Solved: Advantage+ vs Normal Ad Set Performance

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your question about Advantage+ vs. normal (or manual, as I'd call them) ad sets on Facebook. It's a really common question, and the answer isn't as simple as "one is better than the other". To be honest, thinking about it as a straight choice is probably the wrong way to look at it. The real performance comes from knowing when to use each tool for the right job, especially for a service business where lead quality is everything.

Instead of just a simple comparison, I'm going to walk you through how we think about structuring campaigns for service businesses. We'll cover not just the 'which ad set' question, but the bigger picture of how to actually get clients, because just running ads without a solid strategy behind them is the fastest way to burn through your budget. We'll look at who you're targeting, what you're offering them, and how to build a system that brings in proper, qualified leads, not just tyre-kickers.

So, what's the real difference? Let's get beyond the AI buzzword...

You're right, Meta pushes Advantage+ hard because it uses their AI. But what does that actually mean in practise? A manual ad set is you telling the algorithm exactly who to target. You say, "find me men, aged 35-55, in Manchester, who are interested in 'small business finance' AND are 'business page admins'". You have total control over the audience, the placements (e.g., just Instagram Stories), and the budget allocation. It's precise. It's deliberate.

An Advantage+ Campaign (ASC) is you giving the algorithm a goal (e.g., generate leads) and a lot more freedom. You provide the creative, the copy, and maybe some audience *suggestions*, but the AI takes over from there. It decides who sees your ad, where they see it, and how much to spend to get you the cheapest results based on your conversion objective. It's designed for efficiency and scale, not for precision control. When you choose 'Brand Awareness' or 'Reach', you are telling the algorithm to find the cheapest eyeballs, not potential customers. I've seen it time and time again; you're essentially paying Meta to find the people least likely to ever buy from you because their attention is cheap. The only way to counter this is to give it a hard conversion goal, like leads or sales. Only then does the AI have the right instruction: "find me people who will actually do this thing I want them to do".

The choice isn't about AI vs. no AI. It's about control vs. automation. And for a service business, control at the start is everything. You need to know exactly who is responding to your message so you can refine it. Throwing it all into a black box like Advantage+ from day one can be a recipe for disaster and wasted spend.

I'd say you need a proper funnel structure first...

The biggest mistake I see is people just running one campaign aimed at a cold audience and hoping for the best. It rarely works. You need to think like your customer. They don't know you, they don't trust you yet. You have to guide them. This is where a funnel comes in.

Top of Funnel (ToFu): Finding New People

This is your prospecting stage. Your goal is to find people who might have the problem your service solves. This is where you test your assumptions. For a new account with no data, this stage should almost exclusively use manual ad sets.

• -> Who to target: You need to think beyond simple demographics. Forget "companies with 50-200 employees". That's useless. You need to define your customer by their *pain*. What is the specific, urgent, expensive nightmare they're dealing with? Once you know that, you can find them. Are they following specific industry leaders on social media? Do they use certain software (e.g., HubSpot, Salesforce)? Are they members of niche Facebook Groups? These are the interests you test. Start by grouping related interests into themed ad sets and see which performs.
• -> What to run: Your objective here should be conversions (e.g., Leads), not traffic or engagement. You want to train the pixel from day one on what a valuable action looks like. Your offer at this stage shouldn't be "Book a Call". It's too big of an ask. Instead, offer a piece of high value content – a free guide, a checklist, a short video training that solves a small piece of their problem for free. This builds trust and gets their email address.

Middle of Funnel (MoFu): Building Trust

These are people who have shown some interest. They've visited your website, watched one of your videos, or engaged with a ToFu ad. They know who you are, but they're not ready to buy. Your goal is to nurture them.

• -> Who to target: This is retargeting. Again, manual ad sets give you the control you need here. You can create custom audiences of "Website visitors - last 30 days", "people who watched 50% of your video ad", etc. You can then exclude anyone who has already become a lead.
• -> What to run: Show them different content. Case studies, testimonials, a more detailed explanation of your process. You're overcoming their objections and building your authority. The objective is still likely conversions, but maybe the "conversion" is signing up for a webinar or downloading a more in-depth guide.

Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): Asking for the Sale

This is your hottest audience. They've engaged multiple times, they've consumed your content, they trust you. Now is the time to ask for the call or the purchase.

• -> Who to target: You're retargeting a very specific, high-intent group. People who visited your services page but didn't fill out the form, or people who added your productised service to the cart but didn't check out. Again, manual ad sets are perfect for this surgical retargeting.
• -> What to run: This is where your direct offer comes in. "Book a Free Strategy Session", "Get a Custom Quote". Your ad copy can be much more direct. You're talking to people who are almost ready to buy.

So where does Advantage+ fit in? Once you have a manual ToFu ad set that is consistently bringing in high-quality leads at a good price, that's when you can experiment. You can duplicate that campaign, switch it to Advantage+, give it the winning creative and copy, and see if the AI can find more of those people for you, cheaper and at scale. It's an accelerator, not a starting engine.

You probably should focus on your offer more than your ad set type...

I've seen multi-million pound ad accounts fail because of a bad offer. And I've seen tiny budgets do amazing things with a great one. The single biggest point of failure in B2B and service-based advertising is the offer. Your prospect doesn't care about your Advantage+ campaign. They care about their problems.

The "Request a Demo" or "Book a Consultation" button is the most arrogant, high-friction Call to Action in marketing. It presumes your prospect has nothing better to do than get sold to. It offers them zero immediate value. You have to do better.

Your offer's only job is to provide a moment of undeniable value. An "aha!" moment. You must solve a small, real problem for them for free to earn the right to solve the bigger one for money. For us, it's a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit a failing ad campaign. There's no hard sell; we just provide value, and if they're a good fit, they often ask to work with us.

What could this be for your business?

• -> A free, automated audit that shows them their top 3 missed opportunities.
• -> A calculator that estimates how much money they're losing because of the problem you solve.
• -> A free 15-minute interactive video module from your main training course.
• -> A detailed guide that is genuinely helpful, not a thinly-veiled sales pitch.

Get this right, and the choice between manual and Advantage+ becomes a secondary optimisation detail, not the make-or-break factor in your success.

You'll need to understand your numbers...

Before you spend another penny on ads, you need to know this number: your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Most service businesses have no idea what a client is actually worth to them over the long term. Without this, you're flying blind. You're trying to get the cheapest leads possible, when you should be asking "how much can I *afford* to spend to acquire a great client?"

The calculation is pretty simple:

LTV = (Average Monthly Revenue Per Client * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Client Churn Rate %

Let's break that down. Say you're a marketing consultant charging an average of £1,500 per month. Your gross margin (after any direct costs) is 70%. And on average, you lose about 5% of your clients each month (your churn rate).

LTV = (£1,500 * 0.70) / 0.05

LTV = £1,050 / 0.05 = £21,000

Each client is worth £21,000 in gross margin to your business. Suddenly, paying £100 or even £200 for a qualified lead doesn't seem so expensive, does it? A healthy business can often spend up to a third of its LTV to acquire a customer. In this case, that's £7,000. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads, you can afford to pay up to £700 per lead. This maths completely changes how you approach advertising. It frees you from the tyranny of cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to invest in finding your ideal clients.

I've built a small calculator for you below so you can play around with your own numbers.

For service businesses, lead costs can vary wildly depending on the niche and the campaign's level of optimisation. From our own experience on Meta Ads, we once took over a campaign for a medical recruitment platform where the cost per user acquisition was a staggering £100. Through rigorous testing and strategic changes, we were able to reduce that down to just £7. For another B2B software client, we generated thousands of registrations at just $2.38 each. This shows the huge range possible and why it's crucial to focus on optimisation, not just a starting number. Without knowing your specific service and market it's impossible to give an exact number, which is why knowing your LTV is so critical.

We'll need to look at my main recommendations for you...

So, to bring this all together, the Advantage+ vs. manual question is really just one small piece of a much larger puzzle. Focusing on it too much is like worrying about the brand of spark plugs in a car that has no engine. Your engine is your strategy: your audience definition, your offer, and your funnel.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a more structured way. This is the approach we take with new clients, and it's built to create a sustainable system for client acquisition, not just a short-term ad campaign.

This phased approach takes the guesswork out of it. You use the right tool for the job at the right time. You start with the precision of a scalpel (manual ad sets) to find what works, and only then do you bring in the sledgehammer (Advantage+) to scale it up.

Getting this right isn't just about flicking a few switches in Ads Manager. It's about deep strategic thinking, rigorous testing, and understanding the psychology of your buyer. It takes a lot of time and experience, and a few mistakes along the way can be very costly. For many businesses, it makes more sense to bring in an expert who has already made those mistakes and knows the fastest path to getting results.

If you'd like to have a chat about your specific business and see how we might be able to help you build a proper client aquisition system, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a look at what you're doing now and give you some actionable advice you can take away and implement straight away. Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh