Has anyone run a successful Facebook Ads campaign using Advantage+ audiences?

[bendurso]

On YouTube, all the Facebook Ads "gurus" recommend Advantage+ for segmented audiences, but I haven’t had any success with this type of targeting. Is anyone else experiencing the same issue when promoting their plugins?

Perhaps the problem is that the plugins/production niche is too specific, and the algorithm isn’t well-trained for it yet. Or maybe it works with accounts that already have a bunch of conversions (and this is not my case).

I typically spend the equivalent of a plugin’s price on a campaign to test it. With specific segmentation, I usually get conversions, but with Advantage+, I don’t get a single one! On Reddit I also read comments from people saying the same thing about their campaigns.

[d.healey]

@bendurso I've found that it doesn't make too much difference - but you should do an A/B of your particular campaign, that's the only way to get any real insight as there are so many variables.

[bendurso]

@d-healey Nice, thanks! Yeah, I just ran an A/B test with the same ads, and Advantage+ didn’t get any conversions.

[d.healey]

@bendurso Did you get out of the learning phase?

[Straticah]

@bendurso Advantage+ is best if you have extremely broud targeting and let the campaign run for some days/weeks including flex ad sets that have a variety of creatives images/copy from my experience.

For me anything else than advantage+ on ad set level has not worked yet. usually the first sales come from 2x product price spend and it gets more once the campagn has enough data.

I am a beginner when it comes to adsm i have spend around 5-10k yet and advantage + has been the best performing so far in combination with dynamic creatives.

You can suggest amazing target groups to facebook, examples are izotope, thomann, fl studio, native instruments, ableton etc...

[bendurso]

@bendurso Did you get out of the learning phase?

Nope. But with standard targeting I receive conversions, and I didn't want it to continue spending money hehe.

@Straticah Thanks for the info! I will try it again in the future, I may have to spend more and it will improve in the long run.

Edit: Thanks again for the detailed explanation :)

[d.healey]

@bendurso said in Has anyone run a successful Facebook Ads campaign using Advantage+ audiences?:

I didn't want it to continue spending money

How long are you letting your campaigns run?

[bendurso]

@d-healey In this case, I ran the campaign for 20 days, spending $40 per day with normal segmentation. The plugin costs $39. Then, I duplicated the ad set using Advantage+, but after spending $40, I didn’t get any conversions, so I stopped it. (With normal targeting, I got several purchases after the same $40 spend.)

In the past I also tried other campaigns with Advantage+ in a similar way. Maybe I should let Advantage+ run for more days.

[d.healey]

@bendurso said in Has anyone run a successful Facebook Ads campaign using Advantage+ audiences?:

but after spending $40

Does that mean you ran the A+ campaign for only 1 day?

[bendurso]

@d-healey 2, because the campaign split the daily budget between the ad sets.

[d.healey]

@bendurso I think that's the main issue then. Let it run at least a couple of weeks. If you want to have less "risk" you might get more satisfying results doing post boosts.

[Dan Korneff]

An audience defined by your pixel will almost always deliver better results because META knows exactly who to deliver the ad to.
The Advantage+ audience is really good at creating brand awareness. Use a lookalike audience of your website visitor and then create placements that promote your brand. The goal isn't to make conversions with these, it's about reaching people that don't know you yet.

[ps]

For everything under 1000 ad spend per day on meta for plugins:

Focus on ONE plugin only - your best and most popular one.

One campaign - Manual Configuration - Budget on CAMPAIGN Level - One AdSet per angle/hook - 3-5 variations as ads.

Try starting with 3-4 different angles(ad sets) depending on overall budget (1.5 average order value per day per ad set minimum)

do not touch for one week. Launch new ad sets each week.
The algorithm will def figure out where to spend the money.
Each week turn off ad sets / ads that are underperforming.

If it's going great you can simply raise the overall budget.

Meta will always overreport conversion. Do a custom landing page with a unique url that is not even indexed on google that you only use for your meta campaign.

Each conversion that came from this page or was a direct result from the ads.

If you have a rather fresh pixel (not a lot money spent on) but have an email list, upload it to meta and create a 1% lookalike audience.

Advantage+ is good for scaling.

You have to invest until you have a winning creative. You will find it by testing, analyzing and unfortunately burning some money.

Alway have an eye on soft metrics like CTR and CPM. If CPM is low - people like the creative - if CTR is high - people are interested. I CTR and CPM are good but sales aren't figure out where you are losing them.

[bendurso]

@Dan-Korneff @ps Thanks guys! Really good tips!

Spending money seems to be the key here (along with applying these good techniques).

[Lindon]

@ps man this is like a complete other language to me --- mystified.

[ps]

@Lindon demystified version: if you have a good product and good ads (it probably needs some testing and investment to figure out what works) and a good website the algorithm will find people who buy. There are no special hacks or tricks really - most common point of failure (if product and ads are good) is overcomplicating the setup and being too impatient (doing too much changes).

[d.healey]

@bendurso said in Has anyone run a successful Facebook Ads campaign using Advantage+ audiences?:

Spending money seems to be the key here

If you get it right then you will be making money, not spending it ;)

[bendurso]

@ps said in Has anyone run a successful Facebook Ads campaign using Advantage+ audiences?:

being too impatient (doing too much changes).

haha one of the most difficult things to avoid, thanks for mention it :)

What's a good ROAS for you? I'm happy with 2, but I've heard of ads that can have from 3 to 6.

[ps]

@bendurso I would not think too much about the Facebook roas and look much more at the overall roas of your business. Treat META as a new customer acquisition tool and look at the customer life time value. Example: you have a low cost product you advertise on META for 15bucks - you make no direct profit on it and have a ROAS of 1 on it in a 7day window. every 5th of the low cost purchases buys a 100 dollar product later through email marketing and eventually buys another 100 dollar product a few months later you made an average of $55 per customer. That effectively means a ROAS of around 3,66 for that campaign. Always exclude your customers from targeting btw. You don't wanna spend money on showing your ads to people all the time that you already have the email.

[d.healey]

Here's something I did to get 100s of paying customers via Facebook.

Firstly don't promote a free product via an ad unless you have some funnel you're sending them through that more often than not results in them paying. Generally people who download your freebies are only interested in your freebies, so you don't want to spend money to acquire them.

So what I did was I took one of my lowish cost products (£20) and I offered it through Facebook with a coupon code that gave a stupid discount like 98%.

This is such a great offer it sends people flooding in and the important thing is all of them are parting with a little bit of money. It's not a lot but it filters out anyone who has no interest in spending money with you.

Then you follow up with these people with a simple campaign, offer them another discount, maybe 50% off their first purchase, but time limited. Ask them for a review, etc. etc.

Don't do this with your latest and greatest product, do it with something that's been out a year or so - unless you're doing it as a crazy intro offer.

Important here is that the ROAS in Facebook's metrics was terrible, but that wasn't the point. The purpose is to build my mailing list with qualified active leads who I can then advertise to for pennies using email.