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Meta Advantage+ vs. Manual Setup: Which Is Better? - adtechsolutions

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Meta Advantage+ vs. Manual Setup: Which Is Better?


When it comes to Facebook advertising, AI is nothing new. Meta has been using AI for some time. But with Meta Advantage+, it puts more focus on AI-driven campaigns. Meta not only encouraged users to adopt these AI features into their advertising strategies, but also made it extremely difficult not to use these features and place campaigns and ads the old-fashioned way.

The question is, do Advantage+ settings perform better than a manually created campaign by a marketer? What exactly is this “AI” we’re told is the next big thing? In this article I will answer these and other questions.

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What is Meta Advantage+?

The Meta Advantage+ package is at the heart of it all Facebook ads AI capabilities. The tools and features of Meta Advantage+ solutions are powered by artificial intelligence designed to more effectively execute specific strategies and tactics of Facebook ad campaigns. I wrote about pros and cons of using Meta Advantage+ here.

The biggest takeaway, from my perspective, is that you’re handing over the keys to your paid advertising to a machine learning tool with limited insight into how the thing actually works. The results my clients have experienced with these new AI driven tools have not been great. Let me elaborate in the next section.

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Using Meta Advantage+: a case study

I have a client who runs a lot of business Meta ads and is always looking for ways we can expand and continue to grow. The option to start turning on Advantage+ campaign settings was an obvious next step since the entire platform actively encourages you to use these features.

Instead of using a typical Facebook ad targeting options such as similar audiences or manually targeted interests and behaviors, we reasoned that perhaps AI can identify users who are just like our customers better than us (or these outdated methods).

First of all, if you create a new campaign in Meta Ads and select this option, you will not be able to edit specific placements.

meta advantage+ - screenshot of recommended meta advantage campaign settingsmeta advantage+ - screenshot of recommended meta advantage campaign settings

However, if you choose this option for a new campaign, you’re loaded with all the great Advantage+ features that Meta has to offer. My client and I chose this option for experimentation and to determine if the Advantage+ features were responsible for the higher non-qualified rates. The results? 130 unqualified leads in less than a week.

meta advantage+ - example of cost per result for facebook adsmeta advantage+ - example of cost per result for facebook ads

But hey, $8.48 per spam ain’t bad in this economy!

Seriously, let’s break this test apart. We ran this campaign under “recommended” settings and defined our general targeting parameters as we always do: age, gender, location, etc. Now with Advantage+ Audiences, you provide input to a system that essentially delivers AI (machine learning) guidelines on who to target. If you are familiar with Google’s type of campaign for maximum performance this works in a very similar way.

We conducted this test with one audience that contained data on the audience’s occupation and behavior:

This is the audience from which we managed to get 130 unqualified leads. Now we’ve also tried one with custom customer list audience input. This resulted in two more leads being disqualified and kicked out. For context, both of these Advantage+ audiences we constructed had tons of exclusions to help machine learning identify who we wanted to follow.

meta advantage+ - example audience settings for advantagemeta advantage+ - example audience settings for advantage

After these initial results, I concluded that perhaps the inclusion of an audience network had led to an influx of unqualified leads. In the second attempt, I recreated the campaign and set the settings to “manual” to remove that placement. From there, I tried to construct the Advantage+ audience again. We ran this campaign for the rest of the month and it attracted 12 more leads, two of which qualified as sales opportunities. This initially seemed like progress, until we discovered through conversations with the sales team that neither of the two prospects showed up for the scheduled demo. Additionally, another potential client reached out to him directly saying that he was getting the client’s ads all over Facebook and Instagram, but that he sent them by accident and that he wasn’t their target audience.

Therefore, we gave Meta’s artificial intelligence several inputs that should allow it to find the right people who are a good fit for the product and services we sell. But it didn’t. Not only did it fail to build an audience comparable to that of just the mainstream lookalike audienceit wasn’t even close. For whatever reason the “AI” seems to flood our system with fake and worthless contacts every time we try to use the Advantage+ settings. But why?

❓ Not sure how to measure your manual or Meta Advantage+ campaign performance? Compare your current metrics, such as cost per lead, cost per click and more, to industry averages using our latest Facebook Ads Benchmarks report!

Meta Advantage+ vs. Manual Setup: Which is Better?

Meta’s Advantage+ is essentially a black box. We don’t know how and why he makes decisions, but we know he has a goal driving water (or clicks, whatever your goal is) in the largest quantity at the lowest price.

This is not completely different to how automated bidding works on both Google and Meta, however, the difference is that you specified that audience and then the machine learning works within the audience that you created or specified by managing the bidding aspect and which people in the audience which ads are shown and when.

When manual adjustment is better

With something like Advantage+, machine learning makes the decision WHO target across Meta’s customer database and uses your lead suggestions, but doesn’t understand (the way a human would) the subtle nuances that define an audience and make them a qualified prospect or customer.

My conclusion is that, by itself, the current state of these Meta Advantage+ products is not ready for use by companies with complex marketing and sales funnels—unless the user can directly interact with it and give it multiple prompts like “these leads are unqualified, this would make them better, etc.”

As of now, there is too much complexity for companies to have marketing flows or nuanced products and services to make Advantage+ work as effectively as other methods.

meta advantage+ - example of turning on or off the advantage audiencemeta advantage+ - example of turning on or off the advantage audience

When Meta Advantage+ could be better

What I’ve found Advantage+ to be very good at is the targeting capabilities for e-commerce businesses. This makes a lot of sense, though – sales-oriented companies are looking for people within a demographic who have particular buying behaviors. AI can predict this much better than someone who will talk to sales after submitting a form. The purchase process is much simpler and clearer.

Final Thoughts: The Current State of Meta Advantage+

I believe that artificial intelligence products in marketing will reach a point where it will be a better alternative, but it is not there yet. That’s why it worries me that companies like Meta and Google are essentially forcing you to use them by making it harder for you not use them. This could be to allow these systems to learn and improve, or it could be due to overconfidence in their effectiveness for everyone.

If their marketing product is the easiest to use and you can let AI take over, they may believe more people will advertise.

One thing is for sure though, there is much less insight into how everything works for even the most experienced trader using the platform. This means that Google and Meta (and others) can spend your advertising dollars for you and don’t really care about how it’s spent. My advice, for now, is that if you’re a business with any complexity in terms of building your marketing or sales funnel, go back to the original audience options and thank me later.

You don’t have to manage the development of a platform like Meta Advantage+ yourself! See how our solutions can help you use AI in the right way to achieve your marketing goals.



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