Whether you’re a pro or a beginner in the world of social media marketing, and in this case Meta (previously known as Facebook), there are always constant updates to improve current software and trial new products. Meta has launched its new automation tool to increase sales and drive growth called “Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns”. So let’s dig into what this campaign type is, the pros and cons, and how to set it up for your business.
What are Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns?
It’s Meta’s newest type of campaign to achieve and leverage the power of AI (artificial intelligence) and automation whilst maximising the performance of your ad spend. Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns are specifically designed to be an effective solution for performance-focused advertising to drive e-commerce sales.
It immediately eliminates the manual steps of ad creation and automates up to 150 ad creatives and combinations. This puts a lot of trust in Meta as Meta will choose which creative combination performs the best in reaching the right audience – but according to Meta, it works.
“We’ve found that 52% of consumers want to find brands and products they haven’t heard about, but align with their shopping preferences…60% of online shoppers want shopping experiences to be personalised based on their unique interests and preferences” (Meta, Newsroom)
Therefore, advertisers can use Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns to personalise ad creative en masse via Meta’s machine learning – especially in a “privacy-safe way”.
The pros of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns?
If you are a small business owner this may be a great start for you in order to get your shopping campaigns underway. Due to this heavily automated campaign type, the one advantage would be that Meta will create the assets and figure out who to target.
Advantage creative – automatically adjusts ad creative and text for each person who views your ad. This will help engagement and will show to people that are more likely to respond.
Advantage audience – creates a personalised audience based on your Facebook (Meta) page’s details.
This campaign type will save you a lot of time and energy – and as the new AI-driven platform model starts to take over, it will only continue to improve.
The cons of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns?
There is only one (rather big) negative with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns – it will return next to no data or insights. You lose control over audience definition, audience tracking, placements, bid strategy and location. With manual campaigns, advertisers have control over the audience types and targeting parameters, and are therefore able to see which audience type is engaging better and what creative is working best.
With Advantage+ Shopping, Meta reveals nothing about what creative was used, where it was serviced, or what interest-based signals led to conversions/engagements. So in this instance, you have to think of this campaign type as a broad ‘lookalike’ model.
How do I add Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns into my business manager account?
- Select create a campaign and select the sales option – you should see the “Advantage+ Shopping Campaign” as an option. Then you can select “continue”.
- Then select which country you are wanting to target.
- Then select your budget.
And you’re good to go – simple as that. Meta will do the rest!
Across all software platforms, it is evident that automation and AI-powered learnings have given users a more relevant experience online. Utilising curated algorithms and data has helped more and more people connect with things they may be interested in, in a more relevant way. That’s the key driver for big platforms like Meta (and Google) – providing the most relevant information in order to improve the experience for users and advertisers alike.
If you have any questions about whether Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns are right for your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.
