What does the Advantage plus pop-up even mean?

The speaker discusses the new feature called Advantage Plus in Facebook ads. They explain that Advantage Plus offers lower cost per result and uses machine learning to make better decisions. However, the speaker argues that using interest-based campaigns still yields better results for their clients. They mention a pop-up that appears when publishing an ad, recommending the use of Advantage Plus. The speaker advises to publish without adjustments if the audience and creative are already set up and working well. They also mention the challenges with Advantage Plus creative, as the AI may display the ad in a way that doesn't align with the brand's perception. The speaker suggests testing Advantage Plus as an audience but sticking with what works if budget is limited. They conclude by stating that if one knows what they're doing and have a successful setup, they should publish without adjustments, but if they're open to trying something new, they can publish with adjustments and experimen Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope everyone's well today. Summer is here in the UK. Well, it feels like it. It is getting warmer and I think we're going to have a weekend of sun. So the whole of the UK has been getting the barbecues out and we are all going to run out of hot dog rolls, which is inevitable in this hot weather. Anyway, Facebook ads, what's been going on? Let's see. The thing I want to talk to you about today is Advantage Plus and the new Advantage Plus pop-up. Now, I'm not going to break down the whole of Advantage Plus in one podcast, even though you probably want me to, but I think the next few episodes are going to be about, well, not the next episode, but over the next few episodes, we are going to be mentioning it. It's something that I found yesterday and a few of my clients on the Ads Clinic, it's coming up. And then I was building another account today and it comes up with a pop-up. So where do we start? You follow me on my instructions on this podcast and you are still building an ad through manual. Now, the example I've got here is that I'm building a lead ad and I'm sending leads through to a website, which is a bit different to what I've been saying for the last year, but still do it. I still want you to do on Facebook lead gen using a Facebook form because it works great. But this particular client is doing better by going to their actual website. So I'm building this particular campaign going to their website. I'm then going into the ad set and this particular client is based out in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia. Okay. So that's what, it doesn't even make any difference really, but they're going out there. It doesn't matter where your audience is. We're going over to Saudi Arabia and we're choosing women and the ages of 25 to 55. Okay. Set that all done. We next go to the ad page and I create my ad, I put my video in, I've put my copy in, I've put my headline, et cetera. And then this is the drum roll bit. I go to publish the ad and we are, we are then receiving a pop-up covering pretty much the whole of our page saying publish with adjustments of advantage plus. And this is the bit that is catching everybody out at the moment. Right. So let's go back one step to our audience. We're still wanting to choose interest-based because I've just come off a call this morning with a client who was asking me about interest basis. And I said to them, quite honestly, I still get better results for every single client in our agency when we don't use advantage plus. Now I get the reasons why the AI in the algorithm is making some better decisions, but there are some downsides. We've got to have a lot of creative to put in, which a lot of small businesses don't have that kind of number of assets to use in their ads. They can't test as much. They haven't got the sort of daily budgets that an ad, an advantage plus campaign would need. So I do understand the positives around it, but like in a number of my accounts where we're spending, you know, a hundred thousand a month, I'm using advantage plus campaigns and they are working on a par with the interest-based campaigns on those same accounts. You know, I'm trying broad advantage plus and normal interest old fashioned. Let's think a bit of logic behind an audience and let's test some audiences out as we were doing a year ago, two years ago. I still do it. We're still doing it in all of our accounts and we still get really, really good results, but what is this pop up? So as we press publish on our ads now, and you guys might not see it, it's just come to me. I'm seeing it for the last seven days and it's hit a few of my clients who are questioning about it. It comes up with a, before publishing, review your setup along with recommended adjustments. Two adjustments here, advantage plus audience, up to 33% lower cost per result based on our experiment is on. Advantage plus creative, 3% lower cost per result is on. By clicking publish with adjustments, you agree to Facebook's terms and conditions. Now the green button, which is nice and green and bold, making us want to do it is publish with adjustments. The bold, the unbold is publish without adjustments. A bit like when we're having to go and build an audience and wanting to own setup, it's kind of really trying to take us away by highlighting to use advantage plus. Now the problem we've got here is if we've chosen our audience because we're wanting to do a test or we know our audience works, when we press publish with adjustments, it's going to cancel out all of that. We're going to have to bring our age group down to 18 and it's going to have various other cancellations because it wants to go back to the machine learning, especially when it says our advantage plus audience up to 33% lower cost per result. Now I've got numerous accounts that I've done this in and I'm still not beating it. In fact, for this particular client that I've chosen right now as an exercise with what brought this up, the advantage plus is bringing them in a few more leads, but the click through rate of the interest is higher. So we're starting to have to think, okay, well, what am I now going to focus on? Am I going to focus on something that's got a really good interest rate or am I going to go for what the leads are coming through at? Now there's two ways to look at this. The advantage plus I would like to think is going to have longevity. So we're leaving it to the machine. They've opened up the audience and they are going to carry on trying to get us those leads through. That's fine. But I like to pay attention to the metrics I've got here. Now I'm sure there's going to be some experts listening to this outside going, Nick, you don't know what you're talking about. You need to leave it to the machine. That's what we all do. And that's fine. And I'm not disagreeing with anyone. I know that my ads and my agency and what I teach has to move with the times. And I do truly believe there's going to be a time when we will only have advantage plus to go with. But at the moment, I've still got to go with the results. So I would say if you are putting some thought into your audience and you're wanting to choose some interest and you want in the age group to be a specific age group, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, publish without adjustments. Because as soon as you do it with adjustments, it's going to get rid of a lot of things that you want to put in there. The other part, which is going to be one, actually my next one on my next podcast is advantage. The other tick box, which is advantage plus creative, 3% lower cost per result. It's another option on here. Now, for me, the audience I could sort of I could live with. It's like, OK, go out. Definitely worth testing. Go out to an advantage plus audience against your other already set of ads. But the advantage plus creative is causing me no end of problem. Because the AI decides that it's going to show the creative in a certain way. So in fact, let's go on. This is a whole new podcast. So I'm just going to really, really dive into it just a second like I was. But it's going to be, in fact, the next podcast. So if you've got only a square image and you want your square to then show up on a reel, because you're going to leave it all to meta with this advantage plus creative, I'm getting complaints of clients. Well, complaints. Sometimes an ad may have gone live without sign off because we've got permission to do it. And they suddenly see it in their feed and go, oh, my God, that looks awful because the text looks awful on a reel. There's the images. It's just not it's not looking good. Now, there's two sides to look at this. There's we're sitting on a fence because we're leaving it Facebook to do. And Facebook has got our interests at heart. But at the same time, every client has a brand perception of their own business. And if they've got an ad going out there and that looks pretty damn crap, they're going to be on the phone asking why it looks crap and what do we do about it. So there are two ways to look at this. I would test things out. So it sort of got to the point where if you're going to do an ad, let's test things out. Otherwise, go with what you're doing. And if you haven't got the budget to test all these things out, then just literally do what's been working for you. Carry on doing with it. When you've got some more budget and you're seeing some things happening, look at advantage plus as an audience. So rather than looking at another interest, just look at it as another audience and see how it goes. But that's what this podcast is about. It's that pop at the end. It's something I've heard five times already this week of clients saying, what is this? What do we do about it? And I thought I'd address it. I would say conclusion to this. If you know what you're doing and you've got something set up and you want to roll with it, publish without adjustments. If you're happy to try something out, publish with adjustments and do a bit of testing. I hope that helps. See you in the next one. Bye.