While you're probably already here 'cause you know what is an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign (also called an ASC), here's a quick recap.
The Tool
It's one of the latest big rollouts from Meta's suite of advertising tools and products. They are designed to combat IOS14 update and by pooling all their data by using machine learning to personalize ads in a privacy-safe way. Also, ASC simplifies the ad creation process by handing over the control of audience targeting and creative ad placements generating up to 150 unique creatives at once.
The Numbers
Meta has reported that, on average, companies have seen a 12% reduction in cost per action and a 15% increase in their return on ad spend via Advantage+ shopping campaigns. Marketers also see successes. Take AdWeek, which reported on 31 advertisers that saw an average 17% decrease in cost per acquisition 32% increase in return on ad spend.
Still interested? Let's get into how you can actually make them.
1. Per usual, click the '+Create' button in Meta Ads Manager, select the sales campaign objective, then click 'Continue.'
2. Next, select 'Advantage+ Shopping Campaign' over the manual setup and click 'Continue.'
3. What will be different on the next screen is that most of your regular targeting and setting options will be MIA. The idea with Advantage+ is to leverage Meta's AI and automation to the maximum and not limit. Hence these levers are being turned off.
4. Name your campaign, select an ad category, etc., etc. All of these personalizations should be familiar or straightforward enough.
5. The audience type breakdown will be new, where you can decide to include existing customers, with an option to have a reporting breakdown based on their purchase history. This is important, especially since ASC ads are most useful for sales and lower-funnel-focused goals (AKA brand discovery).
6. In account settings, you can pull from your customer audiences lists or create new ones.
7. There is another field for suggested ads to run where you can review these or import all ads. Meta recommends importing all the propagated ads to start, and we also do, to see how they perform before you begin testing other tactics.
8. You can also go to the ad level to create new ads. Another tactic we often do with ASC is to add your top-performing ads from other campaigns and test here to see the results that ASC can deliver in comparison.
9. Launch! 🚀
The Benefits of ASC
The critical advantage of ASC is that it's automated, quick, and fast, freeing up more time to work on everything else you have to work on. (It's endless, isn't it!) Meta has poured so much focus onto this tool, making significant improvements to give you promising results.
The Limitations to ASC
While it has major benefits, ASC really changes how ads are created on its platform. Cutting out so many steps, advertisers are left with less visibility on audience selection and targeting. Also, Meta only allows 8 ASCs per account, which could be limiting for big spenders.
Best Practices for ASC
When you start experimenting, we find it best to run these campaigns alongside your existing ads instead of replacing them. This allows you to keep an eye on the ASC performance alongside your previous efforts as you test-n-learn. It's also been thrown around there that ASC needs time to machine-learn and optimize. That's why it is best to let these campaigns run for at least one month before taking a hard look. Also, test as many creatives as possible when setting up your campaign. Remember, you can add up to 50 ad combinations, so test creatives across the board to uncover what really works. Lastly, if you have a considerable variation in product lines, it's worth separating these customers into product categories and running ASC with these segmented, product-line audiences.
