Automatically Apply Delivery Recommendations to Meta Ads

Introduction

In the dynamic realm of digital advertising, staying ahead requires constant adaptation and optimization. As advertisers strive to maximize their ad performance and reach their target audiences effectively, leveraging the latest tools and features becomes paramount. One such tool that has garnered significant attention is the ability to automatically apply delivery recommendations to meta ads.

Understanding Meta Ads and Delivery Recommendations

What are Delivery Recommendations?

Delivery recommendations are suggestions provided by the advertising platform to optimize ad delivery and maximize performance. These recommendations may include adjustments to targeting, budget allocation, ad creatives, and delivery scheduling.

Leveraging Automation for Enhanced Performance

Incorporating automation into your advertising strategy can streamline processes and improve efficiency. By automatically applying delivery recommendations to your meta ads, you can ensure that your campaigns are constantly optimized for success.

Where Will you Find the Button

Within your Account Overview, you may have seen this:

Automatic Adjustments

If you turn that slider on, you’ll see that you do have some control over what delivery recommendations are considered and which you will automatically apply.

Let’s break these down…

Campaign Structure: Ad sets may be combined so they deliver more efficiently. Ads that are underperforming could be turned off, which may redistribute your budget.

This seems most relevant to Auction Overlap and Audience Fragmentation. My assumption is that the ads that are turned off are only in relationship to the ad set that was combined.

Audience: This 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. “Adjust targeting settings when there’s an opportunity to reach more people who might be interested in your ads.”

This seems to suggest that even if you don’t turn on one of the Advantage+ audience expansion products, Meta may turn it on anyway if it’s believed to help you get more results.

Creative and Format: “Your ad creative may be enhanced when it’s likely to improve performance. This applies to media, text, ad format and other visual elements.”

You have the option of turning on Advantage+ Creative when you put your ad together. If you don’t, it may automatically get turned on (or an element of it may get turned on) if it may help you get better results.

Delivery and Engagement: “Optimize how your ads are delivered and which placements they’re shown in. This includes settings related to how people may engage with your ad, like which outcomes are prioritized.”

This seems a bit vague, but it sounds like it could change how your ad set is optimize (“which outcomes are prioritized”). It also seems to be related to turning on Advantage+ Placements, even if you had manually selected individual placements.

Spend and Schedule: “Your budget will never be changed. Other bid and schedule settings may be adjusted to help spend your budget more efficiently.”

This, again, lacks details. I assume if you used a Cost Cap or Bid Cap, the cap you set may be automatically adjusted if this is on. The only “schedule setting” I can imagine might get adjusted is if you use dayparting — maybe a day or time you had turned off would get turned back on if it would lead to better results.

Benefits of Automatic Delivery Recommendations

• Improved Ad Performance: By implementing delivery recommendations in real-time, you can enhance the performance of your meta ads and achieve better results.
• Time Savings: Automation eliminates the need for manual intervention, saving you valuable time that can be allocated to other aspects of your advertising strategy.
• Enhanced Targeting: Delivery recommendations help refine your targeting parameters, ensuring that your ads reach the most relevant audience segments.

My Opinion Based on My Experience

I've just started to embrace the broad targeting and generally go along with Advantage+ Placements, although I tend to be a bit cautious about it. However, I'm not quite ready to completely rely on Meta's automated assessment across the board.

Enabling these settings means putting trust in Meta's automated assessment universally, without exceptions. The issue is, there are often instances where I prefer not to use these features.

Let's break it down:

1. Campaign Structure: I've never found Meta's recommendation to merge campaigns or ad sets to be beneficial. I prefer to decide when to merge or abandon a campaign or ad set on my own.I'm keeping this feature off.
2. Audience: Sometimes, I have no choice but to let Detailed Targeting or Lookalike Audiences expand, especially for conversion optimization. However, there are occasions when I want it explicitly turned off, like when targeting a custom audience that I don't want expanded.I'm keeping this feature off.
3. Creative and Format: While I'm starting to explore Advantage+ Creative, I'm not fully convinced of its effectiveness yet. If it's off, it's because I've intentionally kept it that way, at least for now.I'm keeping this feature off.
4. Delivery and Engagement: I can't imagine allowing Meta to automatically change my optimization goal. I've chosen my optimization goal for a reason and I want it to remain as I set it. Though I use Advantage+ Placements for conversions, there are times when I prefer not to, due to flaws in Meta's ads optimization.I'm keeping this feature off.
5. Spend and Schedule: I'm not entirely sure what this feature entails. If it's about bidding, I don't engage much in manual bidding, and if it's about dayparting, I don't utilize it either. Hence, I see no reason to turn it on.I'm keeping this feature off.

It's not that I reject making adjustments based on Meta's recommendations entirely. The issue lies in my lack of complete trust in Meta's ability to apply these adjustments universally, given the current weaknesses in the system.

While the ads algorithm is improving and quite sophisticated, it's not flawless. Therefore, I can't bring myself to turn these features on just yet.