Advantage+ vs. Manual Placements for Facebook Ads: 4 Best Practices You Need to Know

Did you know that Facebook has over 2.9 billion monthly active users?

This is one of the reasons growing businesses worldwide leverage the platform to connect with a relevant audience and generate traction.

However, getting the intended audience to notice you organically can be pretty daunting. That’s why businesses run Facebook ads to convey their messages to the right audience.

Facebook ads are a great way to boost brand awareness and capture quality leads for your sales funnel.

It has proved to be useful for businesses around the globe and has helped them elevate their conversions by multiple folds.

However, a common challenge businesses often face when creating Facebook ad campaigns is whether they should go with Advantage+ or the manual ad placement option.

In this article, we will compare both options and discuss a few best practices that will help you choose the one that is best for you.

So, without further ado, let’s get started:

Advantage+ vs. Manual Placements

Advantage+, previously known as Automatic Ad Placement, is an option provided to you by Facebook that distributes your advertisements automatically without you having to go into the nitty gritty.

This option is often preferred by beginners, as it’s easy to use and allows them to reach more people with a limited budget. The Advantage+ placement option is more of a set-and-forget approach. So, it doesn’t require you to be an expert at ad placement.

With Advantage+ placement, the platform does all the work for you and automates the process, so you can have a hassle-free experience when running ad campaigns.

On the other hand, the manual placement option allows you to handpick the mediums where you want your ads to be displayed like feeds, stories, marketplaces, etc.

The manual placement option lets you have the steering wheel and allows you to tailor your targeting strategy. Here, you leverage only the placement mediums that you think align with your niche and will help you engage the intended audience.

So, one can say that manual ad placement seems like a better option to choose compared to Advantage+. However, there’s a downside to choosing manual ad placement, as it may consume more budget compared to automatic ad placement.

Plus, Facebook also recommends that advertisers go with the default automation set by the platform. Therefore, the selection of the best-suited method for ad placement can be tricky.

The following best practices may come in handy here and make it possible for you to choose an ad placement strategy that aligns with your goals.

1. Quality Over Quantity

When you choose Advantage+ to run an ad campaign on Facebook, the platform maximizes your budget to drive a particular action but barely considers the quality.

For example, if you run an ad campaign using Advantage+ to drive traffic, the platform will optimize the campaign to get you more visitors at the lowest cost. However, the audience you attract through your ad may or may not be relevant.

On the other hand, the manual option enables you to customize your ad placement and choose mediums with a strong likelihood of engaging the intended audience.

It’s reported that more than 86% of businesses leverage stories to engage their respective audiences. So, with manual ad placement, you may choose to display your ads on stories only and get better results from your campaign.

2. Testing Variations

When you choose the Advantage+ option, the platform instantly starts distributing your ad on the automatically selected placement mediums.

The platform consistently optimizes your campaign and incorporates the campaign’s learning to get you better results. However, it doesn’t support experimentation and deprives you of the option to test multiple versions of your ad with different placements.

For that, you may have to consider editing your placements manually and customizing your assets, like the text or visual content in your ad.

Testing different variations of your ads with different placement options may seem like a tedious process. But it ensures optimal utilization of your budget and helps you drive better results.

3. Pinpoint Targeting

With Advantage+, you can run your ad campaign effortlessly. You let the platform optimize your campaign and select the distribution options best suited for it.

This may serve as a benefit for beginners but can be a crippling experience for veteran advertisers.

It deprives you of the ability to pinpoint the intended audience profile(s) and select appropriate placement channels.

For your ad campaign to perform exceptionally well, you may want to consider excluding certain placement options as they may not bring you results on par with your expectations.

So, manual placement may be a better-suited placement strategy for you compared to Advantage+.

4. The Human Touch

Facebook ads have the potential to reach around 1.95 billion of the app’s active users. And that makes it one of the leading social media platforms with the highest ad reach potential.

That’s why businesses worldwide have been using the platform to run their ad campaigns. And the platform has been constantly improving its ad distribution based on the lessons learned from previous ad campaigns by businesses around the globe.

That said, the platform may not know more about your business or your audience dynamics than you do.

And for that particular reason, your ad placements may often require the human touch to deliver better results.

Placing your ads manually reduces the likelihood of the platform blowing your budget on placements that are just not right for you.

Advantage+ may give you more reach and is recommended by the platform. But manual placements will help you ensure that you’re efficiently utilizing your budget and conveying your message to an audience that’s likely interested in what you have to offer.

It’s a Wrap

In this article, we compared Advantage+ with manual placement for Facebook ads and explored the four best practices that may help you choose the best option.

If we were to sum it up, manual ad placement is an overall better strategy when running your ads on Facebook. It allows you to dive deep and choose ad placements that work best for you.

However, if you are a beginner or inexperienced advertiser, it’s highly recommended that you choose Advantage+. It’s a safe option for you to get started, as you may not want to burn through all your budget and get no results.

As you get acquainted with the platform dynamics and gain in-depth experience, you may start micromanaging your campaigns and tailoring the placement options as per your liking.

But until then, it’d be best to stick with Advantage+ and trust the platform to optimize your campaigns for you.