Introducing Meta Advantage + Shopping Campaign [5 Best Practices From Tinuiti’s Marketing Experts]

Meta’s latest advertising solution suite is making big waves in the marketing industry, drumming up interest among brands as well as advertisers. Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, also known as ASC is a new performance advertising solution from Meta geared toward unlocking efficiencies for performance marketers across ecommerce and retail verticals. 

In the following article, we’ll dive into Meta’s latest features, capabilities, our own best practices, and a peek into early results using ASC.
 

What is Meta Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC)?

 
The Meta Advantage Suite is inclusive of Meta’s automated shopping products. ASC is the newest addition to the suite, which is in the process of being rolled out to all advertisers.

Credit: Meta Advantage Suite

According to Meta, ASC works to achieve the highest performance from a retailer’s catalog sales or conversion campaigns by automating multiple campaign levers such as:

• Creative
• Placement
• Audience targeting
• Ad budget 

How Is Tinuiti Using Meta ASC To Improve Brand Performance?

 
Social commerce has shifted significantly with iOS 14.5 and signal loss. Apple’s App Tracking transparency has limited data sharing, which has impacted ad relevance on Meta and other social platforms, leading to a decrease in attributable conversions.  As a result,  platforms have had to re-evaluate shopping products, to make great strides in automation and efficiency, which has been challenged by the changing ad ecosystem.

Leaning into Meta Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns is crucial for advertisers to stay competitive in the auction and take advantage of lower CPMs, CPAs, and more efficient ROAS compared to traditional conversion and catalog sales campaigns.

 
Overall, the platform is prioritizing more efficient delivery to this campaign type, which is key leading into the most competitive season.
 

How Does Meta ASC Work [And Why Is It A Big Deal]?

 
This type of campaign has minimal targeting options compared to a typical set up, where we have more control to break out granular audiences within different ad sets. ASC is one combined ad set, enabling broader audience reach optimizing between new and existing customers through machine learning and AI. This does support geo targeting within regions or countries and allows upload of existing buyer and pixel based retargeting audiences. Think of this as testing out the true broad audience within a personalized ad system.

Pro-tip: ASC has the ability to automate the delivery of up to 150 creative combinations in a single campaign, while the previous best practice was to run 4-6 ads per audience.
 

Tinuiti shares early results:

 
“Using ASC has allowed us to scale our budgets since within the first week of launch, it positively impacted overall performance for our retailer, increasing ROAS by 89%. In the first month, we increased our initial daily investment by 1400%, and we continue to see a steady and strong ROAS.” – Jess Vidal, Senior Specialist, Paid Social at Tinuiti

“Since leveraging ASC six weeks ago, we’ve seen a 72% increase in ROAS and overall positive performance impact for our conversion efforts. We continue to increase our investment in ASC in this pivotal time of year for retailers and holiday shoppers.” – Corinne Skala, Strategist, Paid Social at Tinuiti
 

Considerations for Brands Using Meta ASC

 
In order to make the most of your ASC strategy, consider the following:

• Asset Mix: Ensure you’re leveraging a mix of conversion (static image or video assets) and catalog sales (dynamic ads) assets
• Ad Count: Leverage anywhere from 8-15 ads in ASC, focusing on your top performing direct response creatives
• Targeting: Ensure you’re adding in current customer and retargeting lists so that you can monitor the breakdown in delivery against prospecting
• Existing Customer Budget Cap: Keep budget to existing customers/retargeting between 10-30%, depending on brand goals
• Attribution: Align attribution window with desired source of truth (1DC, 7DC, etc)

Credit: Meta Advantage Suite

When to use it:

 
Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns are recommended for retail and ecommerce verticals, where brands are looking to maximize ROAS within their paid social program. This is a great incremental tactic to launch alongside your existing conversion and catalog sales campaigns. Starting with a lower budget and scaling up over time is an effective way to drive efficiencies without disturbing existing campaign strategy.

Want to learn more about how Meta ASC can impact your business? Drop us a line!