What is Advantage Campaign Budget? Should You Use It?
You might have seen something called Advantage Campaign Budget + pop up in your Facebook ad account and you might be wondering what it is.
In this article I’m going to explain what Advantage Campaign Budget optimization is and which of the available budget optimization options to use in which circumstance after this update. I’ll walk you through it in my example ad account.
What Is Advantage Campaign Budget Plus?
You’ll find the update for the advantage campaign budget at the bottom of the campaign level screen.
The first thing that I always do when a new feature roles out in Meta is look at what the Meta itself has to say about it.
If you take a look at that screenshot and are already using Facebook ads then you might recognize that this looks very similar to the CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization) campaigns of the past. The Advantage Campaign Budget + optimization also happens to be in the exact same spot as the CBO campaign budget used to be.
The takeaway here is that this is not a new feature. It’s a rebranding of the old Campaign Budget Optimization. There don’t seem to be ANY CHANGES at all to the way that Advantage Campaign Budget Plus works vs. Campaign Budget Optimization.
Important Note: When you see Meta rebrand something like this in terms that make it seem more desirable then you should pay attention! Meta makes money when their advertisers are successful and spend more money. If Meta is rebranding something like CBO as “advantage” it means they think it’s going to make you more money and that you should test it.
There are a couple of things that I find interesting about the new Advantage Campaign Budget. The first on is that the default is off, which is the same as CBO, but the language that Meta is using is designed to appeal to more advertisers. When Facebook calls something “advantage” it’s going to attract more people than when they just call it campaign budget optimization. That’s because everyone wants an advantage in business.
Should You Use Advantage Campaign Budget Plus or Ad Set Budget Optimization?
Now that you know that Advantage Campaign Budget Plus is just a rebranding of the Ad Set Budget Optimization, it’s time to figure out if you want to use the Advantage Campaign Budget Plus or Ad Set Budget Optimization.
We’ve done a ton of testing on this in my agency and what we’ve found is that the majority of Facebook advertisers want to turn on the Advantage Campaign Budget. You nearly always get better results over the short term if you use this feature as opposed to setting budgets at the asset level.
That’s because with the Advantage Campaign Budget more of your budget is AUTOMATICALLY going to be spent on the ad sets producing the best results. If you have an ad set that’s producing a cost per lead of $2 versus and ad set that’s producing a cost per lead of 15, the Advantage Campaign Budget will give a lot more of your budget to the lower cost ad set. Most if the time this is going to produce better performing ad campaigns.
One the other hand Ad Set Budget Optimization does give you far more control over your spend. If you are spending a lot of time in your ad account and doing tons of testing on your ads then it might make more sense to use Ad Set Budget Optimization. If you are manually testing many offers and have a large enough budget you can get data faster by forcing spend in specific areas. That way you can work out which elements work best and you can optimize specifically for those elements.
But to make ABO work you have to be really on top of things and dedicate a lot of time and effort to managing your campaigns.
We also tend to use Ad Set Optimization in traffic campaigns and video campaigns because with those objectives the Advantage Campaign Budget doesn’t work as well.
That’s why for most advertisers I recommend the Advantage Campaign Budget. This type of campaign works particularly well with conversion based objective like leads or sales. Facebook is great at optimizing your campaign for you as long as your pixels are set up properly and it’s a whole lot less work than trying to analyze all the data yourself.]
Another thing to note when using the Advantage Campaign Budget is that the naming conventions have changed on the campaign bid strategy section.
In the campaign bid strategy the default is now highest volume. That’s the same as what used to be called lowest cost.
For the majority of Facebook ads the highest volume is the one that I recommend.
The reason that I point this out is because this particular name change can be confusing to people. If you think about it the highest volume is the same as lowest cost because you are trying to get as much of your desired result for the lowest cost possible.
More Free Facebook Ads Training
When you attend this webinar you’ll learn:
- 3 different Facebook ad strategies that we use every day. These strategies have generated millions of dollars in revenue and are tried and proven to work.
- How to customize the Facebook ads strategy to your particular business. There is no such thing as a one size fits all approach to Facebook ads.
- How Facebook and Instagram have changed and how to adjust your ad strategy to what works in 2021.
Video Tutorial: CBO vs. ABO vs. Advantage Campaign Budget
In this video I go over which campaign budget to use as well as why I think that Meta is making the change to Advantage Campaign Budget
The Bottom Line on Advantage Campaign Budget
The Advantage Campaign Budget is a rebranding of the old CBO (campaign budget optimization). For most Facebook ad accounts that are running lead or conversion ads the CBO is the best way to get the best possible results from your ads.
