The Difference Between Advantage+ Audience and Custom Audience on Meta Advertising
There are two primary audience settings we can use when setting up a Meta campaign.
Advantage+ is automatically defined by Meta based on various factors, while the custom audience is one you define yourself, but what to use?
Advantage+ Audience
Advantage+ Audience, formerly known as "Automatic Placements," is designed to leverage Meta's machine learning algorithms to optimize audience targeting automatically. This option aims to simplify the targeting process and improve the performance of your ads by using Meta's vast data and predictive analytics.
Key Features of Advantage+ Audience:
Automation: Advantage+ Audience uses Meta's algorithms to automatically target users who are most likely to respond to your ads based on their behaviors, interests, and demographics.
Optimization: The system continuously learns and optimizes your audience targeting in real-time, ensuring that your ads are shown to the right people at the right time.
Ease of Use: Advantage+ Audience simplifies the ad creation process by reducing the need for manual audience selection and adjustments.
Benefits of Advantage+ Audience:
Time-Saving: Reduces the time and effort required to manually define and adjust target audiences.
Improved Performance: Leverages Meta's advanced algorithms to enhance ad performance and achieve better results.
Scalability: Ideal for advertisers looking to reach a broad audience without the need for granular targeting adjustments.
Custom Audience
Custom Audience is a more manual and precise targeting option that allows advertisers to create highly specific audiences based on their own data. This feature enables you to target users who have already interacted with your business in some way, such as visiting your website, engaging with your app, or subscribing to your email list.
Key Features of Custom Audience:
Data-Driven Targeting: Custom Audience uses your own data to create target audiences. You can upload customer lists, website traffic data, app activity, and more.
Specificity: Allows for highly granular targeting, enabling you to reach specific groups of users based on their past interactions with your business.
Retargeting: Excellent for retargeting campaigns, as you can re-engage users who have shown interest in your products or services but have not yet converted.
Benefits of Custom Audience:
Precision: Provides highly specific targeting based on actual user data, leading to more relevant and effective ads.
Re-Engagement: Perfect for retargeting efforts to convert users who have already expressed interest in your business.
Control: Gives advertisers full control over the audience selection process, allowing for detailed segmentation and targeting strategies.
Comparing Advantage+ Audience and Custom Audience
Automation vs. Manual Control:
Advantage+ Audience: Relies heavily on automation and Meta's algorithms to define and optimize the audience targeting. It is best suited for advertisers who prefer a hands-off approach and trust Meta's AI to find the best audience.
Custom Audience: Offers manual control over audience creation, allowing advertisers to use their own data for precise targeting. Ideal for businesses that have specific targeting needs and prefer to have full control over their audience selection.
Use Cases:
Advantage+ Audience: Great for broad, top-of-the-funnel campaigns where the goal is to reach a large and diverse audience. It is also beneficial for advertisers who want to save time and leverage Meta's machine learning capabilities for audience optimization.
Custom Audience: Best for retargeting and re-engagement campaigns, where the focus is on converting users who have already interacted with your business. It is also suitable for advertisers with well-defined customer segments and specific targeting requirements.
Conclusion
Both Advantage+ Audience and Custom Audience offer valuable targeting options on Meta's advertising platform, but they serve different purposes and cater to different needs. Advantage+ Audience is ideal for advertisers looking for an automated, scalable solution to reach a broad audience with minimal manual intervention. Custom Audience, on the other hand, is perfect for those who need precise, data-driven targeting to re-engage specific user groups and achieve higher conversion rates.
Understanding the differences between these two options allows you to choose the right strategy for your advertising goals, whether you aim to reach a wide audience efficiently or target specific users with tailored messages. By leveraging the strengths of both Advantage+ Audience and Custom Audience, you can create effective and impactful campaigns that drive results for your business.
90% of the time, our recommendation is to test Advantage+ and your custom audience against each other to see which one performs best.
