
How Optimizely Improved Facebook Ad Retargeting Cost by 83% - Bexcitement
https://blog.optimizely.com/2020/04/21/reduce-facebook-retargeting-cpa-case-study/
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nrmitchi
While I'm sure the methods in here are valuable, the initial claim of 83%
seems suspect.

> After launching the Adaptive Audience campaign, CPA for our technical
> audience went from $34.47 for general remarketing to $18.80 for the targeted
> remarketing via adaptive audiences, so an 83% overall improvement for CPA
> for our technical audience – which is a huge win!

This seems like a misleading way to phrase this. When I hear 83% improvement
from $34.47, I expect a 83% ($28.61) drop, ie, 34.47 * (1 - 0.83) = 5.86.

This is more reasonably a (34.47 - 18.80) / 34.47 = 45% drop. Still
impressive, but not the same.

Is it really standard to express your improvement in these terms? This would
make it trivial to have a >100% drop in cost, which is clearly wrong.

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jawns
Yeah, going from 18.80 to 34.47 would be an 83% increase.

But going from 34.47 to 18.80 is a 45% decrease.

As to your question about whether this is some sort of acceptable alternative
way to calculate percentage decrease ... no, this is just a math error.

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remarkEon
It's always great to reduce costs where you can.

It's not always great, in my humble opinion, if this results in my being
inundated with more ads on the internet. I wish this technology would go away.

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BilalShaikh
I've been working pretty closely with Optimizely for the last year or so. I
would go ahead and say its difficult/impossible to realize the advertised
effect of their product. Can't speak to this one directly though.

