Unlock Meta Advertising Success with Proven Placement Strategies

The original 11 advertising objectives in Meta Ads Manager have been simplified to 6, better aligning with advertisers’ business goals. All the same functions can be accessed through additional settings. Starting January 2024, advertisers will no longer be able to create, duplicate, or import campaigns, ad sets, and ads based on the previous objectives. After transitioning from the original objectives to the simplified ones, be sure to pause campaigns, ad sets, and ads using the original objectives to avoid running parallel campaigns.

In many cases, Meta recommends advertising through Meta technologies, which allows Meta’s delivery system to be more flexible and provide advertisers with better results. Meta refers to the different placements where advertisers’ ads can be displayed as “placements.” Advertisers can choose placements in the “Placements” section when creating an ad set.

Note: Not every placement is available depending on the advertiser’s ad type, content, and creative design. There are two ways to use placements: automatic and manual.

Meta Advantage+ Placements

Advantage+ placements (formerly known as automatic placements) allow Meta to achieve the best results from all default placements. Because Meta can select results from the widest possible range, Advantage+ placements typically make the most efficient use of advertisers’ budgets and help control costs. Therefore, Meta recommends it to most advertisers!

However, if an advertiser uses a highest volume bid strategy and checks the average cost per optimization event for each placement in the report, they may be confused as to why Meta suggests this approach. For example, if the average cost per optimization event on Facebook feed is significantly lower than on Instagram stories, the advertiser might want to stop running ads on Instagram stories and allocate more ads to Facebook feed.

Meta understands why this consideration might arise in ads. Meta’s delivery system is designed to provide advertisers with the most optimization events at the lowest overall average cost (not the lowest average cost per placement). This means Meta looks at all available opportunities across all placements and selects the cheapest opportunities, regardless of the average cost per optimization event for each placement.

Another benefit of Advantage+ placements is that if an advertiser decides to duplicate a campaign, any new placements will automatically be available for the duplicated ads.

Example

Here’s a simplified example showing how it works and why it can be easily misunderstood: Suppose there are 11 opportunities to display your ad: 3 on Facebook, 3 on Instagram, and 5 on Meta Audience Network. The cost per optimization event for Facebook opportunities is $3 each. Instagram opportunities cost $5 per optimization event. Each optimization event on 3 audience network opportunities costs $1, and each optimization event on 2 opportunities costs $7. Your budget is $27.

In the chart below:

The red circles around these icons indicate that ads have been displayed in that placement and have achieved optimization events.

If you selected all three placements, your report would show an average cost per optimization event of $3 for the Facebook placement, $5 for the Instagram placement, and $1 for the Audience Network placement. You would only need to spend $27 to achieve 9 optimization events, with an average cost of $3 per event.

If you see these numbers, you might want to turn off the Instagram placement and instead focus on the seemingly lower-cost Facebook and Audience Network placements. However, if you turn it off, the following will happen:

The average cost per optimization event for the Facebook placement remains $3. Without the Instagram placement, the average cost per optimization event for the Audience Network placement increases to $3.40. You would only need to spend $26 to achieve 8 optimization events, with a total average cost of $3.25 per event. This results in less efficient budget spending.

Meta optimizes your ad delivery to ensure the lowest overall cost per optimization event. Meta performs this optimization in the context of all available opportunities. In other words, what you don’t see in the report are the more expensive results that you don’t have to take because of the additional placement. The key point to remember is that a higher average cost per optimization event in one placement compared to another doesn’t necessarily mean it’s inefficient.

Audience Network Standalone Version

Selected advertisers can now run app install campaigns using the Meta Audience Network.

While choosing Advantage+ placements is still the best strategy for achieving efficient results in most cases, this new feature allows you to set precise budgets and bids for campaigns on the Meta Audience Network.

You can set this up at the ad set level in Meta Ads Manager by going to “Placements” and selecting “Edit Placements.”

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