Should You Use Meta Advantage+ Placements in 2025?

Want to display Meta ads at the right place at the right time, but not sure how? You are not alone. 

To give advertisers structure and control over ad placements, Meta offers a tool to help ads appear in more visible spots within the Meta ecosystem–Meta Advantage Placements. 

A part of the Advantage+ campaign suite, Advantage+ Placements helps allocate ads across Facebook and Instagram, enhancing visibility and targeting to reach customers who are most likely to convert on these ads. 

This guide will walk through Meta Advantage+ placements, when to use them, how to implement them, and how they optimize your ad budget.

Let’s get started!

What is Meta Advantage+ Placements?

Using AI, Advantage+ Placements (formerly automatic placements) automates ad placements across Meta technologies like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, and Meta Audience Network. It allocates the best possible placements and optimizes your Facebook ads for optimal results. 

To deliver effective performance, Meta analyzes all available default placements to determine which ones are the most suitable for your campaign.

Meta recommends using automatic placements for most advertisers. These placements allow ads to appear across the broadest range of platforms and formats, allowing them to use the advertiser’s budget more efficiently and help manage overall costs.

Ad Placement Options & Their Priority

Advertisers use Advantage+ Placements across various ad locations within the Meta ecosystem. Knowing when to use them is important in order to get the most out of your ad bids. 

Before choosing Advantage+ Placements, you must know the quality options of the different available placements. Ranging from high-quality to low-quality possibilities, we have arranged the placements as follows: 

High Quality Placement Options – Focus on higher engagement & visibility 

1. Facebook and Instagram Feeds: Feeds have the potential to drive more conversions. They are also one of the best spots for displaying creative ad formats such as carousel ads, video ads, and single-image ads.
   
2. Facebook and Instagram Reels: Next but most important are reel ads, a popular choice among younger demographics and suitable for video ads. They offer quicker access and provide call-to-action buttons that take leads to your online store or Facebook or Instagram Shops. Users view reels on all supported devices, such as tablets, iPads, and mobile devices.
   
3. Facebook and Instagram Stories:  Story ads have the potential to garner high click-through rates with short-form videos. Again, it is suitable for mobile devices. 

Medium Quality Placement Options – Medium Reach 

4. Instagram Explore: Ads on the Explore page can grab attention with high discovery value. However, feeds still have the upper hand in driving conversions.
   
5. Facebook Marketplace: The Facebook Marketplace offers high purchase intent for different types of buyers. While a good spot for finding buyers, it provides a 50-50 chance of gaining a conversion.
   
6. Facebook In-stream Videos: Good for video ads, but less effective at generating direct action.

Low Quality Placement Options – Low engagement and less reach 

7. Meta Audience Network: Engagement is low. It is suitable for impressions and offers low CPM (cost-per-mille).
   
8. Messenger: They appear inside the inbox. They are great for retargeting, but not standard ad campaigns.
   
9. Right Column on Homepage: Appears on desktop. It offers low engagement and impressions. 

Keep in mind that low-priority does not equate to being unworthy. They also hold importance in ad exposure. This all depends on where your target audience is and what kind of ad objective you have selected. We have discussed this further below.

When should you use automatic ad placements on Meta?

Meta highly recommends Advantage+ Placements when creating an ad set. The automation optimizes your campaigns to reach the best outcome possible, which is a purchase conversion. 

And when do you get a conversion? When you choose a conversion-based ad objective, such as “Leads,” “App promotions,” or “Sales.” Along with that, upon selecting a high-priority placement, Meta is able to analyze and show ads to relevant audiences. 

When using any Advantage+ feature, Meta constantly trains its machine learning algorithms to understand and display your ads to high-intent leads. It then optimizes placements based on:

• When your audience is available (time and day)
• Audience type 
• Impression frequency 

Good audience data comes with good results; the more the algorithm learns, the better it can provide. 

Hence, it is ideal when you want to convert shoppers into buyers. 

Advantage+ is automatically on when you opt for leads, sales, or app promotions in the ad objective. Here’s how it will look: 

For other objectives, you can choose between Advantage+ and manual placements.

When should you use manual placement on Meta?

While automation can enhance performance, advertisers can manually choose to place their ad campaigns, too. 

Manual placements also work for all ad objectives. In the case of Sales, App promotions, and Leads campaigns, Advantage+ is usually on. If you remove one placement, Advantage+ turns off, signaling that it is in manual mode.

When we talk about applying it, manual placements are utilized for strategic control over ad placement to align with specific campaign goals, particularly for engagement-focused goals rather than conversion-focused ones.

We recommend avoiding low-quality placements like Audience Network and Messenger to get richer traffic or engagement.

Potential customers are not actively paying attention to your ads in these low-quality placements, compared to feeds, reels, or story ads. In such cases, accidental clicks may happen, and you will not receive good results.

Remember that accidental clicks are not ideal, and you need to adjust your ad strategy to avoid them and get the desired results.  

Also, Threads is relatively new and may require personal intervention to decide if it is the right choice for you. The ads mostly appear in the feed between different posts. 

Advantage+ is also available for these ad objectives. You have an option to choose whether to apply it or not.

How Does the Delivery System Work in Meta Advantage+ Placements?

Meta’s ad delivery system utilizes machine learning and ad auctions to identify where, when, and to whom to display your ad campaigns. For placements, Meta uses advanced algorithms to identify the most effective spots across its platforms to maximize your ad’s reach.

For maximum functionality, Meta’s delivery system optimizes the advertiser’s ad budget and improves ad exposure. The delivery system focuses on getting the most optimization events at the lowest average cost. 

By doing so, Meta looks into all available placements and chooses the lowest-cost options, without focusing on the average cost per optimization event for each placement.

Depending on the ad objective, Meta deploys your ads according to the ad type and settings. It also uses audience targeting data to determine where your leads are more likely to be and how these ads can reach them. 

Delivery System Example

Facebook gives an interesting example to explain this better:

Suppose you’re going through your ad report and notice that one placement, Facebook feeds, received more conversions at a lower cost compared to another placement, Instagram stories. You might think that to save up on your budget, it is best to turn off Instagram stories, as they are an expensive option, and keep ads on Facebook feeds running. 

However, Meta advises not to do that. Here’s why:

1. The delivery system focuses on optimizing all possible placements for maximum results, not just the cheaper options.
   
2. Even if Instagram stories cost more per action, it might still help you reach more people, fill in gaps that other placements cannot, or convert users who wouldn’t respond elsewhere.
   
3. Turning off placements based on average costs can limit your overall performance, because you’re removing options that help your ads scale and reach different parts of your audience.

Hence, to get the most results possible for your budget, it is best to go with the highest volume bid strategy.  

To get inspiration or to stay ahead of your competitors, explore the Meta Ads Library to kickstart the ideation process and strategy for creating relevant ad campaigns.

Optimizing Budget Efficiency: Real-Life Example

We will be using Facebook’s example to further explain why removing costly placements will impact your results. 

Imagine you have $27 to spend on ads, and there are 11 opportunities to show them, mainly 3 on Facebook, 3 on Instagram, and  5 on the Audience Network. Each placement has a different cost per result:

• Facebook: $3 per optimisation event – 3 opportunities × $3 = $9
• Instagram: $5 per optimisation event – 3 opportunities × $5 = $15
• Audience Network: $1 per optimisation event – 3 opportunities x $1 = $3 and 2 opportunities x $7 = $14 (remaining Audience Network placement cost; used only when budget allows, while we go with the cheaper one = $3 )

If you use all placements, Meta’s system can pick the most cost-effective options, giving you 9 results at an average of $3 each. Here’s how: 

• With Facebook, the average cost per optimisation event is $3
• With Instagram, the average cost per optimisation event is $5
• And with Audience Network, the average cost per optimisation event is $1

Here is how that will look on a graph: 

But if you turn off Instagram because it looks more expensive, you limit Meta’s options. As a result, you’d get 8 results for $26, with a higher average cost of $3.25 per result:

So, removing higher-cost placements can actually reduce overall performance and make your budget less efficient. 

How To Use Meta Advantage+ Placements? 

The process is straightforward. As mentioned earlier, Advantage+ suits conversion-based objectives like Sales, App promotions, and Leads. You can use it for other ad objectives, too.

You can also access and create ad campaigns via Meta Business Suite.

For this example, we will go with Leads as our campaign objective. 

• Click continue. Give your campaign a name, select the buying type between auction and reservation, set ad budget strategy, and choose special ad categories if applicable.
  
  Click Next. In the next section, give the ad set a name, and choose the conversion location: 

The conversion location is where you want the desired conversion to happen. You inform Meta that this is the designated place (such as websites, instant forms, etc.) where you want the action to take place.

Then, you choose a conversion event, which tells Meta what action you want your target audience to take. The conversion event relies on Meta Pixel, so ensure you have selected the correct pixel. 

• Then, set dynamic creative, budget & schedule, and Advantage+ audience.
  
• Now, bear in mind that performance goals (formerly called optimisation goals) play a vital role in running Advantage+ placements. 

If you have a conversion-based ad objective and the performance goal is a conversion goal, Advantage+ will retrieve efficient results. However, if the performance goal changes to something like page views or link clicks for a conversion objective, Advantage+ may fall behind.

• Scroll down and find Placements. This is how it will look: 

Advantage+ Placements run across all operating systems, offering a versatile way of approaching the right audience on different devices. 

Pick the suitable option from the dropdown. It is best to go with all operating systems and devices. 

Now comes the most crucial part–deciding which Meta platforms to go for. As mentioned before, Advantage+ placements are suitable for a conversion-based campaign, and since Leads covers Advantage+, we recommend going with Facebook and Instagram.

Note that while we recommend following this strategy, you are free to opt for the other low-quality placements according to your needs.

For this example, we are only applying Facebook and Instagram. 

• Next, decide the placements. Since we have opted for Facebook and Instagram, the following options will appear: 

Advantage+ Placements activates when you select all the recommended placements.

Or, to enable all placements, click “Apply now” to activate the Advantage+ leads campaign, which will include placement automation. Once you do, you will see it “on” with a ticked sign and your campaign score will increase. 

Campaign Score: Also known as opportunity score, it informs the advertiser how optimized their ad campaign is before going live. It runs on a 1-100 scale metric.

Meta recommends using all placements for maximum reach and to increase the chances of a conversion.

It’s a good technique to follow, but if you wish to remove some placements, you can do that too, as long as you know that the selected placements will drive desired results and consist of at least one high-quality placement. 

• Optional: Turn on exclude skippable ads if you’re running an in-stream video campaign.

• Lastly, ensure you go through “Brand safety and suitability” to run secure ads. 

• Your Advantage+ placements setup is complete. Click “Next” at the bottom to complete your other ad campaign settings. Once done, you can click “Publish.”

Including other Advantage+ campaign features can skyrocket your chances of getting optimal results. By incorporating Advantage+ catalog ads into your campaigns, you get a dynamic feed that displays relevant products to the right audience. Learn how.

Benefits of Using Advantage+ Placements

Using this feature can be helpful in many ways. Here’s how: 

• More visibility: Showing your ad in more places gives people more chances to see and engage with it, matching their online habits.
• Better budget use: Meta’s system shows your ad where it performs best, helping you get more from your budget.
• Improved performance: Automatic placements often lead to better results, like lower costs per click or conversion.
• Wider reach: More ad placements help you reach a larger audience without changing your targeting.

Conclusion

To summarize, Advantage+ Placements offer an easy way to automate ad placement while maximizing targeting and reach.

With the right strategy and data, Advantage+ Placements can help you achieve better results for many campaigns by optimizing ad placements across Meta’s network.

FAQs

Is Advantage+ better than Manual placements?
This depends on the campaign type you are running. Advantage+ placements are ideal for conversions, while manual placements are ideal for generating traffic, impressions, or link clicks. It all comes down to the advertiser’s budget and requirements. 

How do I turn off Advantage+ placements?
To turn off Advantage+ placements, deselect a few placements under “Placement control” in the ad set level. If you remove even one placement, Advantage+ placements turns off. You will see “Advantage+ off” in the Placements section. You can also remove certain placements by going to Ad account settings > Accounts Control > Placements Control > Toggle on “My business can only advertise on specific placements” and deselect unrequired placements. 

How can I optimize my ad budget using Meta Advantage+ Placements for better ROI?
Using Meta’s Advantage+ Placements helps in displaying ads automatically in places where they’re most likely to perform well. This reduces wasted ad spend on underperforming placements and improves return by focusing your budget on high-impact areas across Meta’s platforms.

Why are my ads not performing well despite using Meta Advantage+ Placements?
While using Meta Advantage+ Placements is beneficial for ad placement optimization, advertisers must keep in mind that performance also depends on their ad creatives and audience targeting. Make sure your ad visuals and messaging are compelling, and review your audience settings. Use performance insights to test different creative formats or messages and refine your targeting strategy. A mix of these three: placements, audience, and creatives, can improve ad performance.

How do I troubleshoot issues with ad delivery in Meta Advantage+ Placements?
One major way to fix this is by checking your performance goal. If you’re using a conversion-based ad objective, ensure the performance goal is set to the maximum number of conversions or any other option that prioritizes conversion outcomes. Refrain from using low-quality placements and depend on your audience targeting. If you’re new to Advantage placements, then rely on high-quality ad placements. 

What should I do if my ad costs are increasing with Meta Advantage+ Placements?
Increasing costs may signal ad fatigue or increased competition. Review your bidding strategy, adjust your budget distribution, and refresh your creatives. Analyze performance data to identify underperforming segments and refine your audience targeting for better efficiency.

How can I ensure my ads reach the right audience with Meta Advantage+ Placements?
Take advantage of Meta’s detailed targeting tools in “Audience” to define your audience based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. Regularly review campaign performance to see which audience segments are converting, then refine your targeting accordingly to improve relevance and results.

Check Out These Related Articles:

• Advantage+ Placements vs Manual Placements
• Meta Advantage+ Audience
• Meta Advantage+ Sales Campaigns 
• Advantage+ Creative for Enhanced Ad Performance