Drive More Conversions This Father’s Day with Meta Advantage+ Audience Targeting

Father’s Day follows closely on the heels of Mother’s Day, giving brands another high-impact opportunity to connect with shoppers honoring the dads and father figures in their lives. For marketers, Father’s Day advertising on platforms like Facebook and Instagram comes with both potential and pressure, as holiday periods often bring increased competition and fluctuating ad costs.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to unlock better performance and cost efficiency using Meta’s Advantage+ audience targeting. Learn how your Father’s Day campaign can reach high-intent target audiences across Facebook and Instagram ads when it matters most.

Why Father’s Day Is a Key Moment for Meta Advertisers

Advertising for Father’s Day presents a valuable opportunity for brands, with 63% of U.S. consumers planning to celebrate. While that’s relatively steady compared to other holidays, 36% of those shoppers will be searching for Father’s Day gifts online, making it a critical moment for Meta advertisers to capture demand.

And while 40–42% of shoppers still plan to visit physical stores, Meta’s extensive platform reach allows your Father’s Day ad to shape purchase decisions long before shoppers step into a store or complete their online checkout.

Meta Ad Cost and Performance Trends Around Father’s Day Advertising Periods

As seen above, the bulk of the purchases occur just before or within June. Do you need to launch early or just in time for shoppers’ searches for Father’s Day gifts? Our Meta ads data tells us the trends for different funnel stages when planning your Father’s Day campaigns.

Planning Your Awareness Campaigns

Running awareness-focused Meta campaigns in April through early May helps build momentum while CPMs remain relatively stable. Facebook typically sees rising awareness costs about a month out from the holiday, while Instagram maintains stronger traction even closer to the date.

Expect the highest CPM spikes in the week leading up to Father’s Day, especially as more brands compete for the same target audiences. After the holiday, CPMs drop, opening up cost-efficient opportunities for re-engagement and early back-to-school promotions.

Immersive Engagement Campaigns

Consideration campaigns also see an early ramp-up, with CPE (cost per engagement) peaking in April and gradually normalizing by Father’s Day week. On Facebook, engagement becomes much more cost-effective during the holiday itself, showing a 65.2% decrease in CPE, suggesting it’s the best time to run interaction-based Father’s Day ad campaigns.

While slightly more volatile in April and May, Instagram maintains consistent engagement costs throughout the shopping window, making it a strong choice for Father’s Day engagement campaigns.

Lead to Conversion with Clicks Campaigns

For click-based objectives, Facebook and Instagram ads tend to become more competitive immediately after Father’s Day. This surge often reflects a mix of advertisers aiming to re-engage audiences, offload leftover inventory, or kickstart early summer promotions. Those who activated summer and 4th of July campaigns earlier tend to benefit from more efficient clicks before the spike hits.

CPCs (cost per click) remain predictable but are higher during this window. If you’re planning your Father’s Day promotion ideas, it’s best to launch conversion-focused ads earlier to beat the spike. Facebook ad costs are more stable here, while Instagram may need tighter pacing and creative testing to maintain efficiency.

Recommended Strategy for Father’s Day Meta Ads

What’s the suggested strategy, considering these Meta ad performance trends during the months before and well within the Father’s Day weekend?

How Advantage+ Audience Supports Your Father’s Day Advertising Strategy

Now that your Father’s Day advertising funnel is in place, how does Meta Advantage+ Audience fit in the equation?

Built with advanced machine learning, Advantage+ Audience analyzes patterns in user behavior across Facebook and Instagram, identifying people most likely to engage, click, or convert, even if they fall outside your original target audiences. This allows your Father’s Day ad campaign to go beyond your set parameters and reach high-value prospects you may have overlooked.

Setting your audience targeting helps ensure that your Father’s Day ads are delivered to people who match your intended demographics and interests. While this can create precision, it can also unintentionally limit your reach by excluding audience segments that may still be strong prospects or potential buyers. What you initially believe isn’t your ideal audience could end up driving valuable results.

That’s where Meta Advantage+ Audience becomes a powerful tool in your Father’s Day advertising toolkit. It analyzes behavioral signals across Meta platforms, such as who’s clicking, engaging, or converting, and uses those patterns to expand your reach beyond the audience you originally set. Your defined targeting will still be prioritized, but Advantage+ dynamically extends delivery to users who mirror high-performing behaviors.

Here’s how this enhances your Father’s Day 2025 campaigns:

• The system automatically shifts budget and impressions toward audiences that perform better, ensuring your ads are always optimized for the highest likelihood of clicks and conversions.
• Advantage+ can adapt rapidly: if a particular creative or audience segment underperforms, the AI reallocates resources to what’s working best, often in real time.
• Meta’s data proves the Advantage+ Audience system can drive measurable efficiencies at every stage of the funnel, especially for time-sensitive, event-based strategies such as holiday campaigns:
  • Awareness campaigns: Achieve up to 14.8% lower cost per result
  • Traffic, engagement, and lead campaigns: Up to 9.7% lower cost per result
  • Sales and app promotion campaigns: Up to 7.2% lower cost per result

Meta Advantage+ Audience targeting proves to be a powerful ally for Father’s Day advertising campaigns looking to drive more awareness, clicks, and conversions under a tight timeline. Its AI-driven approach is perfectly suited for high-velocity, event-based campaigns that demand both speed and precision in reaching the best possible audience.

How to Set Up Meta Advantage+ Audience Targeting for Father’s Day Campaigns

You’ve defined your strategy—now it’s time to put it into action. Setting up your Father’s Day campaign using Meta Advantage+ Audience requires a balance: giving Meta’s AI the freedom to optimize while still keeping the right level of control over your brand’s audience and objectives.

Follow this step-by-step guide to set up a Meta campaign that blends automation with smart targeting:

1. Go to adsmanager.facebook.com and click +Create to begin your campaign setup.
2. Select the most relevant campaign objective for your Father’s Day campaign.
   * For Sales, Leads, or App Promotion, Meta will automatically enable all Advantage+ features.
3. Continue with your campaign level set up. At this stage, you can turn on Advantage+ campaign budget or turn it off for manual budget control.
4. Configure the ad set level.
   • Proceed with the usual setup (Ad set name, Budget & schedule, etc.).
   • For the audience targeting, take a closer look at the following steps:
     • Audience controls: Define your target Location, Age range, and add any Custom Audiences you want to exclude.
     • Advantage+ audience: This feature is automatically enabled. To maintain some level of targeting control:
       • Click on Audience Suggestion.
       • Add additional parameters (age, interests, behaviors, demographics) to help guide Meta’s expansion.
       • This allows Meta to prioritize your preferred segments while still finding high-converting lookalike audiences.
     • Tip: Watch the “Estimated Daily Results” on the right side of your screen as you build your audience. This helps ensure you’re not over-narrowing or over-broadening the reach.
   • If you want specific Meta ad placements, click Edit under Advantage+ Placements and choose Manual Placements. Otherwise, leave the default setting to allow Meta to optimize across all available placements automatically.
5. At the ad level, complete your setup. Name your ad, link your Facebook Page, and upload your ad creative and format.
6. Double-check the full setup of your Father’s Day advertising campaign, then hit Publish.

Simplify Your Father’s Day Campaign Strategy With Advantage+

Every peak season demands a fresh approach, and Father’s Day is no exception. With Meta’s evolving AI capabilities, setting up a campaign has become more streamlined, but success still depends on maintaining the right level of control over performance and costs.

While Advantage+ automation can drive efficient results, it’s crucial to stay proactive. Monitoring changes, making timely adjustments, and applying human insight remain key to maximizing ad costs and performance. To see how Strike Social can help you find the right balance between automation and control, contact us for a personalized walkthrough.