The digital marketing world is a sneaky beast. It’s always evolving, constantly throwing new challenges at marketers. So, how can you keep up?
Meta’s Advantage+ promises to take your ad campaigns to the next level – smarter, more efficient, and serving you better ROIs. But is it really the holy grail of digital marketing, or just another shiny new tool that’ll fade with time?
What is Meta Advantage+?
Meta Advantage+ is a suite of AI-powered tools designed to make your marketing life easier.
The idea is simple: its sophisticated AI automates tasks in your ad campaigns, from audience targeting to optimising your budget and creative elements. It constantly analyses live engagement data to predict which audiences, placements, and ads will yield the greatest return.
The intended result is stronger targeted content and better returns on investment, with the added bonus of freeing up time for your marketers to focus on high-level strategy.
Advantage+ audience
Meta Advantage+ audience automates the process of finding the best audience segments for your ads. It analyses a variety of data points – such as user interactions, past conversions, and demographic information – to serve your ad to the people most likely to engage with it.
Meta tested Advantage+ audience against other audience options and saw improved performance and significantly lower costs per engagement and conversion.
Is it worth it?
Tony, one of our digital marketing specialists at Pixeld, says that this is one of Advantage+’s best features. ‘You can just set the age bracket and location for your target audience, and Advantage+ does the rest. It uses its data to pick the best possible targets, so we don’t have to spend time drilling down and choosing specific demographics and interests.’
If your brand relies on hyper-targeted niche groups with specific needs, it might not provide the granular control you’re used to. But for most businesses, Advantage+’s superior data-gathering and targeting means it can get your ads in front of the right people – faster.
Advantage+ creative
Advantage+ creative automatically optimises certain elements of your creative, including images, headlines, and CTAs.
Specifically, it can dynamically adjust elements like image brightness, aspect ratio, and colour and even animate images to make them more appealing to the viewer’s eye.
Is it worth it?
It depends on how much creative control you’re willing to relinquish. It could work for businesses that don’t have time to tweak creative elements, or that are less confident in the artistic department.
But it doesn’t exactly churn out amazing designs – at least not yet. As it stands, the images can look a little wonky, and its text choices aren’t the most appealing. Brands with a creative eye or who want to stick closely to their brand guidelines (which we always recommend) should probably steer clear until it improves. Brands that have an in-house design team (like us at Pixeld) might also find little use for this tool.
Stay tuned though! With AI progressing at breakneck speed, this article could be outdated within months – or even weeks! We’ll keep our finger on the pulse and update it when we see an improvement.
Advantage+ placements
Advantage+ placements uses AI to automatically allocate your ads to the most effective placements across Stories and feeds in Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Meta Audience Network.
It doesn’t just spread ads randomly; it continuously monitors ad performance and shifts your budget towards the placement driving the most clicks, conversions, and engagement in real time.
Is it worth it?
‘It could be good for awareness campaigns,’ says Paula, another of our marketing specialists. ‘But Advantage+ assumes that more placements mean more visibility, and that more visibility means better results. That’s not always the case. Every placement costs money, so I prefer to be intentional and focus on return on investment and meeting campaign objectives.
For businesses that don’t have the time or expertise to manually adjust placements across platforms, Advantage+ offers a hands-off solution. But it could mean your ads end up in places you don’t want them. ‘For example,’ Paula says, ‘Facebook marketplace isn’t always relevant if we’re not promoting a product.’
Advantage+ campaign budget
Advantage+ campaign budget lets you manually set an overarching budget, and the AI distributes it according to which adsets are performing the best. At its best, it’s like having an accountant and a strategist working together to net you the best ROI.
But does it really work?
Is it worth it?
The idea is that it spreads your marketing dollars as far as possible, making sure that high-performing audiences get more love.
But this is problematic, according to Lachlan from our marketing team. ‘It can skew in favour of one audience segment and ignore others. Say your target audiences are in Victoria, NSW, and Queensland. If Queensland performs the best, then Advantage+ could allocate almost your whole budget to them, and forget about NSW and Victoria. You’re ignoring an entire section of your audience.’
Advantage+ catalogue ads
If you’re running an e-commerce store or managing a product catalogue, Advantage+ catalogue ads can be a game-changer. This feature lets Meta automatically deliver personalised ads from your product catalogue to people most likely to buy.
Instead of showing the same ad to everyone, each person sees a version customised to the products they’ve viewed before or that they’re most likely to click or purchase.
Is it worth it?
It’s a good idea if you’re a well-established brand that people are already familiar with (think Nike, IKEA, Ghanda) since viewers are more likely to know the quality of your product and want to click.
It’s also fantastic for retargeting: you can automatically show ads to people who viewed the product, added it to their cart, or visited your site, nudging them closer to purchase.
But Advantage+ catalogue ads will show minimal info about your product. If your potential buyers need to know more about your products, or you want to highlight specific items from your range, then automation isn’t the best move here.
How Pixeld uses Advantage+
We find Meta’s Advantage+ tools helpful at Pixeld, but we’re selective about how we use them.
According to Megan, Pixeld’s Marketing Director, we’re early adopters, but we don’t take risks with our clients’ money.
‘We’re a results-driven business,’ says Megan. ‘We test tools like Advantage+ on our business first. Then when we see results, we introduce those features to our clients.’
‘Its algorithm is super sophisticated,’ she says, ‘and it’s only getting better.’
The benefits of Advantage+?
- It frees up time for our marketers to work on tasks that require more attention
- It’s excellent at gathering data and using it to target the right audiences
- It helps businesses scale up without needing a huge team
- Advantage+ audience is a winner
The drawbacks?
- The more features you use, the less control you have over your ad strategy
- Businesses with specific requirements for budget or ad placement might find the automation doesn’t align with their objectives
- Advantage+ creative needs a lot of work
Is Advantage+ right for your business?
Meta Advantage+ offers a powerful toolkit for boosting efficiency and performance. But it’s not a set-and-forget tool. It’s smart to be selective. Turn on the features that align with your business’s goals, and stay hands-on with the rest of your campaign.
Curious about how Advantage+ can help your brand thrive? Or looking for a digital marketing agency that knows how to balance automation with creative control for the best results? Get in touch with Pixeld. We can help make your next ad campaign the best one yet.
