How Meta Can Improve Audience Advantage+

I use Advantage+ Audience in most cases right now, but there are always exceptions.

Let’s discuss…

What’s different

While it’s great for shopping, there may be issues with any other configuration.

A good example is businesses that serve customers who are mostly women. Although this often works when preparing for a purchase, the algorithm will spend your budget on people who are willing to click and engage – if it is the action you want (to prepare for link clicks, landing page views, ThruPlay, or post engagement) .

This can be a problem for leaders as well. If your business caters to clients in a certain age group, that often applies when you’re preparing to buy. But, that won’t stop people in the age group you don’t use from filling out your form.

The key point here is that people outside of your target demographic may take the action you’re preparing for – and if that action is going to be of low quality because they’re not relevant to your target audience. This will throw off the funnel optimization algorithm.

Why It’s a Problem

The reason this is a problem when using Advantage+ Audience is that the age and gender restrictions are suggestions.

They are not hard barriers. You cannot prevent your ads from being shown to people outside of those suggested demographics. When people take the action you want, Meta assumes it’s helping you.

Audience Controls does not include age or gender restrictions.

If results get off track because of this, you’ll need to switch to a real audience. There you can control for age and gender.

Sill Need a Real Audience?

Honestly, if Meta just changed this so that age and gender were the audience controls, there would be very few reasons to use the original audience. As the audience grows however when it comes to conversions, link clicks, and landing page views, optimization will work just as well as these traditional controls.

One remaining problem to remove the original audience will be remarketing. You cannot segment remarketing audiences when using Advantage+ Audiences (custom audiences are suggestions).

Yes, remarketing happens naturally now, but there are times when remarketing multiple ad sets can be beneficial. Meta will also need to come up with a solution for this.

I believe the Meta will kill off the original audience eventually, but these are a few sticking points before that happens. Even as someone who uses it often, I know that there are times when it has weaknesses that are addressed by first-time viewers.

If you were to restrict by age and gender, would you use Advantage+ Audience more?