Solved: Exclude Products in Meta Ads with Advantage+

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out.

Honestly, I read your message and just nodded along. That frustration with Advantage+ is something we see all the time. You’re trying to do something logical – exclude seasonal products – and the platform is basically ignoring you. It's enough to make you want to throw your laptop out the window, I get it.

That "magical check box" you're looking for... yeah, Meta has a habit of rolling out features to some accounts and not others, or burying them so deep you'll never find them. But the truth is, even if you found it, you'd still be fighting the core logic of what Advantage+ is designed to do. You're not going crazy; you've just hit the exact wall where the algorithm's goals diverge from your business goals.

So, I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts on this. The short answer is yes, you almost certainly need to go full manual. But the 'how' and 'why' is where you can turn this frustration into a much more profitable and scalable setup. Let's get into it.

We'll need to look at why Advantage+ is a double-edged sword...

First off, let's be brutally honest about what Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC) really are. Meta markets them as this all-in-one, AI-powered solution that makes advertising easy. And for some businesses with simple goals, maybe they are. But for anyone with a bit of nuance in their catalogue, like you, they are a complete nightmare.

You have to understand the algorithm's single, ruthless objective: find the user most likely to convert for the lowest possible cost to hit your target ROAS. That's it. It doesn’t care about your brand strategy, your stock levels, or your seasonal marketing calendar. When you give it your entire product catalogue, it sees a big box of tools. If it thinks it can get a cheap conversion by showing a Christmas jumper in June to a weirdly specific audience segment it's found, it will absolutely do it. It will ignore your carefully curated product set because its data suggests there's a pocket of potential buyers for those "hidden" items it can reach cheaply.

Think of it like this: you've hired a salesperson and told them, "Go sell these new summer dresses, here's the brochure." But you've also left the entire stockroom unlocked, and their commission is based purely on the number of items sold, regardless of what they are. That salesperson is going to ignore the dresses and sell the dusty old winter coats in the back if they find a customer willing to buy them for a quid. That's what Advantage+ is doing. It's a lazy salesperson obsessed with easy wins.

We had a client selling women's apparel, a classic e-commerce brand. They came to us pulling their hair out for this exact reason. Their ASC campaigns were pushing clearance items from two seasons ago, completely cannibalising the sales of their new, full-margin collection. Their overall ROAS looked okay on the surface, but when we dug in, their actual profit was taking a beating because all the volume was on low-margin stock they wanted to get rid of quietly, not make the hero of their campaigns. The algorithm was doing its job – getting sales – but it was completely wrecking their business strategy. That's the danger of handing over control to a black box.

I'd say you need to reclaim control with a proper campaign structure...

So, the answer isn't just to turn off ASC and run a single manual campaign instead. The answer is to build a proper, deliberate structure that guides customers from discovery to purchase, where you are in complete control of what products they see at each stage. This is how you scale predictably without the algorithm going rogue.

I usually structure e-commerce accounts into a few key, long-running campaigns based on the marketing funnel. This might sound complex, but once it's set up, it's far easier to manage and diagnose problems than the chaos of ASC.

1. Top-of-Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting Campaigns:

This is where you find new customers. The goal here is broad reach, but with control. You'd have ad sets targeting different audiences, like Lookalikes of your past purchasers or interest-based groups. Crucially, in these campaigns, you DON'T show your whole catalogue. You create specific product sets for these campaigns. For example:

• -> Ad Set 1 (Broad / Lookalikes): Target a 1% Lookalike of "Purchasers" and show them a product set of only your "Top 20 Bestsellers." You're leading with your most proven products to a highly qualified new audience.
• -> Ad Set 2 (Interest Targeting): Target interests relevant to your niche (e.g., 'sustainable fashion', 'luxury handbags') and show them a product set of your "New Arrivals." You're testing new products on a relevant, but colder, audience.

You are in the driver's seat here. You're telling Meta exactly which products to show to which new audience. No seasonal items will slip through unless you specifically create a product set for them and target an appropriate audience.

2. Middle/Bottom-of-Funnel (MoFu/BoFu) - Retargeting Campaigns:

This is where you bring people back who've shown interest but haven't bought yet. This is where you can start to use more automation, but in a controlled way. You'd have one main retargeting campaign, but with different ad sets for different levels of intent.

• -> Ad Set 1 (Viewed Content): Retarget people who viewed a product in the last 14 days. This is where you use Dynamic Product Ads (DPA). The ad will automatically show them the exact products they looked at. This is the one place where letting the algorithm personalise is incredibly powerful. You're not showing them random stuff; you're reminding them of what they were already interested in.
• -> Ad Set 2 (Added to Cart): Retarget people who added a product to their cart but didn't buy in the last 7 days. This is your highest-intent audience. You can hit them with a DPA ad, but you could also test a static ad with a small discount code ("Complete your order and get 10% off!") to give them that final nudge.

3. Existing Customers - Retention Campaign:

This is often forgotten but is your most profitable campaign. You target your existing customer list. Here you can run ads announcing new collections, special offers for VIPs, or cross-selling complementary products. For example, if someone bought a handbag, you could show them an ad for the matching wallet. Again, you control the product set and the message entirely.

This structure gives you clarity. If prospecting performance drops, you know you need to test new audiences or creatives in your ToFu campaign. If your Add to Cart rate is high but conversion is low, you know you need to work on your BoFu ad set. You can't do that with ASC because it's all mashed together in one big opaque system.

You probably should get your product catalogue in order...

Now, this entire manual structure relies on one thing: a well-organised product catalogue. You're already trying to use product sets, which is the right instinct. But we can make this far more powerful. The secret weapon for catalogue management is using Custom Labels.

Inside your Commerce Manager or your Shopify/WooCommerce feed, you can add up to five custom labels to each product (custom_label_0 to custom_label_4). This is where you bake your business strategy directly into your product data. Instead of just creating a "seasonal" set, you can get much more granular.

Here's how you should be thinking about it:

• custom_label_0 (Category): This could be your main product category, e.g., 'Dresses', 'Handbags', 'Shoes'.
• custom_label_1 (Strategy): This is the most important one. You could use tags like 'Bestseller', 'New-Arrival', 'High-Margin', 'Clearance', 'Evergreen'.
• custom_label_2 (Season/Collection): This is where you put 'SS24' (Spring/Summer 24), 'AW23' (Autumn/Winter 23), 'Holiday-Special'.
• custom_label_3 (Price-Point): You could use 'Under-50', '50-100', 'Premium'.
• custom_label_4 (Audience): This is more advanced, but you could use 'Gift-Idea', 'Self-Purchase', 'Professional'.

Once you've tagged all your products like this in the feed, creating product sets in Meta's Commerce Manager becomes incredibly easy and powerful. You can create a set for "all products where custom_label_1 is Bestseller" or "all products where custom_label_2 is SS24 AND custom_label_3 is not Under-50".

You can now see how this feeds into the campaign structure. Your prospecting campaign targeting a broad audience? Show them the 'Bestseller' product set. Announcing your new collection? Target your past customers with the 'SS24' product set. Your seasonal problem is now completely solved. When winter comes, you create a campaign that specifically uses your 'AW24' product set. The rest of the year, those products simply won't be included in any of the sets your main campaigns are using. It makes it impossible for the algorithm to show the wrong product, because it's not even an option in the sets you've provided.

This takes a bit of work to set up initially, I won't lie. You have to go through your feed and add these labels. But the level of control it gives you is immense. It's the difference between being a passenger in the car and actually having your hands on the steering wheel.

You'll need a better way to measure what actually works...

Once you have this control, the next step is to measure success correctly. And I'm going to be blunt: ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is a vanity metric. It's the number agencies love to show off, but it often hides a lot of sins. As we saw with the apparel client, a high ROAS can easily come from selling low-margin items, meaning you're busy but not actually making much money.

You need to be looking at your Contribution Margin ROAS (sometimes called POAS - Profit on Ad Spend). This tells you the actual profit generated from your ad spend after accounting for the cost of the goods you sold.

The calculation is simple:

Standard ROAS = Total Revenue / Ad Spend

Contribution Margin ROAS (CM-ROAS) = (Total Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold) / Ad Spend

Let's say you spend £1,000 on ads.
Campaign A gets you £5,000 in revenue from clearance items that have a 70% COGS (meaning your profit margin is 30%).
Campaign B gets you £3,000 in revenue from new, full-price items that have a 30% COGS (meaning your profit margin is 70%).

If you only look at standard ROAS:

• -> Campaign A has a 5x ROAS (£5,000 / £1,000).
• -> Campaign B has a 3x ROAS (£3,000 / £1,000).

Campaign A looks like the winner, right? That's what Advantage+ would think, and it would pour all your money into it. But now let's look at the actual profit (Contribution Margin):

• -> Campaign A Profit = £5,000 revenue - (£5,000 * 70% COGS) = £5,000 - £3,500 = £1,500 Profit.
• -> Campaign B Profit = £3,000 revenue - (£3,000 * 30% COGS) = £3,000 - £900 = £2,100 Profit.

Suddenly, Campaign B, with the "worse" ROAS, is the clear winner. It's put £600 more actual cash in your pocket. Your CM-ROAS tells the true story:

• -> Campaign A CM-ROAS = £1,500 Profit / £1,000 Spend = 1.5x
• -> Campaign B CM-ROAS = £2,100 Profit / £1,000 Spend = 2.1x

This is why the manual structure is so important. You can run a campaign specifically for your "High-Margin" product set and know that even if the top-line ROAS is lower than your clearance campaign, you are building a more sustainable, profitable business. You can make intelligent decisions based on profit, not just revenue. You can't do this when ASC is mashing all your products together into a single, misleading ROAS number.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Look, I know this is a lot to take in, espeshally when you just wanted to solve one annoying problem. But that one problem is a symptom of a much bigger strategic issue. By fixing the foundation, you won't just solve the seasonal product issue; you'll build a much more robust and profitable advertising machine. I've broken down the steps into a clear plan for you.

This approach transforms your role from someone fighting the algorithm to someone conducting it. You're making the strategic decisions, and the algorithm becomes a tool to execute your vision, not the other way around. It's more work upfront, there is no doubt about that, but the clarity, control, and profitability it unlocks is more than worth it.

This is precisely the kind of strategic overhaul we specialise in. It's easy to get lost in the weeds of Meta's interface, and having someone who's built these systems out for dozens of e-commerce businesses can save you months of costly trial and error.

If you'd like to have a chat and go through this in the context of your specific business, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We could pull up your account on a screen share and I can show you exactly where to start. It often helps to have a second pair of expert eyes on things.

Either way, I really hope this has given you a clear path forward and helped turn that frustration into a plan of action.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh