In recent years, machine learning has overtaken the largest paid digital advertising platforms, including Google, Meta, and LinkedIn. These tools and configurations promise to give advertisers an edge in targeting and optimization capabilities.
Meta’s recent response to the AI space has been to launch a variety of campaign and ad set configurations under the name Advantage+. If you’ve been managing ads in Meta Ads over the past year, you’ve probably been strongly encouraged to adopt these configurations.
What is Advantage+? Will you get better results with it? In this article, we will answer all these questions and more.
What is Meta Advantage+?
The Meta Advantage+ suite is the core of all Facebook Ads AI capabilities. Meta Advantage+ tools and features are AI-powered solutions designed to execute specific Facebook Ads campaign strategies and tactics more efficiently. I wrote about the pros and cons of using Meta Advantage+ here.
The main takeaway, from my perspective, is that you are handing over the keys to your paid advertising to a machine-learning tool with limited visibility into how it actually works. The results my clients have experienced with these new AI-based tools have been less than spectacular. Let me explain further in the next section.
Key Features of Advantage+ Campaigns
Many tools in Meta Advantage+ campaigns improve the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising. The four main elements that define Advantage+ campaigns are:
- Automated Optimization: Meta Advantage+ evaluates and modifies various aspects of your marketing, analyzing user interactions and metrics to modify ad delivery. This improves effectiveness without the need for constant manual changes.
- Advanced targeting options: Marketers can enhance their targeting by using Advantage+ Audience to find interested users. Interested customers who are likely to respond will see your ads, making them more relevant.
- Budget management and allocation: They change the budget allocation so that optimal ads and placements receive more money. This ensures that your advertising dollars go to the best places.
- Performance tracking and analytics: These campaigns provide detailed insights into relevant statistics. Real-time monitoring of ad performance allows advertisers to see what’s working.
Meta Advantage+ Product Suite
The Meta Advantage+ product suite includes tools and features to improve advertising performance. They are great for general ad optimization as they offer different tools for different needs. The suite contains the following:
Advantage+ Audience:
Advertisers can track events to help them target appropriate customers and create custom audiences based on the data they collect. This data looks at user behavior, interests, and demographics. This increases precise targeting, making ads more relevant and useful. Advertisers can also create lookalike audiences on Facebook to target users based on current audiences or predefined characteristics.
Creating custom and lookalike audiences is also convenient when running retargeting ads on Facebook.
Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns:
Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns automate the creation and optimization of shopping ads, making it easier for customers to discover new products. By dynamically adjusting ad targeting and design, Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns increase sales and ROI.
Advantage+ Creative:
Meta Advantage+ Creative optimizes images and videos so your potential audience is more likely to engage with them. It offers visual touch-ups, text enhancements, music, and many other improvements.
Advantage+ Placements:
Advantage+ Placements strategically positions these ads for better visibility, which increases the chances of conversions. This includes feeds and other places where consumers may interact with ads.
Advantage+ App Campaigns:
Advantage+ App campaigns (formerly known as App Auto Ads) are designed to improve the effectiveness of app install campaigns with minimal advertiser intervention. Using machine learning, Advantage+ App campaigns optimize creative delivery to interested audiences in optimal placements.
Compared to manual app campaigns, Advantage+ campaigns require less advertiser involvement during setup. They also simplify audience selection and creative management. Additionally, Advantage+ App campaigns support Advantage+ Catalog Ads (dynamic ads).
Advantage+ Catalogue Ads:
By pulling product information from your catalog, Advantage+ Catalogue Ads (Dynamic Ads) dynamically create ads to ensure visitors see the most relevant products based on their interests and past interactions.
How to set up Advantage+ campaigns
Let’s explore the process of creating Advantage+ campaigns:
Steps to create an Advantage+ campaign
- Go to Meta Ads Manager. Select the ad account connected to your app and click “+ Create.”
- Select your campaign objective.
- Choose Advantage+ campaigns for shopping and click Continue.
- Optional: Click “See all default settings” at the campaign level to see automated and custom default settings.
- Name your campaign as needed.
- Complete the special announcement categories and campaign information. If relevant, complete the campaign areas for iOS 14+, then click Next.
- Choose the conversion location. This can be for a website or an app and website.
- You will then be asked to choose between two options: pixel or app.
- Complete the budget and time sections.
- In the audience section, select the locations and language needs for your ad and decide who should see it. Then, click “Next.”
- Click the dropdown menu in the optimization controls area to choose your optimization goal. Specify how you want to spend your budget.
- Select your schedule and budget, then click “Next.”
- Choose your Facebook page in the identity area. You can also link your Instagram account if needed. Connecting your Instagram account will also help you get started on your Instagram sales journey.
- Choose Manual Upload or Catalog for your creative source. In the ad setup area, choose an image, video, or carousel as your ad format. To create Advantage+ catalog ads, select a product bundle at the ad level from a catalog. You can only choose one product bundle per campaign.
- In the ad creative area, enter your ad’s media, headline, body copy, and call to action. You can add images, videos, playable ads, and instant experiences. Match items with up to five lines of text and five headers. You can also match specific text and headers to each item.
- Complete the tracking and destination sections.
- See how your media options might look in different positions by reviewing alternatives.
- Click “Publish” when you’re done.
Benefits of using Advantage+ campaigns
Meta Advantage+ campaigns offer the following benefits to advertisers:
- Greater efficiency and time savings: Advantage+ campaigns make it easier to control and improve your ads. Automated features handle campaign management tasks like allocating budgets and targeting the right audience.
- Improve ad performance: Advantage+ ads target the right people at the right times. Optimizing ad targeting and placement leads to conversions. Advantage+ improves the performance of your ad campaigns by strategically placing ads in the prospect’s feed.
- Enhanced Segmentation: This feature helps you understand the needs of your target audience and acts as a way to improve your future campaigns.
- Profitability: Advantage+ ensures that advertising budgets are used optimally. It instantly gives money to the best-performing ads and placements.
Best practices to maximize the performance of Advantage+ campaigns
To get the most out of your Meta ad campaigns, follow these best practices:
- Define your campaign goals precisely before you start. These will guide your campaign optimization. These can range from increasing conversions, driving traffic, or increasing brand awareness.
- Create engaging creatives that speak to your target audience. See which ad formats (image, video, carousel, and stories) perform best.
- Use the Advantage+ Audience tool to automate and improve your audience segmentation. Take into account interests, hobbies, and habits to ensure accuracy.
- Set reasonable schedules and budgets that support your campaign goals. Review your campaign settings frequently and update them as needed to maximize results.
- Use A/B testing to test various creatives, ad formats, and targeting options. This will allow you to make fact-based decisions and improve your tactics.
- Keep your campaigns competitive by staying up to date with the latest Meta features.
Common mistakes when using Advantage+ campaigns
- Optimizing your advertising and measuring its effectiveness is difficult without clear objectives.
- Uninspired content and poor graphics can result in low engagement and return on advertising rates.
- Overly specific targeting can narrow your audience and make your advertising less effective. The audience size or targeting accuracy should be balanced.
- Continuous tuning helps Advantage+ campaigns. Overlooking performance measures could result in missed development opportunities.
- Neglecting budget management can lead to overspending or underspending. Both situations will negatively impact your campaign.
Meta Advantage+ vs. Manual Setup: Which is Better?
Meta Advantage+ is essentially a black box. We don’t know how or why it makes decisions, but we do know that its goal is to generate leads (or clicks, depending on your goal) at the highest volume and lowest cost.
On the other hand, this is not completely different from how automated bidding works on Google and Meta, however, the difference is that you specified that audience and then the machine learning works within the audience you created or specified managing the bids and who to serve the ads to and when.
When manual configuration is better
For Advantage+, machine learning makes the decision about who to target across Meta’s entire user database and uses your suggestions to guide it, but it doesn’t understand (like a human would) the subtleties that define an audience and turn it into a qualified lead or customer.
As we can see, on its own, the current state of these Meta Advantage+ products is not ready to be useful for companies with complex marketing and sales funnels.
When Meta Advantage+ Might Be Better
What we’ve found Advantage+ does really well is offer targeting options for e-commerce businesses. But it makes a lot of sense, as sales-oriented businesses are looking for people within a demographic who have particular buying behaviors. AI can predict this much better than someone who’s going to talk to sales after submitting a form. The buying process is much simpler and more straightforward.
