What Are Collaborative Ads (CPAs)? Their Role and Optimization

By 2023, CPAs are no longer an unfamiliar concept to Facebook advertisers, especially businesses selling on e-commerce marketplaces such as Shopee, Tiki and Lazada.

Using CPAs is now essential to help businesses easily reach off-platform traffic from Facebook. To bring this information together, Optimus has compiled useful knowledge about CPAs in this post.

Check which businesses can share CPAs

Essentially, CPAs let retailers and brands or advertisers collaborate to reach Facebook users together. Alongside popular e-commerce marketplaces, many other businesses can now offer this form of collaboration.

To check which businesses can share CPAs, filter by region and review the list at: https://business.facebook.com/collaborative_ads/retailer_directory

Checking which retailers run collaborative ads in the Meta retailer directory

Overview of CPAs

Why use CPAs?

CPAs are similar to DPA/Catalog ads: they display detailed product information, including images, names, prices and discounts. Clicking an ad takes users to the exact product page to buy directly on the website. Some benefits of CPAs:

• Both CPAs and DPA are very effective at increasing orders and revenue

• CPAs solve the tracking-code problem on retail platforms that Facebook Pixel has not addressed (e-commerce platforms do not allow code to be installed on their websites)

• Sellers without a website for DPA/Catalog ads can use CPAs to send customers to e-commerce marketplaces.

How CPAs work:

Let's call the retailer or e-commerce marketplace A, and the advertiser or brand B.

• To run CPAs, A needs to share a product feed with B. If you've set up DPA before, you'll know what a product feed is. If not, I will explain briefly below.

  • A product feed is a list containing information about all of a business's products.

  • A product feed can be an XML, CSV, Excel or similar file.

  • Syncing the product feed with the website updates details such as prices, stock levels and offers, making the information displayed in ads more accurate.

• Sharing CPAs saves B many setup steps, such as installing a Pixel, setting up Facebook events and creating a product feed, because A has already done them all.

• Each party has its own requirements for sharing CPAs, but generally you mainly need to provide a Business Manager ID and an ad account ID.

• B only needs to follow A's instructions to receive the product feed and set up ads as usual.

• The biggest difference from DPA is that CPAs send users to A's website instead of B's. This can affect B's brand recognition.

Ways to help optimize CPAs

Metrics to watch

Metrics such as Content views, Adds to cart, Purchases, Purchase conversion value and Purchase ROAS are familiar to anyone running DPA/Catalog ads. For CPAs, however, use:

• The metrics above + shared item

• For example, if you previously tracked Facebook revenue using Purchase conversion value, with CPAs you need to look at Purchase conversion value with (shared item).

• CPAs report website and app metrics separately, but the default optimization objective displays only website metrics. This makes tracking performance considerably harder, especially since the rate of orders placed in the app far exceeds the website's. Always track both sets of metrics together to make the best optimization decisions.

• Sellers with few orders when starting CPAs may turn them off and conclude they don't work. I suggest looking at other metrics, such as Adds to cart and Content views, for a more detailed assessment, because advertising does not always produce immediate results. Customers may not have checked out for some reason, but they have still added products to their carts. If the add-to-cart rate is high, consider offering more promotions to increase the checkout rate.

Choosing landing pages

Although CPAs use a product feed to send users to individual product pages, sellers can still put landing pages in the post content to give users more browsing options.

Note that you can select only one product feed in a campaign, so CPA ads should link to landing pages for a single retailer. You cannot combine several retailers. For example, suppose you have permission to run CPAs for Shopee and Lazada. If you select Shopee's CPA product feed in the campaign, the landing pages in the post content should link only to Shopee.

Bid strategy

CPAs can use value-based bid optimization (value usually refers to revenue).

For better performance, you can start with Highest volume bidding so the ad account becomes eligible for value optimization. Once eligible, switch to Highest value or ROAS to optimize revenue and profit for the business.

Apart from these points, the other optimization methods are not significantly different. The main focus remains testing creatives and audiences to improve performance.

Conclusion

When using CPAs, having an online store with a stable sales history on retail platforms is crucial. This makes it easier to optimize incoming off-platform traffic and deliver results for the business. Avoid a situation where Facebook traffic increases but your e-commerce stores lack enough products, support staff or quality sales policies, wasting advertising spend and causing financial losses.

If needed, you can also contact Optimus, a company specializing in CPA implementation with experience in advertising services, for expert help tracking and optimizing your account effectively.