If you’re running ads on Meta (Facebook and Instagram), you’ve probably noticed things look a little different in Ads Manager lately. That’s because Meta has been rolling out and expanding its Advantage+ suite, a collection of AI-powered tools designed to automate campaign setup, audience targeting, creative optimization, and budget allocation.
At Rise321, we’ve been testing and working with Advantage+ across client accounts, and there’s a lot to like. But like any automation tool, it works best when you understand what it’s doing behind the scenes. Here’s a quick breakdown of the benefits and the things every advertiser should keep an eye on.
5 Benefits of Meta’s Advantage+
1. Saves Time on Campaign Setup Advantage+ streamlines the campaign creation process significantly. Instead of manually building out multiple ad sets with different audience segments, you can let Meta’s AI handle the heavy lifting — freeing you up to focus on strategy.
2. Smarter Budget Allocation With Advantage+ Campaign Budget, Meta automatically shifts spend toward your highest-performing ad sets in real time. That means less money wasted on under performers and more budget flowing to what’s actually driving results.
3. AI-Driven Audience Discovery Meta’s machine learning draws from pixel data, conversion history, and engagement signals to find the people most likely to take action. Many advertisers are seeing lower cost-per-acquisition and stronger return on ad spend compared to traditional interest-based targeting.
4. Better Creative Optimization Advantage+ Creative tools can automatically test different combinations of images, copy, and formats to determine what resonates best. This helps combat creative fatigue and keeps performance strong without requiring constant manual refreshes.
5. Proven Performance Gains Meta reports that Advantage+ campaigns deliver an average of 22% higher ROAS and that Advantage+ Leads campaigns have shown roughly 10% lower cost per qualified lead. While results vary, the data points to real efficiency gains when the system has quality data to work with.
5 Things to Be Aware Of
1. Your Ads May Reach People Outside Your Target Audience This is the big one. Advantage+ Audience treats your targeting inputs as suggestions, not hard rules. Meta’s AI will prioritize the audiences you define, but it will expand beyond them if it believes other users are likely to convert. If you’re a business that only serves a specific demographic, geography, or niche, this is critical to understand. Your ads can and will be shown to people outside your intended audience.
2. This Expansion Happens in Almost Every Campaign Type Here’s something many advertisers miss: Advantage+ Audience is automatically active in Sales, Traffic, and App Promotion campaigns. However, the ability to switch back to “Original Audiences” and lock in strict targeting varies by campaign type. If controlling exactly who sees your ads matters to your business, be sure to review your audience settings at the ad set level and understand the difference between Audience Controls (hard limits) and Audience Suggestions (soft guides). Learn more about Advantage+ Audience settings
3. Lead Quality Can Suffer While Advantage+ can drive a higher volume of leads at a lower cost, that doesn’t always mean better leads. The AI optimizes for the action you choose (like a form submission), not necessarily the quality of that action. If you notice a spike in junk leads, consider optimizing for Conversion Leads instead of standard leads, or tighten up your lead forms with qualifying questions. Read more about optimizing lead quality
4. Less Transparency Into Who You’re Reaching With Advantage+, much of the audience learning happens inside Meta’s “black box.” You won’t always have clear visibility into exactly who is seeing your ads or why the algorithm chose them. This makes it harder to diagnose issues and requires a shift in mindset, from analyzing granular audience data to evaluating overall campaign-level performance metrics like ROAS, CPA, and Meta’s Opportunity Score.
5. Creative Fatigue Can Sneak Up on You Because Advantage+ may keep pushing your top-performing creative, it can exhaust your best-performing audiences faster than you’d expect. If you’re not regularly refreshing your ad creative, you may see performance plateau or decline. Build a habit of rotating in new creative every 30–45 days and monitor frequency metrics closely.
The Bottom Line
Meta’s Advantage+ is a powerful set of tools, and when used strategically, it can drive real results. But automation doesn’t mean “set it and forget it.” The advertisers who win with Advantage+ are the ones who understand what the AI is doing, feed it quality data and creative, and stay on top of performance.
If you have questions about how Advantage+ is impacting your campaigns — or you want help making sure your Meta ads are set up for success reach out to the Rise321 team. We’re here to help.
