Meta has released a massive upgrade for its Advantage+ campaigns, which marketers working in retail should find highly useful as many of the upgrades are aimed at driving sales, reaching customers and showing off products.

Facebook

“Today we’re introducing new AI-powered tools that provide more information and personalisation to people at the moment of discovery to give them the confidence to make a purchase after seeing an ad.”

First on the list of new features is called Advantage+ creative optimisations, which can automatically optimise video ads for Reels or Facebook and Instagram mobile apps in a 9:16 ratio.

Facebook

“Advantage+ creative optimizations also helps advertisers dynamically create multiple variations of an ad so that it can personalize them to what a person responds to best.”

Advertisers who like Advantage+ catalog ads are in for a treat as they’ll now be able to import and use branded videos or customer demo videos instead of static images – which should help them create more engaging and dynamic content that sells more products. Catalog ads show personalised product recommendations to users, based on what the algorithm thinks they’ll want to see, and now marketers can better showcase relevant products. Finally, advertisers can now upload a hero image to their catalog ad, which will work with Meta’s AI to show people the most relevant products from their collection.

New ad types available soon

The first new ad type announced is Shops ads, which will help people make a purchase directly on Facebook or Insta after viewing an ad.

Facebook

“To enable more advertisers to take advantage of Shops ads, we’re expanding access to our integrations with Magento and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Now more merchants can tap into AI-powered performance by using Advantage+ shopping campaigns and Shops ads together.”

Shops ads will also become available through Partnership ads (which used to be called Branded content ads), which will let marketers run Shop ads with influencers and tap into their reach and influence to drive direct sales.

Dynamic tools at marketers disposal

Meta has also announced a few new dynamic tools for marketers to enjoy. One of them is Reminder ads on Instagram, which works like the countdown sticker in Stories by building awareness and anticipation in advance of product drops, launches and events.

Facebook

“Now, advertisers can include external links to a new product or sale in their Reminder ads to help turn a person’s interest into a purchase. This summer, we’ll also give advertisers ways to notify people when an event starts and before it ends.”

The plan is to bring Reminder ads to Reels too, so marketers will have more ways to reach potential customers.

Another update seeks to make it easier for brands to advertise promotions and help customers discover and use promo codes through Facebook and Insta ads. Facebook says advertisers who used this feature reduced median cost per purchase by 9.1% and increased median conversions by 10.1%.

Additionally, Product tags will soon come to Facebook feed (they were only on Insta previously), which will let people show a specific product from an image.

Collaborative offerings

Take a deep breath because there’s more to come! Meta is also launching new ad types through Advantage+. One of them is called Collaborative ads with Advantage+ shopping campaigns that has allowed some to increase return by 14% and decrease cost per acquisition by 13%. This format helps retail media networks market to customers on behalf of brand partners.

Meta will also launch Advantage+ Catalog ads with omnichannel brand and product level reports to help retail media networks to provide data-driven proof that advertising on Meta works.

Finally, new analytics will help people “prove that digital awareness drives in store sales with measurement and insights while respecting customer privacy.”

Why has it launched?

Meta says that nearly everyone who advertises across Facebook and Instagram uses Advantage+ to help drive performance, and with Reels and videos becoming more popular year-on-year, it wants to help advertisers “connect with customers and drive performance” through the Advantage suite of tools.

Advantage+ is designed to use machine learning to help marketers reach more audiences than ever before. To create an Advantage+ campaign:

1. Go to Ads Manager.
2. Click Create.
3. Select Sales as the campaign objective. Then, click Continue.
4. Select Advantage+ shopping campaign. Click Continue.
5. Name the campaign.
6. Choose a Conversion location from website, website and app. You may also need to choose a: Pixel or App
7. Choose your Budget and schedule.
8. Choose your Optimisation and delivery.
9. Select Import, under Suggested ads, to use your existing ad creative. You can then make individual edits by selecting Go to ad level. 
10. Publish when you are ready.

What are the business benefits?

With so much change, it can be difficult to pinpoint a few benefits – but the main takeaway hear seems to be helping advertisers to do more, with less, more efficiently than ever before. Using AI will help to automatically optimise ads, while simultaniously increasing the number of ways marketers can get their products in front of interested eyeballs. Some new formats may require a bit of trial and error, but by and large all the changes should help marketers to create better ads.