Guide · Paid social
Advantage Plus Shopping Campaigns: Setup and Limits
Advantage plus shopping campaigns are Meta's automated sales campaigns for online stores. They need few inputs and give you little control over who sees your ads. This guide shows how to set one up, what Meta handles for you and where budget can go to waste.
What these campaigns are
Advantage plus shopping campaigns are sales campaigns in Meta Ads Manager that use automation to set up, target and test your ads. Meta introduced them to advertisers worldwide in August 2022, with a roll-out to ecommerce and retail advertisers from 15 August. Meta says they cut out the manual steps of ad creation and automate up to 150 creative combinations at once.
In a Meta study of 15 A/B tests, these campaigns drove 12% lower cost per purchase than the advertisers' usual ads. That is Meta's own figure, so treat it as a claim to test on your own account, not a promise.
Sources: Meta Newsroom, Introducing New Automation Tools to Increase Sales and Drive Growth, August 2022
How to set one up
The setup is short on purpose. You create a campaign with the Sales objective. Then you pick the Advantage+ shopping option instead of a manual sales campaign. The steps after that are few:
- Choose where sales happen: your website, or website and app. Some accounts also see website and shop.
- Choose the goal: the most conversions, or the most conversion value. By default, Meta tries to get you the most conversions for your budget.
- Choose the conversion event. Purchase is the usual pick, though other standard or custom events are open.
- Pick the countries or states you sell to.
- Set a budget, then add your ads.
A clean product catalog helps, because catalog ads can feed the campaign. Keep your pixel firing correctly too. The system leans on your purchase data to decide who sees an ad.
Sources: Jon Loomer Digital, Get Started with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns
What Meta controls for you
Much of what you would set by hand is locked or automated. Placements are fixed to Advantage+ placements inside the campaign. You cannot turn on dynamic creative. Age is set to 18 and up. The campaign holds one ad set only, and you cannot add a second.
Targeting is the biggest change. You choose locations and nothing more. There are no detailed targeting options, no custom audiences and no lookalike audiences in the campaign. Meta decides who sees your ads from your goal, your pixel data and your conversion history.
You do get a few account-level controls in Advertising Settings. Audience controls set location and minimum age rules. Placement controls let you remove some placements for these campaigns. You can also tell Meta who your existing customers are, and who your engaged audience is, using custom audiences. Meta uses these groups mainly for reporting.
Sources: Jon Loomer Digital, Get Started with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns
Where budget can go to waste
Automation does not guarantee good spend. Three leaks are worth watching.
Spend on people who already bought. With no audience input, the campaign can show ads to past buyers, who are easy to convert. Those sales can make results look better than they are. You can set an existing customer budget cap to limit this. The cap is only as good as your customer list, so keep that list current. It can also lower your sales volume, so use it only if finding new buyers is the goal.
Weak creative. You have little say over targeting, so your ads carry the load. One ad is not enough. Test several images, videos and text options, and add catalog ads if you have a catalog.
Too many campaigns. Splitting products across many campaigns or ad sets goes against how this format works. It splits your data and slows learning.
Bid controls exist, but use them with care. A cost per result goal or a return on ad spend goal only works if you spend enough to give Meta volume, so these suit larger accounts more than small ones.
Sources: Jon Loomer Digital, Get Started with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns
How to read your results
Ads Manager lets you break results down by audience type. Open the Breakdown menu, go to Delivery, and choose Audience Type. You then see new customers, existing customers and engaged audience in separate rows. This is the quickest way to learn whether the campaign finds new buyers or recycles old ones.
The default attribution setting is 7-day click, 1-day view and 1-day engaged view. Compare results with your other campaigns on the same setting. Otherwise the numbers will not line up. Our guide to Google Ads versus Meta Ads covers why tracking matters before you compare the two platforms.
Sources: Jon Loomer Digital, Get Started with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns
A simple way to test one
Run the campaign next to your current sales campaign for at least a few weeks. Keep the budget fair and the offer the same. Then compare cost per purchase and new customer share, not only total sales.
If new customer share is low, set a cap on existing customer spend and test again. If cost per purchase is high, check the creative before you touch any bid setting. Change one thing at a time, so you know what moved the result.
This guide reflects Meta's tools as of November 2024. Meta changes these settings often, so check Ads Manager for what you see today.
Sources: Meta Newsroom, Introducing New Automation Tools to Increase Sales and Drive Growth, August 2022; Jon Loomer Digital, Get Started with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns
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