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Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns: Everything You Need to Know

Meta launched Advantage+ shopping campaigns in August 2022 as part of their efforts to help businesses navigate economic uncertainty and platform changes. 

The primary goal of Advantage+ shopping campaigns (ASC) is to leverage the power of AI and automation to maximize sales and drive growth for advertisers.

Since its introduction, Advantage+ campaigns have been pushed by Meta reps, agencies, media buyers, etc, and have quickly become the default campaign option in Meta’s ads manager.

In this article, we talk about everything you need to know about Advantage+ shopping campaigns, including:

• The basics 
• Benefits and limitations
• How to set up ASC in Facebook Ads Manager
• How to optimize Advantage+ campaigns

So, let’s dive in.

What Are Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns?

Advantage+ shopping campaigns are a new type of advertising campaign designed for e-commerce businesses, Shopify merchants, and other online store owners.

This campaign addresses the limitations you face when building manual ads for Facebook or Instagram, such as:

• Data privacy issues: With manual ads, you deal with a lot of customer data and control targeting parameters, which raises concerns about data privacy. That’s because you have direct access to and control over user data for targeting purposes.
• Time-consuming: Managing manual ads is time-consuming as you have to set targeting, build ad copy and creatives, and segment the audience based on demographics manually.
• Less efficient targeting: Manual ads don’t utilize advanced machine learning capabilities like Advantage+ shopping campaigns, leading to less precise targeting and potentially lower conversion rates.

With Advantage+, Meta streamlines the advertising process and provides a more integrated and comprehensive approach to campaign management and optimization. 

It aims to leverage machine learning and AI to reinforce marketers with new technology and make workflows more efficient.

Benefits of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns

In a Bloomberg article, Nicola Mendelsohn said: “Ads running on Meta Platforms Inc.’s apps saw a return on spending increase by an average of 32% with the help of artificial intelligence.�

But this is just the tip of the iceberg – there are several benefits of Advantage+ shopping campaigns:

1. ASCs are efficient

Advantage+ shopping campaigns automate ad creation and optimization processes, reducing the number of manual steps to save time. You don’t need to constantly monitor and make adjustments to the campaigns for better performance – the machine learning capabilities will automatically optimize your ongoing campaigns

2. Reach new audiences, and optimally target existing ones

Here’s what Microsoft says about customers discovering new brands: “We’ve found that 52% of consumers want to find brands and products they haven’t heard about but align with their shopping preferences.�

This is the main reason why Meta launched Advantage+.

Advantage+ campaigns use machine learning to identify customers willing to buy your product, improving ad performance and ROI.

By analyzing user data and behavior, the system accurately predicts which customers are most likely to convert, ensuring your ads are delivered to the right audience at the right time.

3. Creative optimization

ASCs automatically generate multiple ad variations and identify the best-performing ones for your target audience. By testing various combinations of images, text, and calls to actions that you select, the system can determine which creative elements resonate most with the target audience. 

Pro tip: Try to provide Meta with as many creatives as possible so it can show multiple variations of ads to your audience and see which ones perform the best.

4. Lower cost per result

Advantage+ campaigns aim to make advertising more efficient.

Here’s how.

These campaigns automate audience targeting and creative optimization, which helps reduce ad spend wastage and improve cost per acquisition. 

This further results in a lower cost per conversion, maximizing advertisers’ return on investment and making the most of their advertising budget.

Limitations of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns

• Advantage+ shopping campaigns are more sensitive to changes and have limited targeting options compared to manual campaigns. Advantage+ doesn’t allow for specific demographic targeting, such as age, gender, or interests, and the targeting options are also limited to the country level.
• ASCs don’t let you select or exclude specific ad placements that might sometimes impact brand appearance/safety.
• You can only run a maximum of eight Advantage+ shopping campaigns at a time.
• ASC doesn’t allow you to exclude existing or past customers from the campaign’s target audience. This can lead to ads being shown to customers who have already made a purchase from you, wasting ad spend.

Whilst Advantage+ shopping campaigns are a significant step-up in terms of ad automation, it’s still worth considering whether they’re right for you. Some marketers love the effortless, fire-and-forget functionality of Advantage+, however some prefer the fine-tuning and manual controls that Advantage+ is unable to provide. It’s a similar story to Google’s largely automated PMax campaigns. 

Despite this, the results don’t lie – a well set up ASC campaign can turbocharge your ad spend whilst simultaneously simplifying marketing workflows. Take a look at the guide below to discover how to set up a fully optimized Advantage+ campaign.

How to Set Up an Advantage+ Shopping Campaign

Here’s a step-by-step process for setting up an Advantage+ shopping campaign:

Step 1. Creating Advantage+ Shopping Campaign

Inside your Meta Ads manager, click on the ‘+ Create’ button.

Select your campaign objective – in our case, Sales; and click the ‘Continue’ button you see at the bottom right corner. 

You now get two ad campaign options to choose from: 

• Advantage+ shopping campaign (selected by default)
• Manual sales campaign

Ensure you’ve selected the Advantage+ shopping campaign, then click Continue.

The display of Advantage+ shopping campaigns is a little different from that of manual ad campaigns. 

On the left-hand side, you have two rows – the top one is the campaign, and the one below it is your ad. Advantage+ shopping campaigns don’t show you your Adset right away.

First of all, name your campaign.

Next, come down to the Conversion section.

• Select from Website and Website and app options.
• Set the performance goal.
• Select the Pixel if it’s not already selected by default.

Step 2. Setting Audience Location

After taking care of your conversion settings, it’s time to set your Audience location.

In the Included locations options, click the ‘Edit’ button.

Select a region or country you want to target. 

One important thing to notice here is that you can’t exclude locations for your ads on the Adset level.

To exclude locations, you’d have to set the Advantage+ shopping campaign as a preset in your ad account settings. To do so, follow the next step.

Step 3. Audience Type Breakdown & Budget Cap

The Audience-type breakdown section lets you add custom audiences to your existing customers.

In the Reporting section, under the Audience-type breakdown, click the ‘Go to account setting’ button.

This will open a new page in a new Google tab.

Go to Account controls > Audience controls and select ‘My business can only advertise in specific locations.’

Search for the location you want to exclude and click Review changes. 

In our case, we don’t want to exclude any audience, so we’ll leave it as it is.

Likewise, if you have an age-restricted ad, select ‘My business advertises age-restricted goods or services’ and set a limit on the age.

Next, add your existing customers to the Advantage+ shopping campaign.

Inside the Advantage+ shopping campaigns card, search for your existing customers’ list. 

Click the blue ‘Confirm’ button once you’ve made all the changes.

Go back to your campaign and refresh the page to see the changes you just made to your audience.

Next, go to the Budget & schedule option to set your ad spend.

We’d suggest you check the box – Existing customer budget cap and set a maximum budget percentage to spend on your existing customers.

Go ahead and set your daily budget as well.

Step 4. Suggested Ads & Building Ads

The Suggested Ads section scans your account for all the ads you’ve run and suggests the best ones. You can use them if you want. 

For this campaign, let’s create an ad from scratch.

To build the ad, click on the ad from the left-hand side menu.

This will take you to the ad creation page that looks the same as other campaign ad pages.

Creating an ad for the Advantage+ shopping campaign is the same as creating one for normal ads on Meta.

• Give it a name
• Select the Facebook and Instagram page
• Select the ad format – single image or video, carousel, or collection
• Check or uncheck the Multi-advertiser ads box
• Add your creatives – media, headline, description, call to action

Hit the ‘Publish’ button when everything’s set up.

How to Optimize Meta Advantage+ Campaigns

Here are some Advantage+ shopping campaign best practices you should follow to get the best results.

1. Diversify your creatives

Having a variety of creative options gives Meta the best opportunity to connect the right ads with the right audience.

On Meta, you can add up to 50 images or videos at one time. But uploading and forgetting about them isn’t a good idea. Ensure that you refresh these creatives a few times a month to avoid creative fatigue.

Here’s what YouTube PPC expert Dara Denney thinks about diversifying ad creatives: 

“I encourage rapid format testing into popular performance creative formats. This goes beyond just testing into carousels, videos, and images. What I mean is you must test into tried-and-true performance creatives like UGC, before-and-after, reviews, tutorials, etc.�

2. Select bidding options

Meta suggests selecting the lowest cost bid type and not adding a bid cap for best results,

Why?

When you set a budget cap, it’s good to control your costs – but remember that it also limits the number of audiences you can reach.

One major reason why you might be running Advantage+ campaigns is that you want to find the right fit for your ads.

Advantage+ app campaigns typically receive more results and spend their entire budget when using the lowest cost without a bid cap.

3. Avoid overlapping audiences with manual ads

One thing to avoid when running ASC is audience overlap with manual ads.

When multiple campaigns target the same type of audience, Meta can get confused which can lead to your ads getting deprioritized. You might want to avoid running manual ads and Advantage+ campaigns for the same audience simultaneously.

To see if Advantage+ shopping campaigns are the right fit for your advertisement ideas, we suggest you first properly A/B test your ideas by running both manual and Advantage+ campaigns with no audience overlap.

If ASC performs better, double down on it and stop your manual campaigns.

FAQs 

What is the Advantage+ shopping campaign?

Advantage+ shopping campaigns are a new type of advertising campaign designed for e-commerce businesses, Shopify merchants, and other online store owners.

What is the difference between Advantage+ campaigns and manual sales campaigns?

The difference between Advantage+ campaigns and manual sales campaigns lies in the level of automation and control. Advantage+ automates the majority of your ad-creating and publishing process with AI and machine learning, while there’s no such thing built for manual ad campaigns.

How many ASC ads can you run simultaneously?

You can run a maximum of eight Advantage+ shopping campaigns at a time.

Wrapping Up

Automated campaign types such as Advantage+ have changed the PPC landscape forever. AI and machine learning has successfully automated a lot of previously manual processes, and marketing workflows have never been simpler.

Yet, the question remains – is leaving so much of your marketing in the hands of AI truly a good thing? Opinions are mixed. Some marketers appreciate the simplicity of campaigns such as Advantage+ and PMax, however many aren’t sold on relinquishing so much control over their campaigns and still opt for a manual approach. 

Then there’s the biggest issue – invalid traffic (IVT). 

Automated campaigns such as these aren’t immune to the rising tide of invalid traffic eating away at our PPC budgets – in fact, they may be making the problem worse. 

Limited control over targeting and less visibility in analytics means a thicker fog over exactly who – or what – is clicking on your ads. 

Find out exactly how invalid traffic affects your website with a free, no-obligation 14-day free trial and discover how to optimize your ad spend with Lunio.

Sykes Cottages Boost Booking Conversion Rates by 10.9% with Lunio

Sykes Cottages, a leading holiday cottage rental agency, implemented Lunio to tackle spikes in bot traffic during peak booking periods, and minimise spam lead submissions. Over the course of 12 months, they significantly reduced invalid traffic rates across key acquisition channels, leading to an uplift in both conversion rate and lead quality.

Key Stats 

• 10.9% increase in conversion rate 
• 14.9% decrease in bounce rate 
• £704k saved by blocking clicks from invalid sources

Sykes Cottages is the UK’s leading independent holiday cottage rental agency, with over 30 year’s experience in the industry. They represent more than 22,500 holiday homes across the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand – from cosy cottages to larger properties sleeping 20 or more.

Sykes operates both B2C and B2B paid media campaigns, serving two different kinds of customers. On the B2C side, Sykes drives bookings from holidaymakers searching for their perfect getaway accommodation. And on the B2B side, they advertise to holiday home owners who want a hassle-free way to fill up their rental calendar with bookings, by having their property listed on Sykes website.  

Paul Oates, Head of Performance Media, is responsible for ensuring Sykes digital ad budget is used to drive both property bookings and leads from property owners as efficiently as possible.

In his previous role, Paul had implemented Lunio and was impressed with the results. He had seen first-hand evidence of how reducing levels of invalid traffic (IVT) helped to improve conversion rates over time. So when he joined Sykes in January 2023, he saw huge potential in tackling IVT, especially given the scale of the business. 

Why Sykes Chose Lunio 

Paul and his team went through a procurement process, with Lunio being compared against another invalid traffic prevention solution for an initial trial period. Lunio was selected based on easier usability, more helpful data-driven insights, and higher-quality support. 

Eliminating Source of Wasted Ad Spend 

Invalid traffic rates coming from Google Ads were reduced significantly within the first four months, falling 43%, from an average of 5.1% to 2.9%. This uplift in traffic quality led Sykes to expand Lunio to other key acquisition channels in July 2023, including Bing, Meta, and TikTok. 

The benefits of having greater visibility and insights into traffic sources quickly became clear. Notably, Paul and his team noticed a lot of paid traffic was coming from their head office IP, showing current employees were clicking on ads.

The B2B arm of business saw an outsized benefit from having Lunio in place. Property owners are able to apply for holiday let mortgages through Sykes website via financial services partners they work with. And this inevitably results in a higher level of fraudulent bot activity.

“Lunio acts as an extra barrier protecting us from bad actors, which has led to a significant increase in lead qualityâ€� said Paul.

The Results 

Comparing paid search data from October 2023 to March 2024 YoY, the downstream benefits of blocking invalid traffic are reflected in improvements across Sykes key performance metrics. With Lunio supporting them as they continued to optimise their ads, targeting, and campaigns they saw:

• 10.9% increase in conversion rate 
• 14.9% decrease in bounce rate 
• 11.3% increase in average session duration 
• More than 82,000 IPs automatically excluded 
• £704k saved by blocking clicks from invalid sources 

The overall increase in paid media efficiency has helped Sykes deliver better results across both the B2C and B2B arms of the business. And the roll out of multiplatform protection to cover all of Sykes key acquisition channels has given them valuable insight into the risk profile associated with each platform at any given time. 

“Occasionally we’ll see traffic spikes in our analytics that look like bot activity, and we want to find out whether it has come from paid channels. The Lunio dashboard makes it really easy to quickly assess the health of each channel, to either diagnose where the problem is coming from, or rule out paid media as the source of the spikeâ€�  said Paul.

After a successful first year, Paul and the paid media team at Sykes are now set to scale investment on important growth channels such as TikTok, confident in the knowledge that their increased spend is effectively protected against zero-value clicks. 

Performance Max for Marketplaces: Everything You Need to Know

Google Ads has officially launched Performance Max for Marketplaces – yet another Google campaign type. This one aims to help users sell goods and services on specific marketplaces using Performance Max (PMax). 

If you’re anything like us, you’re probably feeling a bit ‘Ben Affleck’ after hearing this:

(Credit to Mike Ryan from Smarter Ecommerce for that one)

You’re probably also wondering how this new campaign type will affleck affect us as marketers. 

Here, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about Performance Max for Marketplaces, including:

• What it is and how it works
• What marketers are saying about PMax for Marketplaces
• Why we should care about this new campaign type
• When (and how) to use PMax for Marketplaces

What is Performance Max for Marketplaces?

In late 2021, Google introduced Performance Max campaigns – a game-changer for marketers seeking an automated, all-encompassing approach to online advertising. 

Now, Google has taken things a step further with the release of Performance Max for Marketplaces – a campaign type specifically designed for sellers who use established online marketplaces, like eBay or Amazon. 

Traditionally, Google Ads relied on Merchant Center feeds and dedicated landing pages to power advertising campaigns. PMax for Marketplaces disrupts this model by allowing sellers to advertise their existing marketplace product listings directly. 

This means users can use Google Ads to reach new customers and drive sales – with no need for a separate website or Merchant Center setup.

Here’s how it works:

1. Connect Accounts: The user links their Google Ads account with a supported marketplace platform.
   
2. Campaign Creation: Once connected, they can create PMax campaigns specifically designed for their marketplace products.
   
3. Leveraging Existing Data: PMax for Marketplaces automatically integrates with existing marketplace product data – including descriptions, images, and pricing, to generate compelling ad creatives.
   
4. Automated Optimization: As you’d expect, PMax for Marketplaces is very similar to regular PMax campaigns, meaning AI and machine learning take center stage. It takes campaign goals, budget, and audience targeting into account to deliver ads across various Google Ads networks – including Shopping, Search, YouTube, Display, Maps, and Gmail. The automation optimizes ad delivery in real-time based on user intent and behavior, attempting to maximize reach and conversion potential.
   
5. Seamless Reporting: Campaign performance is tracked and reported within the Google Ads interface, providing detailed insights into clicks, impressions, and conversions generated through marketplace product listings.

You might be expecting PMax for Marketplaces to work in the exact same way as regular PMax campaigns – but for, well, marketplaces. This is largely true, however PMax for Marketplaces is currently missing a few features that standard Performance Max campaigns benefit from: 

• No cross-account conversion tracking
• No URL expansion
• No video assets
• No new customer acquisition modeling
• No data segments for audience reporting

It’s worth noting that as of right now, PMax for Marketplaces is still very much in beta. Key marketplaces – such as Amazon, eBay, etc have yet to announce whether they will integrate with Google for this campaign type.

If all goes well, we can expect the major marketplace players to adopt PMax for Marketplaces in due course. For now, however, we can only speculate about the impact of the new campaign type. 

What Marketers Are Saying About PMax for Marketplaces: 

In Google’s own words:

“Performance Max for Marketplaces helps you reach more customers and drive more sales of your products using a marketplace. After you connect your Google Ads account to the marketplace, you can create Performance Max campaigns that send shoppers to your products there.�

But what do marketers think about PMax for Marketplaces?

Mike Ryan, Head of Ecommerce Insights at Smarter Ecommerce (and renowned meme creator) spoke about the implications of PMax for Marketplaces in a LinkedIn post. He talked about how the campaign type could contribute to the ongoing CPC wars already putting the strain on advertisers, and mentions the importance of data input and output optimization. 

Commenting on the post, Joann Stecca (freelance Paid Media Strategist) questioned the viability of merchants having to pay 15% commission for Amazon as well as paid search acquisition. Mike responded, agreeing that the platforms (Google and Amazon) are the real winners here.

Navah Hopkins, Brand Evangelist at Optmyzr, mentions the ongoing US v. Google Antitrust hearings, which contextually makes the introduction of PMax Marketplace campaigns a questionable decision on Google’s part.

Many marketers are hesitant to comment on the implications of the new campaign type, as Google is yet to release any sort of list detailing which marketplaces are approved and ready for PMax for Marketplaces. 

Google has mentioned that they are currently “working to add more marketplace platformsâ€�, leaving us curious about how impactful this new campaign type will be. Web Marketer Dario Zannoni mentions that Singapore-born marketplace Shopee is one of the few marketplaces currently supporting PMax for Marketplace campaigns. 

Why Should Marketers Care About PMax for Marketplaces?

This is Google clearly recognising the ever-growing importance of online marketplaces, such as Amazon.

It’s still early days, but for marketers with established marketplace sales, PMax for Marketplaces is likely to play a big part in their Google Ads strategy going forward – providing all goes according to Google’s plan. 

Since there’s no need for an expensive site or merchant center, there’s a massive opportunity for small businesses here – as well as those with a limited budget. 

Yet PMax for Marketplaces has the potential to offer some key benefits that businesses of any size can take advantage of:

• Budget-friendly: PMax for Marketplaces eliminates the need for a separate website and Merchant Center setup, simplifying campaign management and saving on costs.
  
• Enhanced Reach: The sheer reach of Google’s advertising network is incredibly valuable – PMax takes advantage of this by targeting potential customers across various touch points throughout their buying journey, wherever they may be.
  
• Auto-Optimized Performance: Just like regular PMax campaigns, PMax for Marketplaces leverages Google’s machine learning expertise to optimize ad delivery and maximize conversions based on real-time insights.
  
• Data-Driven Decisions: Gain accurate performance data within the familiar Google Ads interface, allowing for data-driven decision making and campaign refinement.
  
• Accessibility for Smaller Sellers: In theory, PMax for Marketplaces can empower smaller businesses without a dedicated website to compete in the e-commerce landscape.
  
• Uncover New Demand: With access to your entire marketplace catalog, PMax can identify and target previously undiscovered customer segments, expanding your reach and customer base.
  

When to Use Performance Max for Marketplaces Campaigns

As with standard PMax campaigns, PMax for Marketplaces sound great on paper – but they’re not right for everyone. 

Those looking for a precision control of their campaigns certainly won’t find it here – you can’t choose specific keywords or placements, which is not ideal for marketplaces with very specific audiences. 

Alongside this, there are a few other scenarios where PMax for Marketplaces should be avoided at all costs: 

• Campaign Goals: If your primary focus is driving sales directly through your marketplace listings, PMax for Marketplaces could work well. However, if brand awareness or website traffic is your goal, PMax for Marketplaces won’t get you very far.
  
• Product Catalog Size: PMax thrives on a robust product catalog. If your marketplace listings are limited, Google’s machine learning system might not have enough data to optimize effectively.
  
• Comfort with Automation: PMax relies heavily on Google’s machine learning/AI for optimization. Whilst it’s proven to be incredibly effective, it doesn’t always get it right – especially if you’re targeting a niche audience. If you prefer more granular control over ad placements, PMax for Marketplaces probably isn’t for you.

Getting Started with PMax for Marketplaces

Think Performance Max for Marketplaces is the right campaign type for you? Here are the initial steps to get set up.

Keep in mind that, at the time of writing, the beta is currently only available in a select few regions – so don’t worry if you can’t see it just yet!

1. Check Compatibility: As mentioned, Google hasn’t exactly been forthcoming about which marketplaces are/aren’t supported. You’ll need to get in touch with your marketplace of choice to find out whether they support PMax for Marketplaces.
   
2. Connect Your Accounts: Link your Google Ads account with your supported marketplace platform.
   
3. Campaign Setup: As with any other PMax campaign, define your campaign goals, budget, and target audience within the Google Ads interface.
   
4. Creative Assets: While PMax uses existing product data, consider providing high-quality images and standout ad copy to improve performance.
   
5. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize: Regularly monitor campaign performance within Google Ads and make adjustments as needed. Remember, the beauty of PMax lies in its ongoing optimization, so give the AI some time to learn and refine its delivery strategy. 

Quick tip: Keep in mind that your products and ads will need to comply with all Shopping ads / Google ads policies.

Final Thoughts

With Google still “working to add more marketplace platformsâ€�, the overall impact of Performance Max for Marketplaces largely depends on adoption by key marketplaces. 

Once major players such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc. are on board, this campaign type has the potential to become the new norm, and shift the marketing landscape entirely for marketplace sellers. 

Combat Fake Clicks with Lunio

Fake clicks are becoming increasingly problematic for marketers. Invalid traffic (IVT) wastes more of your ad spend than you think – with 1 in 12 online clicks being invalid. 

Nobody is truly protected – IVT affects every ad campaign out there, and will likely impact PMax for Marketplaces, too. Google’s own invalid traffic protection and refunding system has proven to be inadequate in the face of the growing IVT concern. 

Lunio works to protect your campaign budgets and prevent invalid traffic, and ensures your ads are only seen by real customers – not bots who have absolutely zero chance of converting. 

See how much invalid traffic is affecting your PPC success (and how much you can save by eliminating it) with Lunio’s free, no-obligation traffic audit.