I took a brief hiatus in April due to spring break and the April episode of Homefiniti & Beyond. I’m glad to be back though because I missed writing. It’s a gloomy Friday here and there’s lots of work to be done so I’m thankful for this distraction from the rain and the piles of work. It was not exactly a busy news week with the exception of that oh-so-lovely mid week rate hike. However, there is still plenty to cover and update you on.
Google and Facebook are improving their ads, big brands are over digital, and the never ending housing crash convo continues.
🕵️♀️ GOOGLE
I’m not sure you’ve heard but cookies are going away. Google’s doing all the things including making it very appealing to upload your first party data to its platform so it can improve ad targeting and optimize costs. Customer Match lists has been available for a while, but where you once had to manually associate them with ad groups, now Google is automating that process a bit and allowing smart bidding to use the lists to improve bidding. These changes will be rolling out over the course of this year.
This can be super helpful. Let’s say you upload your lead list and google uses that to find people who are already familiar with your brand, prioritize showing ads to them and then through smart bidding, get better pricing for you to reach those customers. Sounds like a win to me!
♾ META
I keep calling it Facebook, but at some point I’ll have to give in and call it Meta because these changes are applicable to What’s App and Instagram as well, not just Facebook. Upcoming additions to the ad platform focused on lead forms which are notoriously poor performers for builders.
These improvements include the addition of a “Get Quote” button, trying to increase the quality of the lead by having prospects answer a multiple choice question, the ability to offer gated content through lead forms, and more creative flexibility in the overall look of the form including the ability to add photos.
As I noted, in app Facebook/Instagram lead forms tend to be very poor performers for builders mostly due to their low barrier for completion. The thing that makes them appealing for people to complete (Meta basically completes the form for you), is exactly what makes them junky for builders. Some of the above additions could improve the performance.
💻 DIGITAL
Word on the street, StreetFight that is, is that big brands are looking to move away from digital and back into OOH. Seems they feel the rising costs of paid social and search alongside diminishing returns from SEO leave them feeling like digital has peaked.
I can kind of see it. Paid social has increased in cost by more than 💯 since April of last year for some of our builders 😵💫. And SEO is super competitive, especially when big dogs like Zillow rule the roost. But the eyeballs are still there and a far more captive audience than OOH if you ask me.
🏡 HOUSING
Of all the housing news this week, I’m choosing to share this opinion piece because it most closely aligns with what I think will happen. Essentially, the prediction is that the market will slow and prices for resale will fall slightly and slowly as opposed to a crash with a price slash. For new home builders, prices aren’t likely to decline much given the increased costs associated with home building.
And that’s all she wrote folks. I bid you adieu and I hope that next week brings sunshine warm weather and a renewed interest in new home sales by your prospects.
