Getting Jiggy with Advantage+ Campaigns
If you were to look at specific moments that changed or had a significant impact on the role of the media buyer/performance marketer, one moment would stand out — the launch of Meta's Advantage+ campaigns.
Launched in late 2022, Advantage+ campaigns signalled the biggest shift yet towards algorithm-driven and automated marketing processes.
It's been over a year and half since its release, but there are still questions and doubts about how to make the most of this campaign type. And that's exactly what we'll be diving into today.
How Does It Work?
Whether you're looking to boost your shopping campaigns or enhance app engagement, Advantage+ puts various ad formats (static, video, dynamic, etc.) together into one campaign, for your entire funnel.
Put simply, you upload a bunch of different text and creative variations. Meta's algorithms will create combinations from this, take care of targeting and start delivering the ad.
Now there are obviously a lot of questions that come up here. Let's tackle them one by one.
Meta Takes Care of Targeting Here?
Yes, Meta's algorithms take up the bulk of targeting. For the algorithms to do their magic, you will only be able to target broadly — based on geography and age.
So how do you try and make the system recognize your target audience? Use your current customer data as a base for the algorithms — this will enable Advantage+ to create the right customer segments, across the funnel, for you. With any machine learning algorithms, it's important to understand that the more data you feed it, the more effective the algorithms become.
How Many Creatives Should You Use?
The more creative options that are given, the more Meta can play around with different combinations and give you decent outputs. Why? Well, if Meta has the legroom of several creatives, it can optimize much, much faster.
While Advantage+ allows you to upload and test up to 150 creatives, you really shouldn't spend your budget and time designing all these creatives. The recommended number falls largely between 20 and 50.
Now I know what you're thinking — that's still a hell of a lot of creatives. But don't fret, they don't have to be entirely new concepts. Keep it similar, with small changes to things like the CTA, the button color, headlines, and other tiny creative elements. Don't focus on building a super awesome creative for each of the 20 variations.
There's also the matter of Meta's creative suggestions, which are essentially identifying the creatives that are doing the best, for continued use. But "best" doesn't always mean what you want it to.
Let's say Meta highlights a creative that has gotten 100,000 views for continued use, because of the high view count. But on inspection, you see that conversions are extremely poor for this. Does that really help your cause? So just keep an eye out for these suggestions and always compare them to the end goal of that creative.
Should You Manage Ad Spend?
This is one of the old responsibilities of a media buyer/performance marketer that still remains. You have to decide the overall budget for the campaign, as well as for different stages of the funnel.
Advantage+ allows for precise budget distribution among the key stages of the sales funnel: prospecting, retargeting, and retention. Your budget allocations are defined as percentages of the total campaign spend.
For instance, with a campaign budget of $100, you might decide to allocate 40% ($40) to prospecting, 50% ($50) to retargeting, and the remaining 10% ($10) to retention efforts.
Roundup: Things to Keep in Mind
So this is broadly how the Advantage+ algorithm works and how you can make the most out of it. Summing up, keep the following things in mind:
- Use a larger number of creatives so that Meta can test and optimize faster.
- Remember to allocate the budget across your funnel, in addition to overall campaign budget.
- With more customers buying your product or service, feed that information back into Meta. Give the algorithm the ammunition required to target well.
- Keep a broad audience segment. Something too narrow and Advantage+ won't be able to give you the almost guaranteed 20% boost in performance.
Take a look at this video from Ecommerce Alley to look at these campaigns being used in a live setting:
