Advantage+ is Meta ads’ automated advertising system built to simplify campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger and the wider Meta network. It uses artificial intelligence to manage targeting, creative testing, placements and budget optimisation. Rather than manually creating and adjusting many ad sets, advertisers set their goals and provide creative assets, while Meta’s AI decides how best to reach the right people at the right time.
When it came about
Advantage+ was first introduced in 2022 through Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, which focused on e-commerce businesses. By 2025, Meta had rebranded and expanded this to Advantage+ Campaigns. The newer version is designed not only for online sales but also for lead generation and app promotion, showing Meta’s intent to make automation central for every type of business advertiser.
Why Meta introduced Advantage+
Advantage+ was developed in response to two growing challenges. The first was the loss of detailed audience targeting following privacy changes such as Apple’s iOS updates, which limited the data advertisers could rely on. The second was the increasing complexity of managing campaigns, which left smaller businesses at a disadvantage. Meta’s solution was to place machine learning at the heart of campaign management. Advertisers still set the overall objective and provide creative content, but the system now controls targeting, placement and budget distribution to maximise results.
How Advantage+ works
Advantage+ uses artificial intelligence to test combinations of images, videos and copy against different audiences. Targeting has shifted from being rigidly defined to more of a suggestion. You can provide audience ideas, such as lookalikes or exclusions, but the system automatically goes beyond them to find people most likely to take action.
Budgets are no longer locked to specific ad sets. Instead, Meta’s AI shifts spend dynamically depending on performance, ensuring more money is directed towards high-performing creatives. Placements across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the Audience Network are also chosen automatically. In 2025, Meta introduced an Opportunity Score, which rates campaigns out of 100 inside Ads Manager and gives advertisers guidance on how to improve.
Efficiency versus control
The appeal of Advantage+ lies in its efficiency. Campaigns take less time to set up and manage, and advertisers often see better performance. The compromise is less control and transparency, since most decisions are made by the AI and not by the advertiser. By 2025 Meta had invested billions into AI infrastructure, signalling its commitment to this model. For businesses, this means that automation is not just an optional tool but a growing standard in digital advertising.
Regaining some control
Audience segment reporting
Audience Segment Reporting allows advertisers to break down campaign performance into three groups (as defined by Meta ads):
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New audience: People who have not interacted with your products or services.
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Engaged audience: An audience that you define in your ad account as people who are aware of your business or have interacted with your products or services, but have not made a purchase.
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Existing customers: An audience that you define in your ad account settings as people that have purchased products or signed up for your services.
When you turn this on, Meta classifies conversions into these categories based on your account’s defined audience segments. The benefit is that you can see not just how many conversions you received, but also where they came from in terms of customer lifecycle.
In the past, Meta gave very limited visibility into who was converting through Advantage+ campaigns. It was often described as a black box, which made advertisers hesitant to scale. Audience Segment Reporting was introduced to bring back some of that transparency.
As of 2025:
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You can define your engaged and existing customer lists in Advertiser Settings, usually by uploading customer data, using custom audiences, or integrating CRM data through the Conversions API.
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Advantage+ will then automatically classify results into new, engaged or existing groups.
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This is especially important because Advantage+ campaigns often find “easy wins” in existing customer bases. The reporting helps you see if the AI is mostly remarketing to people who would have converted anyway, or actually finding new customers.
Without this reporting, it can be easy to overestimate campaign success if most conversions are simply from people who already know your brand. With it enabled, you get a clearer view of:
| Segment | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| New audience | Shows how well Meta’s AI is expanding reach and finding fresh customers |
| Engaged audience | Demonstrates how efficiently warm prospects are being converted |
| Existing customers | Reveals if the campaign is relying too heavily on repeat buyers or past leads |
Value rules
This also lives in your Advertiser Settings. Value Rules provide a strategic way to re‑insert business context into automated campaigns, at least where you know certain segments deliver higher revenue or better lifetime value. They help you steer AI behaviour without dismantling automation. This means, instead of inputting suggestions in each new adset, if you have a common targeting theme (i.e. if you sell products only for a specific gender), you can set this rule to apply across all ads.
When setting up Value Rules, you first pick one or two criteria, such as age, gender, location, operating system or placement, then specify a percentage adjustment to your bid for that group. The default increase is around 20 %, but you can scale this up as much as 1,000 % or decrease it by up to 90 %. However, we recommend being careful with this tool. Value Rules can raise your cost per result. If you significantly increase bids for certain segments, you may see more conversions from them, but each conversion could cost more. Meta advises that you base your rules on actual data such as ROAS or lifetime value rather than instinct.
How to use Advantage+
Getting started with Advantage+ in Ads Manager is straightforward:
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Choose your campaign objective, such as sales, leads or app installs.
Advantage+ on Meta ads (Leads) -
If you’re using a Sales objective, select Advantage+ Sales Campaigns, which is usually the recommended option. If you’re running leads, you will automatically go to campaign creation with “Advantage+” on (review the box on the right hand side of your setup). For some of you, your Sales objectives will automatically take you to Advantage+ without asking also. This is a current update.
- We recommend you have Audience Segment Reporting filled in in your Advertising Settings to allow Meta to have insights into your customer and engager base.
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Set your daily or lifetime budget along with campaign dates. Keep this as CBO for Adv+.
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Upload multiple creatives, including images, videos and ad copy.
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Provide optional audience suggestions or exclusions if you want to give the system a starting point. We recommend suggesting at least 3-4 ad sets made up of a broad audience, one or two lookalikes and a detailed demographic audience. Make sure these are not tight audiences. They should have at least 500k users within them.
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Make sure tracking is correctly set up through the Meta Pixel or Conversions API. The latter is ideal but not a requirement.
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Publish your campaign and allow the AI to optimise automatically.
Why use Advantage+ for e-commerce and lead-based business
Advantage+ was initially built with e-commerce in mind, and many retailers saw reduced purchase costs and higher return on ad spend compared with manual campaigns. By 2025 the same automation had been extended to other objectives, particularly lead generation and app installs. This means a retailer can sell products at scale, while a clinic can generate consultation bookings, a financial services firm can capture leads, and a recruitment agency can attract job applicants.
| Business type | How Advantage+ helps |
|---|---|
| Ecommerce | Promotes catalogues at scale and reduces cost per purchase |
| Lead-based services | Identifies and engages high-intent prospects automatically |
| App promotion | Optimises delivery for installs and user engagement |
Is Advantage+ considered “AI”?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is that Advantage+ is considered AI, although in Meta’s own language it is usually described as “automation” or “machine learning” (a subset of AI, not generative as many of us will be familiar with) rather than being framed directly as artificial intelligence.
Machine learning is at its core. Advantage+ uses algorithms that analyse vast amounts of performance data (clicks, conversions, browsing behaviour, creative engagement) and then make predictions about which audience, creative, placement and budget allocation are most likely to drive results. That is machine learning, which sits under the broader umbrella of AI.
While Advantage+ itself does not write copy or create images, it can generate creative combinations (mixing different headlines, texts and visuals) and test them automatically. This optimisation is AI-driven, even if it is not generative AI in the way tools like ChatGPT or DALL·E are.
As of this year, Meta has been publicly clear that its entire ads platform is shifting to an “AI-native” model. Mark Zuckerberg has said the company’s vision is that advertisers provide a goal, budget and creative inputs, and Meta’s AI does the rest, from audience selection to campaign optimisation. Advantage+ is a key part of that shift.
While the generative elements of Meta ads’ AI is still in its infancy and we personally would not recommend using any of these more generative elements for ad creation, we have witnessed the shift towards better performance in leaning into Meta’s machine learning rather than fighting against them with segmented detailed targeting. In fact, tightening parameters such as audience targeting too much can hinder Meta’s machine learning algorithms by giving it a smaller pool of users in which to find your “true audience” within.
Best practices for Advantage+
Finally, let’s cover some best practice to help get you started. To make the most of Advantage+, a few guiding principles are worth keeping in mind:
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Provide a variety of strong creatives so the AI has more material to test and optimise.
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Aim for at least 50 conversions per week if possible, as this gives the algorithm enough data to learn effectively. Otherwise, you may go in to Learning Limited.
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Scale budgets gradually rather than making large jumps, which can disrupt the optimisation process. We recommend, once you hit positive performance, to scale no more than 10-20% weekly.
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Refresh creatives regularly to avoid ad fatigue and keep results consistent. We recommend setting yourself a calendar invite to rotate creatives bi-weekly.
