Meta Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns: What Are They and How to Create Them

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In the new age of consumer awareness and privacy restrictions, Meta has no option but to do more with less, especially as its data pool continues to shrink. Enter; Advantage + Shopping Campaigns (A+SC), the newest advertising product in the Meta Advantage umbrella.

WHAT ARE META ADVANTAGE+ SHOPPING CAMPAIGNS

A+SC is the first enhanced optimization model built in the post-iOS14.5 landscape, designed specifically for direct-to-consumer and ecommerce retailers to consolidate campaigns with full-funnel marketing in mind. Meant to deliver optimum performance, these campaigns streamline build-out in alignment with Meta’s best practices. A+SC is a sales objective campaign with the goal of better performance with greater scale and efficiency while expanding customer growth. 

A+SC takes full-funnel marketing approaches and brings them together in one campaign, eliminating many steps in manual campaign creation. These new campaigns allow for easier creative input while automatically testing up to 150 creative combinations and delivering the highest-performing variation. Leaning into creative optimization capabilities from Meta benefits small businesses, allowing them to do more with less.

THE BEFORE AND AFTER COMPARISON OF ADVANTAGE+ SHOPPING CAMPAIGNS

Levers you lose control of with Advantage+ Shopping campaigns:

• Audience definition: With A+SC, your audiences are divided into two categories, Prospecting vs. Existing customers. 
• Audience tracking: If your campaign is using 3rd party tracking: only one UTM can be placed at the campaign level. Within Ads Manager, you will see Facebook metrics broken out by Prospecting vs. Existing customers.
• Placements: With A+SC, you cannot customize your placements. 
• Bid strategy: With A+SC, your bidding strategy will automatically be the highest volume. 
• Location: A+SC can only define your audience by country.

Levers you maintain control of with Advantage+ Shopping campaigns:

• Investment levels for New vs. Existing customers: You can control the maximum percentage of your budget you are willing to spend toward existing customers. 
• Attribution settings
• Reporting breakdowns

PROS AND CONS OF ADVANTAGE+ SHOPPING CAMPAIGNS

So what do these levers mean, and how do they affect campaigns? With everything in one shared and consolidated campaign, A+SC allows Meta to think smarter, not harder, when nurturing purchasers. 

Existing customers will be defined at the account level for your brand, but keep in mind that this applies to all A+SC’s created. The campaign creation process will look similar to the standard campaign build. However, you cannot change the preset settings, and the audience location is set at the campaign level since a limited audience definition is used. 

At the campaign level, budgets and desired budgets go toward existing audiences. Upon each campaign setup completion, you will be prompted directly to ad build-out, as A+SC’s do not have ad sets. Ad build-out looks similar to conversion campaigns, with the opportunity to build out your ad and set up UTMs. 

A+SC is not meant to replace all automated shopping ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, as it’s still sales and lower funnel-focused. It is beneficial for smaller businesses to lean into this campaign type to assist in time-saving, whether that be creative resources or campaign optimization. However, for larger campaigns that require more detailed control, such as placements, third-party tracking, and location-specific targeting, A+SC is better used in conjunction with standard business-as-usual campaigns. 

Keep in mind that Advantage+ Shopping campaigns are more sensitive to changes than standard conversion objective campaigns. Less frequent changes to budget, ads, and structure have proven to be more effective. This is crucial for retailers that run frequent promotions.

HOW TO SET UP ADVANTAGE+ SHOPPING CAMPAIGNS

• After selecting that you want to create a Sales based campaign, it will prompt you to either create an Advantage+ Shopping campaign or a manual campaign. Selecting a manual campaign will take you to the standard campaign setup.

• If you select “Advantage+ shopping campaign,” you will notice that the campaign setup looks different than the manual campaign creation. By clicking “See all preset settings,” you will see what settings are automatically selected for your campaign.

• Next, set country targeting at the campaign level. Since the only audience leverage you have in using an AS+C is country and defining your existing customers, you will set the targeting location at the campaign level.

• The next section to fill in is Reporting. This is where you will see how your existing customers are defined. If you have not already outlined how you define your existing customers, you do so at the account level in ad account settings.
  
• Next, select your daily budget. You will have the option to create an existing customer budget cap. This will limit the amount of budget allocated toward previously defined existing customers.

• After finalizing campaign level settings, click “next.” It will lead directly to ad build-out. Since you have already determined your existing customers and target country, there are no other audience levers in AS+C, removing the need for the ad set. Ad build-out is standard for all other campaigns. 

With that, you’ve created your first Advantage+ shopping campaign. Go forth and conquer.

Conclusion

While AS+C is not a forced migration, like Google’s Performance Max campaigns, Meta is leaning heavily into automation. Now is the time to test the waters and build the foundation for your brand as the needle continues to point to machine learning automation. 

Do you have questions regarding automation and advertising? As a Meta Business Partner with over 20+ years of experience, we settle for nothing less than above and beyond for your digital performance marketing. Let’s chat.

Camila Vincent

Camila Vincent is an Account Supervisor at Adlucent with an emphasis on social media marketing. She is passionate about incorporating results-driven problem-solving techniques into her client’s strategy.