Facebook Advertising Strategies: Top 5 Practices for 2024

Boost your Facebook advertising Returns on Investment (ROI) through leveraging AI tools such as Advantage+ audiences, creative enhancements, and optimized ad placements.

The article discusses how PPC ad platforms, especially Meta platforms, are adopting and standardizing AI, automation, and machine learning in their advertising products. Meta, in particular, has rebranded its automated ad products as Advantage and Advantage+ tools, promoting the use of AI across various aspects of campaign management like budgeting and creative development. As a result, automation and Advantage+ will play a significant role in the best practices for advertising on Meta platforms in 2024.

Aims to provide recommendations for strategically incorporating AI into campaign setups to achieve growth and scalability without completely relying on automation for control.

1. Streamline your account structure

To enhance efficiency in Meta advertising, it's crucial to optimize your campaign setup for growth and budget allocation. This involves consolidating campaigns with similar objectives and conversion events into a single campaign, utilizing the Advantage campaign budget (formerly Campaign Budget Optimization).

By simplifying your account structure, you reduce overlap in the auction and direct your budget towards ad sets with a higher potential for lower Cost Per Action (CPA) and increased volume.

The key to this strategy lies in leveraging the Advantage campaign budget, which automatically allocates spend based on performance metrics. This eliminates manual budget guesswork and maintains efficient CPAs by investing your marketing budget where it can make the most impact.

While consolidating campaigns is generally beneficial, there's an exception worth considering for prospecting and retargeting audiences. If you have large prospecting ad sets combined with smaller retargeting audiences in the same campaign, Meta might under-allocate the budget to retargeting. In such cases, creating a separate campaign for retargeting can be advantageous, particularly if there's a strong business rationale for allocating a specific amount to retargeting efforts.

2. Explore the Meta Advantage+ Audience

In recent times, there has been a significant shift in meta-advertising best practices, particularly regarding the effectiveness of broader audience targeting. Meta has responded by making the new Advantage+ Audience product the default choice for creating new ad sets.

But what exactly is Advantage+ Audience?

Think of Advantage+ Audience as an AI-powered dynamic targeting feature that adapts its audience selection based on performance data. Unlike fixed targeting methods (such as interests, behaviors, and demographics) that limit ad delivery to specific categories, Advantage+ Audience expands and adjusts your audience based on your campaign objectives.

Advantage+ Audience comprises two main components: Audience Controls (essential settings) and Audience Suggestions (optional recommendations).

Audience Controls allow you to define essential targeting parameters, such as location, age, language, and any custom audiences you wish to exclude. Audience Suggestions enable you to add standard Meta targeting criteria like interests and behaviors. However, Meta is not restricted to targeting only these segments; instead, it uses them as guidance rather than strict requirements.

I've been utilizing Advantage+ Audience since its launch, and I find it to be a powerful tool that can drive improved results overall.

Nevertheless, I suggest testing it within a campaign alongside a separate audience created using your original detailed targeting options. Additionally, incorporating a conversion-based lookalike audience can be beneficial, as this audience type has seen a resurgence in terms of effectiveness.

By incorporating multiple audiences within a unified campaign using the Advantage campaign budget, you can enhance efficiency and unlock better scaling potential.

3. Embrace Creative Enhancements (When Feasible)

One of the standout updates in Meta's automated tools suite is the introduction of creative enhancement options, now known as Advantage+ Creative.

These enhancements enable Meta to automatically optimize the visual appeal of your ads. They include various adjustments like:

• Tweaking image brightness and contrast.
• Applying artistic filters such as sharpening, color temperature adjustments, vignettes, or radial blurs.
• Altering aspect ratios to show the original or cropped versions of images.
• Incorporating templates into feed images.
• Adding labels to highlight essential aspects of your business, such as likes or ratings from your Facebook Page.
• Integrating relevant Facebook and Instagram comments.
• Implementing text combinations like primary text, headlines, or descriptions.
• Including music to complement the ad content.

By default, Meta will likely apply most, if not all, of these enhancements to your ad creative. It's crucial to review and assess these enhancements in collaboration with your creative and brand teams.

Some enhancements, such as image templates (with editable fonts and colors), music, and image expansion, can significantly impact the appearance of your creative. However, when executed correctly, these enhancements have proven to improve campaign results. Personally, I've found image templates (using brand-safe colors and fonts) and text improvements to be particularly beneficial.

Testing Advantage+ Creative is worthwhile, provided it's done in a brand-safe manner. Not only can it boost click-through rates (CTRs) and creative engagement, but it can also help combat creative fatigue over time.???

4. Utilize New Lead Generation Features

Meta is introducing two significant updates to its lead generation forms that offer substantial benefits for users: Conditional Logic and Rich Creative.

Conditional logic addresses a common concern among meta-lead generation advertisers: lead quality. It allows advertisers to customize lead forms so that respondents are directed to different questions or end pages based on their answers to custom questions. This enables advertisers to pre-screen leads and redirect them if their answers suggest they may not be a good fit.

Additionally, conditional logic enables advertisers to set up tailored end pages aligned with specific answers, leading to different destinations or calls-to-action (CTAs) based on responses.

Rich creative lead forms offer enhanced visual and customization options, including additional sections such as Benefits, How it Works, Products, and Incentives. These optional sections can boost engagement and improve conversion rates by providing more detailed information before lead submission.?

5. Explore Advantage+ Placements

Meta has introduced Advantage+ placements as a more advanced version of Automatic placements, allowing advertisers to run ads across various placements within the Meta network and allocate budget accordingly.

While many advertisers traditionally focus on Facebook and Instagram newsfeeds for ad placement, there are now numerous other options like Reels, Stories, Marketplace, and more.

Initially skeptical about automatic placements, I've observed significant improvements in managing costs per 1,000 views (CPMs) and achieving better results through diversification in ad placements.

For advertisers focusing on lead generation or conversion-optimized campaigns, experimenting with Advantage+ placements can lead to improved CPM efficiency and higher conversion rates.

However, for those running upper-funnel campaigns aimed at reaching wider audiences or enhancing brand awareness, it's advisable to proceed cautiously. While CPM efficiency may improve, there's a possibility of ad delivery favoring placements that may not be as premium.

Ultimately, Advantage+ placements optimize based on your campaign objectives, promising better results in terms of CPA and media efficiency. Given these potential benefits, it's worth conducting a test to gauge its impact on your campaigns.