How Can Event Companies Use Facebook’s Ad Manager to Optimise the Click-Through-Rates of their Native Instagram Ads?

Abstract: Marketers have come to realise that an abundance of potential customers can be reached through Facebook advertising. Although a new player, Instagram is quickly catching up to Facebook’s success with its native ads. Despite this, there is a scarcity in the amount of academic literature that explores the use of them. This thesis aims to rectify that, by contributing to the academic discourse surrounding Instagram ads. Shownight, a live event promotion company, had yet to run ads on Instagram. Using split-testing, this thesis was aimed to figure out which ad features generated the highest click-through-rates. The tests were carried out through Facebook’s ad manager. Although a unique platform, functioning with both drawbacks and benefits, it provided this study with an efficient tool to split-test ads. The results from this study demonstrated Instagram to be a suitable platform on which to advertise live events. Furthermore, the findings revealed targeting through lookalikes as well as behaviour, results in the highest click-through-rate. Moreover, using a video with 4 hashtags for lookalikes targeting, and an image with up to 3 hashtags for behaviour targeting, were the best ad set combinations. A call-to-action, portraying some degree of urgency, should also be employed within the caption. Nevertheless, this study has its limitations. Including being restricted demographically, as well as being confined to Shownight’s target audience, and advertising content. Furthermore, Facebook’s ad manager poses its own limitations as a split-testing platform, in terms of even audience distribution.