?
The overlap % is the “uh oh” zone of death for reaching Net New Customers
How you might be leaning too hard on one motivator/angle and keeping Meta from finding new pockets even when launching fresh ads.
Why whitelisting is known for lowering CPMR and unlocking different ad distribution. -
Why testing with exclusions is still a good practice for your campaigns.
If you had one report to tell you “you’re fine today, but cooked next month,” would you be running it weekly?
To Get the Net New Reach Reporting Tool, head to https://tools.producedept.co/
This episode of the Scalability School podcast is sponsored by NorthBeam and they just launched Northbeam Incrementality. Northbeam Incrementality gives you easy, automated, self-service incrementality tests, while protecting you from the major mistakes so many people make while running incrementality tests. Your MTA handles the daily tactics, your MMM guides the long-term planning, and Incrementality provides the causal truth. It’s a closed loop that allows you to scale what works and cut what doesn't. Right now when you head over to https://northbeam.io/incrementality, they’re offering Scalability School listeners 50% off unlimited tests for a year when you join. Just tell them we sent you!
To learn more about Kurt Bullock, you can follow him on X https://x.com/KurtBullock
To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email Andrew@foxwelldigital.com
To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch
To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck
Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/
Learn More about the The Hive Haus Creators Community at http://HiveHausUGC.com
Full Transcript
(00:00) 50% of those were the same people. There's this crossover. And so let's say when you combine them and you have them both selected, instead of seeing 2000, you see 1500, right? So that would mean that, you know, 50% of your audience you had reached in previous months. And so and 50% was, you know, people you hadn't reached.
(00:18) Obviously, that's, that's super important. And that is enough in most cases, but there is some benefit to knowing whether you're reaching a new audience or not. And that might indicate that you can push hard on this. It might indicate like, if you have a goal of having a more sort of more creative diversity and reaching new audiences, that CPMR can be one, one indicator that that's happening.
(00:35) And then you might be able to push harder on that. Or one argument is that yeah, running cost caps is going to restrict the the number of new people that come into your funnel, right? And that your ads reach, because you're constraining who you're willing to talk to by putting that big cap on there. And and if you can't reach them, you know, underneath that bid, you're saying to Meta, don't go there.
(00:55) And so it does, you know, I think the argument is that it can go after lower funnel audiences and just keep churning through those lower funnel audiences. You know, the diagnostic side of a lot of these accounts is that a lot of people are still are just reporting on what we all learned, like ROAS and like, that's what you're doing.
(01:10) And so much more of it is around how are you talking to new people like that? It's very, it becomes much more simple. And now let's take a listen to the scalability school podcast. I have a great guest today. Let me tell you, Kurt Bullock, one of my favorite advertisers, favorite people in my community.
(01:37) Incredible human being, dad, Nike and mountain bike coach, incredible partner and husband to his wife. So you know, Kurt, what's up, man? Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for the great intro. And yeah, mountain bike season's over. So I got a little bit more, more time on my hands these days. We were talking about what we, what we bought for Black Friday.
(01:57) And obviously this is going to air another time, but it's right before Christmas. So we're talking about what we bought. I bought a tankless water heater. I was telling the guys, which is exciting for me. Yeah. I was saying you're making, making the big moves there with that one. Yeah. It was half off. $1,200. I mean, yeah. Versus $2,400. I mean, unreal. Like plus free shipping. And it came the next day.
(02:16) I was telling our team, I was like, you guys need to buy, you need to buy something to make your sacrificial purchase to, to Zuck. Make sure you click an ad first, you know, and get involved. Buy, buy, buy a little something to make sure you're supporting, supporting the economy, supporting Meta, who's our, you know, they keep us all employed.
(02:34) Our sponsor. You know, exactly. Yeah. Basically, basically. I will say, I, uh, we bought, um, I have this problem where like, I cannot wait for my wife to open up her gifts. So I just like, they're sitting in my office for probably three days. And I was like, I can't wait anymore. You need like, just please take them and open them. Cause I want you to know what you got.
(02:52) I literally can't wait. Um, and so she opened up. So I, uh, I, I joined team Hexclad from a knives perspective, at least. Um, so we have some Hexclad knives now. So that was one thing. So you already opened them. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We're, we've got the knives open. We got these like leg sleeve recovery things. She, she opened everything.
(03:10) She, she's already, she's already done and opened. The kids haven't opened their stuff yet. So like, we'll wait for that. But she's, she's done. She's opened everything. Yeah. No, we, uh, my, my final contribution was actually a couple of days ago. I bought a sauna. Um, not a big one, but I bought, uh, one of those like pop up ones, you know, ready to sweat in 2026. So that's, uh, that was my contribution.
(03:31) Red light or? I don't know. It's a great question. I know it's not an infrared, but it's, uh, it's got a, it's got a heater. It gets up to like 185 degrees. So I'm just going to slap it in my basement and see what happens. All right. Nice. That's good. I got, uh, to cove us boots for the wife. Yes. That's a big DTC contribution.
(03:50) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to do my part and I think they're stressing over there. I got an email today. So I bought it on black Friday. I got the email today. That's like, we have bad news and we've lost however many orders. Yours was part of the, you know, the orders that was lost.
(04:09) And so, uh, we sent out a new pair of boots today. That was just like an hour ago. It got this email and hopefully it gets there in time for Christmas. If you know, you might actually get another pair of boots too. If you get to like, hooray for you. So yeah, that was my favorite. And a new laptop. I got a new laptop too. Nice. I mean, that's good customer service. So I respect, I respect that by Tacoma.
(04:29) I know what it feels like. Yeah. I'm sure they're sweating over there with all the people like, you know, reaching out about their Christmas gifts. But well, today we're talking about a lot of different things, not just what we got for holiday or for the holiday on black Friday.
(04:43) We're talking about rolling reach and other metrics for scaling. Um, you know, I think why we wanted to talk about this, right. Is media buyers plateau when they're scaling a lot. I think that happens. We know this and people wonder why. Um, so this is an episode about really a diagnostic deep dive for those stuck with winners that aren't scaling.
(04:59) And we're going to talk about diagnosis, uh, sequences, decision trees, way that we go through things to scale. So Brad, why don't you kick us off in terms of where we're going to start? Cause you know, Kurt is a real reporting expert. He's the reporting head and guru for the Foxwell founders membership.
(05:17) And actually Kurt and I are working on a piece of software he can tell you about, um, as well, but Brad, why don't you go ahead and kick it off? Yeah. So we did an episode, I think it's out by now on dashboards and we kind of went through a similar framework for what's in our dashboard, what we pay attention to.
(05:33) Um, but I think this will be a little bit unique in that, um, we're going to kind of talk about, you know, where we're going to go through, maybe you look at things like MER, AMER, ROAS, CPA, but at some point, those are not the only things that, I mean, I think there's some of the most important. Um, but at some point, those don't, those don't paint the full picture of maybe what's starting to limit your scale.
(05:51) Um, maybe where you can preemptively get ahead on, okay, I don't have issues now, but I might have this leading indicator of issues I may see in the future. Um, and so I know there's big, big Twitter X, whatever it's called conversations around rolling reach and, and, uh, cost per incremental reach and all those different types of metrics.
(06:09) And so I think we'll kind of dig into when, when ROAS isn't enough or when you're butting up on, you know, some of these issues, uh, where those can be, can be helpful. So I'm like super curious how you like hierarchically like go through these metrics and when they start to be useful. So, um, wherever you want to start with that, I'm sure I'll have a million questions.
(06:27) So please feel free. Right. All right. Well, I listened to the dashboard episode as well, which it was, yes, it was one of our tens of listeners, Andrew tuning in. Yeah. I mean, I won't go over, you know, all the same, uh, you know, layout, although I have a really similar, similar process, similar layout that you outlined, you know, on the podcast.
(06:50) So yeah, I guess just as to paint the picture, then, you know, we do have the foundational metrics that, you know, I'm looking at as well. You hit on the, you know, the most important ones right off of that MER. Um, so, you know, media efficiency ratio or marketing efficiency ratio, um, AMER, which is sort of your acquisition, you know, MER.
(07:14) So basically just counting revenue from new customers. And then you've got your, you know, in platform, potentially ROAS and CPA, and then your triple whale, your North beam, where you might be monitoring the same thing. So I'm looking at that on a day to day basis as well. That's kind of how I'm steering the ship. But as I started to learn more about rolling reach, uh, and everything, it became, it was a big experiment for me initially to see like, how does it all, what impacts what, you know, why do we care about this number? Of course, we're trying to
(07:46) reach people. We, and aren't our ads already reaching people. So it was, it was interesting for me to start, you know, learning about the contexts and which, you know, we use this and what it all means to, because I think that there's not necessarily agreement and there's variations on the type of like, uh, reports that people used, you know, when they say like a rolling reach report.
(08:06) And I've got kind of my own variations that I was going to highlight here in the recording, but at any rate, so yes, at some point, I think it also becomes maybe more important now with sort of Andromeda and gem and the way that everything is happening and sort of the importance of finding new pockets and new audiences, uh, in order to keep growing.
(08:28) And so I think that that maybe put it on the radar in a way that it hadn't been, you know, previous times. So, all right. Talking, I guess at a high level, then I like to use a rolling reach report. It, it can be predictive and also you can look at it and use it as sort of a diagnostic. So it's, you know, predictive in the sense that you are measuring how many people you're reaching.
(08:52) And so you're, you know, you're filling your funnel with, you know, with these accounts reached. And effectively, just to be clear for everybody, that's what a rolling reach report is. It just measures how many people over time you're reaching, right? Like that's, that's what it, and it's, and it's, you can pull them different ways, but that's effectively what you're, you know, cause you're always trying to, if you're scaling and you're not able to scale, like we just audited a massive account in the DTC world, and, you know, worked with some founder members
(09:19) on that audit. And they had spent 15% more to reach 1% more people. This is what we're talking about effectively. Yeah. Yeah. And Kurt, maybe it's helpful to actually, I know there's a couple of metrics that we're going to dig into. Maybe it's helpful to start with like definitions of each of those things.
(09:39) And then I think the diagnostic thing and how it's pretty, I'm uniquely interested in the predictive piece. So my ears perked up immediately when you said that, but maybe start with some of those quick definitions and then we can, we can dig into how you're using it. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds good. So the way that I use it, it might be slightly different than, than other people use it.
(09:56) So rolling reach, I, you know, I look at it as the report that Meta started sending out, right? And so monthly rolling reach, they would pick a day on the calendar, usually two years ago, but you know, sort of as far back as you can see in the account sometimes. And then each month, what you're doing is you're saying, and you know, let's to take the super simple example, month one, we reached a thousand people. Great.
(10:21) Month two, if we look at month two in isolation, we reach a thousand people, it says. But when we look at month one and month two in the selector, now Meta is going to deduplicate that and say, well, yeah, you might've reached a thousand people in this month and a thousand, but 50% of those were the same people. There's this crossover.
(10:41) And so let's say when you combine them and you have them both selected, instead of seeing 2000, you see 1500, right? So that would mean that, you know, 50% of your audience you had reached in previous months. And so, and, and 50% was, you know, people you hadn't reached and this is extended outward. So let's say that you're on month 12. Now you would look at, you know, what did we do last month? What did it say our reach was? And then what did we do the last 12 months? Right.
(11:07) And then you take the difference between those and you can see what your actual net new reach was or the new people that you reached with that spend. And so it's sort of a variation. It's a different, you know, look at frequency as well. That's a part of it, right? And you can calculate it by using frequency.
(11:24) But so that's what I'm talking about when I'm saying like a rolling reach, I'm usually saying it's an expanding window. So one peculiar thing about that report is that if you're looking at, you know, month one, or let's just say month six, you're looking at month six, the definition of who you've reached previously is different than if you're looking at month 12 in that report, right? They each have a different length they have.
(11:52) And so the conceptually it's pretty easy. It's like, have we ever reached them before? Yes or no. Right. So that's not rough, but it is a little bit different if you're trying to compare months to each other, because, you know, you're not comparing apples to apples. And so to sort of make a distinction, I'm calling this other reports, the net new reach report.
(12:10) They're both net new reach, but just so that I can distinguish one from the other. So this other report that I like to use that we can talk about as well has, you know, a sliding window where each month in the report looks back by some, you know, look back window, let's say 180 days, six months. So month one is, is you calculate it very similarly, except for instead of going back to the, to the start of the time period, you go back six months for every single month in the segment.
(12:38) And so that window moves a lot. It slides along with the timeline, I guess, of the month that you're looking at. Is that clear in any way? Yeah. Yeah. So you're, I mean, so you're, you're basically using, so rolling reaches when you're trying to find out, you know, how big is the total audience we've unlocked? Are we expanding our footprint over time? How far into the market are we? It shows the total audience penetration, right? Do you think, is that a good way to summarize rolling monthly rolling reach? And then using
(13:04) net new reach is, are we still reaching the same, you know, new people this month or are we still reaching new people this month? Let me say it more clearly. Is creative still unlocking new audiences? Because the window stays, you know, the same length, right? It can go up or down. It's sensitive to creative fatigue and tells when you've stopped expanding kind of too.
(13:25) Is that, is that net new reach? Do you think a good way to describe that? Yeah. I mean, I think that you mentioned one really interesting thing about that second, you know, way of doing the report with the sliding window and that is the numbers can go up and down. Whereas if you're looking at like the first report, the monthly rolling reach with the fixed start period at some point, you know, at, at scale, your numbers generally go down every month or you're lucky if you can maintain it.
(13:53) And so how useful is that when you're trying to, you know, run tests like, Hey, we tested this new creative format. We've got this new objective traffic, you know, this new upper funnel objective, let's say. And so the window is so large also by the end that to see the variations, it can be difficult to see what you're really doing.
(14:14) So that's why I like using the sliding window when I'm trying to make decisions about, Hey, this is a test I'm running. How are we doing right now? Or year over year comparisons? How was this December compared to last December? But I like to use the first report if I'm looking at like market penetration, right? And, and saturation.
(14:31) So I find myself in the second report on like a weekly basis. I check it really regularly and, and I use it for, like you said, for making decisions about is my creative reaching new audiences or not, where it can be maybe hard to see that with the first report. Just for, I'm going to say this back to you to make sure I'm following.
(14:48) In the example that you gave, you've, you've reached 1500 people. Um, and in month one, you've got a thousand people in a month two, you've got a thousand people. So your rolling reach is 1500 because there was a 50% overlap in month two. Your net new reach was the additional 500 people that you reached. And so if you were going to calculate, I know there's some other metrics that pop up from time to time, which is like the incremental cost per net new reach or, um, uh, cost per cost per reach.
(15:17) The incremental cost per net new reach would be taking what you spent in total in the second month divided by the 500, which is the net new reach. And that actually tells you, and that's what, to your point. So if you look at this year, um, your cost per reach is going to look, you know, say it's $50, but if you include last year, it's going to be something like 70, 80, not, it's going to be way more because you're going further back and it's, it's counting the additional unique people that you've reached over that time period. And so
(15:44) where these reports are to be helpful is, you know, I think the sliding one is, is, is actually super interesting because that allows you to kind of see it in these, in these pockets to your point, I think where, where this can get tricky and what, what has historically tripped me up is that due to just the nature of advertising is that your cost per net new reach goes up over time.
(16:04) Like inherently there are less people to reach, but if you're a brand spending, I mean, I'm curious for your take on like this, you know, maybe pockets of spend, but if you're a brand that's spending, you know, 50 to a hundred K a month and you are really tapping out and you're like cost per net, your reach is getting really, really high, really fast or month over month, you're not reaching a ton of net new people. And you've only reached low millions of people.
(16:26) You probably have a problem here because you've not actually really hit much of the U S as an example. What I'm curious about, I'm sorry, I'm like sidebar in this a little bit is do you find value in actually comparing that cost per the CPMR, right? Like on a month to month basis, like comparing this, I'm comparing January in isolation against February in isolation.
(16:49) Cause I'm curious, like if my new, and maybe that's what you mean with the sliding, my new creative strategy last month, my CPMR was $50 this month. It's, it's $40 in isolation, not rolling, right? Just in isolation. Is that how you're using it? Am I understanding that correctly? So I guess CPMR just also to add, you know, one more definition, right? So that's like, uh, instead of CPM, right? Is your cost per impression.
(17:14) CPMR is just your, uh, cost per reach. So cost per thousand people reached. And one thing I love about CPMR is that you can put that column in your ads manager. So I actually use CPM, CPMR a lot. And so. And CPMR is total ad spend divided by accounts reached divided by a thousand. That's right. So for instance, if when it's in my ads manager, you can start to pick up on patterns, uh, really easily, um, because it's right there with the rest of your data you're staring at.
(17:39) So I like CPMR for that reason. The other thing that I noticed is that CPMR aligns really well with some of these other metrics that we care about to like cost per 1000 net new reach. Uh, you know, for people that can't see my hand drawing, but you know, if you see it moving in an S shape, you'll find that your CPMR also is probably moving in that same, you know, S shape.
(18:01) It may not be to the same degree, but they, they're very directionally correlated. And so, so I'll use CPMR in the ad account and I like to use it to compare. For instance, there's talk about whether, um, what whitelisting does for your, your reach. And so in most of the accounts that I've looked at, I'll see the CPMR, uh, for my whitelisted ads generally, if it's a, if it's a good ad much lower than sort of my account average.
(18:30) And so I'll use it comparatively a lot. I'm not sure that I use it as much month over month without additional context. And that additional context would be like, what's the cost of my traffic, you know, in general, you know, this month and, and other things that, you know, that could have an effect on that. But you know, I also like your ad spend level, right.
(18:51) It's, it's going to change depending on how much you're spending. So if you start blasting black Friday, uh, you know, spend that might look different. And that's one more factor, you know, to compare or, or to take it. All right, friends, quick break. This episode is brought to you by North beam, the marketing attribution platform that we love over here at the pod and good news.
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(19:31) You can act on every day, not one-off siloed reports, and it does it end to end. So it automates lift testing does, it connects you with your MTA and MMM. So you can scale what works and cut what doesn't all in one dashboard. That's the real game changer. Now that North beam has incrementality, it means you can run the absolute trifecta of marketing measurement in one single platform, all using the same data.
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(20:11) I'm going to ask a question, which may sound like I'm skeptical, but it's, it's cause I'm, I think I know you're going to have a good answer to it, but it's like, why is ROAS not enough in that scenario? And I think there's maybe two examples you give. It's like, well, if ROAS is working, maybe we don't need to worry as much about, um, the reach on it or the unique reach on it.
(20:31) Um, but it might be a secondary thing where you say, Hey, we see, we see ROAS and then we look at that and it's like, it's much lower than our account average. And that's an indication that we're reaching new people as an example on the flip side. It's like, well, if it's not working and we go look at this and it's super high, or especially when it's overlapped with our current reach, it's super high.
(20:48) It's like, well, then we haven't reached enough new people. It's like, we, we worked with the whitelisting partner that didn't make our current pocket better or didn't expand into a new pocket. And my understanding that correctly of how you're using it or any other ways you're using it. Yeah, that's how I would look at it.
(21:04) I think that you captured it well there, you know, in the sense that ROAS is, you know, obviously that's, that's super important and that is enough in most cases, but there is some benefit to knowing whether you're reaching a new audience or not. And that might indicate that you can push hard on this. It might indicate like, if you have a goal of having a more sort of more creative diversity and reaching new audiences, that CPMR can be one, one indicator that that's happening.
(21:26) And then you might be able to push harder on that. The other thing is that, and we're kind of jumping around to different things, but is using sort of the campaign compare overlap report. And because the, you know, another weird thing about sort of net new reach and all of that is that you can't really isolate one campaign in that first type in a monthly rolling reach setting, because the way that, you know, we're relying on meta to deduplicate everything for us.
(21:52) And so we have to get, you know, we have to use the whole, and it does that at the account level. It won't necessarily do that for us. If we, if you just have one campaign selected, then you don't know, did they see other, were they included any, in any other campaign? Right. So, because initially when I was working on this tool, I was like, yeah, we should build this out.
(22:07) And for, yeah, for campaigns and ads, you can't actually do that. But what you can do is do an overlap report. And so an overlap report is basically, you would take the account reach for, let's say a 30 day period. And let's say that's a thousand, you know, to keep it easy. And then you have the total account reach without that particular campaign selected.
(22:27) And then in that way, you find out how much is that campaign contributing that is not being contributed by other campaigns. What you'll find, it's really interesting, is if you have any retargeting campaigns, sure enough, they have a hundred percent overlap. Also, you'll find that a lot of your like broad campaigns have maybe like 40, 50 percent overlap.
(22:45) And then when you find, in my experience, something that's really working well in terms of reaching new audiences, it might be, I don't know, it could be in the twenties, thirties, you know, at 40 percent overlap. Those are all sort of winning numbers. But so that's what I'll use as well for my whitelisting ads too, is I'll do the campaign overlap and see, you know, is this reaching audiences that aren't being reached by all my other campaigns? And that's a positive indicator to me if my ROAS is also good. If, if it has, you know, its own pocket
(23:15) and I'm not getting anything good out of it, it could be garbage, right? And so of course you want to use those other things to keep you grounded, those other metrics. So if you go through, so just to recap, kind of thinking about this. So people go through, they're having trouble scaling, having trouble identifying what's really working.
(23:31) You're going in and you're looking at, you know, obviously you're going to look at rolling reach. Then you're going to look at incremental cost per net new reach. You're looking at CPMR, which is essentially what we talked about the calculation. Then frequency. What other things are you looking at? I mean, obviously you're looking at sort of the classics, but those are the, like some of the deeper metrics.
(23:53) And right now, what are the most common things you see when you're auditing? And by the way, we'll put all these calculations and everything in the show notes. So that's no problem. We'll have that for you that, you know, you can run that through. You can also sign up for Kurt's tool, which we'll have in the show notes as well, called ad insights that does all this for you as well.
(24:11) But I'm just curious, like, what else are you looking at to diagnose and what are the main things you see? Yeah. I mean, so it depends on what I'm trying to figure out, but if we're sort of pulling on this same thread, you know, and trying to think about creative and if we're burning out or we're kind of circling the drain in terms of finding new audiences, then I, you know, I'll pull up one of my, you know, my reports here. Hopefully that doesn't know.
(24:34) Yeah. I mean, I think what we're talking about is that classic where people feel like they're hitting a wall. And I get this all the time, right? Like founder members, Hey, it's been that they're either they're a brand owner, someone in house or an agency. Hey, we're hitting a wall, you know, and we, we're talking about more creative and more diverse creative, which is good.
(24:54) And they're getting there, but they're trying to prove the point to the client that what they've been doing isn't, isn't working. So I'm wondering if there's other sort of pieces that go into this that are a little bit deeper than just saying, well, your ROAS is going down. You know, one of the things that I look at is, and you can calculate this yourself, or you can use, you know, a tool to do it, but it's the percentage of net new reach.
(25:15) And, and so that percentage, I'm looking at that over time. And if that percentage is going down, you know, and we're having trouble getting it to move up at all, you know, that's a signal. And so I guess that sort of ties me into the, you know, maybe some of the things that I've seen that actually can impact that number.
(25:33) So I guess that's one of the big things that I'm looking for when I'm doing, you know, the audit is, is our net new reach. And, and if we're able to increase that, if we're not able to increase that, and we're not happy with the metrics that we're seeing, then I start looking to some of these other strategies.
(25:49) And, you know, we, we might've brushed on a few of them real quick, but one is whitelisting and partnership ads. That, that has been an unlock for a few of the brands that I've been working on. If you haven't been doing that, then you'll, you'll probably notice an immediate difference. If you, if you set up one that's working well, you, you notice you'll get cheaper, you know, CPMRs on that.
(26:11) It can scale more. And for Black Friday, that was some of our best performing campaigns. Black Friday is an interesting time, but is it because you're going deeper and finding somebody that better resonates like a human being that better resonates with your existing audience, or because you're expanding into a new audience? I think it's a, I think it's a combo for sure.
(26:28) And, you know, it also will tie into the creator's audience that they've already built and those signals. You know, and I think that that's a big part of it. I guess it takes a concerted effort to really produce diverse creative and to have like big swings that are really different than what you've been doing. I think it is a real challenge.
(26:46) And one of the easiest ways to do it is just to get another brain in the room, you know, or to hire another brain. That's a simpler way to do it quickly. If you're trying to systematize it, I guess that's, that's sort of a different story, but you know, for your team, but yeah, I think you're definitely tying into their audience and all the signals that they bring, you know, with them when you're, when you're using their profile to advertise.
(27:07) And, and then, you know, you touched on, on the rest of it was just their delivery, their, their messaging. That's all going to be potentially different than the way that you've been doing it in the past and their approach. But yeah, I think they bring with them an audience and that's probably a big component. I'm curious about the tactics and I'm also, I'm still curious to come back to like the predictive piece.
(27:22) We've rolled off that. So if you have any additional things like, okay, whitelisting is a, is an example that helps with this. If you have any other ones, would love to dig into those or, or the predictive, whichever path you want to go down. As far as predictive, I guess I just think about sort of the whole analogy of like, you know, squeezing the sponge.
(27:39) And so let's say for Black Friday, I mean, one of the big goals that we had for our client accounts was to increase our reach in the months leading up to Black Friday so that we would have a nice audience to draw from and, you know, and squeeze the sponge as they say. So squeezing the sponge is basically converting that audience, monetizing them and getting them to purchase.
(28:01) And so this could be running a big sale. There's, there's different ways that you can do that. But so in the sense that it's predictive, well, you might have a really strong ROAS and it might be because you're burning through your retargeting audiences, you know, and hitting them really hard. You're not reaching any new people. You might have a really high frequency and that might work for a short period of time, right? Like a Black Friday or some other event like that, a product launch.
(28:23) Interestingly too, like when I looked at our Black Friday campaigns using these tools, Black Friday, like CPMR for many of the accounts was really low. And that wasn't, it wasn't like that for all of them was actually what I'm looking at right now, where it was the opposite where I'm kind of trying to figure out exactly how that, you know, happens or why.
(28:40) But a lot of times they're hitting audiences that you've already got. And so the overlap is really high. That I think is pretty, pretty general across most of the accounts I've looked at is the Black Friday accounts. Campaign overlap really high and you're just squeezing the sponge.
(28:55) So I guess the point in it being predictive is just that if you're not reaching those new audiences, even if your other metrics like your MER looks good and your ROAS looks good, you still could be headed for difficulty in the future if you're not, you know, still growing. So the way that you use your tool is as an example is like on a weekly, monthly, whatever basis you're, you're looking at whatever conversion of the reporting, whether it's a sliding or the, the other one.
(29:21) And what you see from time to time is that the rolling reach starting to go down as a rant, as an example of one of the numbers that you might be looking at can, can proceed ROAS starting to come down. And like that allows you to proactively say, Hey, we are good with what we have for now. And that might us, that might get us through the next month, but it's probably not going to get us through the one after that.
(29:41) And so we need to practically figure out, is it the messaging that we're currently doing that's not working within the pocket of audience, or we need to figure out a new audience to go to. I know Zach's not here, but like an example of this for him is like, you know, he's hollow has sold socks and hunters is the one that we always got to go to.
(29:57) But they've, you know, if you go look at the hollow website right now, it's like they started with messaging to a bunch of different types of people. And then they started making products for those types of people. And so at some point the messaging wasn't good enough to convert the runner and they had to make a runner product or, you know, I guess a random example.
(30:12) So there's different ways to try to get your existing pockets to convert better. But I guess like, am I understanding that correctly in that it precedes the ROAS dropping and that's where you can stop, you can pause and say, Hey, might not be a problem today, but it's going to be a problem tomorrow. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yep. Nice.
(30:29) Let me ask you about two things as it relates to the actual tactical ad buying of this. So one is exclusions and how that affects rolling reach, how that affects, you know, you know, AMER, right? Like I'd be curious of your take on what you typically do with exclusions. And the second one is bidding, right? I think that this big account that I was talking about earlier, we audited that and they have cost caps and they don't appear to have changed them ever. And I mean, as far as I can tell, they haven't been changed very often.
(30:55) They're not adjusting them. So therefore they're running out of people really. Well, exclusions, it's funny using sort of like an overlap report. So there's this other part of the, of the reporting, right? There's the new engaged and customer breakdown, right? And so you can set, let's say your website visitors in your engaged list or your email list or, you know, any of these things and your customer lists, and then you can exclude them.
(31:22) And then you can see them pop right up in those columns when you run the report, right? So like exclusions are super porous, you know, sometimes, which has been funny to see. So, you know, I tighten them up and then, and I put in everything I can make sure that I have synchronized Klaviyo segments and, and, you know, that everything is, is being updated.
(31:40) So I'll rely on that as much as I can, but they only go so far. Oh, bidding, bidding. I think that this is, you know, not clear cut. There's some, you know, people argue about this, I guess is what I'm saying. So, but I think that the argument is that, or one argument is that, yeah, running cost caps is going to restrict the, the number of new people that come into your funnel, right? And that your ads reach because you're constraining who you're willing to talk to by putting that bid cap on their end.
(32:11) And if you can't reach them, you know, underneath that bid, you're saying to Meta, don't go there. And so it does, you know, I think the argument is that it can go after lower funnel audiences and just keep churning through those lower funnel audiences. I've been looking for, you know, good examples of that. And I have, I've got accounts, you know, it's funny before this, I was thinking about like all the rules that I break that like are sort of best practices.
(32:35) I was like, that'd actually be kind of interesting. It's like, what, it's all the stuff that I do that everybody says you shouldn't do. But, but anyway, as I was going down that, that line, I've got an account that's all cost caps generally, and we've been able to grow it. We've been able to grow it month over month, you know, for the last year.
(32:49) So you can definitely grow an account on cost caps, but I think that, yeah, you have to be dynamic with the bids, you know, just for example, like with Black Friday, I mean, I raised, you know, our bids like 25%. There was still no spend. So I'm cranking them up. And then what I did, you know, is that I also launched a lowest cost at the same time.
(33:06) I took those post IDs, put them in the lowest cost. And that was kind of training wheels for the cost cap campaign. I was able to blast money through that lowest cost, maybe teach meta about these ads and who's buying. And then that bought me a little bit of time also to adjust the cost caps. And then the cost caps actually turned out to be the, you know, our highest efficiency ads for this account for Black Friday.
(33:28) It turned out great, but we had to use lowest cost to get there. I think otherwise we would have missed out. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting in terms of other, are there other bid types that you've used that have helped in the pursuit of scale? I mean, the reason I asked this is because I think it's never all or nothing. Right.
(33:46) And like in pursuit of scale, you have to use, I think all bid types almost like to, to, to sort of, you know, I mean, we talk about creative a lot, which is huge. Obviously we know this, we have like 17 episodes on creative from this podcast, but like what, you know, in terms of bidding is another one.
(34:07) And I think these types of reports, you know, illuminate that. Are there other types of bids that you see, or I guess I'd be curious too, like anything else that you think is overlooked as it relates to scaling? Sure. Yeah. So as just a bid specifically, or, or I guess campaign types, like going with a highest value versus, you know, any other type highest value I've seen when I can get it to work well, I'll run that campaign overlap report.
(34:32) And, and you'll see that it does have a lower overlap oftentimes than campaigns using the same build that are all on like lowest cost, for example. And so it does seem to be tapping into different audiences, which, which is, I think one of the arguments, the other one is like going with a, you know, ROAS, a max ROAS, I've got an account running almost exclusively on, on max ROAS.
(34:55) And because it's, they've got a huge catalog, like 14,000 products. Right. And, and so it's really difficult to segment things out by sort of a, an AOV range or, or anything like that. We're like, all right, let's, let's just go for, you know, a target ROAS, target ROAS. But as soon as we, we did experiment with other ad types just in the last couple of weeks.
(35:17) And as soon as we, as soon as we introduced those other, those other bid types, you can see the overlap was very low on those. So that just shows me, I think that using bid types does tap into different audiences, different sections of these audiences. And you can see it really clearly when you look at overlap reports. Yeah. Which ones to use? You have to test, right? They don't, right.
(35:35) I mean, so I couldn't say which one specifically to use, but it's a combination and I, I try them and I think you tap into different, you know, layers of the audience. Yeah. When you, when you flip over to value, do you have to do a little bit of a, I mean, value optimization, generally speaking, for at least from what I've seen it, so there's two points that you're, yeah, you're making.
(35:54) The first is that the overlap might, there might not be overlap. There might be, but there might not be just due to the nature of how Meta is deciding to go. I think something that's, that's interesting to, I'm curious about is what happens to your rate, your cost per reach on those value campaigns though. Do you have to kind of, you assume that they're going to be higher just through the nature of like how they're doing the bidding and then you just have to kind of know mentally like, Hey, I'm just expecting CPMR is going to go up as a result of this and I'm okay
(36:16) with that in the short term just to make, because I'm, I'm sacrificing that for net new people into the funnel. Right. Okay. That's exactly how, yeah. And so I just sort of make that mental, that mental adjustment and then I can compare it against other campaigns of the same type. Cool. And then I exclusion.
(36:33) Exclusions. Sweet. I just wanted to go back to exclusions really quick. If that's what you're actively going, are you actively going and adding exclusions to force Meta to try and reach that new people? Is that something that you're doing across the board or even in a few accounts? I have, and I wouldn't say that's a strategy that I'm really using right now because it just, it hasn't been super effective, you know, cause I already have pretty strict exclusions in there.
(36:57) And so if I'm going to go, you know, and, and make it even tighter, I guess I'm already excluding like my, my website visitors and my existing customer list. Yeah. If, if I'm just going for, yeah, for net new reach, then I'll exclude. And then you'll still see that it hits tons of website visitors, you know, but yeah, it depends on the account though.
(37:17) No great way around it. That's why I was, I think that's interesting to point out. Cause I think a lot of, there's been a lot of no, like we're not using exclusions, who cares, send it type thing. Right. And using the creative to do it. And I think, I still think we're all trying to, when you scale, you're trying to reach net new people.
(37:38) And I think that like having hard exclusions is useful. Like, I mean, as, as along with creative diversity, creative type diversity, using, you know, a product catalog as well. Like, you know, all of these things that we talk about, I think we can use the last couple of last few minutes of our podcast to, to do a new segment. I'd like to introduce called what let's talk as if we weren't recording.
(38:01) Cause sometimes we get caught up trying to sound really smart, but you know, what's some, what's some shit that you guys want to talk about as if we weren't recording for, for me on the scaling part and all of this is that I think that, you know, the diagnostic side of a lot of these accounts is that a lot of people are still are just reporting on what we all learned.
(38:21) Like, I mean, you know, just like MER or like ROAS and like, that's what you're doing. And so much more of it is around how are you talking to new people? Like that's, it gets, it's very, it becomes much more simple to me. Like, right. Like you're, you're figuring out, all right. On that new reach, like who, who even cares like about this? And are they, are they a resident? Is this resonating with them? Like that to me is so much of it. I don't know how you guys feel again.
(38:49) Yeah. I mean, we're not recording, although we are, but pretend we're not. Yeah. I mean, if you're, if you feel like you're making diverse ads and you go and look at your rolling reach and it's, it's not going up or it's not going up as fast as you want to, or it dropped off really quickly. Um, then I think the, the, the mirror that you're holding up and looking into is, uh, saying they're not really diverse or they're not, you know, they may look different, but they're not, they're not, they're not hitting a different motivator or a new angle
(39:16) that you haven't pursued or the same angle presented in a different way from a different persona type. So yeah, no, that's, that's interesting. And, um, when I say this, I'm the one holding the mirror and looking into it. So yeah, no, uh, Kurt, I'm curious if you have anything that you would add. Well, I mean, I guess the thing that I just jumping a little bit is, you know, one of the big questions I have is just upper funnel objectives, you know, and how does that play, you know, what's really working these days? And cause I
(39:45) can raise like net new reach through the roof, right. With like, yeah, the, with the traffic campaign. Um, and it's also funny too, like last, uh, last month we had one of those like runaway ads that just like the CPMs were like for no good reason, $2, you know, if anyway, it was ridiculous, but the traffic was just garbage.
(40:08) I, so I've been experimenting with like, uh, add to cart optimizations, view cart, uh, view content optimizations. And one thing though, that I have found that is working really well is quizzes. They have really low overlap for whatever reason. I'm still optimizing for purchase too, though. Yeah. So it's like, I'm opt. Yeah.
(40:25) It makes sense. It's like diversifying on, well, it's diversifying too on, they're looking at the time and site that they're spending there and it's a different interaction. And it's like diversifying on like an advertorial type of thinking too. Right. Like it's, I mean, I think we, we focus a lot on the, on the ad itself.
(40:42) We also obviously, you know, in the episode with Ryan Doney, you can listen to it's like the landing page is a huge part of it. And if there's something that we can all learn from, I would say Zach's team. One of the things is they're, they're, they're diversifying places they're sending people in a pretty regular basis and the types of things are putting them through.
(40:57) And like, if you think about it from a consumer, like you go through, like I honestly, like I got sent fricking like Faraday and all these websites. And I like even Huckberry, like I look at them and I'm like, there's a lot of fricking shirts on here. I have no idea. Like if I like any of these, like if they look nice, I guess, but like as a guy, you know what I mean? You're like looking at this.
(41:17) It's like, there's overwhelming choice. So like if I went through and took a quiz, it's like, what are you trying to solve? It's like, well, I'm trying to solve like this is the type of weather I live in. And it's like, it suggests you a shirt. I'm like, great. That's why I go to chat to PT to ask it.
(41:29) Like, do I need to go to the bathroom? Cause I don't know sometimes what I have to go. But I, I think that's, I think that that personalization is huge. And I think that's another good way on scaling and diversifying. And just to your point about upper funnel objectives, you know, I just was with the head, the head of growth for, for hollow Kevin, who is, you know, lives in Denver.
(41:48) We were spending time together and I was asking him about some of the things they're doing and they're, they're doing their, you know, upper funnel objectives, you know, it's hard to measure, but they're going into places where they're trying to push retail throughput and it works like they're pummeling people's eyeballs with stuff about hollow socks.
(42:05) And turns out there's been better sell through in Dick's sporting goods and shields, like, you know, and it's targeted. So I think that does contribute. And that, that obviously helps net new reach of course, but it does help you reach new people, which I think is, is a part of it. As you start to scale, as you really start to spend a ton of money.
(42:23) I mean, they spend obviously way more than I think the average person, but I think that there's a validity in that. And I think advertisers are too myopic. You know what I mean? Like we were all taught in like thinking in this like little tunnel sometimes. And I think sometimes like got to think a little bit bigger and try some stuff out of the box.
(42:39) Um, because the playbook, if there's anything we know about meta advertising, there are no playbooks. The playbook that you have today is like not going to work next week necessarily. I pulled up a really specific example. This is my, this is my last piece from, from my end. You mentioned the landing pages and I was really curious, the quiz, uh, Kurt, when you mentioned that, that I wanted to dig into the most obvious landing page win that we have this year.
(43:00) And I'm looking at their, their cost per read, uh, cost per CPMR as well. I'm looking at their CPMR month over month. And there was no new like standout ad. But what I do know is that month to month there was from, from April into May, there was a new landing page and the ad going to that page was the same. Um, and the following month into June was the same.
(43:20) And the only thing that changed is CPMR actually came down, um, over, over the course of both of those months. And we increased spend 50% month over month, you know, to your point on quizzes and Andrew, to your point on landing pages and unlocking more, it's like the landing page itself actually unlocked better, um, cost per, uh, cost per 1000 reach, because I'm assuming it's speaking better to the audience that we're actually reaching and then also forcing meta down the path of that, of that audience and optimizing for those folks. So yeah.
(43:47) Anyways, I need, uh, I need access to this tool ASAP. Yeah. I'd be interested to see, yeah, with the overlap. Kurt, so talk, talk about the tool a little bit. So it pulls rolling reach. It pulls, so talk about like briefly and where people can get it. Yeah, sure. All right. Well, so this is something that, I mean, Andrew, you and I've been working on putting this, this tool together.
(44:06) So it has a monthly rolling reach calculator. So all you do is you log in with your Facebook account and it connects to all your ad accounts. So you can run the report on any account you're connected to. It'll build a table. So it does the pretty graphs and it also builds a table that you can export CSV if you want to mess with the data, you know, in sheets or whatever, or, or put it in reporting.
(44:25) Um, it does that second report that we were talking about with the sliding window. It'll do campaign and ad set, uh, you know, overlap reports. And then we're working on some, some other cool, uh, you know, reports that are still yet to come, but it also does like the audience segment breakdowns, like with, with new existing and engaged, you know, customers over time or, or segments over time.
(44:47) Um, but anyhow, if you can go and sign up for free, it's tools.producedept.co and you'll get access to all the reports right there. Super simple to use. There's a little button on there. If you have any questions, it'll ring me. If you have any new reports you want to add, hit the button, let me know, and we'll work on it.
(45:07) Building a report for the people is what you're doing out here. That's what we're doing. We're building reports for the people. Great to have you. Thank you. Thanks for being here. And, uh, Brad, it's always wonderful to see your face. If you love this episode or you have thoughts, feel free to email me, andrew at foxwelldigital.com.
(45:22) Brad is brad at sexy man.net. Uh, no, I'm just kidding, but just email me. I'll get you in touch with these guys. And, uh, thanks for being here. Talk to you soon. Thank you, man. It's just hilarious watching us. Like just sitting, sitting quietly. This episode is brought to you by the Foxwell Founders membership that Andrew and his wife, Gracie run.
(45:46) It has been absolutely pivotal for not just the Homestead team, but the Easy Street Brands team. We've had, I don't even know how many members are currently in there that are a part of our ecosystem. But when it comes to anything from learning ads to understanding what's going on, to building an agency, to knowing retention, it's been absolutely useful for our team when they get stuck or they need help to just go there and resource all the other experts.
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