Boosting Posts on Meta: Best Practices for 2024.

Are Boosted Posts Ads? 

Let’s get started with a popular FAQ. In short, yes. Boosted posts live somewhere between organic content and a paid ad campaign, giving brands the ability to put spend behind certain kinds of organic posts and push them to a larger audience. 

Keep in mind that as of February, 2024 a 30% Apple service fee applied to boosted posts made from an iOS device. This fee is in addition to your total ad payment and excludes taxes and local fees. So, boosting from a desktop is recommended. 

What Posts Can’t Be Boosted?

Not all posts are eligible for boosting. Posts that contain copyrighted material, such as music or images, may not be eligible. Additionally, posts that are based on someone else’s content, such as remixed Reels or shared posts, may not be eligible for boosting.

This is important to keep in mind when boosting different types or content or partnership ads. Partnership ads, for example, have specific requirements to consider. In story placements, you can use up to five supported stickers and tappable text, but be sure to keep your text, logos, or key elements within the safe zone. In-feed placements support single images, videos, and carousels.

What Does Success Look Like? 

Honestly, boosted post performance indicators can vary depending on your goals and objectives. If you are looking to build awareness, reach or CPM may be important to you. Whereas if you’re looking for traffic or engagement, consider analyzing link click-through-rate or cost-per-click. 

The creative and placement of your boosted post can also affect performance. So, it’s important to start off on the right foot because once your boost is running, the only way to change these settings is to create a new one. 

Navigating Advantage+ Creative 

When setting up your boosted post, Meta will recommend using Advantage+ Creative. These settings leverage Meta’s AI technology to overlay, crop, and add wording or music wherever the platform feels is necessary—in other words, brand standards are essentially thrown out the window.  At Ciceron, we recommend toggling that setting off when boosting posts. If you would like to implement or test one of these features, you are able to manually enable specific optimizations via Ads Manager. 

Navigating Advantage+ Placements

Boosted post placement can also drive efficient results. Currently, Meta wants users to select Advantage+ Placements when they boost a post. This setting lets Meta place your content in any placement that accepts the aspect ratio of your post. While it may lead to efficient results, you’re not able to control where boosts end up. 

This is important because you wouldn’t want to spend money on placements that resulted in increased impressions if your goal is to generate website clicks. We recommend selecting your placements manually in Meta Ads Manager—this ensures control over each placement, and you can add as many as you’d like.  

Boosting Stories and Reels

What about content types? Stories and in-feed assets are typically what brands boost, but each one has its own set of recommendations from Meta. 

When boosting stories on Meta, it is recommended to keep your creative elements simple. Avoid using copyrighted music, GIFs, or link stickers, and opt for Instagram-made effects instead. You can use interactive elements like location, hashtag, polling, tappable text, countdown, and @mention stickers, but be sure to leave enough space at the top and bottom of your creative to accommodate action buttons.

Boosting reels on Instagram and Facebook requires specific criteria:

Instagram reels must be under 90 seconds, in full-screen (9:16) vertical format, and should not include copyrighted music or third-party filters.

Facebook reels can be up to 60 seconds and should also be in full-screen, vertical format.

Including music or sound can enhance the fit for placement.

Takeaways

Whew! You’ve made it this far—so, let’s sum it up. 

Boosting posts on Meta platforms requires attention to brand objectives, KPIs and creative preferences. While most organic posts can be boosted, there are restrictions on copyrighted content and certain design choices. 

All of these rules and optimizations can be daunting, so if you need any help or would like more information, feel free to reach out to our team at info@ciceron.com.  

Happy Boosting!