Strike Overview
- Advantage+ vs. manual campaign set up in Meta, what’s really bringing cost efficiency and better performance?
- Understand where automation delivers speed and scale, and where manual setups still outperform through tighter targeting and strategic optimizations.
- Discover how Advantage+ tools can lower cost per result by up to 44%, while manual tactics have driven up to 47% lower CPM, plus when to combine both for smarter media buying.
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Meta Advantage+ vs Manual: Choosing the Right Campaign Setup
Meta’s Advantage+ promises what every advertiser hopes for: simplified campaign setup and stronger performance. With automation designed to speed up Instagram and Facebook advertising campaign launches, it’s no surprise many marketers are tempted to lean fully into Meta Advantage+.
But fast doesn’t always mean better.
The real question is: between Advantage+ vs Manual, which campaign setup delivers better results and cost efficiency? In this blog, we’ll break down Meta Advantage+ vs manual campaign controls, explore where each approach performs best, and understand when to trust automation, and when to take back control.
Comparing Meta Advantage+ vs Manual Campaign Controls
Before deciding which setup is right for your campaign, let’s have a quick look at the Meta Advantage Suite features. Specifically, we’ll focus on the core components of campaign setup and how Advantage+ vs Manual setups differ during the pre-launch and planning phases inside Meta Ads Manager.
Audience Targeting
Advantage+ Audience
Meta Advantage+ Audience uses machine learning to expand your audience reach by analyzing past campaign data and user engagement.
The system predicts which users are most likely to engage or convert, then prioritizes them automatically.
Manual Audience
Manual setup gives you full control over audience parameters, allowing for precision targeting.
You can define your audience by detailed demographics, interests, behaviors, and exclusions. This is especially valuable for niche targeting or remarketing to warm audiences.
Selecting Placements
Advantage+ Placements
With Advantage+ placements turned on, Meta automatically selects where your ads will show across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Meta Audience Network.
The algorithm identifies high-performing placements and shifts delivery to drive more impressions or click-throughs, whether that’s in-stream video, Reels, or Stories.
Manual Placements
Take full control of where your ads appear by selecting specific platforms. For instance, you can select Instagram placements only, especially when targeting known audience segments like 18–29-year-olds or running branded content ads with an Instagram influencer.
This level of control is ideal for brands that understand where their audience is most active or want to exclude placements that have historically underperformed in terms of return on ad spend (ROAS).
Budget Allocation
Advantage+ Campaign Budget
Using CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization), Meta Advantage+ automatically allocates your campaign budget across ad sets in real time.
As the system gathers more data and engagement, it shifts more budget toward high-performing ad sets while minimizing spend on underperformers.
Manual Budget Settings
You can set budgets at the ad set level, giving you greater control over how much is spent per audience or creative. This approach allows more precision in spend tracking and easier budget adjustments mid-flight based on real-time performance.
Creative Variations
Advantage+ Creative
When you upload creative assets in Meta Ads Manager, Advantage+ Creative can automatically optimize or generate ad variations using AI.
It may enhance images, crop for better fit, or modify call-to-action placements to test what resonates best with your audience.
Manual Creative Setup
At the ad level, you have full control to upload and manage multiple creative variations including assets, formats, headlines, and descriptions.
This setup gives you the flexibility to maintain brand voice and messaging consistency while testing new concepts, formats, or original creatives for performance.
As you can see, the tools in both Meta Advantage+ vs manual campaign setups offer distinct advantages. The next section will help you determine when to let automation lead, and when it’s best to manage your Facebook and Instagram campaigns with more hands-on control.
When to Use Advantage+ vs. Manual Setup: Best Practices
Rather than weigh every pro and con of Advantage+ vs Manual, the smarter approach is to assess what works best for your brand’s goals. Depending on your priorities: cost efficiency, audience targeting, or performance; it becomes clearer when Meta Advantage AI takes the lead and when manual setup still holds the advantage.
Which is Better for Cost Efficiency in Meta Ads?
Advantage+ shines when broad reach and quick optimizations are the priority. Meta’s AI can rapidly identify high-converting segments within larger audiences, dynamically optimizing bids and Advantage+ placements to drive lower cost per acquisition (CPA). For example, Advantage+ audience targeting has helped campaigns achieve up to 14.8% lower cost per result for Traffic, Engagement, and Leads objectives.
However, when your campaign demands precision, such as targeting niche groups or running retargeting strategies, manual controls are often more effective. Having control over audience segments, placements, and budget allocations enables tighter cost management. In fact, Strike Social helped a global electronics brand achieve up to 47% CPM efficiency* by using manual placement strategies focused on high-performing inventory like Facebook Feed and In-Stream Video.
Which Delivers Better Results for Facebook and Instagram Campaigns?
When manual campaigns run into delivery issues or performance plateaus, often due to overly narrow targeting or limited audience reach, Advantage+ can help by expanding the potential audience and using AI to find new, unexpected converting users. While this can boost cost efficiency, performance metrics such as CTR may vary.
Our latest Facebook benchmark report showed that while Traffic campaign costs declined year-over-year, engagement rates like click-throughs didn’t always follow. CTR improved slightly in Q1 2025 compared to Q4 2024, but meaningful user actions remain harder to come by through automation alone.
Manual campaigns, on the other hand, benefit from hands-on management and a deep understanding of brand-specific strategies. Pairing expert media buyers who know your audience with real-time optimizations can outperform automated setups. In one of our campaigns, refreshing creatives with updated offers – while ensuring Facebook Pixel tracking remained intact – helped drive up to 913K club joins* for a fitness brand, with nearly 1 in 4 link clicks resulting in a successful registration.
* Performance outcomes may vary depending on your industry, campaign setup, bidding strategy, and other variables.
Finding the Perfect Balance with AI and Manual Ad Management
The most efficient Meta ad strategies rarely rely on a single method. Instead, they combine the scale and automation of Meta Advantage+ with the precision of manual campaign control.
Advantage+ performs well for top-of-funnel activities like prospecting and broad awareness campaigns, where AI-driven automation can scale quickly and discover new audiences. Meta’s AI is particularly effective in these situations, helping advertisers discover new segments and lower acquisition costs quickly.
Meanwhile, manual campaigns work well for mid- and bottom-funnel efforts such as retargeting, lead nurturing, or campaigns requiring strict parameters. Manual control ensures you can tailor messaging, placements, and bids precisely to the audience’s stage in the customer journey, improving audience engagement and conversion rates.
At Strike Social, we combine AI-powered optimization with expert strategy. By using Meta Advantage+ audience tools and campaign data while applying manual refinements, we help advertisers unlock both performance and cost efficiency, without leaving success to automation alone.
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How to Enable Advantage+ or Return to Manual Campaign Settings
For campaign objectives like App Promotion, Sales, and Leads, Meta automatically activates Advantage+ features by default. That means Campaign Budget Optimization, Advantage+ Placements, and Advantage+ Audience are already turned on when you start your setup in Meta Ads Manager.
When launching a new campaign with these objectives, you’ll see this notice before proceeding:
- All Advantage+ tools are automatically turned on.
- While some configurations can still be adjusted manually, they’re limited. For example, under Advantage+ Audience, you can refine targeting by adding custom audiences, but interest or behavior targeting will only be treated as suggestions, not strict filters.
If you’re running campaign types like Awareness, Traffic, or Engagement, here’s how to activate Meta Advantage+ manually:
- In Meta Ads Manager, click +Create and select your campaign objective.
- After selecting, a prompt may appear asking you to choose your setup. Choose Manual campaign, then click Continue.
- Campaign Level:
- To activate Advantage+ Campaign Budget, toggle the budget option ON.
- Set a daily or lifetime budget, and Meta’s AI will handle distribution across ad sets using real-time performance signals.
- Ad Set Level:
- Advantage+ Audience is usually pre-enabled. You can refine this further by adjusting age ranges or layering in custom audiences and limited detailed targeting (e.g., interests or behaviors).
- Meta Advantage+ Placements is also automatically selected. Keeping it on allows Meta to optimize delivery across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network.
- Ad Level:
- Under Set up creative, upload your media or choose existing assets.
- Click Next to reach the text fields where Advantage+ Creative can auto-enhance your Primary Text, Headline, and Description.
- Select any recommended creative variations or enhancements generated by Meta Advantage AI.
- Click Done when you’re ready to proceed.
Turning Off Meta Advantage+ Features
Even for campaigns where Advantage+ is the default, advertisers can still regain manual control. Here’s how to revert each Meta Advantage+ feature:
- Advantage+ Campaign Budget: Toggle the On/Off switch if available. If not, select Ad Set Budget instead of Campaign Budget to bypass automatic optimization.
- Advantage+ Audience: For campaigns with automation on, scroll to the bottom of the Audience section and click “Further limit the reach of your ads”.
For other campaigns, use the “Switch to original audience options” button to revert to full manual targeting.
- Advantage+ Placements: Click Edit under the Placement section. You’ll be able to deselect platforms or placements (e.g., Stories, Reels, or Audience Network) and choose exactly where your ads appear.
Meta is steadily rolling out Meta Advantage+ as the default across more campaign types in Meta Business Suite, but that doesn’t mean you have to hand over full control. Advertisers focused on cost efficiency and performance can still steer their campaigns manually. The key is knowing when to activate or deactivate Meta Advantage+ tools to strike the right balance between automation and strategic oversight.
FAQs: Meta Advantage vs Manual Campaigns
What is the difference between Meta Advantage+ and manual campaigns?
Meta Advantage+ campaigns use AI and machine learning to automate audience targeting, placements, budget allocation, and creative optimization. This allows Meta to find high-potential audiences beyond manual parameters, ideal for quick campaigns that require broad reach.
In contrast, manual campaigns give advertisers full control over every aspect of the campaign—from precise audience segmentation to specific placements and budget distribution. This allows better understanding and command of where budgets are allocated to, and which audiences are being targeted.
Are Advantage+ campaigns more cost-effective than manual campaigns?
Advantage+ campaigns often show lower CPMs, especially for top-of-funnel objectives like Awareness. In our latest Facebook benchmark report, CPM for Advantage+ campaigns was 44% lower year-over-year.
However, lower costs don’t always mean better performance. While Meta Advantage+ can increase reach, it may not always find the most high-intent users. Manual campaigns allow you to directly target known converting segments, which can result in stronger engagement and return, especially when managed by experienced media buyers along with real-time optimization.
How do I measure the success of Advantage+ vs manual campaigns?
The best way is through A/B testing within your account. You can create identical campaigns or ad sets: one using Advantage+ audience, the other using manual audience targeting. Just make sure Advantage+ campaign budget is turned off, so you can allocate the same budget across each test and keep variables even.
Match your evaluation metrics with your objective. For example, here are the suggested Facebook metrics to track:
- for Traffic campaigns: focus on CPLC (Cost Per Link Click), Link Click-Through Rate (CTR), and CPC.
- for Conversion campaigns: track CPA and CVR (Conversion Rate).
This gives you a clear view of how Advantage+ vs manual campaigns perform under the same conditions.
Is Meta phasing out manual options in campaign setup?
Meta is increasingly defaulting to Advantage+ automation, especially for conversion-led campaigns such as Sales, Leads, and App Promotion. Many of these campaigns launch with Advantage+ features turned on by default.
That said, manual setup options are still available; you just need to know where to look. Refer to this section for a step-by-step guide on how to turn off Meta Advantage+ features and switch back to manual control.
Blending Automation and Control for Smarter Meta Ads
Finding efficiency in today’s Meta ads requires an approach that balances the strength of Advantage+ with manual precision. Meta’s Advantage+ tools represent a significant shift toward AI-driven marketing, which can help deliver cost savings, offering a clear path to maximize ad spend with less manual oversight.
Then again, manual campaign setup remains essential when precision matters most—whether it’s controlling placements, refining audience targeting, or optimizing based on brand and performance goals. Human expertise still plays a critical role in interpreting results and steering strategies that AI can’t fully account for.
Blending these two strategies can be a smart move: the speed and scale of AI-powered automation combined with the precision and customization of manual management. As Meta continues to evolve its ad platform, Advantage+ is not something to avoid—but something to use strategically. It’s most effective when ad experts stay in the driver’s seat—reviewing data, adjusting levers, and ensuring that automation serves your campaign goals, not the other way around.
Modern advertisers who embrace this blended approach will be better equipped to hit performance targets, maintain control, and optimize every dollar spent.
Article by
Franchette Brucelas, Strike Social’s Head of Operations
Franchette is the operational force behind Strike Social’s cross-regional performance success, overseeing campaigns across APAC, EMEA, and North America. Her leadership ensures delivery precision, platform strategy, and continuous improvement through close collaboration with sales, tech, and client teams.
