What are Collaborative Ads (CPAS)?

Collaborative ads, which is also known as Collaborative Performance Advertising Solutions (CPAS) is an advertising solution that Facebook offered brands to collaborate with retailers on dynamic advertising campaigns. Brands can create dynamic ads easily with the retailer’s product catalogs, and directly drive sales to online retailers and marketplaces such as Shopee and Lazada. 

Before the launch of Collaborative ads, brands that sell products on marketplaces are not able to track down user’s data because of the inability to embed code on marketplaces. The restriction turns out that brands can not apply Dynamic Product Ads, the solution which can personalize product feeds to fit each user based on their interest and behavior. Luckily, with the help of Collaborative ads, brands on marketplaces nowadays can deliver conversion campaigns, track down user data, optimize ad performance, and create Dynamic Product Ads. 

The Collaborative Performance Advertising Solutions is the first time that online retailers and marketplaces willing to open their purchase data and provide the most targeted audience to brands. Brands can find out the source of users’ end-to-end customer journey through the solution. Getting know more about customer behavior, brands can analyze the ad performance and adjust it in the first place. 

CPAS creates the e-commerce ecosphere, where brands can directly drive traffic to the retailer sites, gain more potential leads, and eventually boost more sales to help grow GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) on the Internet.

How to apply Collaborative Ads and create Dynamic Product Ads?

First of all, brands have to collaborate with an agency to create a CPAS account by providing marketplace information listed below, Brand Shopee Shop ID, Brand Shopee Username, Brand Shopee Link, Shopee Account manager, and Shopee Account manager email. Then, brands can start to create Dynamic Product Ads and run performance marketing campaigns with their product feed which is shared by the marketplace. If brands would like to run other ad formats, such as video and banner ads, brands should apply for Marketing Solution Platform (MSP) access, which can generate UTM and get the full report of ad performance.

To create Dynamic Product Ads, brands should go to Commerce Manager to create product sets. The shared catalog in Commerce Manager contains all products available on the retailer’s sites. According to different product types and upcoming promoting campaigns, brands can create a product set that they would like to advertise by filtering the products by category, price. etc or selecting them manually. Here we recommend that brands should avoid creating too many product sets with few items, but starting with a broader set to efficient ad delivery and performance.

After setting up product sets, brands should go to Ads Manager to create a campaign. The set-up process is listed below:

1. Create a campaign and set an objective to catalog sales.

2. Select the catalog and product set that you would like to advertise.

3. Create an Audience to define who you want to see your ads.

• We recommend that brands should both target prospecting and retargeting audiences. While targeting broad audiences by interests can generate demand from people beyond website visitors, targeting people who have visited sites can help generate sales.
• While setting up the prospecting audience, we suggest that brands should not exclude website visitors to make sure ads leverage the information to personalize product recommendations. Also, avoid excluding all purchasers which may eliminate the potential of repeat purchases.
• While setting up the retargeting audience, we suggest starting with people who viewed or added to carts but not purchased in the last 14 days. We do not recommend narrowing down the time frame to 3 days or 7 days because it may decrease the audience size and affect ad delivery and performance.

4. Select the placements to show your ad.  We recommend selecting Automatic placements to maximize your budget and help show your ads to more people. The delivery system will allocate your budget across multiple placements based on where ads are likely to perform best.

5. Decide the conversion event and the conversion window that you want the system to optimize the results. 

• Brands can set up conversion windows based on respective sales cycles. Here we recommend selecting the “7 days click or 1-day view” conversion window for FMCG brands and businesses.

6. Start to create ads by choosing the ad formats.

• We suggest using carousel and collection ad formats to run dynamic product ads.
• For carousel ad format, you can add a card mentioned brand information at the front, and the system will dynamically generate the rest of the cards with products from the product set.
• For collection ad format, you can create a custom instant experience, a fast-loading, mobile-optimized experience that captures people’s attention instantly when they interact with your ad.

7. Fill in attractive copywriting and headlines, and select the destination for your ad. 

8. Finally, click the “Publish” button to publish your ad.

With all the process done, brands can start to run performance marketing campaigns. Brands can measure sales and other conversion events, and do upsell and cross-sell to retarget users who have purchased similar products. With well-planned strategy and optimization methods, brands and retailers can see the impact of their collaborative ads on sales!

Key guidelines to prepare CPAS campaigns for Mega Sale Days

When it comes to the end of the year, brands will face several mega sale shopping seasons. For instance, 9/9, 11/11, 12/12, Christmas, and New Year. The mega sale days make the fourth quarter the busiest season for e-commerce businesses all over the world, and no brands and retailers would be glad if they miss the opportunity to grow their revenue during this time.

To help brands perform the best during the mega sale days, we provide 5 key guidelines to enhance your strategy on CPAS campaigns:

1. Start activating your campaigns two weeks earlier before the mega sale days.

2. During the pre-teasing period (14 days to 8 days before sale day), we suggest reaching board audiences and optimizing for View Content to drive awareness for your mega sale campaign.

3. When it comes to the teasing period (7 days to 1 day before sale day), we suggest adding retargeting audiences (view content 14 days) to drive shoppers’ consideration to add products to carts and do the initiate checkouts.

4. We suggest running pre-teasing and teasing campaigns continuously until the sale day. You can also drive conversions from past visitors (view content 14-180 days) during sale day by adding the audience to your retargeting campaign.

5. As for the budget plan for the mega sale media plan, we suggest allocating 20% on the pre-teasing period, 50% on the teasing period, and 30% on the sale day.

Planning Mega Sale Days in advance can help to boost sales on D-day. As a leading advertising solution provider for e-commerce businesses in Asia, Tagtoo has successfully assisted e-commerce businesses to hit their revenue targets and reach high ROAS on mega sale days.

Case studies on Mega Sale Days

1. Chicco Malaysia

Chicco is an Italian manufacturer of children’s clothing and toys with retail outlets worldwide. Tagtoo collaborates with Chicco Malaysia since July 2020, and take over Taiwan and Singapore digital ads campaigns due to outstanding performance. In November 2020, Tagtoo helped Chicco run Shopee and Lazada CPAS campaigns for the 11/11 mega sale day, which increased 189.74% on purchase ROAS for shared items and reached daily ROAS to up to 75.72.

2. This Is April

This Is April is a leading woman fashion industry that has over 70 stores all over Indonesia. Tagtoo has taken over This Is April digital marketing ads since March 2020, and helped This Is April run Shopee CPAS campaigns on 11/11 Sale and Payday Sale. During the sale campaigns, Tagtoo contributed to the ROAS by increasing it up to 21, assisting This Is April to hit their revenue targets.

Collaborative Ads create great opportunities for brands and retailers. If you are interested in applying Collaborative Ads and do not know how to begin, please feel free to contact us!

Reference: https://www.facebook.com/business/m/collaborative-ads