Hi there,
Thanks for your enquiry regarding Advantage+ versus manual campaigns and I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance. It's a common question, but honestly, the debate itself often misses the bigger picture. It's rarely about which button is "better" and more about the underlying strategy—or lack thereof—that you're feeding into the Facebook algorythm.
The fact that your Advantage+ campaign performance has dropped off a cliff isn't surprising. In fact, it's pretty predictable. Let's dig into why that is, and what you should be focusing on instead to build something that's actually scalable and resilient.
We'll need to look at why your campaign is failing, not just which button to press...
First off, let's be brutally honest about what Advantage+ actually is. It's an amplifier. It takes the inputs you give it—your creative, your pixel data, your conversion objective—and it finds the quickest, cheapest path to getting you more of what you asked for. When it works, it feels like magic. But when it stops working, it's usually for one simple reason: it's run out of the easy wins.
Think of it like this: the algorithm initially finds all the people in your audience who were basically ready to buy anyway. The low-hanging fruit. Once that pool is exhausted, it has to work harder, go wider, and test more broadly. This is where your costs start to climb and your ROAS takes a nosedive. You're now paying the platform to find people who are less likely to convert. In essence, you're paying Facebook to find you non-customers, because that's the easiest way for it to fulfill its command of 'get more reach'.
Switching to a 'normal' campaign with advantage targeting or going fully manual isn't necessarily the solution. It's just swapping one tool for another without fixing the real problem. The real problem is likely one of three things: your audience strategy is too simplistic, your creative and offer aren't compelling enough, or you don't actually know what a "good" cost per acquisition is for your business. Without fixing these fundamentals, you'll just end up burning cash in a different campaign type. The goal isn't just to get a campaign "working again" for a few weeks; it's to build a predictable system for acquiring customers profitably.
I've seen this play out with countless clients. They come to us after chasing their tails, switching between campaign types, tweaking budgets, and getting more and more frustrated. The solution is always to take a step back from the Ads Manager interface and look at the whole engine. One of our clients, a medical job matching SaaS, was stuck with a £100 Cost Per Acquisition. They'd tried everything, including every variation of campaign type. We didn't find a magic button. We rebuilt their strategy from the ground up and got their CPA down to £7. That wasn't an Advantage+ trick; it was strategy.
I'd say you need a proper audience structure, not just a single campaign...
Relying on a single Advantage+ campaign is like trying to build a house with only a hammer. You need a full toolkit. A robust Meta ads account shouldn't just have one campaign doing all the work. It should be structured to reflect the actual customer journey, from total stranger to loyal customer. I'm talking about a Top-of-Funnel (ToFu), Middle-of-Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom-of-Funnel (BoFu) approach.
This structure allows you to speak to people differently based on how familiar they are with your brand, and it gives the algorithm much clearer signals to work with. It also lets you control your budget and prioitise where your money goes. Here’s how I would typically structure it for an eCommerce client, but the logic applies to almost any business.
| Funnel Stage | Purpose & Audiences | Common Mistake to Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| ToFu (Top of Funnel) - Prospecting | This is your cold traffic. The goal is to introduce your brand to new people who have never heard of you. Audiences to test here: 1. Detailed Targeting (interests, behaviours that your ideal customer has). 2. Lookalike Audiences (built from your best customers, email lists, or high-intent pixel events like 'Purchase' or 'Initiate Checkout'). 3. Broad Targeting (only once your pixel has thousands of conversion events). |
Using interests that are too broad. If you sell high-end camera gear, targeting the interest "Photography" is useless. It’s full of amateurs with iPhones. You need to target interests like specific pro camera brands, magazines for professional photographers, or followers of famous photographers. Get specific. |
| MoFu (Middle of Funnel) - Consideration | These people have shown some interest but haven't taken a high-intent action yet. You want to nurture them and build trust. Audiences to retarget here: - All Website Visitors (in the last 30-90 days) - People who watched 50%+ of your video ads - Facebook/Instagram page engagers |
Showing them the same ad they saw at the ToFu stage. They've already seen your intro! Now show them testimonials, user-generated content, a behind-the-scenes look at your product, or highlight a key benefit they might have missed. |
| BoFu (Bottom of Funnel) - Conversion | These are your hottest prospects. They are on the verge of converting. The goal is to give them a final nudge over the line. Audiences to retarget here: - Viewed Cart / Added to Cart (in the last 7-14 days) - Initiated Checkout (in the last 7-14 days) |
Not giving a clear reason to buy NOW. This is where you can use a bit of urgency or a specific offer. "Your cart expires soon," "Complete your purchase and get free shipping," or a small discount can work wonders. Don't just show them the product again. |
By splitting your campaigns this way, you can start to see where the real drop-off is. Are you failing to attract the right people at the ToFu stage? Or are you failing to convert interested people at the BoFu stage? A single Advantage+ campaign hides all this from you. It just gives you one blended ROAS number that doesn't tell you anything actionable when it starts to decline.
When you have this structure, you can then test audiences systematically. Start with detailed targeting to feed the pixel data. Once you have at least 100 purchases (but ideally 500-1000), you can build powerful Lookalike audiences. For one of our software clients, we generated 5,082 trials at just $7 each on Meta.
You probably should focus on a message people can't ignore...
Even the most perfectly structured campaign with the most precise targeting will fail if your ad creative and offer are weak. This is the part that most people overlook because it's harder than clicking buttons in Ads Manager. You can't just show a picture of your product and expect people to care.
You need to stop thinking about your customer as a demographic ("males aged 25-40 who like cars") and start thinking about their nightmare. What is the specific, urgent, expensive problem they are struggling with that your product solves? Your ad's only job is to reflect that nightmare back at them so they feel understood.
Let's say you sell a project management tool for small agencies. A bad ad says: "The best project management software for agencies." It's generic, boring, and gets ignored.
A good ad, using the Problem-Agitate-Solve framework, says: "Another project gone over budget? Are your clients complaining about missed deadlines while your team is burning out from chaotic communication? Stop juggling spreadsheets and email chains. Our platform centralises everything, so you can deliver projects on time, every time, and see exactly where your profits are."
See the difference? The second one speaks directly to the pain. It agitates the problem, making it feel more acute, and then presents the solution. This is what grabs attention and forces a click. Your creative—the image or video—needs to reinforce this. For a B2B SaaS product, a UGC-style video of a happy customer talking about how their life is easier now is a thousand times more powerful than a slick, animated explainer video. We've seen this time and again with SaaS clients; authentic creative wins.
This then leads to your offer. The "Request a Demo" button is one of the worst calls to action in marketing. It's high friction and low value. Why would a busy person give up 30 minutes to be sold to? Your offer needs to provide instant value. For a SaaS product, this is a free trial (no credit card). Let them experience the "aha!" moment inside the product itself. For a service, it could be a free audit, a checklist, or a short video training. Give them a small win for free to earn the right to ask for the big sale.
You'll need to understand the maths before you can scale...
This is the final piece of the puzzle, and it’s the most important. You said your ROAS "went to shit." But what does that actually mean? Was it still profitable? You can't answer that question unless you know your numbers, specifically your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).
Most advertisers are obsessed with getting the lowest possible Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). But that's the wrong way to think. The real question is: "What is the highest CPA I can afford to acquire a valuable customer?" The answer is in your LTV.
Here’s a simple way to calculate it:
Calculating Your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): How much revenue does a typical customer generate per month?
Example: £100/month
2. Gross Margin %: What is your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for cost of goods sold?
Example: 75%
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?
Example: 5% (This means the average customer sticks around for 1 / 0.05 = 20 months)
The LTV Caluclation:
LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
LTV = (£100 * 0.75) / 0.05
LTV = £75 / 0.05
LTV = £1,500
In this example, each customer you acquire is worth £1,500 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £500 to acquire a single customer (£1,500 / 3).
Suddenly, a £100 CPA from your Advantage+ campaign doesn't sound so bad, does it? It looks like an absolute bargain. When your campaign performance "goes to shit" and the CPA rises to £200, it's still wildly profitable. Without knowing this number, you're flying blind. You're making emotional decisions based on rising numbers in Ads Manager instead of rational business decisions based on profitability. We had a client selling a subscription box, and we hit a 1000% ROAS for them.
This is the main advice I have for you:
So, to bring this all together, forget about the Advantage+ vs. Manual debate for a moment. It's a distraction from the real work you need to do. Here is a clear, actionable plan to build a paid advertising system that actually works and can scale without falling apart every few weeks.
| Step | Action | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Know Your Numbers | Calculate your LTV and determine your maximum affordable CPA (target a 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio to start). | This is your north star. It allows you to make data-driven decisions about ad spend and profitability, instead of panicking when metrics fluctuate. |
| 2. Define Your Customer's "Nightmare" | Go beyond demographics. What specific, urgent pain does your product solve? Rewrite your ad copy to reflect this using frameworks like Problem-Agitate-Solve. | Generic ads get ignored. Pain-driven ads get clicks. This is the single biggest lever for improving creative performance and cutting through the noise. |
| 3. Restructure Your Account | Pause your current campaigns. Rebuild using a ToFu/MoFu/BoFu funnel structure with separate campaigns for each stage. | This gives you control, clarity, and allows you to diagnose problems effectively. You'll see exactly where your funnel is leaking and can fix it. |
| 4. Test Audiences Systematically | In your ToFu campaign, start by testing 3-5 different, highly specific interest-based audiences. Once you have enough data, expand to test Lookalikes of your best customers. | This is how you find new pockets of profitable customers. It's a process of constant discovery and optimisation, not a one-time setup. |
| 5. Re-introduce Advantage+ Intelligently | Once you have a proven creative, a strong offer, and a winning audience from your manual testing, you can then put those elements into an Advantage+ campaign to scale it. | Use Advantage+ as a scaling tool, not a discovery tool. Give it your best-performing assets to amplify, rather than asking it to find gold in a pile of dirt. |
As you can probably tell, doing this properly is a significant amount of work. It requires a level of strategy, analysis, and continuous testing that goes far beyond just managing a few campaigns. It's about building a complete customer acquisition machine.
This is why businesses choose to work with an agency or a consultant. It's not just to save time, but to leverage the experience of having built and scaled these machines for dozens of other businesses. We've seen what works and what doesn't across niches from B2B SaaS to high-end eCommerce, like the campaign where we drove a 691% return for a women's apparel brand or generated 1,535 trials for a B2B SaaS client.
If you'd like to get a second pair of expert eyes on your specific situation, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. We can take a look at your account, diagnose the core issues, and give you a clear roadmap of what we would do to fix it. It might be the most valuable 20 minutes you spend on your marketing this year.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
