Search Marketing FAQ

For top-of-funnel content campaigns driving visits to articles, landing pages, or guides where you do not yet have a measurable conversion event. Use sparingly - Traffic optimizes for clicks, not the quality of the visit. If you have any conversion event (lead, signup, view-content), use Leads or Sales instead for better downstream results.

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For community-building campaigns (Page likes, post engagement, video views, Messenger conversations). Rarely worth the spend for direct-response brands. Sometimes useful for podcasters, creators, and brands that monetize community over conversions. Test against organic engagement before paid spend; engagement objective often delivers low-quality engagement from incentivized users.

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For B2B and service businesses generating form submissions, demos, calls, or quotes. Choose Instant Forms (on-platform) for fastest fills, Website Leads (off-platform form) for richer data, Calls for service businesses, or Conversations (Messenger) for high-touch products. Leads needs at least 50 weekly events per ad set for the algorithm to optimize effectively.

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For mobile app marketers driving installs (App Installs) or in-app events (App Events: purchase, signup, level complete). Requires Meta SDK in your app and standard event configuration in Events Manager > App. Optimization works best when you optimize for value or specific in-app events, not just installs.

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For e-commerce purchases, subscriptions, or any direct revenue conversion tracked via pixel and CAPI. Sales is the right default for most direct-response brands. Optimize for Purchase event specifically; using ViewContent or AddToCart as the optimization event trains the algorithm on weaker signals and underperforms Purchase optimization.

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Meta consolidated 11 legacy objectives into 6 in 2022. Reach, Brand Awareness merged into Awareness. Link Clicks, Landing Page Views into Traffic. Post Engagement, Page Likes, Video Views, Messages into Engagement. Conversions, Catalog Sales, Store Traffic into Sales. The new ODAX framework simplified setup but caused some confusion among legacy advertisers.

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Advantage+ Shopping (ASC) is Meta's automated e-commerce campaign type that combines audience, creative, and placement automation in a single setup. Provide creative assets and a product feed; Meta handles audience selection, bidding, creative rotation, and placement allocation. Typically outperforms manually-structured campaigns for e-commerce with sufficient creative variety and a healthy product feed.

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ASC bundles audience, placement, and creative automation. Manual campaigns let you control targeting (specific interests, lookalikes, exclusions), placement (feed, Stories, Reels), and creative rotation. ASC trades control for performance: most accounts running ASC see 15-30% lower CPA than manually-structured prospecting campaigns. Worth testing as your prospecting baseline.

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E-commerce advertisers with healthy product feeds (50+ products), Conversions API or Pixel installed, and budget for 50+ purchases weekly. ASC needs catalog data and conversion volume to perform. Below those thresholds, ASC underperforms manual campaigns. B2B and service businesses cannot use ASC - the campaign type is e-commerce-only.

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Advantage+ Audience uses Meta's machine learning to find converters with minimal manual targeting input. You provide an audience suggestion (interests, custom audience, lookalike) and Advantage+ broadens it as needed to find conversions. Replaces detailed interest targeting in modern Meta accounts. Performs better than tight manual targeting in most categories.

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You supply audience suggestions (interests, demographics, custom audiences, lookalikes). Meta uses these as signals, not strict targets. The algorithm broadens reach when it finds high-converting users outside the signals. Toggle: 'Allow Advantage+ Audience' (algorithm can expand) or 'Limit to my audience' (strict targeting). Default to Advantage+ for 2025.

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Default to Advantage+ Audience for new campaigns in 2025. Use strict manual targeting only when (1) brand restrictions require exclusion lists (e.g., government regulation, brand safety), (2) extremely specific niche where broad targeting would dilute conversion volume, or (3) testing whether tight targeting outperforms (rare). Broad+Advantage+ outperforms tight targeting in most A/B tests.

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Audience targeting defines who sees your ads. Three layers. Core Audiences (demographics, location, interests, behaviors - Meta's default segments). Custom Audiences (your data: website visitors, app users, customer email lists, video viewers). Lookalike Audiences (Meta-modeled audiences resembling your converters). Combine via include and exclude rules per ad set.

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Demographics (age, gender, language). Location (country, state, city, zip, radius). Interests (categories, brands, keywords). Behaviors (purchase patterns, device, life events). Connections (people connected to your Page). Custom Audiences (your first-party data). Lookalikes (modeled from your data). Advantage+ Audience auto-broadens. Apply via include and exclude across all available dimensions.

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Custom audiences are explicit lists of users built from your data: website visitors, app users, customer emails, video viewers, lead-form openers. Lookalike audiences are Meta-modeled segments resembling your custom audience source. Custom audiences are best for remarketing; lookalike audiences are best for prospecting at scale once you have 1,000+ matched users in a seed audience.

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In Ads Manager > Audiences > Create Audience > Custom Audience. Choose source: Website, App, Customer List, Video, Lead Form, Instagram, Facebook Page. Configure the rule (visited URL, watched video over X%, interacted with form, etc.). Set retention (1-180 days). Save. Audience populates within 24 hours and stays active as long as the source signal keeps firing.

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In Audiences > Create > Lookalike. Pick a source custom audience (Customer Match list, high-value buyers, video viewers). Select country. Choose similarity 1-10% (1% closest match, smaller audience; 10% larger, looser). Save. Lookalike needs 100+ matched users in source to build; 1,000+ for stable performance. Use 1-3% lookalikes for prospecting.

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Prospecting at scale from a high-value source audience. Best sources: paying customers (highest signal), high-LTV customers (filtered for top spenders), high-engagement video viewers, lead-form completers. Avoid lookalikes from low-quality sources (Page likers, all website visitors). 1% lookalikes for tight prospecting, 3-5% for scaling reach without losing too much fit.

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In ad set audience configuration, click Exclude under Custom Audiences. Add audiences you do not want to reach. Common exclusions: existing customers from prospecting campaigns, brand-aware users from cold campaigns, churned users, employees. Layer multiple exclusions to refine. Excluding existing customers from prospecting is one of the highest-leverage spend savings in Meta accounts.

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Audience overlap is when two audiences in your account contain many of the same users, causing ad sets to compete with each other in the auction. Check via Audience Insights > Audience Overlap. Reduce overlap by tightening audience definitions, using exclusions, or consolidating overlapping ad sets. Heavy overlap inflates CPMs and dilutes learning.

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Three-layer stack. Custom audiences feed remarketing campaigns (Sales objective for purchases, Engagement for retention). Lookalikes feed prospecting campaigns (Sales for ecommerce, Leads for B2B). Broad+Advantage+ Audience runs alongside Lookalikes to find users beyond your modeled segments. Each campaign objective optimizes for the conversion event most aligned to that audience's funnel stage.

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Mobile-first design (95% of impressions are mobile). Lead with a visual hook in the first 1-2 seconds for video. Square (1:1) or vertical (4:5, 9:16) aspect ratios. Minimal text overlay (avoid the deprecated 20% rule, but less text still performs). Strong CTA. Branded but not corporate. Test 3-5 creative variations per ad set continuously.

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Five elements. A scroll-stopping visual hook in the first second. A clear single message (one product, one promise). Mobile-optimized aspect ratio (4:5 or 9:16). Social proof or specific benefit (numbers, testimonials, before/after). A clear, single CTA. Creative that looks native to the placement (Reels-style for Reels, feed-style for feed) outperforms repurposed campaign assets.

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1080x1080 square (1:1) for feed. 1080x1350 vertical (4:5) for feed - takes more vertical screen real estate. 1080x1920 vertical (9:16) for Stories and Reels. 1200x628 horizontal (1.91:1) for link previews. Always upload the highest resolution you have (Meta downscales but cannot upscale).

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