Advantage Detailed Targeting Updates – Jon Loomer Digital

There are updates to Advantage Detailed TargetingWhen turned on, Meta can expand your audience to reach people beyond the Detailed Targeting (interests and behaviors) that you selected, but only if that expansion is expected to lead to better results. Location, age, gender, and exclusions are hard constraints, and the expanded audience will continue to follow those rules. More. From this announcement…

1. “CampaignsThe campaign is the foundation of your Facebook ad. This is where you’ll set an advertising objective, which defines what you want your ad to achieve. More that are optimized for ImpressionsImpressions are the number of times your ads were displayed to your target audience. Impressions aren’t counted if it is detected they came from bots. More, Video Views, ReachReach measures the number of Accounts Center Accounts (formerly users) that saw your ads at least once. You can have one account reached with multiple impressions. More, Engagement or Ad Recall Lift will now have the option to opt-in to Advantage Detailed Targeting.”

Previously, these optimizations were not eligible.

2. “Campaigns that are optimized for Leads will have Advantage detailed targeting automatically applied with the option to opt-out.”

You will still be able to turn it off.

3. “Campaigns that are optimized for Link clicksThe link click metric measures all clicks on links that drive users to properties on and off of Facebook. More or Landing page viewsLanding Page View is a Facebook ads metric that represents when people land on your destination URL after clicking a link in your ad. More will have Advantage detailed targeting automatically applied with no option to opt-out.”

So, just like when optimizing for conversionsA conversion is counted whenever a website visitor performs an action that fires a standard event, custom event, or custom conversion. Examples of conversions include purchases, leads, content views, add to cart, and registrations. More, it’s always on with no ability to turn it off.

In the end, does it matter?

Advantage Detailed Targeting allows Meta to expand beyond your targeting inputs if it will lead to better results. The problem is that this feature is only available when using the original audienceThis is the group of people who can potentially see your ads. You help influence this by adjusting age, gender, location, detailed targeting (interests and behaviors), custom audiences, and more. More options. Those are buried now.

Instead, Meta prioritizes the use of Advantage+ Audience.

In that case, your targeting inputs are simply suggestions before the algorithm goes much broader.

At this point, it’s not all that clear why Meta is even keeping any of the Advantage audience expansion products (Advantage Detailed Targeting, Advantage Custom AudienceWhen turned on, Meta has the ability to expand targeting beyond your selected custom audience. The location, age, gender, and exclusions that you input will continue to be used as hard constraints. More, and Advantage LookalikeWhen turned on, Meta can expand your audience if it believes you can get better results by doing so. That expansion will be achieved by increasing the percentage of your lookalike audience, using the original custom audience for training. More). It’s confusing for advertisers because the difference between turning audience expansion on with those features or using Advantage+ AudienceMeta’s AI-powered targeting option. Meta will attempt to find your audience for you based on pixel activity, conversion history, and ad engagement. You can also provide targeting suggestions that Meta will initially prioritize before going broader. More is minimal.

Or, more accurately, the average advertiser won’t know the difference and will be confused. The difference is mostly semantics.

Since Advantage+ Audience does pretty much the same thing and it’s what Meta wants us to use anyway, I would not be surprised to see Advantage Detailed Targeting go away eventually. Maybe soon.

But, whatever. Some updates! Something to watch if you still use the old audience options.

What do you think?