Detailed guide on launching campaigns with AI from Meta - Advantage Shopping Campaigns

The importance of implementing AI in modern advertising campaigns cannot be overstated. Advantage Shopping Campaigns provide a unique toolkit for automating and optimizing advertising efforts, allowing marketers and arbitrageurs to focus on strategic planning rather than routine setup of each ad. In this guide, you’ll find everything you need for effective work with ASC: from campaign creation to results analysis and real-time strategy adjustments.

What is ASC?

Advantage Shopping Campaigns (ASC) is a type of campaign that utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to help advertisers achieve optimal results.

ASC uses predictive analytics and optimization to maximize ROAS and reduce CPA, ensuring greater scalability and stability of results. Key factors include user demographics, interests, past purchase behavior, and other relevant preferences.

It’s worth noting that ASC by Meta is also somewhat of a black box, and you have only two major levers to manage performance:

• Creatives
• Landing pages

ASC+ works effectively when it has enough data on both purchases and advertising. It’s quite possible that ASC+ may not be as effective for a new account.

How many ads to launch in ASC+?

Meta recommends launching at least 20 ads. However, we’ve seen the best performance with a maximum of 6 ads. Make sure that only tested creatives are launched in ASC+ to preserve your budget.

Search segmentation for potential clients and retargeting

It’s very important to set a budget limit for existing customers. Ideally, no more than 15-20% of the budget should be allocated to existing customers. You can also see performance breakdown for new and existing customers.

How to set budgets for ASC+?

Be sure to set a daily budget at least 5-7 times higher than your CPA. For example, if your CPA is $50, set $250 per day as your daily budget. This ensures 35-50 conversions per week. However, it doesn't always work out as planned with the black hat stuff.

How to scale with ASC+?

ASC+ can handle sharper budget increases after 10-12 days from the launch and optimal results. For white offers, we've seen good results even with a budget increase of 25-30%. However, to play it safe, stick to increasing the budget by less than 20%. Horizontal scaling is also a good approach that works with ASC+.

Analyzing Advantage+ Shopping compared to other campaigns

According to our analysis, ASC+ has been both successful and unsuccessful in terms of ROAS. This could also be related to their setup: creatives, rates, and niche.

Measurement of ASC+ Attribution (view-through and click-through attribution)

Budget allocation for new and existing customers

How to set up ASC+ campaigns?

When setting up Advantage+ Shopping campaigns on Meta, certain steps need to be considered to create a successful campaign and achieve good results. Here they are:

• Go to the Ad Manager.
• Click on "Create Campaign".
• Select the campaign objective, either "Conversions" or "Sales". Then click "Continue".
• Choose the Advantage+ Shopping campaign. Click "Continue".

Next, you need to manually enter the campaign name:

Conversion location (website or website and app).

Select the audience location by choosing one or multiple countries and set the budget for each day, adding the start and end dates of the campaign.

Click on "Import or create ads".

Publish. 

Best practices and key points of ASC+

When launching Advantage+ Shopping campaigns, follow these fundamentals for optimal performance:

• Set a budget cap for existing customers to avoid overspending on familiar audiences and prevent algorithm prioritization.
• Conduct initial tests for your ad sets to ensure you're not investing in ineffective parameters.
• After optimization, minimize changes. Ensure tracking with Facebook Pixel and Conversions API for enhanced data and algorithmic optimization.
• Avoid frequent changes. Advantage+ campaigns thrive on stability, and changes can reset the learning phase, prolonging optimization.
• Advantage+ campaigns can streamline setup and improve ad performance, but they should complement, not replace, your standard campaigns for a balanced strategy.

When not to launch ASC+

• High targeting requirements. If your marketing strategy requires highly precise targeting, such as targeting a narrow audience with specific interests or behaviors, the broad automation of ASC+ may not provide the necessary level of control for such accuracy.
• Limited budget. For companies with a very limited advertising budget, the automated nature of ASC+ may potentially lead to less efficient use of funds compared to carefully managed campaigns where every dollar is accounted for.
• Testing new markets or products. When entering a new market or launching a new product, you may need more active campaign management to gather data and understand audience reactions. ASC+ automation may not allow for collecting granular data and rapid iteration needed in such cases.
• Brand campaigns. For campaigns where brand messaging and positioning are crucial, and there is no room for errors or inconsistencies, automated ASC+ solutions may not perfectly align with the brand's strategic vision.

This is all that we've highlighted during the analysis of this useful tool from Facebook. Good luck!