Is Advantage+ Audience Good for Your Meta Ad Strategy?

Meta claims that Advantage+ Audience improves ad performance, citing their own test results—up to 28% lower cost per click (CPC) and 7% lower cost per website conversion. They position it as an AI-driven solution that “typically” enhances efficiency across all campaign objectives.

More importantly, Meta is steadily pushing advertisers toward full automation—Advantage+ Audience is now automatically enabled for new campaigns in Ads Manager. But does it truly optimize performance across the board, or are there trade-offs? Let’s break down its impact and whether it’s the right fit for your Facebook and Instagram ads.

But does Advantage+ Audience truly work for all campaigns, or are there trade-offs? Let’s break down its impact and whether it’s the right fit for your Facebook and Instagram ads.

What Is Advantage+ Audience?

As part of Meta’s AI-powered ad tools, Advantage+ Audience is designed to enhance audience targeting by identifying users who are most likely to engage, click, or convert. It expands upon your selected interests and demographics, optimizing reach based on past engagement and additional behavioral signals.

How Meta Advantage+ Audience Targeting Works

According to Meta, here’s how Advantage+ Audience determines who sees your ads:

• Ads are automatically delivered to users most likely to interact, based on engagement, clicks, and conversions.
• If you provide preferences in Audience Suggestions, Meta’s AI will use them alongside its own analysis.
• Advantage+ Audience refines targeting using factors such as:
  • Meta Pixel data
  • Previous conversion history
  • User engagement with past ads and content, etc.

The goal of Advantage+ Audience is to simplify Meta ad campaign setup by replacing manual audience targeting with AI-driven automation. Instead of selecting every targeting parameter yourself, Meta’s AI determines the best audience for your ads based on your past campaigns.

Let’s have a look at the table below to see the difference between Advantage+ audience vs. manual targeting:

While Advantage+ Audience improves efficiency and lowers costs, manual targeting still holds value for niche campaigns requiring precise audience selection. For brands running multiple campaigns, Advantage+ Audience offers a balance of scalability and automation.

However, advertisers who need strict audience control and want full transparency on who sees their ads may still prefer manual targeting for highly specialized goals.

Where Advertisers Struggle with Advantage+ Audience

First introduced in mid-2023, Advantage+ Audience is no longer new to advertisers. Many brands have tested it—some achieving cost-efficient results, while others faced challenges in ad performance.

Despite Meta’s promise of simplified campaign management, advertisers still encounter key struggles when using Advantage+ Audience.

Broad Targeting ≠ Quality Engagement

The core idea behind Advantage+ Audience is its ability to expand reach beyond manual audience targeting. While this can lead to increased exposure, it often prioritizes quantity over relevance, which can result in:

• Lower CTRs: Ads may be shown to users outside core demographics, leading to minimal engagement despite high impressions.
• Misaligned leads: Automated targeting can include users likely to engage but not convert.

For example, if an advertiser wants to target primarily female audiences, Meta’s AI might still expand the ad frequency to male audiences if it predicts better performance. While this increases ad reach, it doesn’t always translate to meaningful engagement or conversions.

A real-world example comes from WordStream, which tested Advantage+ Audience under Meta’s recommended settings. While the campaign achieved a 61% lower cost per lead (CPL) than the $21.98 industry benchmark, all 130 leads generated were unqualified—proving that low CPL does not always mean high-quality results.

Downsides of Over-Automation

Since Advantage+ Audience relies on AI-driven decisions, advertisers often face blind spots that are difficult to adjust mid-campaign:

• Audience burnout: Campaigns may initially perform well with low CPMs and high engagement, but AI quickly exhausts high-quality audiences, leading to performance declines.
• Skewed budgets: When used alongside Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO), Advantage+ ad sets often absorb a disproportionate budget share compared to manual targeting.

For instance, Search Engine Land tested Advantage+ Audience vs. interest-based targeting. While Advantage+ delivered more leads at a lower CPL, the quality of leads was twice as poor compared to interest-based targeting. Additionally, 40% of the campaign budget was allocated to Advantage+ audiences, reducing control over ad spend.

Without active campaign pacing and adjustments, advertisers risk higher-than-expected costs per action (CPA) despite Advantage+’s initial cost-saving promise.

Advantage+ Audience Results: What Meta Advertising Trends Reveal

Our 2024 Facebook Ads Benchmark Report analyzed key ad cost and performance metrics to uncover the impact of Advantage+ Audience on Facebook campaigns. Let’s hear the data talk:

Impression Campaigns

Cost Efficiency: CPM improved by 51% compared to 2023, largely due to Advantage+ placements expanding reach across Meta’s ad network. This allowed ads to be shown to more audiences, effectively lowering CPM.

Challenges in Performance: While impressions increased, CTR dropped by 61%, highlighting a major drawback—ads were served to a broader but less engaged audience. The challenge? Lower costs, but weaker audience engagement.

Video Views Campaigns

Cost Trends: With 21% of Facebook users spending time on Reels (second only to the main feed at 36%), CPV improved by 20% YoY.

View Rate Decline: Despite increased exposure, view rates fell by 13%, indicating that while Advantage+ audiences were served the ads, many quickly swiped past without engaging. The AI-led targeting likely matched behavioral patterns (e.g., watching similar videos) but did not necessarily identify high-intent viewers.

Traffic Campaigns

Cost Improvements: CPC saw a 42% improvement vs. 2023, reinforcing Advantage+ Audience’s cost efficiency across all campaign types. By widening audience reach, Advantage+ was better able to identify users likely to click, aligning well with click-driven campaign objectives.

Higher Engagement: Unlike impression and video views campaigns, traffic campaigns benefited most from Advantage+ automation.

• Clicks campaigns: CTR increased by 52%
• Link click campaigns: CTR rose by 10%

Advantage+ Audience clearly drives down costs and optimizes ad spend, but only traffic campaigns—a lower-funnel objective—saw improvements in both cost and audience engagement.

While Meta’s automation expands reach and reduces costs, manual oversight remains crucial to ensure these expanded audiences actually convert.

Meta Advertising Strategies to Maximize Performance

While Advantage+ Audience targeting has both strengths and limitations, it remains a powerful tool for Facebook advertisers. The key is knowing when to use it and how to stay in control of your campaign performance.

When to Use Advantage+ vs. Manual Targeting

Advantage+ Audience works best for lower-funnel campaigns like clicks and conversion campaigns. Because it prioritizes users most likely to convert—using your Meta Pixel data and engagement history—it is well-suited for direct-response objectives.

For awareness campaigns, Advantage+ can still be effective in maximizing reach and lowering CPMs, making it a viable option when the goal is broad visibility rather than immediate conversions.

When Manual Targeting Outperforms AI

• For highly niche audiences: If your audience must meet very specific demographics, interests, or behavioral criteria, manual targeting gives you greater control over audience selection.
• For remarketing and retargeting: These campaigns rely on high-quality past data—such as Lookalike Audiences based on past conversions or B2B leads. Advantage+ may not prioritize high-intent users, as it focuses more on engagement likelihood rather than conversion potential.

Optimizing Advantage+ for Better Results

While Advantage+ simplifies campaign management, it still requires oversight to prevent audience fatigue and ensure continued performance.

To maintain control over Advantage+ campaigns, here’s what you can do:

• Add Custom Audiences: Advantage+ treats additional targeting inputs as “Audience Suggestions.” Provide as many variables as possible to help Meta’s AI refine its targeting and focus on relevant users.
• Control Ad Frequency: If applicable, set frequency caps to prevent ad fatigue. The more times Meta recycles your ads to an exhausted audience, the more engagement and performance may decline.

Enhance Your Facebook Campaigns with Strike Social’s AdTech Solutions

Keeping an eye on your ad campaigns 24/7 is no simple matter—you’d need people monitoring them constantly to ensure nothing is overlooked.

With Strike Social, you can leave the heavy lifting to us. Our mission is to help you lower ad costs while keeping your campaign performance on track. Through our Software-with-a-Service (SWAS) model, you gain access to a team of expert Facebook media buyers while maintaining full transparency with dedicated access to your campaign insights.

In combination with Meta’s Advantage+, our adtech optimizes auction bids and ensures your ads reach the right audiences. This strategic alignment helps maximize ad performance and keeps your campaigns running efficiently.

Want a full walkthrough of our adtech solutions? Request a demo from our team today.