Meta announced it’s merging all its automated ads into Meta Advantage. The consolidation will make it easier for advertisers to use these products.
Facebook advertisers will benefit from this change, but with big changes comes confusion. This article will clarify any questions about the Facebook Meta Advantage Suite.
What is the Meta Advantage Suite?
Meta Advantage offers a collection of advertising automation tools powered by machine learning. Its goal is to offer all its automated tools in one place. This spares users from needing to switch back and forth.
If you’re already familiar with Facebook’s ad toolset, the changes won’t be too drastic. Instead, you’ll find all the tools you know and love in one portfolio.
Meta Advantage divides these tools into two kinds of products:
- Advantage: Advantage tools allow you to customize specific aspects of your manual campaign setup. For example, you can adjust the Detailed Targeting options for your audience.
- Advantage+: Advantage+ can automate an entire campaign flow from beginning to end. It can also automate a core step of a manually set up campaign, such as placements or creatives. It’s the next evolution of Facebook automated ads.
What Are the Benefits?
Before the Meta Advantage Suite, using Facebook automated ads required users to switch between platforms. Now, all these tools come together to offer users three main advantages:
- Optimization: Achieving superior campaign results and sustaining them over time.
- Personalization: Matching audiences with the right ads at the right time to create and cultivate a deeper connection between them and the brand.
- Efficiency: Saving advertisers time and effort so they can concentrate on strategic, big-picture work.
In general, automation serves to create an easier path for advertisers. Ad creation, ad optimization, and decision-making become simplified. This creates better outcomes for all businesses, big and small.
Addressing Privacy Changes
Meta Advantage is also a response to the challenges posed by trends in consumer privacy. For example, iOS 14.5 updates and the phasing-out of cookies have proved a problem for marketers.
Tracking restrictions have injured conversion tracking, detailed targeting, and other marketing technologies. But Meta Advantage’s machine learning tools will ease marketers’ pains.
Meta Advantage Products
The goals of the Meta Advantage suite are twofold:
- Optimize for desired marketing results
- Maintain those results overtime at the lowest cost and effort
Here are the products where advertisers already see these goals realized:
This article will elaborate on them below:
Advantage
Advantage itself has two subproducts:
- Advantage Lookalikes (formerly Lookalike Expansion)
- Advantage Targeting (previously Detailed Targeting Expansion)
These two tools can help advertisers reach a wider audience and improve performance.
Please note: these tools are not to be confused with Advantage and Advantage+.
Advantage Lookalikes
In a regular ad, advertisers choose a set audience. However, Advantage Lookalike allows Meta’s system to reach a broader audience.
Imagine if Advantage found a target group that did better than the defined audience. In this case, it would expand to the new audience without any hesitation.
Meta says Advantage Lookalikes improves cost per action compared to Advantage Targeting.
Advantage Detailed Targeting
Advantage Detailed Targeting (ADT) lets advertisers find more audiences based on their targeting options. For example, interests or location.
ADT will look for higher-performance opportunities outside of your defined audience. When it does, it will make dynamic updates. These updates will optimize performance for new audiences.
Meta cites ADT as having a 37% lower average cost per conversion than without it.
Advantage+
The Advantage+ subproducts are as follows:
- Advantage+ App Campaigns (formerly Automated App Ads)
- Advantage+ Placements (formerly Automatic Placements)
- Advantage+ Creative (formerly Dynamic Experiences)
- Coming Soon: Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (formerly Automated Shopping Ads)
This section will elaborate on each.
Advantage+ App Campaigns
Advantage+ App Campaigns (AACs) are Facebook automated ads for app installs (like iOS apps).
AACs increase performance for marketers with real-time learning. ACs use this real-time learning to adjust ads across audiences, placements, and creatives.
Meta testing revealed two reasons AACs performed better than manual campaigns:
- 6% lower cost per install on average
- 9% lower cost per action compared to a manual campaign
Advantage+ Placements
Advantage Placements (APs) determine how to place an ad best across different channels. For instance, Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. APs can thus enhance performance more than manual campaigns.
APs work best when advertisers use at least six Placements. Placements are mediums such as Reels and Stories. More placements give AP more room to make dynamic adjustments.
Meta tests confirmed the success of campaigns with more placements. Campaigns with at least six placements outperformed those with four or fewer by 73%.
Advantage+ Creative
Advantage+ Creative (AC) provides a single entry point for a set of creative optimizations. As a result, the effectiveness of ads improves.
A recent Meta study confirmed this. In the following campaign types, AC resulted in a 3% lower cost-per-action for these formats:
- Link Clicks
- Landing Page Views
- Offsite Conversions
Advantage+ Creative (formerly Dynamic Experiences
Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns
Meta designed Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASCs) to maximize your online sales performance.
ASCs optimize across campaign levers to drive conversions. Examples of these campaign levers include targeting, placements, and budget.
Meta cites an example of a fashion company that enjoyed success with ASCs. The ASCs were 80% more effective than their usual campaigns.
Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns are currently in beta. But, all advertisers will have access by the end of the year.
Meta Advertising: FAQs
Facebook and Meta advertising can be complex. This section will answer some of the most popular questions about it.
How Much Does it Cost to Advertise Using Facebook?
Many factors will determine your Facebook advertising costs. Some of these factors include your industry and campaign objective.
An Adespresso study broke down advertising costs based on bidding model. Studying ~$300 million worth of ads, they found the following:
- Cost-per-click (CPC): $0.97 average cost per
- Cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM): $7.19 average cost per
- Cost-per-like (CPL): $1.07 average cost per
- Cost-per-download (CPA): $5.47 average cost per
Remember, these numbers are only averages. Your results will vary depending on many factors.
Is Meta Advertising Worth It?
Meta’s products have billions of users. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or anything else, most people use Meta.
Their large user base means they reach a broad audience. Not using Meta ads means you lose out on reaching a lot of people.
Also, Meta has even more precise demographic targeting than Google. As a result, Meta is hard to beat when reaching a particular demographic.
This depth of reach means enormous potential for marketers. With a successful ad strategy, Meta advertising is worth it.
How Do I Start Advertising on Facebook?
The first step to advertising on Facebook is to create an ad account:
- Go to Facebook Ads Manager
- Log in to Facebook or create an account
- Verify your information
- Configure your payment method
Once you’ve set up your account, you may configure your ads using the Facebook Ads Manager.
Create Your First Advertisement
To create your first ad, click on “Create” in the top left corner.
Then, choose a campaign objective.
You’ll then be able to customize and create your new Meta ad.
How Hard Is It To Learn Facebook Ads?
Learning how to succeed with Facebook ads can seem daunting at first. It will take a combination of experience and learning.
Be warned that Facebook ads can quickly become expensive. Therefore, you must study and learn as much as possible before running ads.
With sufficient determination, you can and will succeed.
What Skills Do You Need for Meta Advertising?
A Meta advertiser needs the following skills:
- Creativity: Advertisers need to create unique ideas quickly. Creating attention-grabbing advertisements is essential to marketing success.
- Social media skills: Meta advertisers should have a deeper understanding of social media. They must be in touch with the most recent trends online. For example, what people talk about, what formats they prefer, and more.
- Research skills: Meta advertisers will need to perform deep-dive research. They must understand platform updates, market trends, and more. An advertiser is constantly moving, always learning.
- Marketing skills: Advertisers need to plan, create, and present great ads to their target market. Tasks like these fall under the marketing skillset. While some marketing skills come naturally, advertisers must learn most of them.
- Delegation skills: You can’t always do everything yourself. You may need to delegate art, strategy, or other advertising tasks to others. Knowing how and when to delegate is essential to advertising success.
What Makes a Good Meta Ad?
Among the most effective Meta advertisements are:
- Precise targeting: Advertisers never design Meta ads to appeal to everyone. Instead, they target a specific demographic. Then, they tailor the ad just for them.
- Fitting visuals: Your visuals should always match your ad copy. Otherwise, your advertisements will seem disjointed to viewers. This is especially true for Instant Experience ads that are visual-heavy.
- A compelling call to action: Meta ads should have a clear objective. For example, are you trying to get app downloads, collect emails, or sell products? Decide on a call-to-action. Then, create copy and buttons to match.
Wrapping It All Up
The Meta Advantage Suite simplifies Meta ad creation for all users. The result will be a more accessible advertisement experience for everyone.
Stay on top of the new Meta suite as it rolls out. If you need help, we’ll be there for you.
