The global economic downturn is going to affect businesses of all shapes and sizes, but Meta is hoping that its changes to Shops ads and Meta Advantage will help some improve ad performance and earn new sales. 

To do that, it’s making Shops ads available to thousands of new businesses. The change will make it easier for customers to purchase directly from ads, without requiring them to leave the platform. Furthermore, Shops ads will also be moved under the Advantage portfolio to make Meta’s ad automation tools accessible from the same place.

Shops ads will also be made easier to set up in combination with an in-app checkout, which means customers can complete a purchase on Facebook or Instagram with a few taps. Meta is also testing new Shops tool such as ratings, reviews, buyer email opt-in and dynamic product pages.

What are Shops ads and how do they work? 

Shops ads send potential customers to your website or Meta-hosted shop, depending on which platform is most likely to lead to a purchase.

Facebook Help

“When you create an ad with the website and shop destination, you can choose whether people sent to your shop are directed to a product page, a collection or your Shop’s home page.”

Get underway with Shops ads

Before you create a Shops ad, you’ll need to create a Shops using Checkout with Facebook and Instagram. Next, connect your Insta or Facebook account to your shop. Then, connect your catalogue to your shop, and your meta pixel to your catalogue.

To create an ad, follow these steps:

1. Open Ads Manager.
2. Click Create on the top left.
3. Under Objective, choose Sales and click Continue.
4. Choose Advantage+ shopping campaign (more on that later), or click Manual sales campaign.
5. Enter your campaign details and click Next.
6. At the ad set level, pick Website and shop as your conversion location.
7. Review and edit your ad set. If everything looks good, click Next.
8. On the ad level, under Identity, select the Facebook Page or Instagram account linked to your Commerce Manager account. You must select a linked identity to proceed.
9. Choose your ad creative.
   1. If creating an Advantage+ shopping campaign
      Click Catalogue to automatically create personalised ad creative from your catalogue, including reasons to shop. Or, click Manual upload to upload your own creative, making sure that you choose at least one eligible format (see below).
   2. If creating a manual sales campaign
      Click Catalogue to use creative from your catalogue. You can then turn on Advantage+ creative for catalogue to automatically generate personalised ad creative for each person who views your ad, including reasons to shop. Choose Manual upload to upload your own creative, making sure that you choose at least one eligible format (see below).
10. Select your ad destination. You can choose to send people to your Shop’s home page, a product page or a collection. Click Next.
11. Click Publish.

How to use Meta Advantage

Meta Advantage is a portfolio of automated ad products designed to improve the performance of ads by using machine learning. Meta Advantage automatically helps find the most relevant audience for your campaign or ad placements and is designed to help marketers save time and focus more on running the business.

A big change to Shops ads

As part of its Shops ads changes, Meta will no longer support Shops without checkout.

Meta

“To focus on bringing these Shops ads and checkout tools to more businesses, we will no longer support Shops without checkout in several markets.”

If you’re one of the affected brands, Meta suggests that you run personalised ads, Reels and business messaging. In the US, Meta will focus on helping businesses add checkout to their shop.

Why you should get around Advantage+

Meta says that brands which use Advantage+ shopping campaigns with checkout-enabled Shops outperform website-only campaigns in several key areas.

Meta

“Our tests show that campaigns using Shops ads outperformed website-only campaigns with a cost per action and return on ad spend improvement of 20% on average. And in a recent A/B test in March 2023, Zox, a one-of-a-kind wristband company, saw over 10% improvement in cost per purchase and over 20% improvement in return on ad spend when selecting “website and Shop” in their Advantage+ shopping campaigns versus website only.”