Advertisers often complain about paying to reach people they believe should have been explicitly excluded using custom audiences. The assumption is that Meta has chosen to ignore exclusions. But, the effectiveness of these exclusions is mostly within our control.

We most often hear this related to existing customers. There are two primary scenarios where this comes into play:

1. Advantage+ Shopping using an Existing Customer Budget Cap.

Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns allow you to set a cap on how much you will spend on existing customers.

This approach relies on the definition of your Existing Customers audience segment within your Ad Account Settings.

2. Manual campaign with a custom audience exclusion.

You can also run a manual campaign and exclude your existing customers by listing out the custom audiences that reflect that group.

If you use Advantage+ Audience, that would be within the Audience Controls.

If using original audiences, you can exclude custom audiences.

But, even if you use these settings, you will probably still reach some of your custom audiences. Why?

Here are the three most likely reasons (along with a myth about audience expansion)…

1. Completeness and Accuracy of Data Provided

In order to exclude every existing customer, you must first completely and accurately define your customers with custom audiences so that Meta can do just that. But, this is far more difficult than it sounds, approaching unreasonable.

Here’s an example of how I’ve defined my existing customers…

It’s a mixture of data file custom audiences and website custom audiences. But, I guarantee it’s incomplete.

To troubleshoot, ask yourself these questions…

Do your excluded custom audiences actually include existing customers?

It may seem like a silly question, but one of the first mistakes that advertisers make in this area is that they mess up the parameters that define a group of people. Look no further than inflated conversion reporting happening because the Purchase event is firing for the wrong stage.

Do your excluded custom audiences exclude all customers or only some?

When creating a custom audience based on your email list, have you confirmed that you’ve included every customer for every product? All customers historically, or only a specified period of time?

I should also point out that, depending on how you interpret Meta’s Custom Audience Terms of Service, you may be required to remove customers who have opted out of your list. So, there may be paying customers who you can’t include in the custom audience.

This may be pointing out the obvious, but website custom audiences are capped at 180 days. If you exclude your existing customers using this approach and your business is more than six months old, the audience will be incomplete.

And of course, there’s a long list of potential issues with website custom audiences and completeness. The most obvious is iOS opt-outs. Meta specifically said that the result of opt-outs would be smaller custom audiences.

That will create holes in your exclusions.

2. Meta’s Ability to Match the Audience

This mostly applies to data file custom audiences, where you provided a customer list to create a custom audience. Just because you uploaded a customer list that includes a specific person doesn’t mean that Meta will be able to match that customer’s details to a Facebook profile.

If you only include a list of email addresses, they need to be matched to Facebook users who provided those same addresses in their profiles. Facebook profiles may be old and outdated. Maybe your customer used a business email address that isn’t associated with their profile.

The more columns of data you provide for first name, last name, email address, phone number, and physical address, the higher the match rate will be. But, you can guarantee you won’t get a 100% match rate.

It’s anecdotal, but advertisers tend to see anywhere from 20 to 70% match rates from customer lists. The ability to match is only as good as the completeness and accuracy of the data. But even then, it’s not guaranteed to match a Facebook profile that’s used for exclusions.

You could also make the argument to include website custom audiences here. If a user is blocking cookies, browsing incognito, or using other privacy settings that impact the data that can be sent back to Meta (not to mention iOS opt-outs), Meta’s ability to match and exclude users is impeded.

3. Meta’s Ability to Actually Exclude Them

This is more theory than reality, and it assumes that the source of the problem isn’t #1 or #2 above. Essentially, it would mean that despite accurately and thoroughly defining your existing customer custom audiences, you are still paying to reach the people you shouldn’t. Meta knows that a specific person falls within your exclusions, but you reach them anyway.

Maybe it’s due to a bug. Maybe it’s because Meta doesn’t care about your stinking exclusions.

I’m not saying that this is impossible. But, of the three possible explanations, it’s the least likely. It’s also very difficult, if not impossible, to prove.

By “least likely,” I don’t mean that bugs rarely happen or that Meta is always trustworthy. I mean that there are so many obvious reasons for holes in exclusions, we don’t really need to resort to conspiracy theories to explain them.

The Expansion Myth

I’ve seen the theory that audience expansion doesn’t respect your custom audience exclusions. Specifically, this is related to using original audiences when Advantage Detailed Targeting or Advantage Lookalike are turned on.

The way I understand it, the source of the theory is this passage in Meta’s documentation related to Advantage Detailed Targeting…

And a similar passage from Meta’s documentation related to Advantage Lookalike…

For Advantage Detailed Targeting, Meta says that you can still exclude “targeting selections outside of detailed targeting (such as age, gender, location and language).” For Advantage Lookalike, “you can add targeting selections as exclusions if you don’t want our system to consider certain demographics such as Locations, Age, Gender etc.” Meta didn’t mention custom audiences!

But, is this an intentional omission? In both cases, it’s clear that Meta isn’t providing an exhaustive list. “Such as” language when listing out what can be excluded from Advantage Detailed Targeting and an important “etc.” to wrap up exclusions for Advantage Lookalike could suggest, maybe, that custom audience exclusions aren’t respected.

I’m not buying this argument. You can still exclude custom audiences in either case. It’s far from definitive that the reason you can still reach some of these people is due to expansion.

According to this theory, the proof is that if you optimize for a top of funnel action that doesn’t require expansion, third-party reporting tools show that you reach fewer existing customers as a result. But, this is less a function of the incredibly low quality results you get from top of funnel optimization than any proof that the exclusion works in this case.

If you’re still not convinced, look no further than Advantage+ Audience. Audience Controls are where you set the specific parameters that Meta will respect. These are not suggestions, but tight constraints.

One of those controls is excluded custom audiences.

If you believe that your custom audience exclusions aren’t respected when using original audiences when expansion is on, then maybe you should use Advantage+ Audience instead. This seems backwards, though, since the entire benefit of Advantage+ Audience is that the algorithm has more freedom to reach people who are likely to convert than when using original audiences. It would be odd if it were Advantage+ Audience that would respect your exclusions while they may not be with original audiences.

But, again, I’m confident that the belief that exclusions aren’t respected with expanded audiences is a misinterpretation. When in doubt, go with the most likely explanation. And there are lots of them.

Your Turn

What are your feelings about the causes behind reaching excluded existing customers?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 3 Holes in Existing Customers Exclusion for Meta Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I’ve been a Facebook-then-Meta advertiser since close to the beginning. This site exists (for 13 years strong now) because of my passion and deep understanding of how everything works. It’s been my pleasure sharing tips over the years to help keep you ahead of the curve.

That’s why the current path of Meta ads targeting pains me. My only goal is to help you understand where things are now and where they are heading so that you are best prepared. I’ve published several videos and posts to help explain what’s happening with targeting. The most common response I’m receiving is disbelief, if not outright defiance.

I am not trying to convince you that Advantage+ Audience is always effective or that you should go targeting-free with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. I want you to understand that your targeting inputs matter less than they ever did before. Knowledge of this is power because it helps advertisers better understand their role and where they can be most impactful.

Some of the things I’ve said and will repeat here aren’t up for debate. It’s how things work now. Too many advertisers simply don’t have a full understanding of how targeting works in the current environment. They are tweaking things and turning dials that have little or no connection to results.

But, the defensiveness runs deep, and I understand this. If you believe that the value you add as an advertiser is found, partially or entirely, within your targeting strategy, you will hate everything that I’m saying on the topic. It’s an attack on your way of life, and that’s scary.

This post may not fix that. It took me longer than I care to admit to accept it, and I was surely angry and defensive at first. But, I hope that this at least sends you in the direction of understanding.

Interests, Behaviors, and Detailed Targeting

First, Interests and Behaviors is the same category of targeting as Detailed Targeting. I include them all here because advertisers often misunderstand what Detailed Targeting means and lump it in with remarketing, lookalike audiences, and demographic adjustments.

This is the oldest method of targeting. It was a big deal when advertisers were given the ability to target people based on their interests and behaviors. It allowed us to isolate people based on specific interests that were related to what we were promoting.

It allows me, for example, to target people who may be interested in online-advertising content and products.

This was powerful since it would give me confidence that my ads were being shown to people who cared about, and were more likely to respond favorably to, my ad.

But, the current environment is not the same as that of 2014. The value of these inputs is not the same.

1. Inaccuracies.

I encourage you to take the time to go through the interests and behaviors that can be used to target you. Some of it is accurate. Some of it is outdated. And some of it is straight-up random.

I was originally going to list out all of the most random ways that advertisers can waste their money targeting me, but I honestly don’t know where to start. There are a lot of them. I wrote about this four years ago.

North Carolina State University ran a study in 2022 that estimated 30% of interests and behaviors used for targeting are inaccurate or irrelevant. These categories are far from perfect. We should treat them accordingly.

We assume that when we use detailed targeting that our ads will reach people who have an interest or experience directly related to that thing, but it’s not that simple. Meta seems to make inferences from random engagements that are far less meaningful.

2. Expansion.

This is a big one. It’s not new. But, advertisers continue to act surprised by or completely oblivious to this.

If you optimize for conversions, link clicks, or landing page views and you provide detailed targeting inputs, Advantage Detailed Targeting is automatically turned on. It can’t be turned off.

This means that your ads will reach people beyond those interests and behaviors if it can improve results. Your audience is expanded.

We don’t know how much your audience is expanded. We don’t know how much of your budget will be spent on the interests you listed and on people beyond those groups. But, this uncertainty matters.

There’s a very wide range of possibilities here. Maybe only a small percentage of your budget is spent on reaching people beyond your intended interests. Maybe most was spent on people you didn’t plan to target.

You should have concerns regarding the accuracy of detailed targeting inputs. You should also assume that there’s a distinct possibility that the results you get have more to do with the expansion of your audience than the inputs you provided.

While we can’t say definitively that interest targeting doesn’t matter at all, the amount of positive impact they can make is certainly in question.

Bottom line: My point isn’t that you can’t get good results while using detailed targeting. A common response I get from advertisers is that they get good results when they use interests. The point is that it’s questionable how much your selections of interests and behaviors impacted your results.

Lookalike Audiences

Like interest targeting, lookalike audiences are not new. When they were announced, lookalikes presented an enhancement from using interests only. Instead of guessing about what your customer was interested in, you could have Meta find people who were most similar to your customers.

While they made sense at one time, it’s questionable whether they remain relevant today. At the very least, they’re certainly less useful than they once were.

1. Expansion.

Once again, there’s a bit of fuzziness about the parameters you’re providing. When optimizing for conversions, Advantage Lookalike is automatically turned on and it can’t be turned off.

This means that you may reach people beyond the percentage of lookalike that you selected. We won’t know how much this is expanded or how much of your budget is spent on this expansion versus your selected audience.

2. Algorithmic Targeting.

I generally find it curious that advertisers will favor lookalike audiences over Advantage+ Audience (which we’ll cover in more detail shortly). Lookalike audiences are algorithmically driven. Meta will search for people similar to those in your source audience and compile an audience that is much, much larger.

Instead of using a lookalike audience based on your current customers, let’s instead assume you use Advantage+ Audience without suggestions. By definition, Meta will use signals like pixel activity, conversion data, and prior engagement with your ads to determine who should be in your audience.

It seems odd to be okay with Meta’s development of lookalike audiences but not with algorithmic targeting. There are very obvious similarities between the two.

How much impact do the lookalike audiences that you provide have on your results? Due to expansion, we don’t know. And why should we prefer it over Meta’s more recent algorithmic targeting developments?

Targeting Inputs are Deprioritized

You may not like it, but it’s clear what Meta is doing. If you use original audiences and optimize for conversions, your detailed targeting and lookalike audiences will be expanded. Those inputs are less important than they once were.

Of course, Meta doesn’t want you to use those approaches anyway. Meta wants you to use Advantage+ Audience.

While you can provide targeting inputs, it’s pretty darn obvious that Meta doesn’t think this is necessary. Otherwise, those inputs would be immediately available.

If you provide custom audiences, lookalike audiences, detailed targeting, age maximum, or gender, they will be used as audience suggestions.

This is the default way to impact targeting. While the option to provide targeting inputs using original audiences still exists, Meta works hard to discourage you. When you click to use original audiences, you’ll get an alert asking if you’re sure.

Meta’s tests show that you can improve your results by up to 33% if you use Advantage+ Audience over original audiences. It’s in Meta’s best interests that you get those superior results.

When it comes down to it, Meta may not even prefer that you use Advantage+ Audience. When creating a sales campaign, you are defaulted to Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns.

You still have the option of creating a manual sales campaign, but Meta clearly wants you to go this route.

Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns take algorithmic targeting even further. Your targeting inputs are virtually non-existent.

It’s not that you will always get better results using Advantage+ Audience or Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. But, Meta has found that advertisers do get better results with these methods, on average. And your impact on targeting in either case is minimal.

Remarketing

I still remember how excited I was when advertisers were given the ability to target website visitors. It changed the entire industry.

You don’t need to convince me of the value of reaching people who are deeply connected to us. I lived primarily off of remarketing for a very long time. The question is whether much of the remarketing that we once did is still necessary.

Audience Segments for sales campaigns opened my eyes to this possibility. Once you define your Engaged Audience and Existing Customers (essentially your remarketing audiences), you can see how much of your budget is spent on remarketing while not even trying.

In my tests, it doesn’t matter whether I use Advantage+ Audience (with or without suggestions) or original audiences. I regularly see a similar distribution between remarketing and prospecting.

If Meta is going to prioritize your remarketing audience anyway, why is it necessary to create separate ad sets to reach your remarketing audience — especially a general remarketing audience (all website visitors, for example)?

The primary argument for remarketing now is if you have a unique message for a very specific group of people that would only be relevant to them. Minus such a message, it just doesn’t feel necessary.

Exceptions and Caveats

I’ve been careful to specify that the situations when detailed targeting and lookalike audiences are least impactful are when those audiences are expanded. The end result is likely more like Advantage+ Audience than you think.

But, there are times when you can turn expansion off — and it may even be recommended. If your performance goal is post engagement, ThruPlay, or just about anything other than a conversion (or link clicks and landing page views for detailed targeting), Advantage Detailed Targeting and Advantage Lookalike are options that can be turned on or off.

I’m not suggesting that turning off expansion will give you better results. Instead, your inputs obviously mean more if targeting is restricted to what you provide.

There are also times when using original audiences instead of Advantage+ Audience may be preferred, especially when optimizing for top-of-the-funnel actions. Not only do you get more control over detailed targeting and lookalike audiences, but age maximums and gender become tight constraints. If you’ve seen that your budget is wasted outside of your demographic preferences when using Advantage+ Audience, this is always an option.

That said, this still doesn’t have anything to do with your detailed targeting and lookalike audience selections.

How Much Does It Matter?

If I’m successful at nothing else with this post, I hope that you at least walk away with a new skepticism about your impact on targeting.

I said it before, but it requires repeating: This isn’t about whether Advantage+ Audience is superior to using interests and lookalikes. It’s that any difference between the three approaches has the potential of being completely random.

If you’re getting great results using a certain group of interests, it may be partially due to the interests you’re using. It may be mostly due to the expanded audience. We don’t know. The main thing is that the inputs you provided aren’t likely to be the main or only reason you’re getting those results.

Results from test after test are showing me this. Surface level metrics are nearly the same. Distribution between remarketing and prospecting are nearly the same. Results are nearly the same.

And when there’s a wider difference, it’s a disparity that often can’t be replicated when I recreate the test. It was random.

That’s why I want you to obsess less over these things. It’s not that I demand you stop using original audiences with interests and lookalikes. I just want you to stop obsessing over them. It’s unlikely that you found the perfect combination of targeting inputs.

Advertisers are superstitious creatures. Even if we know that something we’re doing isn’t why we’re getting great results, we don’t want to rock the boat. And that’s perfectly fine.

But, I encourage you to resist the need to over test your targeting. If you continue to create multiple ad sets for different groups of people, hoping to isolate the best performing selection of targeting inputs, you are likely doing more harm than good.

It’s also a potentially colossal waste of time that could be better spent on things that matter, like your ad copy, creative, landing page, and attribution.

The Direction We’re Heading

This should be obvious…

1. In a very limited number of situations, you can avoid having your detailed targeting and lookalike audiences expanded. In those that remain, they may be expanded by default, but you can turn it off. Meta wants you to turn it on.

2. When optimizing for conversions (and sometimes link clicks or landing page views), your ads can be delivered to people outside of the interests and lookalikes that you provide.

3. The default approach to targeting is Advantage+ Audience. Meta doesn’t want you to use original audiences and tries to discourage you from using them.

4. Meta doesn’t even seem to care if you provide any targeting at all with Advantage+ Audience. When you do, it’s merely a suggestion.

5. If you’re creating a sales campaign, it defaults to Advantage+ Shopping, which allows for virtually no targeting inputs at all. This is what Meta wants you to do.

Your targeting inputs matter far less than they ever did before. More importantly, Meta doesn’t seem to want or even need them. And the trend line is towards eliminating them entirely.

You can be upset about this, but I simply ask that you acknowledge it. Repeat after me:

“My targeting inputs mean less than ever before. Meta doesn’t want or need my targeting inputs. One day, I will likely lose all ability to control these things.”

Once you accept it, you can prepare.

How to Impact Who Sees Your Ads

This may seem like you’re placed in a helpless situation, but you’re not. Your targeting inputs may not matter much, but you can still impact who sees your ads.

1. Performance Goal. Think about it. This might be the most impactful control of all. Whether your audience is expanded or you’re using Advantage+ Audience, the algorithm is driven by finding people who will perform the action that you want, as defined by the performance goal. This includes the conversion event that you choose when optimizing for conversions.

What you define as your goal will drastically alter who sees your ad. Meta’s focus will be on helping get you that action.

2. Ad Copy, Creative, and Offer. A common claim is that the ad does the targeting now, and I don’t know that this is literally true. I haven’t seen Meta specify that the algorithm scans your copy for keywords to determine who sees your ad. But, it’s mostly semantics.

Your initial audience is likely determined by pixel activity, conversion data, and prior engagement with your ads. After that, it learns from who performs the action that you want. So, you want your ad copy, creative, and offer to attract your ideal audience.

You don’t want to attract a general audience. You want to attract very specific people. In a sense, you want your ad to repel people who aren’t your ideal customer.

These aren’t small things. Crafting effective copy, creative, and offers isn’t easy to do. Don’t feel as though a light-touch approach to targeting is somehow the easy way out. You still have work to do.

Your Turn

What’s your approach to reaching your ideal audience? Has it evolved?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Meta Ads Targeting and an Advertiser’s Role, Explained appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One of the challenges resulting from audience expansion and algorithmic targeting is the lack of visibility into who sees our ads. When the advertiser loses control over defining the target audience, how can we trust that our ads are shown to the right people?

Audience Segments can help.

Let’s take a closer look at this incredibly valuable tool…

What Are They?

When running Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, advertisers have very little impact on who sees their ads.

When using Advantage+ Audience, most targeting inputs are used as audience suggestions only.

Even when using original audiences, an advertiser’s targeting inputs are often expanded — either manually or automatically.

The resultant mystery about who sees your ads can be frustrating. A benefit of Audience Segments is that advertisers can get visibility into how budget and performance are distributed between important groups.

Audience Segments allow advertisers to define people who are connected to their business:

• Engaged Audience: People who have interacted with your business but have not made a purchase
• Existing Customers: People who have bought a product or signed up for your services

Anyone who falls outside of these groups will be considered a New Audience. You will then be able to see how much of your budget was spent on each group — as well as how performance varied between them.

Audience Segments were first made available for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. In the beginning, advertisers were only able to define Existing Customers. Not only did this allow them to view breakdowns of results by customers and non-customers, but it could be used to set an Existing Customer Budget Cap for those campaigns.

The Engaged Audience segment would soon follow. Meta eventually rolled out Audience Segments for all sales campaigns — whether manual or Advantage+ Shopping. While it doesn’t allow for an Existing Customer Budget Cap on manual campaigns, these Audience Segments are enormously useful for reporting.

NOTE: You’ll know that you can leverage Audience Segments for manual Sales campaigns if you see this reporting section when creating a campaign.

Define Them

You won’t be able to leverage Audience Segments until you define them. To define your your Audience Segments, go to Advertising Settings in the All Tools menu. You may need to go to Ad Account Settings first.

Click the section for Audience Segments.

It will look like this…

1. Define Engaged Audience.

If you haven’t yet defined your Engaged Audience, expand this section and it will look like this…

You can select from existing custom audiences or create new custom audiences to define this group. You’ll want to use every method possible to help define people who have engaged with you. That includes Website, Customer List, App Activity, Offline Activity, Catalog, Lead Form, and Shopping.

Note that this will not include certain types of custom audiences like Page Engagement, Instagram Account Engagement, and Video View Engagement.

There will be overlap — not only between custom audiences within Engaged Audience, but between your Engaged Audience and Existing Customers. Do not worry about excluding people to prevent that overlap. People will only be counted once. If someone is shown your ad who exists in both the Engaged Audience and Existing Customers, they will only be counted as an Existing Customer.

Define this Audience Segment as throughly as possible. Here’s what mine looks like…

2. Define Existing Customers.

If you haven’t defined your Existing Customers, expand it and it will look like this…

You will want to define this based on people who have bought from you. There is a bit of confusion in Meta’s definition since it also includes “people signed up for your services.” I do not interpret that as being anyone who is on your email list (these people would be part of your Engaged Audience). A purchase needs to be made.

The most common ways to define this will be a segmented customer list of people who have made a purchase. I’ve created several Customer List Custom Audiences based on specific purchases as well as one that captures all purchases. I also use a Website Custom Audience based on the Purchase standard event that fired during the past 180 days.

Here’s what my Existing Customers Audience Segment looks like…

Depending on your business, you could certainly use Shopping, App Activity, Offline Activity, and and Catalog Custom Audiences, too.

Leverage with Breakdowns

Once your Audience Segments have been defined, you can leverage them for Ads Manager breakdowns going forward. How long will it take until it’s available? It could be as quick as a few minutes, or it could take longer.

Then click the Breakdowns dropdown menu in Ads Manager (between Columns and Reports).

You will have two different breakdowns that you can use.

1. Breakdown by Audience Segments.

This is found under “By Demographics.” When your Audience Segments are defined, your results will be broken down to include three separate rows:

• Engaged Audience
• Existing Customers
• New Audience

Here’s an example…

You may also see Uncategorized or Unknown. “Uncategorized” will appear when viewing campaigns that don’t qualify (not a Sales campaign). Keep in mind that not everyone has this for manual Sales campaigns.

“Unknown” may reflect that ads were delivered to people while your Audience Segments weren’t yet defined. I’ve also seen some results for Unknown temporarily before they eventually move to one of the two Audience Segments.

2. Breakdown by Country and Audience Segments.

This is found under “By Geography.” You will then get breakdowns by Audience Segments for each country where people were shown your ads. Here’s an example…

Examples of How I Use Them

I’ve had lots of fun using Audience Segments with both Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns and manual Sales campaigns. This feature was central to a test I ran to determine how much our audience inputs matter (and how much remarketing happens) when using various targeting approaches.

1. Advantage+ Audience without Suggestions.

I was curious how much of my budget would be spent on remarketing without providing any suggestions at all. It was a lot!

2. Advantage+ Audience with Suggestions.

If that much remarketing happens without providing suggestions, what happens when I provide suggestions that match my Audience Segments exactly? Maybe surprisingly, the distribution was virtually unchanged.

3. Original Audiences Using Custom Audiences with Advantage Custom Audience Turned On.

If I use Original Audiences, would Meta respect my inputs more before going broader? Once again, the custom audiences I used matched my Audience Segments. Distribution was again about the same.

4. Original Audiences Going Broad.

What about using Original Audiences and going broad? Well, still lots of remarketing!

5. Advantage+ Shopping Campaign Optimizing for a Complete Registration.

And finally, I created an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign that optimizes for the Complete Registration event to be consistent with what I did in the other four tests. So far, this is looking a lot like Advantage+ Audience without suggestions.

Here are my main takeaways from these tests:

1. Algorithmic targeting and audience expansion do indeed result in remarketing. This is a good thing!

2. It is unclear how much our targeting inputs matter when audience expansion and algorithmic targeting are at play. The distribution of my budget and results were all within a similar range for each approach.

Feel free to use Audience Segments for your own tests!

Your Turn

Have you started using Audience Segments? What have you learned from using them?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post A Guide to Audience Segments appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

When you create a sales campaign in Meta Ads Manager, the recommended setup is an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign.

First rolled out in 2023, Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns streamline and simplify the steps necessary for setting up a sales campaign while applying advanced machine learning to ad delivery and optimization.

But these campaigns also represent a drastic departure from the complex campaigns advertisers constructed in years past. Many advertisers doubt the effectiveness of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns due to their simplistic nature that requires very little input and customization.

I’ve written blog posts and recorded videos about the numerous nuances and changes related to Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, but this post will help aggregate all of those developments into one place.

Let’s discuss in detail all of what makes these campaigns unique. Consider it a roadmap to create your own…

Locked-In Defaults

Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns were much more restrictive when they first became available. Over time, Meta has allowed a bit more customization.

But, these are still far more restrictive than a manual campaign.

You can’t adjust the objective from Sales, but that should be self-explanatory. Advertisers don’t have the ability to turn on Dynamic Creative. Placements are locked in at Advantage+ Placements, though we’ll get to a minor potential adjustment there. And the age is defaulted to 18 and up.

This sounds more customizable than it is. You’ll see how little control you have over targeting shortly.

Conversion Settings

This section has grown since Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns first became available.

Conversion Location

There are at least two options for Conversion Location: Website or Website and App. Some advertisers also have Website and Shop.

Performance Goal

The performance goal defines what is most important, which ultimately impacts the delivery of your ads. Advertisers have the option of maximizing number or value of conversions.

If you use the default, Meta will try to get you the most conversions within your budget. If you optimize for value, you may get fewer conversions but with a focus on higher dollar value.

Conversion Event

This defines the specific type of conversion that determines success. Originally, the only option was Purchase. But, now you can select from any of your standard or custom events.

Personally, Purchase seems most logical here. But, feel free to experiment with other options.

Bid Strategies

The default bid strategy will be Highest Volume (if maximizing number of conversions) or Highest Value (if maximizing value). The option to use manual bidding was not available initially. Advertisers have the option of setting a Cost Per Result Goal (when maximizing number of conversions) or ROAS Goal (when maximizing value).

Only use these as a last result if you are not getting the performance you want but can spend enough to generate the volume you’ll need to make manual bidding effective.

Attribution Setting

Attribution is how Meta assigns credit to an ad for a conversion. The attribution setting determines two things:

• How conversions are defined for reporting
• How your ads are optimized for delivery

The default attribution setting is 7-day click, 1-day view, and 1-day engaged-view (for videos) — which is the case for manual campaigns, too. This means that Ads Manager will report conversions that happen within 7 days of clicking your ad, one day of viewing (without clicking), or one day of viewing your video for at least 10 seconds without clicking.

Click attribution can be adjusted to 7 days and either view attribution option can be set to “none.”

Targeting

This, more than any other feature, may be what sets Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns apart. Your targeting inputs look like this…

Countries or states. That’s it. No detailed targeting. No custom audiences. No lookalike audiences.

And this has been a major mental block for advertisers. If we can’t define our target audience, how can Meta possibly deliver our ads to the right people?

Well, that’s the beauty of the machine learning that drives these campaigns. Targeting is largely determined by your performance goal (“who is most likely to perform this action?”), pixel data, and conversion history.

Audience Controls

So, you have limited impact on targeting within the Advantage+ Shopping Campaign. But you can do something from the ad account level.

Go to your Ad Account Settings…

If you don’t see sections for Account Controls and Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, go to your Advertising Settings (a new section that is rolling out).

Audience Controls allow you to set location and minimum age restrictions account-wide. These now apply to all campaigns, not just Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns.

Only use this if there are restrictions regarding where you can do business and whom you can serve.

Within the Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns section of your Advertising Settings, you can define some important audience segments: Existing Customers and Engaged Audience.

Use custom audiences to define each of these groups.

• Existing Customers: Those who have already bought from you
• Engaged Audience: Those who have engaged with your business but have not purchased a product

This information is primarily used for reporting (we’ll get to that). You can’t technically target either of these groups, but…

Existing Customer Budget Cap

When setting your budget, you’ll have the option of establishing an Existing Customer Budget Cap.

This allows you to put a cap on how much of your budget is spent on existing customers, leaving the rest to prospecting. The accuracy of this cap relies heavily on your ability to define your existing customers in Advertising Settings.

Only use this if you want to focus primarily on new customers as a cap will likely lead to less volume of sales.

Reporting

I’m jumping ahead a bit here, only because there’s a reporting feature unique to Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns that relies on the Existing Customers and Engaged Audience audience segments.

Once you publish your campaign, there’s another unique benefit to defining your Existing Customers and Engaged Audience. It allows us to get greater insight into the people who saw our ads — and who converted.

From the Breakdown menu in Ads Manager, go to Delivery and select Audience Type.

This will generate three rows to segment your results by New Customers, Existing Customers, and Engaged Audience.

This is especially helpful for advertisers who distrust the lack of control of algorithmic targeting. Even without inputs, your ads will be distributed to people who have had a connection to your business.

Placement Controls

Earlier, we discussed how there’s a fixed default for Advantage+ Placements. Unlike manual campaigns, you cannot customize placements within the campaign. But there is something you can do in the Advertising Settings.

Placement Controls are found under Audience Controls.

Unlike Audience Controls, which now apply account-wide to all campaigns, Placement Controls only apply to Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. If your business can only advertise on certain placements, you can remove some options here…

This is an incomplete list, but you can remove some of the placements that have the potential to be problematic.

That said, I discourage advertisers from manually removing placements whenever optimizing for a purchase, unless you have a very good reason for doing so. It’s unlikely to be for performance issues since the algorithm will adjust if a placement isn’t converting.

One Ad Set

Of all of the unique features of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, this might be the biggest mental hurdle for advertisers. But when you consider how these campaigns work, it makes sense.

Unlike a typical manual campaign, Advantage+ Shopping combines the campaign and ad set into a single step. You cannot create a second ad set within these campaigns, and that’s intentional.

There’s no reason to create multiple ad sets for different targeting segments since each Advantage+ Shopping Campaign uses wide-open, algorithmic targeting.

There’s very little reason to create multiple ad sets based on optimization. You could conceivably want to test different conversion locations (Website, Website and App, or Website and Shop), performance goals (number of conversions or value), or conversion events, but Meta is clearly discouraging that.

I know that some advertisers insist on creating multiple campaigns to promote different products, but that’s not in line with the point of these campaigns either. The assumption is that you’re going to load up your campaign with creative, whether it be manual ads or catalog ads.

Take a simplified approach here. While there are exceptions to every rule, avoid the urge to create multiple campaigns or ad sets to force Meta to use your outdated strategy.

Schedule Individual Ads

While it would be helpful to have this feature for manual campaigns, it makes sense why it’s unique to Advantage+ Shopping.

Once again, Meta is pushing the one campaign, one ad set approach. As a result, your campaign could be loaded up with ads that promote different products.

If you want to prevent the promotion of different products at the same time or leverage sales and other price changes, an ad schedule may be useful.

When creating an ad, there is an optional Schedule section between Format and Multi-Advertiser Ads.

Focus on Creative

Your impact on the performance of an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign is minimal, up until this point. You can certainly screw some things up, but the best thing you can do is not touch a single setting until you get to the ad. These campaigns are that powerful.

But that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed good results. You’re not. And a major factor will be your ads. Dedicate 90% of your time to ad copy and creative.

Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns are hungry for creative. Do not settle for a single ad. You can automatically test up to 150 creative combinations. Don’t be worried about overwhelming Meta with too many ads.

Experiment with different formats. Use the multiple text options. Try Catalog Ads. You don’t need separate campaigns for different products. Throw them all into this campaign. That’s what it’s for.

This is your time to shine as an advertiser. Take advantage of it.

Your Turn

Are you running Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Get Started with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

While pondering the changes related to targeting and optimization over the years, it struck we why so many advertisers struggle with understanding how their role has evolved with targeting: There’s a messaging problem.

I know there’s a messaging problem because I was dealing with it myself while I was trying to communicate it. The processes of targeting and optimization are beginning to blend into one. I think I found the solution.

We need to shift our focus to who sees our ads.

Sometimes people see your ads because they were included in your targeting inputs. Sometimes it’s due to Meta’s optimization for delivery. Both have been important. But the importance of both are changing.

Targeting and optimization were previously very different things. Now they are converging.

Maybe this doesn’t make sense yet. But once it does, it will help you better understand the systems at play which determine who sees your ads — and your role in them.

How People Saw Your Ads Pre-Expansion

Previously, advertisers had a critical role when it came to who saw their ads. They provided the initial targeting inputs.

Facebook (before there was Meta) then optimized to show your ads to people within that initial audience who were most likely to perform your desired action. This was “Optimization for Ad Delivery.”

Both were critically important. But optimization couldn’t fix bad targeting. If you provided a flawed pool of people to work with, you would not get good results.

For years, I contended that targeting was the most important advertiser responsibility. It could make or break your advertising.

How People See Your Ads with Expansion

That started to change pretty dramatically once Meta introduced Detailed Targeting Expansion (which eventually became Advantage Detailed Targeting).

Advantage Lookalike and Advantage Custom Audience soon followed.

The advertiser provides the initial targeting inputs. Just as important, they indicate a performance goal.

In some cases, the advertiser has the option to turn expansion on. In others (like when optimizing for conversions), it’s on by default and can’t be turned off.

When on, your initial inputs will be prioritized. But if Meta believes that you can get better results (determined by your performance goal) by expanding the audience, people who would not have qualified within your targeting inputs can see your ads.

The level of transparency has mostly been zero. Until recently, advertisers had no way to know how many of the people reached were via targeting inputs how how many were due to expansion. That’s at least partially corrected with the introduction of Audience Segments.

How People See Your Ads with Advantage+ Audience

While the mechanics of Advantage+ Audience sound very similar to expansion via Advantage Detailed Targeting, Advantage Lookalike, and Advantage Custom Audience, there are some very important differences.

Any inputs you provide when using Advantage+ Audience are mere audience suggestions.

If you don’t provide any suggestions, Meta will start with your prior conversions, pixel data, and previous engagement with your ads. In other words, the targeting will prioritize remarketing without providing inputs.

Another difference from Advantage expansion is that after prioritizing that initial audience, it can go much broader. The focus will be showing your ads to people most likely to perform the action that you want (defined by the performance goal).

As is the case with Advantage expansion, there is minimal transparency regarding a breakdown of performance between your inputs and the algorithmically generated audience. But one can assume that a much larger percentage of those reached are found by the algorithm — especially since you don’t need to provide inputs at all.

How People See Your Ads with Advantage+ Shopping

Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns take this even further. The targeting inputs you can provide are virtually nonexistent. No interests, custom audiences, or lookalike audiences. You can restrict by country and set a current customer cap by defining your current customers in your ad account. But that’s it.

Otherwise, the people who will see your ads are determined via machine learning. All Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns utilize a conversions performance goal (either “most conversions” or “value of conversions“), and the conversion event will define which specific action determines success. This was previously locked in as Purchase, but you can now select any standard or custom event.

Who will see your ads? This is determined using machine learning based primarily on the conversion event.

The Performance Goal is Your Targeting Now

There’s a very good argument (okay, it’s my argument) that the performance goal is more important to who sees your ads than your actual targeting inputs. Especially now that your inputs are only suggestions with Advantage+ Audience and no inputs are provided with Advantage+ Shopping, it’s difficult to make the case that these inputs are as important as they once were.

But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have any role when it comes to determining who sees your ads. Even when you have no targeting inputs at all, like with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, there remains one very critical step.

Your performance goal is the targeting now.

If you want purchases, set a conversions performance gaol with Purchase as your conversion event.

If you want post engagement, set that as your performance goal. But don’t expect purchases.

This will automatically include some of the people you would normally target manually via remarketing audiences. The rest are filled in algorithmically based on the performance goal.

But here is something you need to understand: The audience won’t always be the same.

The people who see your ads when the performance goal is Conversions (with Purchase conversion event) will not be the same as the people who see your ads when your performance goal is Post Engagement. Your performance goal determines what you care about — and that is the central lever for determining how Meta optimizes and makes adjustments.

If your performance goal is for anything top of funnel (link clicks, landing page views, Post Engagement, or ThruPlay), you are very likely to run into quality issues. The reason is that Meta doesn’t care whether these people do anything else — because the assumption is that you don’t either. So your ads will be shown to people most likely to perform that action, which could be because they click on everything or a placement often results in that action.

The Role of Ad Copy and Creative

It’s popular to say that targeting has moved to your ad copy and creative (I even said it). While what you do with the ad is absolutely important, I contend it remains secondary to the performance goal.

That’s not to diminish the importance of ad copy and creative. It may be splitting hairs to say that one is more important than the other.

If you pick the wrong performance goal, you’ll need the perfect ad copy and creative to get any results.

If you create a sub-par ad, the right performance goal can help get you some results.

In both cases, your potential is limited. You’ll get the best results by setting the appropriate performance goal and being on top of your game with ad copy and creative.

The Future of Who Sees Your Ads

If you’re following the trends outlined here, it shouldn’t be all that difficult to predict the future of targeting. The continued focuses on privacy, tracking, and malicious uses of targeting (discrimination and manipulation of elections) makes the continuation of this trend a near certainty.

You may argue that your inputs still mean a lot because you use the original targeting options and don’t always optimize for conversions. You regularly find ways to avoid audience expansion.

But do not expect these options to remain. Meta clearly wants advertisers to use Advantage+ Audience. It couldn’t be more obvious that the original methods are on the way out.

And we’ll very likely see the hands-off targeting approach of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns expanded to other objectives. Meta already hinted at this related to leads.

If you haven’t already started to shift from “targeting” to “people who see my ads,” it will be forced on you eventually. Might as well get used to it.

Your Turn

How do you see your role in who sees your ads?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post The Evolution of Who Sees Your Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta advertising has changed rapidly the past few years, and that leads to several common targeting mistakes. These errors are largely due to a combination of ignorance and stubbornness.

I admit that I miss the old days of Facebook advertising — before it was Meta advertising. More than anyone, I preached the gospel of targeting and the art of finding your ideal audience. I found great success with micro-targeting and I found great enjoyment in all of the levers I could pull with targeting to find what works and what doesn’t.

But things are changing. And while I was initially resistant to much of the change, I’ve grown to embrace it. You should, too.

If you’re making mistakes with targeting now, it’s likely one of these six things. And it’s impacting your results…

Improper Use of Exclusions

The improper use of exclusions can go two ways.

1. Nonexistent or incomplete use of exclusions.

The use of exclusions is a fundamental way to avoid wasted ad spend. It’s a step that’s often missed by beginner advertisers.

If you’re promoting a product that can only be purchased once, there’s no need to show ads to people who have already purchased it. If I’m promoting my Power Hitters Club – Elite membership, I will excluded current members using a custom audience exclusion.

While that customer list custom audience is a start, it’s unlikely to exclude all current members due to matching incompleteness. When an exclusion is required, you should exclude that group in as many ways as possible.

An example is if you ever run lead ads using instant forms while also having a landing page on your website, there are at least three different ways you can exclude people who already performed this action: Lead form custom audience, website custom audience, and customer list custom audience.

2. Overuse of exclusions.

While you should use exclusions, you can overdo it. It’s not uncommon for advertisers to exclude all current customers when promoting a product that current customers can buy. They consider it a “true prospecting” campaign and only go after completely new customers.

This is missing a golden opportunity. Your satisfied customers are the ones who are most likely to buy again and again. Excluding them eliminates the least challenging sale.

The response from those who take this approach is that they have a separate ad set for remarketing. But if you have one ad set for broad remarketing and one for prospecting, you’re going to drastically increase the costs to reach your remarketing audience. Remarketing audiences are small audiences, which translates to higher frequencies and CPMs.

It’s inefficient and unnecessary now. Don’t exclude current customers unless those customers can’t buy the product you’re promoting.

Expansion Ignorance

Many advertisers hate hearing this, but your targeting inputs mean less than ever before. This isn’t to say you should remove all targeting inputs and go completely broad (though it’s something to try). But even when you do provide inputs, the targeting is often going broader.

Either advertisers don’t know or they’re willfully ignorant about the role of audience expansion. And it doesn’t necessarily matter whether you’re using the original audience options or Advantage+ Audience.

1. Original audience options.

You’re resistant to the newfangled targeting of Advantage+ Audience and insist on kicking it old school. So you opt-out of it by making a couple of extra clicks to use the original audience options. You even click past the “Are you sure?” message about how it could lead to higher costs.

You enter in a bunch of interests and behaviors. This is how to go after your ideal customer, you think. These detailed targeting options define the exact person you want to reach. You’re doing something super smart.

But, you’re also optimizing for conversions, link clicks, or landing page views. And when you do that, your audience is automatically expanded using Advantage Detailed Targeting.

2. Advantage+ Audience.

It’s possible you may not even know there is a “new way” and “old way.” You spend significant time and budget trying to find the ideal targeting using custom audiences, lookalike audiences, and detailed targeting.

But, guess what? This targeting is only a suggestion.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re optimizing for conversions, link clicks, or landing page views. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using custom audiences, lookalike audiences, or if you click a box to expand the audience.

Your inputs are only suggestions and people well beyond this group will see your ads.

Your inability to understand and appreciate that targeting is expanding beyond your inputs may not be a mistake in and of itself. But this will lead to mistakes as well as wasted budget and time.

Too Narrow When Optimizing for Conversions

Many advertisers treat targeting like it’s 2017. There’s no better example than when optimizing for any type of conversion.

There was a time when a critical step was picking the targeting. Which interests, behaviors, lookalike audiences, or custom audiences made a huge difference to your results?

But when you’re optimizing for conversions now, your targeting inputs aren’t nearly as important as they once were. This is seen in the examples above when running manual Sales campaigns using either Advantage+ Audience or the original audience options, as described in the previous section.

But Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns go even further. You don’t provide any targeting inputs in this case. Meta does it all automatically.

There are two important factors that contribute to how your audience is chosen…

1. Performance goal optimization.

In the case of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, it’s typically a purchase (though it can be any standard or custom event now). The algorithm’s primary focus for delivery is to get you as many of that goal action as possible within your budget.

Success is determined by the ability to satisfy that goal. Adjustments will be made to delivery to get you more of those actions where possible.

2. Prior activity.

Whether you’re using Advantage+ Audience without targeting inputs or creating an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign, the initial focus of targeting is determined for you based on your pixel activity, conversion history, and prior engagement with your ads.

The mistake is that advertisers go far too narrow when optimizing for conversions when it simply isn’t necessary. Your biggest obstacle to success is limited budget and audience size. The more you limit the audience, the more you will restrict the algorithm and drive up your costs.

It’s also not as easy to go narrow as it once was, for the reasons already described. In some cases, your attempts are futile and the audience will expand anyway.

But, if you provide broad custom audiences while using the original audiences and turn off Advantage Custom Audience, you are likely doing more harm than good. You may get some short-term results. But you’ll exhaust that audience and run into a ceiling quickly.

It’s an obstacle that’s easily avoidable since Meta will automatically go after relevant people based on pixel activity, conversion data, and ad activity anyway — if you simply allow it.

Overdoing Demographic Granularity

Once again, there was a time and place for this. Especially when optimizing for any type of conversion, those times have passed.

We all did this years ago, and it was smart advertising at the time. We constructed the profile of our ideal customer. Their likes and dislikes, age range and gender, even their incomes and zip codes.

You may have even run breakdowns to find the groups of people by age and gender that lead to the best results so that you can then focus only on them.

You think that’s necessary now, but it just isn’t.

I’ve written before about how this may be necessary when optimizing for top of the funnel actions. But if we’re to be honest, nearly all top of funnel advertising is flawed anyway.

It’s one thing if you are unable to sell to customers under a certain age. Or your product is for women. There’s no reason to get cute messing with these settings simply because you believe that your product appeals more to men between the ages of 35-44.

If your goal is to drive more purchases, don’t try to outsmart the algorithm. It will learn. By restricting options, you are likely driving up costs unnecessarily — and limiting your pool of potential customers.

Too Broad When Optimizing for Top of Funnel

I alluded to it above. Avoid restricting your audience unnecessarily when optimizing for any type of conversion (especially a purchase). But that changes when optimizing for top of funnel actions.

Why? Because ad set optimization is literal. The algorithm’s only goal will be to get the action that you want. And while that is why you should limit restrictions when optimizing for conversions, it’s why top of funnel optimization can fail spectacularly.

Let’s say you’re optimizing for post engagement. You are a women’s clothing brand. You are hoping to attract potential customers by showcasing your new line.

Because you optimized for post engagement, the algorithm will only care about getting you engagement. It doesn’t matter (to Meta) whether that engagement is from a potential customer or not.

So, you’ll get plenty of engagement if you don’t limit by gender. Comments, video views, reactions, and image clicks. But you can bet that the vast majority of this engagement won’t be helpful.

You have to put guardrails on targeting when optimizing for these top of funnel actions because after all of these years, there are still very few ways to optimize for high quality actions that aren’t conversions.

I realize this sounds like a contradiction. I’ve given two very opposite sets of advice: 1. Stop restricting your targeting, and 2. Restrict your targeting. But the important context is whether you’re optimizing for the top or bottom of the funnel.

On one hand, I’d tell you it may be best to avoid running campaigns for engagement or clicks at all. But if you do, you’d better use some strict targeting — and make sure that the audience can’t be expanded.

Unnecessary Extra Ad Sets for Cold Targeting

This is connected to expansion ignorance. It’s also related to advertisers’ refusal to evolve with how things work now.

I avoid making absolute statements like “you should never create multiple ad sets for cold targeting now,” so I won’t do that here. If you’ve found success doing it that way and you aren’t getting results by combining those ad sets, do what works for you.

But consider me skeptical.

The idea that this would be more efficient than combining the cold targeting ad sets into one is illogical. It goes against how it works now and opposes Meta’s recommendations.

In the past, it made sense to split out ad sets for different cold targeting segments. Not only were there more interests and behaviors to choose from, but you could have very distinct groups of people. The overlap could have been controlled.

But that’s not the case now. If you’re using Advantage+ Audience (and that’s what Meta recommends), your inputs are only suggestions. If you’re using the original audience options with interests and lookalike audiences, those audiences are expanded.

There may be initial differences in performance between your ad sets in the beginning. Some of it will be based on your inputs and some will be due to randomness. But if they’re all optimized the same way and run the same ads, the differences will eventually be minimal. The algorithm will expand to show to people most likely to convert.

That overlap is not beneficial. You’re undoubtedly getting flooded with recommendations about auction overlap and audience fragmentation with suggestions to combine your ad sets. You’re willfully ignoring those warnings.

In most cases, you should use one ad set per campaign for cold targeting. If you need further evidence that this is where things are headed, look to Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. You can’t even create a second ad set in that case.

And an educated guess would be that the future of campaign creation will look like Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. You can fight it with your multiple ad sets all you want for now, but it very well won’t be possible at some point.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about this, too. Watch it below…

Your Turn

What common targeting mistakes do you see?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 6 Targeting Mistakes Advertisers Make appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta announced that more detailed targeting options will be removed on January 15th. It’s the continuation of a trend that began more than three years ago.

Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

This is a reminder that you cannot rely heavily on granular targeting. Not only might it go away, but your targeting inputs matter less and less with each new update.

I didn’t write this post to scare you. Instead, I’m hoping to break through to help you understand what’s happening and is bound to happen. It’s time to embrace this direction and prepare for it.

Targeting Trends

It’s debatable when the first shoe dropped related to the current direction of targeting. From about 2012-15, the focus was on developing new powerfully specific ways to target people. New detailed targeting to reach people by actions and behaviors. New custom audiences to reach those who have engaged with you. All focused on your inputs.

Maybe things didn’t officially start shifting during the election season of 2015, but that’s certainly when the seeds of change were planted. The use of targeting to manipulate elections attracted scrutiny. Meta (then Facebook) found itself under significant regulatory pressure.

Cambridge Analytica surely contributed to greater awareness of ways people were being tracked and how it was used for targeted advertising. Meta developed new rules for special ad categories that were aimed at preventing discrimination in the areas of employment, credit, and real estate.

Then iOS 14 happened a few years later, and doubts emerged around how accurate and complete some of our ad targeting was. Meta took an interest in machine learning, AI, and modeling to help repair lost data and fill in the gaps.

Meta performed a sweep to remove certain ad targeting options in the early parts of 2022. Those removals focused on “detailed targeting options that relate to topics people may perceive as sensitive, such as options referencing causes, organizations, or public figures that relate to health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation.”

The removal of those targeting options feels like deja vu now.

During the past couple of years, Meta launched several products that helped clarify the path that we’re on…

1. Advantage Targeting Expansion Tools. Meta launched Advantage Detailed Targeting, Advantage Lookalike, and Advantage Custom Audience. When used, Meta can expand your audience beyond your targeting inputs if more or better results can be found. In some cases, it’s an option that you can turn off. In others, expansion is on by default.

2. Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. Meta launched its advancements in machine learning and AI to help e-commerce advertisers. When running Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, no advertising inputs are provided at all beyond a cap on reaching current customers. Instead, Meta relies on signals and historical data.

3. Advantage+ Audience. Meta applied what it was doing with Advantage+ Shopping to create a version for any objective. Advantage+ Audience allows you the option of providing targeting suggestions, with the expectation that delivery can go much broader. If you don’t provide suggestions, the algorithm will focus on pixel data and conversion history as a starting point.

While you can switch back to the old targeting method, Advantage+ Audience is now the default approach.

We could even include Chrome’s phaseout of third-party cookies in 2024 as another critical change that is likely to impact how targeting happens.

Targeting Today

Given all of these trends, the picture of targeting today looks like this…

1. You have fewer detailed targeting options than ever before.

2. Your targeting inputs aren’t always required.

3. When provided, your targeting inputs mean less than ever before because the algorithm can and will go broader.

These are facts and are not debatable. Whether or not you insist on using granular targeting options and you believe they are more effective does not matter. In some cases, the impact of those granular inputs are probably far less than you think because the audience is expanded. In others, you may actually hurt your results by refusing to evolve with the trends.

That isn’t to say that broad targeting works 100% of the time for all advertisers and you should never use granular targeting. Instead, know that the way you are targeting opposes the way Meta wants. That will eventually catch up to you.

What’s to Come

Unless something shocking happens, we’re heading in a rather obvious direction.

1. It’s quite possible that Meta will repurpose Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns for other objectives (this is already in the works for leads). This means the possible removal of all targeting inputs. Before you consider it a bad idea, this also assumes that Meta’s delivery algorithm improves to make it possible.

2. If not #1, Advantage+ Audience becomes the default requirement. No more switching to the old targeting methods. Any targeting inputs you provide, regardless of the objective, will be suggestions only.

3. Detailed targeting options continue to dwindle, eventually settling on a broader category of behavior. Again, this assumes that we’ll be able to use detailed targeting at all soon. But if we do, this approach of broader categories makes the most sense since it gives Meta more control over these smaller interests that end up falling into sensitive areas.

What You Should Do

It’s time to be blunt. There’s no stepping around this. You can’t keep targeting the ways that you always have. And frankly, you may be hurting your results if you are.

The first thing you should do is an audit of your current advertising approach. Maybe it worked five years ago. Does it actually make sense now?

And by “making sense,” I don’t just mean that you’re getting good results. It’s possible you’re still getting decent results in spite of yourself. Are you creating five ad sets per campaign for different cold targeting options? Due to targeting expansion, there’s probably way more overlap in that targeting today than there would have been in the past.

Start embracing some of the targeting methods that will continue to be available in the coming months and years. Experiment with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns if you’re promoting an e-commerce brand. Start using Advantage+ Audience, both with and without targeting suggestions. Does it matter which one you use? Does that approach impact longevity?

Let me be clear that I did not immediately embrace broad targeting. I resisted the initial Advantage Targeting Expansion options when they were released. Over time, I began to see that they did help results (with some exceptions). I now fully embrace Advantage+ Audience with targeting suggestions.

I’m not necessarily saying to completely abandon something if it works, especially if you’re positive that the alternative does not (though I’d question that). Instead, prepare yourself the best you can for what is likely inevitable. Test broader targeting. Don’t just test it because you hope to prove that it fails. Try to find ways that will make it work for you.

Because one day, and that day is likely not far into the future, you likely won’t have a choice.

Your Turn

Have you embraced broader targeting?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Meta’s Removal of Detailed Targeting is a Reminder of What’s to Come appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

In a previous post, I discussed how you should approach Meta ads targeting now. Things have changed quite a bit, and it’s important that you evolve with those changes. But, what does the future of Meta ads targeting look like?

I don’t have a crystal ball. These are all predictions. But, if you’ve been paying attention during the past few years, you’ll likely agree that these predictions are reasonable, if not likely.

Some of you will read this and feel comfortable, knowing that these changes are unlikely to impact you since you’ve adjusted well to the evolution of Meta advertising so far. But I also know that this will make some of you very uncomfortable.

When is the “future,” exactly? I could see some, if not all, of these changes enacted during the coming year. It wouldn’t shock me if some happened suddenly in the very near future.

I have no inside information. It’s always possible I’m wrong. But, here’s what I expect will happen…

Where We’ve Been Heading

We’ve been trending in a natural direction for a few years now…

1. Thousands of interests removed.

2. Tracking challenges related to iOS 14 and privacy changes impact remarketing.

3. Meta begins expanding targeting beyond the audiences we’ve selected — first as an option and then by default (in most cases).

4. Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns roll out, which eliminate targeting inputs.

5. Advantage+ Audience targeting rolls out, which allows optional targeting “suggestions.” Otherwise, Meta will find your audience based on pixel activity, conversion history, and prior engagement with your ads.

Maybe you’ve resisted it. But there is a very clear, natural progression happening here.

Advantage Audience Expansion Will Be Eliminated

Once Meta started rolling out Advantage+ Audience, predictable confusion resulted. There are now four different features that sound like nearly the same thing.

1. Advantage Detailed Targeting: If Meta’s systems believe that better performance is available beyond the detailed targeting inputs you’ve provided, your audience can be dynamically expanded.

2. Advantage Lookalike: If Meta’s systems believe that better performance is available beyond the lookalike percentage that you’ve selected, your lookalike audience can be dynamically expanded.

3. Advantage Custom Audience: If Meta’s systems believe that better performance is available beyond the custom audiences you’ve provided, your audience can be dynamically expanded.

4. Advantage+ Audience: Advertisers have the option of providing targeting suggestions using detailed targeting, lookalike audiences, and custom audiences. Meta will prioritize matching those suggestions prior to moving more broadly.

The differences are subtle. In each case, you provide initial targeting inputs (though with Advantage+ Audience, they are merely suggestions). Meta can expand beyond that audience to get you better results — though, Advantage+ Audience seems to suggest that expansion definitely will happen.

Advantage+ Audience also has the potential to go much broader. And if you don’t provide targeting suggestions, Meta will use your past conversions, pixel data, and engagement with prior ads to build and evolve your audience.

The typical advertiser will not understand the subtle differences. They also won’t understand that Meta released Advantage+ Audience as the enhancement that is intended to be more effective than the prior three options.

There truly is no reason for Advantage Detailed Targeting, Advantage Lookalike, and Advantage Custom Audience to continue to exist. You can accomplish nearly the same goals (with improved results, according to Meta) by simply using detailed targeting, lookalike audiences, or custom audiences as suggestions — if you use anything at all.

Meta should, and likely will, eliminate those three options. It’s the natural progression, and I’d be surprised if they survived much longer.

Advantage+ Audience Will Become Fixed Default

We’ve seen this progression with other Ads Manager features in the past. Meta makes or plans to make a setting a fixed default. There are protests. Sometimes (like with Advantage Campaign Budget), Meta backs off.

We’ve seen this with Advantage Detailed Targeting and Advantage Lookalike for specific optimizations. You no longer have the option to turn them off.

We’re starting to see signs of this related to Advantage+ Placements. Meta, at the very least, wants to discourage adjusting from the default.

You have limited ability to make any adjustments to Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, including targeting. The entire purpose of Tailored Campaign setup is that it’s streamlined and you can’t edit defaults.

Meta’s process with these decisions is rather straight forward. They analyze results when advertisers use the default and when they make manual adjustments. If results are consistently superior by keeping the default, Meta will either lock it in or make it difficult to change.

At the moment, advertisers have the ability to bypass Advantage+ Audience and use old targeting methods. But it’s not entirely clear and obvious that this is possible. It’s an intentional design decision to discourage these changes.

Meta will surely monitor to compare results when advertisers use Advantage+ Audience vs. the original targeting options. They have some of these results already, which is why we’re seeing the current design.

It’s logical to conclude that, while there may be isolated exceptions based on objective or optimization, the original targeting options will be discontinued. You will still be able to use detailed targeting, lookalike audiences, and custom audiences as targeting inputs during this phase. But they will only be as suggestions.

I can see this happening first with detailed targeting and lookalike audiences. It’s possible that custom audiences without expansion will survive — or at least for now.

Most or All Manual Targeting Inputs Will Be Removed

Why not keep going?

Once again, this isn’t a particularly bold prediction. We’ve seen it already with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. You cannot provide any detailed targeting, lookalike audiences, or custom audiences for targeting — even as suggestions.

Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, according to reports from Meta, have been more effective than prior Sales campaigns optimizing for purchases. If it can work for Sales, why not for other objectives and optimizations?

There will likely come a time when these targeting inputs won’t be possible for any campaign type. Meta will dynamically determine your targeting based on:

1. The performance goal
2. Past conversions
3. Pixel data
4. Engagement with prior ads
5. Global user engagement data

In a way, detailed targeting will still exist, but only Meta will use it. The data is all there for Meta to find, and your inputs won’t be needed.

I do think this could be problematic given the current Ads Manager structure. Eliminating targeting inputs makes sense for purchases. But Meta may need to provide additional layers of performance goals to provide clarity regarding what you actually want for this to work in other cases.

One could argue that removing targeting inputs could be a smart move for Meta related to privacy and perception, as well. If advertisers are unable to select specific interests and behaviors, the process of delivering ads may seem less “creepy” to non-advertisers.

Maybe Not Now

I can hear the complaints through my computer screen. “This will never work.” There are bound to be reservations about instituting such an approach with Meta’s current advertising feature set. And many of those reservations are valid.

But Meta’s machine learning and AI will only improve. No matter what you think of the effectiveness of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, Advantage+ Audience, or any of the audience expansion tools now, think about a year or two from now.

Think about the advancements we’ve seen in AI just this year. A future without targeting inputs shouldn’t seem far-fetched.

Your Turn

Hey, I could be wrong. But I feel strangely confident about these predictions. They don’t feel particularly bold. It’s the natural progression of where we’ve been and where we appear to be heading.

What do you think of these predictions for the future of Meta ads targeting?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post The Future of Meta Ads Targeting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Ever since Meta launched Advantage+ Shopping, we’ve seen additional releases of enhancements every month or so. Another example: Value optimization.

In this post, we’ll walk through where to find this, what it is, and how you might use it.

Let’s go…

Advantage+ Shopping Optimization Default

When you create an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign, the default performance goal is “Maximize number of conversions.”

This means that success is measured by the number of conversions your ads generate. Meta’s focus will be to show your ads to the people most likely to complete a purchase on your website.

In other words, the number of conversions (purchases in this case) is what matters most.

Value Optimization

If you have this update, there is a dropdown menu for the performance goal, and you will be able to select “Maximize value of conversions.”

This means that Meta will attempt to show your ads to people more likely to make higher-value purchases on your website.

To recap, you have two options…

1. Maximize number of conversions (purchases): Focus on the number of conversions.
2. Maximize value of purchases: Focus on the value of conversions.

While this option is new to Advantage+ Shopping, it’s not new to Sales campaigns. Advertisers have been able to optimize for value using the manual campaign creation method for a few years now.

ROAS Goal

Just as is the case when you optimize for value using manual campaign creation, you’ll have the option of setting an ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) Goal when optimizing for value using Advantage+ Shopping.

This setting is optional. If you don’t set it, Meta will attempt to spend your entire budget while getting the highest purchase value. If you have a minimum ROAS to remain profitable, you can set it as your ROAS Goal and the algorithm will use that as a focus.

When you set a ROAS Goal, you may not spend your entire budget. That becomes less likely if you set an overly aggressive ROAS Goal. If it isn’t achievable, you may spend very little budget at all.

When Should You Use Value Optimization?

I’d encourage all ecommerce businesses to experiment with value optimization. Compare your results (particularly ROAS) to when the performance goal maximizing the number of purchases.

That said, there are a couple of variables that will determine whether this is likely to be effective.

1. Product Price Variance. If you have products that fall across a wide range of price points, this may be a good option for you. Meta may then value potential customers who might spend hundreds of dollars over those who spend $10.

2. Budget and Volume. In all likelihood, the use of value optimization will mean you will get fewer purchases. That may make it more difficult for the algorithm to properly optimize if you don’t generate enough volume. That’s why this is best suited for those already generating a high volume of purchases.

If your product price variance is narrow or you are already struggling to generate purchase volume, this probably isn’t going to give you better results. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t test it, but set your expectations accordingly.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about this, too. Watch it below…

Your Turn

Have you experimented with value optimization? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Value Optimization for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns have given e-commerce businesses a big boost. They combine machine learning and automation to get your ads in front of the audience most likely to buy. And now there’s a scheduling enhancement.

Let’s talk more about what this update is and why it matters.

Schedule Ads

The typical schedule is set at the ad set level. This is where you determine the days and times that all of the ads within it will deliver.

Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns have the primary scheduling in the ad set, too. Although, you could argue it’s technically in the campaign since the campaign and ad set creation is done in one step.

But, there’s also a scheduling option when creating your ad. Under the ad format section, you’ll notice an optional schedule to run your ad during a specified time period.

If you don’t edit this, your ads will run on the schedule that you set in the campaign. Otherwise, you can manually adjust the schedule of individual ads.

While you’d only have one ad set within an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign, you could have multiple ads that run at different times.

Ad Schedule Column

To view the schedule you’ve set for each ad in Ads Manager, you’ll need to add a column by using the Customize Columns feature. Search for “Ad Schedule” and then click the checkbox to add the column to your Ads Manager.

You could also include the Starts and Ends columns (for the campaign or ad set schedule) and the final product would look something like this…

Ad Schedule is specific to Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, so you won’t see data in this column for any other ad.

How Would That Work?

While messing around with this, I wanted to see if you could establish an ad start date that begins before the campaign/ad set start date. Well, you can (at least in draft)…

It doesn’t make much sense that an ad would start before the delivery of the ad set, but that’s technically possible here. My guess is that this is an oversight that needs to be corrected, and your ads won’t run until the main scheduled start date.

When Would You Use This?

First, it’s important to reiterate that this is only necessary because you can’t create multiple ad sets within a single Advantage+ Shopping Campaign. In a typical campaign, you might create separate ad sets with different schedules for the ads within them.

Second, this might be used if you want to stagger promotions. You could have dozens of ads within the same Advantage+ Shopping Campaign, but they’ll all compete with one another for attention. You might have three different products that you want to promote, so you can then stagger when each product is promoted to prevent overlap.

Another example would be if you have sales that occur on specific days, so your wording will change during those periods. It may not even have anything to do with your products, but instead the messaging in your ads.

Would This Come to Other Campaign Types?

When I first saw this announced, I thought it was for typical campaigns, not Advantage+ Shopping. At the time, I thought it would be interesting to see it for standard ad scheduling. I’ve since seen a lot of advertisers suggest the same.

The more I think about it, I just don’t know that it’s all that necessary. Again, remember that Meta’s primary motivation for this is likely that you have only one ad set in an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign. Ad scheduling was needed because you couldn’t create multiple schedules without creating multiple campaigns.

For a standard campaign, you’d just create multiple ad sets. But, you could make the argument that an optional ad schedule would simplify things. No need to duplicate an ad set that would keep everything the same, other than the schedule. Just adjust the ad schedule.

I can see the argument for it. I just wouldn’t be surprised if it never happens.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about this, too…

Your Turn

Have you experimented with ad scheduling? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Schedule Individual Ads for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns offer advertisers powerful results using machine learning and special features. But in some cases, audience controls are necessary to provide some guardrails for broad targeting.

After reading this post, you’ll have a better idea of how targeting works with Advantage+ Shopping, how to use audience controls, and how this approach could be helpful for other types of campaigns in the future.

Let’s go…

Advantage+ Shopping Campaign Targeting

Targeting for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns is essentially “let the algorithm do the work.” No custom audiences. No lookalike audiences. No interests and behaviors. You can’t even limit age groups.

What you see in the image above is it. You can provide countries or regions, but that’s it. Even within locations, you can’t provide states, cities, or zip codes.

It’s broad for a reason, but this can be problematic for advertisers who have (often legal) restrictions regarding customers they can serve by age or location.

Audience Controls

Go to Ad Account Setup within you Ad Account Settings. It should be the default view.

You should see Audience Controls within the Account Controls section.

Click on it, and you’ll see this…

Toggle on “My business can only advertise in specific locations.” You can then search for or enter specific countries, states/regions, cities, postal codes, addresses, DMAs or congressional districts where you don’t want to deliver your ads.

Requiring the entry of every place you don’t want to reach people is a weird approach. You’d think an option to list the only places you want to target people would make sense, too.

Luckily, you can also add locations in bulk.

You can then paste a list of locations.

Click to match…

You can download that list or save it to use it later.

It’s a bit more straight-forward for age-restricted goods or services.

Simply provide the minimum age you can serve, and you’re good to go.

These settings will apply to all Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns going forward.

Why Stop There?

You’d think that this type of approach could be helpful elsewhere. Consider the change to location targeting (“living in or recently in” default) as an example.

What if there could be an account-wide location setting that isolates travelers for the tourism industry or local residents for service businesses?
It would be different than these audience controls, but a similar concept.

You’d think that there could be some account-wide settings that could help in these and other unique cases.

Your Turn

Are you using audience controls for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Audience Controls for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you’ve selected the Leads objective in Meta Ads Manager recently, you may have seen an immediate prompt for a Tailored Leads Campaign. It looks like this…

Meta has been testing and rolling out Tailored Leads since November of 2022, if not earlier. And if you’ve experimented with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, you’ve certainly spotted similarities.

Is there a clear benefit to using Tailored Leads Campaigns? Do Tailored Leads provide unique features and optimizations compared to manual leads campaigns, similar to the way Advantage+ Shopping does compared to manual sales campaigns?

Let’s explore…

Defining Tailored Leads

Let’s go back to that initial definition of a Tailored Leads Campaign:

Create your campaign in fewer steps using the tailored leads campaign. It’s preset with built-in best practices to help you get more leads at the best value.

So far, nothing jumps out as a unique benefit. Meta defines it as “preset with built-in best practices.” That doesn’t inspire excitement. It doesn’t sound unique.

Let’s go through the setup process…

Campaign Setup

First, you won’t be able to utilize A/B testing or Advantage Campaign Budget directly from campaign creation. Those options aren’t there.

The campaign and ad set are completed in one shorter step. This is a streamlined process.

One big difference is that the Tailored Leads Campaign only includes four conversion location options: Instant Forms, Messenger, Instagram, and Calls.

It’s missing Website, Instant Forms and Messenger (combined), and App. Here’s the conversion location section when setting this up manually…

This is a big deal, especially if you like to collect leads from your website. You won’t be using Tailored Leads.

There also isn’t an option to use manual bidding with Tailored Leads. This is stripped down.

Presets

Some of the missing features aren’t actually missing. You just won’t be able to change them, so Meta put them out of view. There are several presets that you aren’t able to customize.

Now we see that the bid strategy is set at Highest Volume. You won’t be able to change that.

Advantage+ Placements is automatically on, and you won’t be able to remove placements if you prefer.

Finally, you’ll be optimizing for Leads, which sorta explains why the Website conversion location is missing. When you utilize the website conversion location, you then go through the steps of selecting your pixel and the optimization event of your choice.

Added Features?

Advantage+ Shopping also streamlines the campaign creation process by locking in presets. But what makes it especially unique is that it offers features related to defining your current customers and some added machine learning to drive sales.

Unless I’m missing something, I see none of that here. Tailored Leads Campaigns simply appear to be a Boost button for leads in Ads Manager. It simplifies things for newer advertisers to prevent them from modifying settings that will make their results worse.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think Tailored Leads Campaigns offer anything that is unique, special, or powerful. All indications are that you could easily recreate a Tailored Leads Campaign by creating a manual leads campaign that utilizes the same settings.

You could not say the same of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. You can’t completely recreate it with a manual campaign (mainly due to the current customer features and machine learning).

Should You Use It?

Sure, knock yourself out. I’d love to be proven wrong and hear that results from Tailored Leads Campaigns are incredible and can’t be duplicated with manual campaigns. But I have serious doubts.

If you are overwhelmed and are unsure about the best way to set up your campaigns, Tailored Leads is a good starting point.

Your Turn

What do you think of Tailored Leads Campaigns? Have you tested them out?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Should You Create a Tailored Leads Campaign Over the Manual Setup? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

If you’re an e-commerce brand that utilizes Meta ads to promote your products, you’ve either experimented with or heard about Advantage+ Shopping campaigns. They are unique, and the reports on performance have largely been positive.

While I don’t have your typical e-commerce brand, I’ve been waiting to get my hands on this. For months, I’ve heard advertisers rave about the results, and I could only live vicariously through them. I finally have access, and you might as well.

Let’s create an Advantage+ Shopping campaign…

What Are Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns?

First, some background is in order…

Advantage+ shopping campaigns leverage machine learning with a focus on driving online sales. They streamline the process of setting up your campaign. Many of the settings we’re used to customizing are locked presets.

Meta sees this as different than manually creating your campaigns for more reasons than the streamlined setup. Instead of setting up several different campaigns with varying optimization, targeting, and creative options, you can only create up to 8 Advantage+ shopping campaigns per country. Meta says that this gives its system more opportunities to reach people likely to purchase your products.

Your typical sales campaign will have at least two ad sets: One for prospecting new customers and one for current customers. Advantage+ Shopping combines them in one campaign.

Performance is largely based on reputation at this point — especially for me since I’m just now getting first-hand experience with it. The selling point has been how much more powerful the machine learning is for these campaigns with the primary focus of sales performance.

Meta says that, on average, brands have seen a 12% reduction in Cost Per Action and 15% increase in Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) compared to manual campaigns. So, let’s try them out!

1. Create a Campaign

From Ads Manager, click to create a new campaign. Then make sure to select the Sales objective and click “Continue.”

If you have Advantage+ Shopping, you will immediately see this…

You may have seen a similar prompt in Tailored Leads or other Advantage+ campaign tests. The concept has been around for more than a year. The primary benefit of tailored campaigns is that they are easier to set up — defaults are frozen and can’t be changed.

But, Advantage+ Shopping is more than that.

Click “Continue.”

2. Preset Settings

Creation of this campaign will be streamlined. There’s very little you’ll need to do until you create your ad. There are several settings that you will not be able to change.

If you like customizing your objective, optimization, bid strategy, placements, and age group, you’re going to be disappointed. You also can’t utilize Dynamic Creative.

3. Special Ad Categories

If you’re looking to promote a product that falls within credit, employment or housing, or special issues and politics, you’re not disqualified from using Advantage+ Shopping.

Just select your category before moving forward…

4. Conversion Location

Select either “Website and App” or “Website.” Then select your pixel and app (if applicable).

5. Country

If you like to target refined groups, Advantage+ Shopping isn’t for you. The only option is to define by country.

You can’t select states or cities, even for exclusion purposes.

6. Reporting

I know this feels like we’re jumping ahead, but it’s actually next in the creation of this campaign.

This is one of the things that makes Advantage+ Shopping unique. We will define our current customers so that Meta will know if a person who was reached is a current customer or new customer (current customers aren’t excluded).

To define that audience, click the link to go to your Account Settings. It will look like this…

You can select from or create new custom audiences to define your current customers (based on website, app, catalog, customer list, shop, or offline activity). I did this using both data custom audiences and website custom audiences.

7. Tracking

Again, while we’re here in the Account Settings, let’s address what’s immediately under your current customers.

What’s really interesting about this is that you can create different URL parameters for current customers and new customers.

What you do with this is up to you. You’d need to utilize some sort of third-party analytics tool, like Google Analytics.

8. Budget & Schedule

At first glance, there’s nothing different here than what you’re used to…

Set a daily or lifetime budget. If you use a lifetime budget, you can use dayparting and set your budget on a schedule. Nothing new so far.

But, you can set an Existing Customer Budget Cap.

If you want to focus on new customers, you can adjust this here. But I’d make sure you have a really good reason for doing so, like if current customers wouldn’t be a prospect. Otherwise, you’re just restricting the algorithm and preventing it from doing its job.

9. Optimization & Delivery

There’s nothing new here. The default Attribution Setting is 7-day click and 1-day view. But you can change it to 7-day click, 1-day click and 1-day view, or 1-day click if you want.

10. Create Your Ad

If you create an ad from scratch, there’s nothing new about this process.

All of the usual options are available, like Advantage+ Creative, setting your destination, language optimization, and tracking (pixel, app events, offline events, and URL parameters).

But it’s not expected that you’re going to create one ad from scratch here. The expectations is that you’ll import all of your “suggested ads” from your portfolio. I haven’t seen this process personally yet, so I can’t provide any more details regarding how that works. My assumption is that it’s catalog related.

The main thing is this: With Advantage+ Shopping, Meta can automatically test up to 150 creative combinations and deliver the highest performing ads.

11. Breakdown

Once you publish your campaign, another unique benefit relates to the sixth step when we defined our current customers. Since Meta has that information, we can now breakdown our results by current and new customers.

From the Breakdown drop-down menu in Ads Manager, go to Delivery and select either Audience Type or Audience Type and Country.

You can then get a very helpful breakdown to see how budget and performance are distributed by audience.

Questions? Concerns?

Look, I’m completely new to Advantage+ Shopping. I can’t say much yet. I know that the feedback has largely been positive.

But so far, a small thing does jump out at me. Brands that sell one-time-purchase products may have some challenges.

For example, my current customers are still potential customers for certain things. But obviously, what I’m promoting matters. I don’t want to sell membership to a current member or a specific course to someone who already bought it. As far as I can tell, though, I can’t really do anything about that.

One option, of course, is to adjust my Existing Customer Budget Cap. But again, I don’t necessarily want to remove them entirely. I just want them to see stuff that’s relevant to them.

Anyway, maybe others have found a way around this. Or maybe it’s simply not ideal for my type of situation.

Overall, though, I’m looking forward to what happens next.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about this, too. Check it out below…

Your Turn

I’ve just started experimenting with Advantage+ Shopping, and I’m probably not the ideal advertiser for it. This is best for an online e-comm brand with a large budget and product catalog.

Have you started experimenting with Advantage+ Shopping yet? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.