What is The Meta Advantage Suite?

What it is

Meta initially announced its Advantage advertising suite in March 2022, positioning it as a tool for addressing both the rising costs of paid social and the increasing challenges of navigating privacy changes. Meta Advantage includes several features designed to streamline campaign creation and automate ad delivery.

Meta Advantage offers a collection of advertising automation tools powered by machine learning. Its goal is to offer all its automated tools in one place. This spares users from needing to switch back and forth. If you’re already familiar with Facebook’s ad toolset, the changes won’t be too drastic. Instead, you’ll find all the tools you know and love in one portfolio.

Meta Advantage divides these tools into two kinds of products:

1. Advantage: Advantage tools allow you to customize specific aspects of your manual campaign setup. For example, you can adjust the Detailed Targeting options for your audience.

2. Advantage+: Advantage+ can automate an entire campaign flow from beginning to end. It can also automate a core step of a manually set up campaign, such as placements or creatives. It’s the next evolution of Facebook automated ads.

1. Advantage

Advantage itself has two subproducts:

- Advantage Lookalikes (formerly Lookalike Expansion)

- Advantage Targeting (previously Detailed Targeting Expansion)

These two tools can help advertisers reach a wider audience and improve performance.

Advantage Lookalikes

In a regular ad, advertisers choose a set audience. However, Advantage Lookalike allows Meta’s system to reach a broader audience. Imagine if Advantage found a target group that did better than the defined audience. In this case, it would expand to the new audience without any hesitation. Meta says Advantage Lookalikes improves cost per action compared to Advantage Targeting.

Advantage Detailed Targeting

Advantage Detailed Targeting (ADT) lets advertisers find more audiences based on their targeting options. For example, interests or location. ADT will look for higher-performance opportunities outside of your defined audience. When it does, it will make dynamic updates. These updates will optimize performance for new audiences. Meta cites ADT as having a 37% lower average cost per conversion than without it.

2. Advantage+

The Advantage+ subproducts are as follows:

- Advantage+ App Campaigns (formerly Automated App Ads)

- Advantage+ Placements (formerly Automatic Placements)

- Advantage+ Creative (formerly Dynamic Experiences)

Advantage+ App Campaigns

Advantage+ App Campaigns (AACs) are Facebook automated ads for app installs (like iOS apps). AACs increase performance for marketers with real-time learning. ACs use this real-time learning to adjust ads across audiences, placements, and creatives. Meta’s testing revealed two reasons ‌AACs performed better than manual campaigns: 6% lower cost per install on average 9% lower cost per action compared to a manual campaign.

Advantage+ Placements

Advantage Placements (APs) determine how to place an ad best across different channels. For instance, Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. APs can thus enhance performance more than manual campaigns. APs work best when advertisers use at least six Placements. Placements are mediums such as Reels and Stories. More placements give AP more room to make dynamic adjustments. Meta tests confirmed the success of campaigns with more placements. Campaigns with at least six placements outperformed those with four or fewer by 73%.

Advantage+ Creative

Advantage+ Creative (AC) provides a single-entry point for a set of creative optimizations. As a result, the effectiveness of ads improves. A recent Meta study confirmed this. In the following campaign types, AC resulted in a 3% lower cost-per-action for link clicks, landing page views, and offsite conversions.

If you’ve been struggling with underperforming Facebook and Instagram ads or seeking new ways to streamline paid social efforts, Meta Advantage will be a welcome solution. While it doesn’t feature radically new tools, Meta Advantage does make it easier for advertisers to create and optimize campaigns efficiently, with minimal need for manual testing.