Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Weekly observations from inside Meta ads

Meta made a couple of announcements this week that could have a real impact, especially if the new one-click, no-cost Conversions API is as simple as it sounds. Beyond that, there were several smaller updates that are easy to overlook now, but could matter later.

1. No-cost, one-click Conversions API
2. Meta pixel upgrade adds AI-powered data
3. Expanded custom audience labels and value rules
4. What are Dataset Attributes?
5. Live video ads
6. New creative workflow helps consolidate ads

Let’s get to it…

1. No-Cost, One-Click Conversions API

Meta made a couple of announcements recently, and this one could be the most impactful.

Meta announced a simpler way to set up Conversions API for web:

…we’re also making it significantly easier to set up the Conversions API for web, with the introduction of a Meta-enabled Conversions API setup – a one-click option that requires no technical expertise, no costs, no ongoing maintenance, and will allow businesses to get set up in minutes.

This could be a really big deal. Meta has pushed the benefits of the Conversions API for years (this announcement mentions a 17.8% lower cost when implemented), but technical hurdles and costs have always been obstacles, particularly for smaller businesses. Meta doesn’t provide details of this solution, but they used all of the magic words: “one-click,” “no technical expertise,” “no ongoing maintenance,” “set up in minutes,” and “NO COSTS.”

No costs? Really? In addition to being easy to set up? Sign me up.

The main question will be what downsides, if any, there are related to this new option. Otherwise, third-party vendors that generate revenue from these integrations could see a noticeable hit to their profits.

2. Meta Pixel Upgrade Adds AI-Powered Data

Meta actually led that announcement with what I believe is a less interesting update, though that may depend on your needs: An upgraded Meta pixel.

We’re introducing a new Meta Pixel feature that allows businesses to use AI to automatically include additional page and product information – such as product names, availability, and business details – with the events you share with Meta.

If you run ads for an e-commerce company, you surely know all about the importance of product catalogs. Advertisers can run catalog ads that dynamically pull product information from a feed provided by the company. The accuracy of that feed, of course, is critical.

Will this new automated way be more accurate? Will it be as accurate? Without more details, it’s difficult to grasp how exactly this will work and what potential downfalls there may be.

Apparently, this change will be forced on all advertisers in the future, though it can be turned off. From Meta:

Existing Meta Pixel users will receive a notification with a 30-day window to review the feature before it’s enabled. Advertisers can adjust or turn it off at any time through Events Manager, and they can also review and manage which specific data categories are shared so that they can optimize best for their business and compliance needs.

How does this impact advertisers who don’t already utilize a product catalog? Will it be a good thing or a detriment?

Look for this addition soon in your Events Manager.

3. Expanded Custom Audience Labels and Value Rules

Some advertisers have the option to add labels to custom audiences. Up until now, labels have only been for customer list custom audiences, and options included the following:

• Qualified Leads
• Disqualified Leads
• Customers
• High Value Customers
• Low Value Customers

I’m part of a test that expands these labels. Not only are there more options, but they also apply to website custom audiences.

There are now four categories of labels: Engaged Audiences, Customers, Restricted Audiences, and Other Audiences.

Engaged Audiences include labels for Qualified Leads, Disqualified Leads, App Installers, Trial Users, Cart Abandoners, and Other Engaged Users.

Customers include High Value, Low Value, Recent Purchasers, At Risk, Disengaged, and All Customers.

Restricted Audiences would only be those you can’t legally serve ads to.

And then Other includes Personas and three “Other” groups.

These labels don’t seem to have anything to do with Audience Segments. I’ve added labels and they did not impact the definitions of my Engaged Audience and Existing Customers in Advertising Settings.

So, what are labels for? That’s where the fun stuff starts. If you have these expanded labels, you probably also have a new value rule for Audiences.

These value rules then allow you to bid more or less based on the label.

This is something I’m currently digging into, and I’ll be covering it on my blog shortly. Stay tuned!

4. What Are Dataset Attributes?

Earlier this week, a field for Dataset Attributes appeared in my ad sets when using the Website conversion location and optimizing for conversions.

The tooltip says that this allows you to “track and measure the performance of the ad delivery for prioritized attributes from your dataset.”

What does that mean, exactly? The dropdown menu to select said attributes was empty. And based on every example I saw, others ran into the same thing.

Might this be related to event parameters? So, instead of focusing only on a purchase, it’s the purchase of a specific product, product category, price, or something else? While you could do this with custom conversions, Dataset Attributes would make that process easier so that custom conversions wouldn’t be required.

I’m only speculating since I can’t find any documentation and the feature has since disappeared. But I’m sure we’ll see this again soon.

5. Create Live Video Ads

If you host live Videos to your Facebook page, you can run Live Video Ads that promote your video while it broadcasts or after it ends.

To run Live Video Ads, you first need to have created a live video on your page and satisfy eligibility requirements. Then you may see the following option when in the ad set…

While similar to a regular video ad, Live Video Ads will highlight a “Live” icon while the video is being broadcast.

I don’t actively host live videos on my Facebook page, so I don’t have anything to share from personal experience. But you can learn more about how to set these up here.

6. New Creative Workflow Helps Consolidate Ads

I’m part of the test for Meta’s new creative workflow, and I think it will solve a lot of structural problems. The biggest opportunity is that it can help consolidate ads that may have otherwise resulted in inefficiencies. Let me explain…

Advertisers have become hyper-focused on creating diverse ads to lean into the power of Andromeda. That includes leveraging different formats. While prioritizing diverse formats is a solid goal, the old workflow presented some obstacles.

Single image or video ads gave advertisers the ability to build ads around one image or video. If you wanted to utilize both an image and video, you generally had to create separate ads. You could try to work around this by creating one ad, but you’d need to customize it to showcase an image in some placements and a video in others.

Neither option was ideal. If you created separate ads, would you utilize the same primary text and headlines in each ad? That conflicts with creative diversification, but it may also feel unnecessary and burdensome to create five primary text and headline options for an image and a completely different set for a video when the same text could have worked for both.

And customizing by placement for one ad wasn’t the best option either. You may assume that certain placements may be better for images and videos, but we’re not giving Meta much flexibility.

What’s funny is that Meta has been taunting us with a solution for a while. Related Media was the precursor to the new creative workflow. It allowed us to add multiple images and videos to a single ad.

The main problem was that we were limited to the creative Meta recommended. And the customization of that Related Media is nonexistent.

The new creative workflow is exactly what I’ve been begging for. I want to create one ad that gives Meta multiple options of images and videos that could work with a specific set of text options. Then Meta can figure out which format and version would work for each person in a particular placement.

I’ve already consolidated my ads quite drastically. I’ve combined 36 ads from a single ad set into six.

And that includes two carousels that are different only by color. If I could combine them, I would (I’ll likely eventually turn one off as I see more results).

At minimum, this is much cleaner from an organizational standpoint. Will it lead to better results? That’s the part we’ll find out next.

Your Turn

What do you think about these updates?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post One-Click Conversions API, Pixel Updates, and More appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Some advertisers have access to a new creative workflow that allows them to upload up to 10 images and videos for a single ad. I am part of this test, and I believe it will be a helpful improvement.

This workflow allows advertisers to do the following:

• Upload up to 10 images and videos for a single ad
• Provide three cropped aspect ratios for each creative
• Customize text and URL destination by creative
• Opt in or out of placements by creative variation
• View performance by creative asset

In this post, we’ll walk through the following:

1. Requirements
2. Initial Setup
3. Customizations
4. Switch Back to Original Workflow
5. View Performance
6. How It’s Different
7. How I’m Using It
8. What Could Be Better?

Let’s get to it…

1. Requirements

First, know that not all advertisers have access to this test. If you have the new creative workflow, it will apply to all new and duplicated ads, not to existing ads. You’ll see this for image and video creatives only, not for Advantage+ catalog ads or carousels.

While this workflow applies to all campaign objectives, there are a few exceptions by conversion location…

• Awareness: All conversion locations
• Traffic: All except Facebook or Instagram
• Engagement: All except Facebook Page
• Leads: All except Website + Instant Forms or Website + Calls
• App Promotion: All
• Sales: All except Website + Calls or Website + In Store

2. Initial Setup

When you create a new ad following the requirements above, click to create an image or video ad.

Complete the Creative Setup step as you normally would and click “Next.”

The screen to add or upload images and videos will look mostly the same as the original workflow.

Normally, you can only upload or select one image or video. But now you can select up to 10. You can toggle between the Videos and Images filters to select from both.

When you do, those selected creatives will appear at the bottom.

If you hover over a thumbnail, you can remove or crop the creative.

Let’s assume you didn’t click the crop icon. We can still do that later. Click “Next” and then complete the steps in the creative setup wizard for text, image generation, and enhancements as you normally would.

3. Customizations

Once you complete the wizard, here’s how the Media section looks…

Recall that normally your creative would be displayed in placement groups, and you could customize it for each individual placement. But now we can customize all of the creative we provide.

Click “Customize Media.” It will look like this…

Using the old workflow, Meta normally asks for square, vertical, and horizontal versions of an individual creative. Now you can customize this for each image or video that you provide.

You can choose to keep the original or crop for each selected size.

If you choose to crop, Meta will automatically adjust the crop tool to fit the aspect ratio that is requested. You can then move or shrink the tool to focus on the area you want to represent the cropped version.

Once you’re done, click on Placements. Here, you can opt in or out of a placement for the chosen creative version.

Note that Text and Destination are grayed out when the first creative is selected. This version will automatically use the text and URL destination provided for your ad.

But if you select any of the other creatives, you can edit these things. If you don’t make any changes, Meta will use the text and destination from your original setup.

But this is where you could use very different text depending on the image or video. One drawback is that you don’t have the five options that you have for the first creative option.

You can also customize the destination URL by creative. One obvious use case for this would be if you want to use different images to promote different products. But you could also send people to different landing pages, depending on the image. I’m doing this so that my ad creative matches the creative on the landing page.

Otherwise, finish setting up your ad the way you normally would with Format Display Options, tracking, and URL parameters. Then preview and publish.

4. Switch Back to Original Workflow

I realize some people hate change, and this is likely to be confusing the first time you go through it. If you’d like, you can revert back to the original workflow.

Of course, it’s not easy to find. Hover over “Media” and then you’ll see a link to “Return to original single media experience” at the bottom of the tooltip.

5. View Performance

One very big addition to this new creative workflow is a way to break down results by creative asset. When live, you’ll see an option for “Media” under the Creative breakdown.

I didn’t have this option until I published my first ad with the new workflow.

6. How It’s Different

Maybe you’re thinking, “Oh, great. I can add up to 10 images and videos for a single ad. But can’t I do that with Dynamic Creative and Flexible Format?”

Yeah, you can. But whether you can use Dynamic Creative or Flexible Format will depend on the objective. And based on reports I’m seeing, Flexible Format is going away.

Another big element is the level of customization. With the new creative workflow, you can do the following with up to 10 images and videos:

1. Crop three sizes for each
2. Customize primary text, headline, and description for each
3. Customize URL destination for each
4. Opt into or out of placements for each

You are now able to do things that would have required creating multiple ads in the past.

But the biggest benefit of this new workflow over Flexible Format is the reporting granularity. Advertisers have complained about the lack of this element ever since Flexible Format became available.

7. How I’m Using It

It’s funny how this became available to me only a few days after I had a specific need for it. I immediately applied it to make my current ad setup more efficient.

I previously created six separate ads to promote my Cornerstone Advertising Tips lead magnet. Each ad used a different image and sent people to a different landing page that featured an image that matched the one they’d see in the ad. While each ad used slightly different text, they certainly could have been the same.

So I consolidated this approach with the new creative workflow. One ad with the same images I was using for those six separate ads. They all share the same five primary text and headline options, but I’ve customized the destination URL for each one.

The screenshots in this blog post are actually from the process I went through to create it.

Ultimately, this new workflow gives advertisers the tools to create ads that are truly in the spirit of creative diversification. In the past, you would have created separate ads for images and videos, but now you can combine them into one without having to choose specific placements for each format.

8. What Could Be Better?

Early on, my complaints are minimal. I like this a lot, and more issues are likely to pop up as I use it. But I have a couple of specific problems with it.

First, you can provide three crops for each image or video. But this is more limited than it needs to be.

For example, Meta says it supports either 5:4 or 1:1 for the square crop. Is this right? I often use 4:5 for Feeds, not 5:4. But regardless, you can only crop by 1:1.

Same thing for vertical. Meta says that 4:5, 3:4, 2:3, and 9:16 are all supported. But you can only crop to 9:16.

And, of course, the horizontal crop. Meta says that 3:2, 5:4, 1.91:1, and 16:9 are all supported. But you can only crop to 1.91:1 (I think?).

Why not offer the ability to adjust the crop to different aspect ratios if they qualify?

My only other request is related to ways to make this process faster and easier. If you have 10 creatives, you have to go into each image individually to crop each one.

I’m no designer, so I know that this has to be a challenging problem. I have no idea if an alternative that would allow you to crop multiple images at once is realistic. But that feels like a potential bottleneck.

Your Turn

Do you have the new creative workflow? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post New Creative Workflow for Meta Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

This is a common mistake advertisers make…

The reporting breakdown feature allows advertisers to break down results by things like age, gender, placement, platform, location, and more.

It’s incredibly valuable, but most advertisers incorrectly apply what they learn from these results.

The Mistake

They’ll see cheap results based on age, and they’ll remove other ages. They’ll see fewer results from stories and reels, so they’ll remove those placements. They think that this will improve results, but it almost never does.

This is an old school “optimization” approach, which assumes that we can manually trim away waste to force Meta to spend more efficiently. It may have worked at one time, but those days are in the past.

Meta wants you to get more results based on your performance goal. You don’t need to remove ages or placements to get more results.

A Troubleshooting Tool

Instead, breakdowns should be used as a troubleshooting tool. This is where they’re most valuable.

Because Meta wants you to get more results, they’ll exploit weaknesses related to your performance goal. And this is where you can uncover a high number of cheap, low-quality results by demographic group or placement.

Thanks to breakdowns, you’ll be able to detect a concentration of ad spend on the audience network because it’s leading to a high number of cheap clicks.

Or on people aged 65 and up, because they’re leading to a high number of cheap leads.

I also recently documented how I used breakdowns to troubleshoot a weird drop in performance. Read about this weird problem and how I solved it here.

The post Use Breakdowns for Troubleshooting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Weekly observations from inside Meta ads

A handful of smaller updates caught my attention this week, but several of them could have a meaningful impact on how you approach delivery, tracking, and creative. From new value rules for audiences to Flexible Format going away and an updated Meta pixel GTM template, there’s plenty here that’s worth a closer look.

1. New value rules for audiences
2. Flexible Format is going away
3. Updated Meta pixel GTM template
4. How I’m using AI to create videos
5. Ad posts moving from Page Posts
6. Ad performance troubleshooting

Let’s get to it…

1. New Value Rules for Audiences

Some advertisers are seeing a new option to create value rules by Audiences.

I’ve seen other versions of this related to customer value. It’s not clear what’s a test and what is an official rollout. I have neither. But let’s attempt to make sense of the screenshot above.

In this example, there are four initial options:

New Audiences: Audiences that are not included in your custom audiences.

Engaged Audiences: Prospective customers who engaged with your business but haven’t converted yet. All available options are labels you added to custom audiences.

Customers: Audiences that have made a purchase from your business. All available options are labels you added to custom audiences.

Other Audiences: Audiences who don’t fit into the other categories.

Since only the New Audiences option is available here and the others are grayed out, I’m not able to tell you what happens if you select the other three. But let’s try to make sense of what we’re seeing here.

On the one hand, it would make a whole lot of sense if these were based on audience segments for engaged audience and existing customers, as defined in Advertising Settings. These definitions reference engaged audiences and customers, and those who aren’t in either segment are considered “new audiences.”

But there are a couple of other things here that caught my attention.

1. Custom Audiences. Yes, audience segments are defined with custom audiences. But these definitions seem to imply that if you aren’t in any custom audience, you fall under “New Audiences.”

2. Labels. The definitions for both engaged audiences and customers refer to “labels” that were added to custom audiences. This sounds familiar, but I don’t believe I have this.

So, my interpretation is that advertisers will need to somehow label custom audiences that reflect either the “Engaged Audiences” or “Customers” group to then bid differently on those people. Anyone in a custom audience that hasn’t been labeled will be considered “Other.” And anyone not in any custom audiences at all will be “New.”

Until I have any of this functionality, it’s only an educated guess. But it feels like a lot of moving parts that advertisers need to take care of to do this right. And I worry that some will micromanage delivery when it’s not necessary.

Actually, I don’t worry about that. I know that will happen.

2. Flexible Format is Going Away

An alert at the top of Meta’s official documentation on Flexible Format indicates that it’s going away.

Or, more literally, it will “no longer be available in Ad Setup.” So I guess it’s possible that it would still be available in another way. It also appears it’s already started going away for some people, which is consistent with some of the confused questions I’ve received.

Of course, I still have Flexible Format…

But we also know that format selection is changing, and Format Display Options will be the way to choose formats.

It would be a whole lot easier if I had any of these changes to communicate them with you. But one of the screenshots I’ve seen suggests that you can add at least three images or videos for a given ad — and maybe it was for a single placement or placement group. This would be similar to how Flexible Format works, though it allows up to 10 creatives for an ad.

I don’t want to speculate too much at this point because it’s difficult without access to any of these changes. But maybe you have them?

3. Updated Meta Pixel GTM Template

Meta has updated the official Meta Pixel Google Tag Manager template to use for tracking.

This replaces the old Facebook Pixel template. One added benefit is GA4 integration. It will automatically reuse your existing GA4 dataLayer, meaning an event like purchase is mapped without manual configuration.

I admittedly need to switch to this. I’ve been using GTM to manage the pixel for so long that it was set up with manual tags, instead of a template. That surely means I’m missing out on some functionality.

4. How I’m Using AI to Create Videos

I have a complicated relationship with AI. I hate AI slop, but I like using AI to simplify my processes so that I can create more valuable stuff more quickly. I wanted to share one way I’ve started to use AI to help with videos that can be used in ads.

I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that video creation is a bottleneck. I like creating videos, but they take time. I currently publish a short-form video per week, but I’ve done as much as one per day. I’ve essentially reached peak efficiency there, and it still takes time.

Because of this, I pick my spots to create new videos. I rarely record videos to promote my new content. When I do create videos for my ads, they often fall into similar templates. They lack creativity and the styles are repetitive.

So, I was having this conversation with Claude (which has asked that I call it “Chip”), not thinking that it could help me in this area. It surprised me with a solution.

That solution was very basic to start. I’d give it details of a piece of content that I want to promote, complete with the title and full body. It would then suggest some video concepts. I’d pick one, and it would create an HTML video.

When I say it’s an HTML video, I mean it’s very basic. No animated characters or AI-generated people, characters, or scenes. Animated text, colorful backgrounds, and sound effects. More slideshow than video, if we’re to be technical.

That may sound boring to you, but that’s how I already create a lot of my videos now. What made this especially attractive was that I could generate these videos very quickly and I’d be far less limited in terms of style.

Most importantly, because of the nature of these simple videos, they don’t look like AI-generated videos. They don’t stand out as the typical slop that I hate so much.

But that initial version had issues. I could play the video, but there was no file or export. I had to screen record it, which created issues with aspect ratios and video quality.

And then we moved to Claude Code. I took everything we did with that initial version and had specs drawn up as a foundation for a new dashboard. After a day of iterations, I now have a dashboard that helps me quickly and easily generate new videos in 9×16, 4×5, and 1×1 aspect ratios.

At the top, I provide the title of the piece of content I’m promoting and the body of that content itself. This gives it something to review and generate a relevant video.

I worked out several styles and variations with Claude that fit formatting and dimensions that I wanted. So, I can either manually select a style and variation, or hit “Surprise Me” and it will choose one randomly.

It starts building the video for me…

It generates 9×16, 4×5, and 1×1 versions of a video.

I can chat with Claude to make refinements if necessary.

When I’ve approved the final output, I can export and then download the files.

Here’s an example of a video that was generated with this dashboard that promotes my Beginner’s Checklist for Meta Advertising blog post.

Is it rocket science? No. And I know there are all kinds of tools out there that you can pay for that do something similar.

I just find it super cool to be able to customize something to my exact needs. I’ll continue to refine it, and hopefully it will become a part of my process.

5. Ad Posts Moving From Page Posts

If you publish ads to your page, know that this process is moving from the Page Posts section to Meta Business Suite.

One of the reasons I did this before was that you couldn’t create videos organically that include a CTA button and send people to a page on your website. So I’d take an ad that does this and publish it to my page.

According to this message, this functionality should be available in Business Suite now. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing it, so I’ll continue to use Page Posts until that happens.

6. Ad Performance Troubleshooting

One of the challenges I have is that I’ve published endless content on every topic imaginable. If someone wants to know how I approach something, they can find it on my website. But some of it will be old and outdated, and there isn’t a single post that consolidates my current recommendations.

That’s why I developed Ad Briefs. Ad Briefs are summaries on all of the most important topics related to Meta advertising. They are based on my most recent content and are updated monthly to remain current and relevant.

There are currently 23 Ad Briefs on topics related to targeting, attribution, reporting, campaign construction, and a whole lot more. While Ad Briefs are only available to my Power Hitters Club – Elite members, I’ve created a sample ad brief on Ad Performance Troubleshooting that you can read for free.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Most performance drops have logical explanations: randomness, recent changes, competition, website issues, or event delays—investigate these first.
• Evaluate results in seven-day windows at least two weeks in; don’t overreact to daily fluctuations, especially at low volume.
• Dig beyond surface metrics—use attribution comparisons, audience segment breakdowns, and backend validation to understand what’s really happening.
• When ads consistently underperform, simplify campaign structure and focus on improving the ads, offer, and landing page rather than chasing tactical hacks.
• Early strong performance followed by decline is often natural audience exhaustion, not a sign something is broken.

Read the sample Ad Brief here.

If you want access to this and 22 other Ad Briefs, as well as other benefits like weekly strategy sessions, weekly webinars, a private community, and more access to me, go here to learn more.

Your Turn

What do you think about these updates?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post New Value Rules for Audiences, GTM Updates, and More appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I’ve been doing this for a very long time. In August, this website will be 15 years old. I’ve been talking about and writing about and practicing Facebook-then-Meta advertising longer than almost any walking human.

But that also gives me lots of chances to be wrong. And I’ve been wrong a lot.

In some cases, I was right about something for a time. But as things changed, I clung too tightly to that old perspective. Correction was more difficult in some situations than others.

It’s why I’d argue that it’s easier to be a new advertiser than an experienced one. If you’re new, you don’t walk in with expectations about how things should work. But the experienced advertiser has years of “proof” that you should do things one way, and that other way is wrong.

Meta advertising is constantly changing. The pages of this website are proof of that. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of new features and best practices that may conflict with those discussed a few weeks, months, or years earlier.

Below are examples of when I was the most wrong about Meta advertising. This, of course, is not an exhaustive list.

1. Remarketing

The thing about remarketing is that I was absolutely right about it for a while. I was obsessed with it, and for good reason. Targeting was possibly the most important factor for getting results.

I was all over every type of remarketing. The minute we could create website custom audiences, it became almost all I did. I’d segment and micro-target and do some of the craziest stuff.

And it worked. Part of the reason it worked so well was that I was lucky enough to have large and engaged audiences to target. Facebook was still surfacing my content organically, leading to lots of social traffic to my website. Google loved me, resulting in plenty of referral traffic. And my email list was large and active, leading to a big chunk of email-driven traffic.

It’s not that I don’t still benefit from these things, but I took for granted how easy it all was back then. And, combined with the low costs, it made remarketing all the more effective.

My sweet spot was from 2015 to 2018. A large percentage of my strategic-focused content was about remarketing. When I spoke at a conference, I’d talk about remarketing. It became what I’d be known for.

Remarketing strategies became part of my identity. And that, my friend, is dangerous. Because if remarketing were to become less relevant, that would mean I was less relevant.

And I became less relevant.

It probably started with iOS 14 changes and the drop in reliability and completeness of remarketing audiences. But costs also increased while my audiences began to shrink. And Meta, faced with challenges related to privacy and charges of discrimination in targeting, focused on improving algorithmic targeting.

And this is when I started to be wrong. I would not allow myself to believe that Meta could reach the people I wanted to reach without me explicitly targeting them.

It wasn’t until Meta introduced Advantage+ Audience that it began to click. Even if you didn’t provide audience suggestions, Meta would prioritize people based on pixel activity, conversion data, and prior engagement with ads. You know… REMARKETING.

But I clung to my old strategies until Meta made audience segments available for manual sales campaigns. It wasn’t until then that I could actually prove that Meta was doing the things that were claimed.

And once I could prove it, I first had to admit to myself that I was wrong. And it was time to change course.

2. Targeting Control

Of course, I wasn’t just wrong about remarketing. I was wrong about all targeting control.

If I wasn’t remarketing, I was using interests and behaviors to reach a new audience. And if I wasn’t using interests and behaviors, I was using lookalike audiences. To make things really fun, I’d layer them together.

And I’d restrict by age, usually focusing on people aged 25 to 54. It didn’t matter what I optimized for.

This was the accepted way to reach a new, but relevant, audience. It wasn’t wrong years ago. But then Meta started making changes.

The first big moment was the introduction of audience expansion. It started as a checkbox to allow Meta to reach people beyond your chosen interests and behaviors if it would improve performance.

Then it was offered for lookalike audiences. And eventually, under the labels of Advantage+ Detailed Targeting and Advantage+ Lookalikes, these were forced for many of the most common performance goals.

I wanted to restrict my audience. But Meta wouldn’t let me. I initially revolted against the idea that my chosen audience could be expanded, and I’d have no way to prevent it.

Eventually, I gave up the fight. If I can’t restrict by these audiences, why should I obsess over which ones I reach? And if algorithmic targeting is already proven to reach my remarketing audience automatically, what does that say about the necessity of detailed targeting and lookalikes?

These audience inputs ceased being part of my focus when creating ad sets. I was wrong to fight it for as long as I did.

And while restricting by age made sense in certain circumstances, it took me far too long to realize that context matters. The only reason to restrict by age would be if Meta could find cheap, low-quality optimized actions from a certain age group.

Eventually, even this scenario wouldn’t require a restriction. Value rules became the solution.

3. Ads Focus

When my priority was targeting, I spent very little time worrying about the ads. I was convinced that great targeting provided the benefit of making even below-average ads effective.

And this was a nice perk for someone who didn’t love the ads side of advertising. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I’m an accidental marketer. I enjoy the stats and strategy and mechanics of advertising, but I’ve always hated the selling part.

Because I wasn’t trained in sales, I wasn’t particularly concerned about the psychology of sales copy. I convinced myself that my soft sales approach with low-quality creative that I whipped up in two minutes was good enough.

They weren’t. I was wrong. And it wasn’t until the craze over Andromeda that I started to figure it out.

I can actually thank my initial overreaction to Andromeda in the first half of 2025. To test what Andromeda meant to performance, I’d create 10, 20, and even 50 ads in an ad set. It forced me to dive deep into the copy and creative — things that never made me all that comfortable.

In the meantime, I started thinking about customer personas, pain points, solutions, and sales psychology — all things I had mostly avoided until that point.

While I can also say I was initially wrong about needing so many ads, that experience helped me get more comfortable with the importance of ads. I started to understand that not every potential customer was the same or would respond to the same text or creative.

These realizations coincided with embracing a hands-off approach to targeting. So once targeting took a back seat, my focus shifted to the ads themselves. If I wasn’t getting the results I wanted, I knew where to look.

In the past, I may have focused on the targeting. But now, I understand: Improved performance can be found with better ads.

4. Complexity

This truly happened as a result of abandoning my long-held beliefs about targeting.

If remarketing happens algorithmically, why do I need to create a separate remarketing ad set? And it went so much deeper than this since I’d create “Evergreen Campaigns” that included separate ad sets and ads for separate stages of the funnel based on when someone engaged with me.

If detailed targeting and lookalike audiences are automatically expanded, why do I need separate ad sets for different groups of detailed targeting and lookalikes when they could all, technically, reach the same people?

I was wrong. And because I was wrong, I could approach campaign complexity differently.

I cut out these extra ad sets, which eliminated much of the complexity that became a common trait of my advertising in the early days.

5. Control

Years ago, it made sense. Control targeting. Control placements. Control the message.

Ultimately, we were trying to guarantee that a specific ad looked a specific way for a specific group of people. And we’d “optimize” performance by further controlling these things.

I turned off placements that metrics suggested were less effective. I obsessed over winning copy and creative combinations. These are the types of actions taken when you assume your target audience is static.

I was wrong. And it’s a lesson I’ve come to embrace as control has steadily disappeared.

I know now that, because the algorithm is literal, Meta is trying to get results that reflect my performance goal. That’s a balancing act of costs, impressions, and performance by placement. As long as a placement isn’t known for generating low-quality optimized results, there’s no reason to control it.

The entire concept of five primary text and five headlines conflicted with my original approach years ago. It didn’t make sense. I wanted this specific message to be shown to that group of people. Why would I let Meta choose from other options?

And what do you mean I should provide up to 10 images and videos for a single ad? And I can’t see which one performs best? That’s nonsense.

I now understand that different people respond to different creative and messaging. Meta has more data than I do and can adjust dynamically to show the right versions to the right people. And ultimately, micro-results by primary text or headline or even creative aren’t all that important. We should be viewing results in aggregate to determine success.

6. Automation

If you’ve been doing this long enough, you may remember when Campaign Budget Optimization was introduced in 2018. Then, in early 2019, it was reported that it would eventually become a fixed default that couldn’t be turned off (this would never happen).

I nearly rioted. If I set a $100 daily budget for one ad set and a $50 ad set for another, that’s what I want to spend. That’s why I set those budgets in the first place!

I spent some time understanding how CBO worked. I tested it. And I realized that my budget would be spent optimally to help get the most results. It took the thinking out of setting my budgets.

I was wrong.

And you can certainly connect so many other automations to my former need to control things. Allowing budget to be spent on all placements. Allowing Meta to find my audience algorithmically. These were all things that would have originally seemed like nonsense.

Because I knew better, dammit. But I was wrong.

7. Creative Enhancements

I was like most advertisers when Advantage+ Creative enhancements first became a thing. I despised them. And many advertisers still do.

But it wasn’t until all of that time spent trying to better understand Andromeda and creative diversification that everything clicked. These enhancements help me create more variations of my ad to give Meta a larger pool of options.

I was wrong. Or maybe I was wrong about most of the enhancements. Some of them are still trash. But I’ll leave most of these enhancements on now.

The main thing I’ve come to understand is that creative enhancements are there to help me. They won’t change my images and videos universally. Instead, they give Meta the option to enhance a version that will become one of many versions that could be shown.

8. The Learning Phase

Don’t touch a campaign that’s working!

My voice was one of many shouting this, and it was related to the learning phase. Avoid any change that will restart the learning phase because that will mean that performance is likely to go into the toilet.

And maybe there was some validity to that claim for a while. But even when it became less true, I clung to it for too long.

I was wrong. I was wrong that the learning phase was something to be feared. And I was wrong that exiting the learning phase is a necessary priority.

The truth is you may never exit the learning phase when selling an expensive product. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get good results. The concept of 50 optimized actions in a week is a rule of thumb. More is better, but it’s not required.

And delivery isn’t as sensitive as it once was. You’re getting good results now, not because of some magical combination of settings and luck that can be disrupted with a change. You’re getting results because you have good ads.

I’m no longer fixated on ways to avoid restarting the learning phase. I’m not going to tell you to only raise budget by 20 percent or avoid creating new ads when you’re getting decent results. If you’re getting good results now, you can get good results again.

It’s not magic or luck, and that’s the main thing that’s helped me understand that I was wrong.

We Will Be Wrong

If you’re ever going to have success with Meta advertising — or anything, really — you need to understand that you will be wrong. If you are unable to embrace this possibility, you’re likely to create a fantasy land where everyone else is to blame but you.

It’s the algorithm. Meta’s automations. Server outages. Creative enhancements. Attribution. Targeting. Magical campaign structure.

I was wrong. The fact that I’m still here today, writing on this website, is because I was willing to accept that fact. And truly, there was once a danger that I wouldn’t be able to do that.

If you’re truly committed to getting the best results possible, you’ll also be committed to fully understanding how things work. That involves researching Meta’s documentation and running tests that aim to disprove your beliefs, not confirm them.

Once you’re open to being wrong, you’re much more likely to survive what is an absolutely wild ride of constant changes to features and functionality. And that ride isn’t ending anytime soon.

Buckle up.

Your Turn

What have you been wrong about related to Meta advertising?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post I Was Wrong: How My Approach to Meta Ads Changed appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta desperately needs this feature…

Meta introduced site links a couple of years ago now. They allow advertisers to generate a variation of their ads that will showcase other products and services.

But there’s an element of this that is incredibly frustrating, and Meta can fix it.

The Problem

This is one of the most annoying exercises for advertisers. Every time you create an ad, you need to define your site links.

In the example above, Meta includes site links I’ve customized previously but also automatically detects other links and generates new site links for me. So then I’ll need to go through and manually remove the ones I don’t want to feature the ones I do.

Site links require a thumbnail image and label, so each one needs some thought and customization. Meta isn’t helping by automatically detecting these links.

The Solution

So here’s what I request: Add an account-wide setting for site links in Advertising Settings. Allow advertisers to globally define them so that a default setting will be used for each new ad.

This shouldn’t be that complicated. We shouldn’t need to remember to re-customize these links every single time we create a new ad.

I’m fine with Meta being able to recommend other site links, but they shouldn’t be included by default. Can we do this, Meta??

The post Site Links Feature Request appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Weekly observations from inside Meta ads

A handful of small but meaningful updates stood out this week, from customer acquisition and attribution to audience segments and delivery. None require a full deep dive, but they’re all worth your attention right now.

1. Customer Lifecycle Strategy
2. Engage-through attribution rollout
3. Audience segments use case
4. Incremental attribution windows
5. Adaptive Ranking Model for Instagram

Let’s get to it…

1. Customer Lifecycle Strategy

I normally refrain from sharing information about a new feature unless one of these three things is true:

1. I have the feature
2. Meta mentions the feature
3. Someone I know and trust has it

So while I’ve heard rumblings about this one for more than a week, I’ve been more than a little skeptical about the information I’ve seen. But I’ve heard enough now that it does appear to be a thing.

This screenshot has been shared repeatedly on LinkedIn…

From what I have been able to sort out, it appears at the top of an ad set when creating a Sales campaign. As you can see from the screenshot, you’re given two options:

Reach new and existing customers: Choose this if your strategy is to get conversions with a lower cost per result and you don’t need to exclude people based on if they made a purchase.

Acquire new customers: Choose this if conversions from people who have never made a purchase generate more value for your business. This may increase your cost per result.

“Reach New and Existing Customers” would be the default option, and it’s what happens naturally now anyway. This should be the chosen method for most advertisers, but there may be exceptions when you’d want to only reach completely new people.

I’ve seen all sorts of weird speculation that choosing “Acquire New Customers” will automate the process of excluding your customers. You no longer need to create custom audiences to exclude them, and Meta will use their data and magical wand to exclude those people for you. And that all sounded like a bunch of nonsense.

I had my theories about how this would work that were far less mysterious. And based on the latest screenshot I’ve seen shared, my theories were correct.

Take a close look at that screenshot under the selection of “Acquire New Customers.” Meta lists the custom audiences that will be excluded based on that selection.

In other words, Meta is only able to exclude your current customers because you’ve defined the Existing Customers audience segment in your Advertising Settings.

This is a bit of a 2026 twist on the Existing Customer Budget Cap that originally existed for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. ASC was the reason that defining your existing customers became necessary in the first place, and audience segments were born.

Back to the second screenshot, you’ll see there’s one more option: “Reach engaged or non-engaged audiences.” In the example, “Reach both” is selected.

Once again, this appears to be pulling from your audience segments. You can also choose to exclude people who have engaged with your business in some way but haven’t purchased. These people are defined in your audience segments as Engaged Audience.

There’s a whole lot to discuss here regarding whether it’s a reasonable strategy to exclude those who have bought or engaged with your business before. That’s a separate topic for another day.

For now, it does appear that this is a thing. But it’s also not as interesting as many are suggesting. If you wanted to exclude these people before, you could have manually. And, of course, the accuracy of those exclusions will be dependent on how you define your audience segments in the first place.

2. Engage-Through Attribution Rollout

A month ago, Meta announced some significant changes to attribution. Not only does click-through attribution now require a click on a link, but engage-through attribution replaces engaged-view. All of the social and other clicks that were previously counted under click-through attribution move to engage-through.

Earlier this week, advertisers started seeing the changes reflected in the ad set.

And now we’re also seeing it in the reporting tools. When using the breakdown by attribution settings, “1-day engagement” replaces “1-day engaged-view.”

And you’ll also see this reflected when using the Compare Attribution Settings feature.

What’s confusing about using these tools is what becomes of the data that was previously defined under the old definitions of click-through and engaged-view attribution. Just keep this in mind when viewing historical data prior to, or overlapping with, the rollout of these changes.

3. Audience Segments Use Case

Audience segments are one of my favorite features, and I know I talk about them a lot. While the primary use case of audience segments is to prove how much remarketing happens naturally, there’s another way to use this feature to help explain performance fluctuations.

Here’s an example…

I have a campaign that has been running for eight weeks and performance has decreased over time. I used the breakdown by audience segments, and I found it interesting how the percentage of ad spend dedicated to remarketing (as defined by the Engaged Audience and Existing Customers audience segments) declined over time.

• Week 1: 19.6%
• Week 2: 19.9%
• Week 3: 21.6%
• Week 4: 27.5%
• Week 5: 26.7%
• Week 6: 8.4%
• Week 7: 2.4%
• Week 8: 2.4%

So, Meta spent as much as 27.5% of my budget on remarketing in those initial weeks. But this slice dropped to 2.4% during the most recent weeks. Not coincidentally, the cost per conversion has risen during that time.

The natural reaction might be to assume something is wrong. Why would Meta shift so dramatically in remarketing? But the reality is that hidden beneath the surface was a 9.0 frequency for remarketing audiences during this time, which was double that of the new audience.

In other words, Meta leaned into remarketing early to get the best results. But as these audiences were exhausted, effectiveness decreased. Meta then relied less on remarketing, which meant new audiences became the primary source of conversions.

The decline in performance that I saw wasn’t much of a decline at all. The new audience performance remained mostly the same. It’s just that remarketing became less available to bring down my costs.

This doesn’t mean that my remarketing audiences are completely exhausted. I also haven’t created new ads in a few weeks. Once I do, those new ads are likely to be shown to my remarketing audiences again.

This example is a reminder that your performance fluctuations can often be explained by natural delivery shifts. Don’t forget to use the breakdown by audience segments to help diagnose it.

4. Incremental Attribution Windows

Beginning about a year ago, advertisers have had the option of Standard or Incremental attribution in the ad set when maximizing the number of conversions.

When Incremental attribution is selected, Meta will use models that predict whether a conversion was caused by your ad. This is different from Standard attribution, which focuses on conversions that happen after clicks or views within a defined window of time.

It’s important to remember this because the breakdown by attribution settings won’t work when using Incremental attribution. Typically, this breakdown will segment your results by attribution window.

But these rows will not appear if you used Incremental attribution. The reason for that is breakdowns will only segment results relevant to your settings. Since you aren’t using Standard attribution, rows for those windows wouldn’t be relevant.

Of course, you can uncover conversion results outside of your settings by using the Compare Attribution Settings feature. When used, you can add columns for the click-through, engage-through, and view-through windows and see how they compare to your Incremental results.

I’ve found that Incremental results tend to be consistent with click-through conversions, though they don’t match up exactly. View-through and engage-through can be incremental, too.

5. Adaptive Ranking Model for Instagram

Meta recently detailed improvements made to show more relevant ads to people on Instagram. This was shared on its Engineering Blog, so the audience understands the technical details that will make little sense to the rest of us normies.

Here’s why Meta says they developed the Adaptive Ranking Model:

This increase in scale & complexity exacerbates a fundamental ‘inference trilemma’: the challenge of balancing the increased model complexity and associated need for compute and memory with the low latency and cost efficiency required for a global service serving billions of people. To overcome this, we have developed the Meta Adaptive Ranking Model, which effectively bends the inference scaling curve with high ROI and industry-leading efficiency.

Uhh….

Thankfully, Andrew Hutchinson at Social Media Today helped interpret.

The bottom line is less compute power and more relevant ads. Meta says that since launching the Adaptive Ranking Model on Instagram in Q4 of 2025, advertisers have seen a 3% increase in conversions and a 5% increase in click-through rate for targeted users. Maybe not significant, but relevant.

We’ve heard a lot about Meta’s developments related to new hardware and software to improve ad performance. While Andromeda, GEM, and Lattice get a lot of attention, add Adaptive Ranking Model to the list of technologies that Meta is working on to help advertisers reach their ideal customers most efficiently.

Your Turn

What do you think about these updates?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Customer Lifecycle Strategy, Attribution Updates, and More appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Some Meta advertisers have spotted a new “Describe Your Audience” AI feature for detailed targeting. I finally have it in one ad account, so let’s walk through what it is and isn’t.

It’s not clear if what advertisers are seeing is a test or the early stages of an official rollout. I’m not seeing any updates to Meta’s official documentation related to detailed targeting that would indicate this is a new fixture going forward.

I have some thoughts. The vast majority of reactions I’ve seen exaggerate or misunderstand what this feature actually does. My hope is to clarify things here.

Let’s get to it…

How It Works

If you have this feature, you’ll see “Describe Your Audience” as a new, default tab for detailed targeting.

The other option is to “Use Original Options.” If you don’t have this feature, it will look like this…

With “Describe Your Audience” selected, click “Get Started.” You’ll see a window that looks like this…

The instructions say to “describe your ideal audience and our AI will find relevant interests and behaviors.” Once you enter a prompt in under 2,000 characters that describes your ideal audience, click “Find Options.”

After a few seconds, Meta will generate a list of interests and behaviors that match your prompt.

If you hover over an interest, you’ll see an explanation of why Meta believes it’s relevant to your ideal audience.

You can individually remove interests, remove them all, or revise your prompt and have Meta find more options. Once you’re ready, click “add all” to add the selected interests and behaviors to your audience.

Your detailed targeting will then be updated with those items.

Here’s a quick video that walks through the process…

Is This Anything?

I’ve seen a lot of excitement about this new feature from advertisers, particularly on LinkedIn. To sort out whether this is a big deal, we need to answer a few questions…

1. Does it offer anything new?

Not really.

Yes, it’s a cool way to find interests and behaviors that you would otherwise search out manually. But these aren’t new options. This might surface interests and behaviors you wouldn’t have considered before, but they were always there.

2. Does it add more control?

No.

Within the default audience creation view, all detailed targeting inputs are suggestions.

If you click the option to “further limit the reach of your ads,” detailed targeting remains a suggestion for 11 of the most commonly used performance goals.

The advertiser’s level of control remains the same, which is minimal.

3. Does it make detailed targeting more accurate or effective?

The natural response to technology like this is awe because it automates stuff and makes it easier. But does it make it better?

The quality of the outputs will rely heavily on the quality of your inputs. You are still responsible for writing out a prompt that will generate relevant interests and behaviors.

That doesn’t mean we should automatically accept all of Meta’s recommendations either. This feature still needs to accurately surface the right detailed targeting options, including those you may not have considered, to be useful.

To be truly valuable, it needs to provably impact performance. And that takes us here…

4. Does it even matter?

The main thing to remember here is that this does not substantively change anything about our inputs or control. This feature only surfaces options that were previously available. It’s a novelty.

Whether the inputs are selected manually or found using the “Describe Your Audience” tool, they’re treated the same way. They’re only audience suggestions in most cases. And we have no reliable way to prove whether Meta uses them or whether they make a positive impact on performance.

If you’re using one of the few performance goals that allow advertisers to restrict by detailed targeting, this could become more valuable. That assumes, of course, that the output generated by the AI leads to better results. And we won’t know that without testing.

Verdict: Meh

I hate to say it, but this feature is mostly pointless.

It would have been useful five to 10 years ago when control over detailed targeting was possible and useful. But, of course, such technology to automate this would not have existed then.

If you believe that the detailed targeting suggestions you provide make a significant impact on performance, you probably think this is a big deal. I just don’t think that’s the case. I doubt suggestions can hurt you, but there’s little evidence that they do much of anything.

Meta has even de-emphasized the use of audience suggestions. They’ve removed the button to provide suggestions in the default view. Language indicating audience suggestions are “prioritized” before going broader has seemingly disappeared.

I just don’t understand why time was spent developing this feature. If Meta actually wants advertisers to provide detailed targeting suggestions because those suggestions have proven to improve performance, why are all of the platform’s trends moving in the opposite direction?

Your Turn

Have you experimented with this feature yet? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Meta’s “Describe Your Audience” AI Feature for Detailed Targeting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

This feature changes everything…

The problem is that far too few advertisers use it. And many who do aren’t using it correctly.

What are Audience Segments?

Meta introduced audience segments for manual sales campaigns in the summer of 2024. I credit this feature for completely transforming my understanding of algorithmic targeting.

Advertisers who accurately define their engaged audience and existing customers get incredible insights.

When you run sales campaigns using algorithmic targeting, you can break down results by audience segments. This helps you see how ad spend and conversions are distributed between remarketing and prospecting audiences.

The Impact

Before I had this information, I thought Meta needed me to explicitly target remarketing audiences. But once I used it, I understood how much remarketing happens by default.

The impact of having this information is that it validates a more hands-off approach. You can simplify targeting and ad set creation because you can see that your ads are already reaching these people.

I created a free mini-course to help you get the most out of audience segments. It takes you through how to define them, break down the results, and use that information.

The post Audience Segments Change Everything appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Weekly observations from inside Meta ads

A handful of small updates stood out this week, from new delivery controls and audience filters to questions about location targeting, video translation limits, and Threads ads.

1. “Push delivery to this ad”
2. Engagement frequency filter
3. Did Meta change location targeting?
4. Video translation limitations
5. Threads ads updates

Let’s get to it…

1. “Push Delivery to This Ad”

Some advertisers have reported seeing a new “Push delivery to this ad” option.

I don’t seem to have it yet, but here’s what I’ve been able to figure out based on what I’ve seen so far…

For published ads that aren’t getting distribution.

I’ve seen versions of this where an advertiser sees an alert in the Delivery column that a published ad is getting “limited or no ad spend.” The advertiser is prompted to “push delivery” to that ad by dedicating a portion of their budget to it.

Similar to the creative testing tool.

The screenshot above may look familiar since it looks almost exactly like that of the creative testing tool. For example, here’s what that feature looks like…

In fact, it appears that Meta completely stole the functionality from the creative testing tool and applied it to “push delivery.” Meta even seems to have mistakenly included text related to it being a “test.” But this shouldn’t be a test since you’d only be pushing delivery to a single ad.

How it seems to work.

I can only make educated guesses about how this works, but I’ve seen enough that I think I can piece it together.

If an ad isn’t getting impressions, you can choose to dedicate a specific percentage of your campaign or ad set budget to the ad for a designated number of days. This will allow you to see what would happen if the ad were to actually get impressions so that you can decide whether any other changes need to be made.

The other difference between this and the creative testing tool is that it appears to be intended for ads that were already published and running (though it’s not clear if this can be applied for new ads when published). The creative testing tool is only for new ads, which is actually one of its annoying quirks.

This could change some things.

I have to admit I’m chuckling to myself a bit about how excited some advertisers have been about this. I’ve been pushing the creative testing tool for months for this precise purpose. The creative testing tool is part of my routine, as I start new ads with a test.

But the addition of “push delivery” could change that approach. One reason I used the test for all new ads is that we couldn’t apply the creative testing tool to active ads. But this new tool gives us flexibility.

Now you can publish an ad without an initial test and see how Meta distributes budget normally. If you have questions about why it’s not getting impressions, you can push budget to it for a few days and see what happens.

I’m looking forward to trying this out when I have it.

2. Engagement Frequency Filter

Here’s a change that’s only about eight years too late…

Advertisers who create engagement custom audiences for their Facebook page or Instagram profile will notice something new: A filter for either “in the past” or “at least.”

For example, you could create an audience of people who engaged with your Facebook page in the past 14-21 days.

Or you could isolate the people who engaged with your Facebook page at least 3 times in the past 90 days.

These filters apply to the following types of custom audiences for Facebook pages:

• People who engaged with your page
• People who visited your page
• People who engaged with any post or ad
• People who clicked any call-to-action button
• People who sent a message to your page
• People who saved any post

And they apply to the following types of custom audiences for your Instagram account:

• People who engaged with this professional account
• People who visited this professional account’s profile
• People who engaged with any post or ad
• People who sent a message to this professional account
• People who saved any post or ad

So… interesting. But like I said, it’s about eight years too late.

Why would Meta choose to do this now? Are you trying to tell me that Meta doesn’t already prioritize the people who engage most with our Facebook and Instagram accounts? This is the kind of remarketing that should be left mostly in the past.

Some people will be really excited about this. But it will likely be forgotten soon after.

3. Did Meta Change Location Targeting?

This is one of those very subtle changes that would be easy to miss, but it jumped out at me. It may not mean anything. Or maybe it means a lot.

Here’s what the location targeting box looks like today…

Do you see what’s missing? Here’s the exact same box from February 15th…

Meta removed the line that location targeting allowed you to “reach people living in or recently in this location.”

I’m not sure if Meta’s documentation changed, but it does mention “living in or recently in” within the explanation. But it’s quite possible that it’s been softened. Here’s how it reads now:

Location targeting lets you show ads to people who spend time in locations, such as people living there or recently there.

Maybe it’s always read that way. But the “such as” implies that it includes people beyond those “living there or recently there.”

It’s certainly vague. I have questions.

4. Video Translation Limitations

This isn’t necessarily ad-related, but I don’t know what this is all about…

I use Business Suite on desktop to schedule Reels. I first started using the video translation feature last September. It’s pretty awesome. It allows me to generate versions of my video that translate my voice into other languages.

Last year, I published three of these per week without issue. Now I’m only publishing one per week. Then, without warning, I started seeing this message.

It’s a “limited new feature” now? Even though I was previously using it three times per week, now I’ve suddenly exceeded my max while using it once per week?

It’s not clear what the maximum is or what this is all about. But pretty annoying.

5. Threads Ads Updates

Meta made a couple of Marketing API updates to Threads ads:

App Ads now supported: App ads support the Threads Feed placement through the Marketing API globally. This is for the App Promotion campaign objective with performance goals related to link clicks and conversions (or at least that’s how I interpret it).

Reply Moderation Tooling: View, hide, and reply to top-level replies on your Threads ads. Reply moderation lets you manage the conversation on your ads by reading replies, hiding content, and adding your own replies.

These are Marketing API updates, so they apply to third-party tools that allow you to manage your ads. Presumably, this will also carry over to the main interface if it hasn’t already.

Your Turn

What do you think about these updates?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post “Push Delivery to This Ad” (Plus 4 Updates) appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta ads targeting is more confusing and controversial than ever. That is, at least, if you listen to all of the loud recommendations about strategies and control.

The reality is that targeting has never been simpler. It’s just confusing if you don’t take the time to understand your role in it, and when you should insert yourself.

And that’s the point of this post. Targeting inputs fall into three categories now:

1. Audience Controls
2. Audience Suggestions
3. Audience Restrictions

It’s your job to understand all three levels: What they mean, why they matter, when control is necessary, and when methods other than an audience restriction should be preferred.

Let’s get to it…

Age Range

Advertisers can set an audience control using a minimum age between 18 and 25.

You can also provide an age range suggestion that doesn’t act as a tight constraint.

Or you can turn Advantage+ off and set a strict age minimum and maximum.

How to Approach:

Avoid restricting by age when possible. The one exception would be when selling age-restricted goods, where you cannot serve people under or over a certain age. Such a restriction can also be done at the account level.

An age range suggestion shouldn’t hurt delivery, but it also won’t necessarily impact it. Meta will ignore suggestions if it means helping you get more optimized actions, as defined by your performance goal.

A common mistake that advertisers make is that they envision their ideal customer when defining the ad set audience. Whether based on data or not, advertisers might restrict by ages 25 to 54 because they believe this age range most accurately reflects their customers.

While that may indeed be a reflection of customer data, such a restriction is rarely necessary. Meta has mounds of data to help find the people who are most likely to perform the action that you want, and this is likely to be reflected in budget distribution. Restricting your audience also restricts the algorithm, preventing Meta from spending even a small amount of your budget on a group that could lead to results.

In some cases, Meta will concentrate budget on certain age ranges because it has proven to drive more of the results that you want. But you might find that this is because an age range is the source of cheap and low-quality results.

Consider lead generation as an example. I’ve found that when running ads for leads, Meta will concentrate a high percentage of my budget on people aged 65 and up. The reason for this is that, for whatever reason, this age group results in cheap leads at a high rate. I have information that Meta doesn’t, which is that these aren’t high-quality leads.

Don’t overthink this. Prioritize limiting restrictions. Know that any guidance Meta needs is most likely related to weaknesses that will lead to cheap and low-quality results. Know how to detect such behavior.

When it happens, prioritize using value rules to adjust bids, rather than removing age ranges entirely.

Gender

Advertisers cannot set an audience control for gender in the default setup. You can provide an audience suggestion for gender that doesn’t act as a tight constraint.

Or you can turn Advantage+ off and set a strict restriction by gender.

How to Approach:

Avoid restricting by gender when possible. A gender audience suggestion shouldn’t hurt delivery, but it also won’t necessarily impact it. Meta will ignore suggestions if it means helping you get more optimized actions, as defined by your performance goal.

As is the case with age ranges, advertisers often fall into the trap of restricting by gender to more accurately reflect their ideal customer. Such a restriction is rarely necessary, and it can prevent you from spending even a small amount of budget on a segment that could lead to customers.

In some cases, Meta will concentrate budget on a gender because it has proven to drive more of the results that you want. As is the case with age range, this can be because a gender is the source of cheap and low-quality results.

For example, consider a situation of a service focused on helping women-owned businesses. When optimizing for a purchase, gender restriction shouldn’t be necessary. But if they run ads with a performance goal related to an engagement-level action, Meta is likely to show their ads to men if they’re likely to engage. This could mean spending a lot of your budget on people not likely to purchase.

If there’s such a problem to be solved, prioritize using value rules to adjust bids, rather than removing a gender entirely.

Location

Location is an audience control. You can include specific countries, states/regions, cities, postal codes, addresses, DMAs, Comscore Markets, or congressional districts. You can also add worldwide or global regions.

Since location is an audience control and not a suggestion, Meta will not reach people outside of those locations. However, there’s a major caveat. Meta defines those who would qualify to be reached under this setting as “people who spend time in locations, such as people living there or recently there.” You cannot isolate residents or travelers.

When a city, state, or region within a country is selected, advertisers have the option to “reach more people likely to respond.”

When selected, you can also reach people who wouldn’t qualify under living in or recently in that location, but they live in that country and have provided signals that indicate they are interested in that location.

How to Approach:

The main thing to understand here is that advertisers cannot isolate local residents or travelers. The definition of a person who qualifies when a location is selected will automatically include both.

That’s frustrating, but it’s not something we can successfully overcome. I know that some advertisers will target one selection of cities while excluding the surrounding areas. By doing so, you’d also exclude some of the people you want to reach (for example, those who live in the area you’re targeting, but commute to the excluded area for work).

So if you’re hoping to reach people in a local area, include it in locations. Know that you are likely to reach some people you didn’t want to reach. But address this with ad copy and creative to clearly appeal most to the people you want to reach.

Otherwise, most businesses will be focused on country targeting. In most cases, you can and should combine multiple countries in the same ad set, particularly when costs are similar between them (for example, targeting the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia).

The ideal scenario might be to separate countries into their own ad sets to create ads that are most relevant to residents of each country. But you should only do this if you have the budget that can be adequately spent on each country to bring in a volume of results that is meaningful.

To keep with the theme of this post, do not overthink location targeting. In most cases, keep it simple. Target the relevant locations and keep it broad when possible. Consolidate locations in most cases, leaving opportunities to separate them as exceptions to the rule.

Custom Audience Exclusions

Custom audience exclusions are an audience control. Meta will respect such an exclusion as a tight constraint.

How to Approach:

Custom audience exclusions make the most sense when promoting a product that can only be purchased once. You may not want to waste budget on reaching people who cannot buy. That said, there are a couple of factors to consider.

First, it’s virtually impossible to successfully exclude everyone. This isn’t because Meta ignores your exclusions. It’s because custom audiences are, by nature, flawed and incomplete. Expect that you will always reach some people you do not intend to reach.

Second, an argument can be made for including prior customers, even if they cannot buy again. They are the people most likely to share positive comments. Your ad may also be a reminder to make a related purchase, though it may not be of that product.

The bottom line is this: You can exclude custom audiences. Limit such exclusions to situations that make the most sense to avoid wasted ad spend. But know that custom audience exclusions are imperfect, and you will always reach some of these people anyway.

Detailed Targeting

Detailed targeting is one of the oldest types of audience selection for Meta advertisers. It allows you to select categories of interests and behaviors that match your intended audience, based on the data that Meta has from both in-app and off-app signals.

Any detailed targeting inputs will be suggestions by default. Meta will go beyond suggestions to help you get more results.

Even if you attempt to turn Advantage+ off, you can rarely restrict by detailed targeting inputs. For 11 of the most common performance goals, detailed targeting will always be used as a suggestion. You can remove suggestions for the remaining performance goals, when applicable.

How to Approach:

There are multiple layers to answering the question of how you should approach detailed targeting.

1. Can you restrict by detailed targeting inputs? In most cases, no. Detailed targeting is almost always used as a suggestion.

2. Do detailed targeting suggestions positively impact distribution and performance? We don’t know for sure. Outside of using A/B tests, which could vary widely based on the account and detailed targeting suggestions used, Meta offers no way to prove how much suggestions are used and how much they matter.

Suggestions might matter sometimes. Meta might mostly ignore them at others. We have no idea how suggestions are applied from case to case.

Even Meta’s documentation has softened on how suggestions are applied. Meta previously said that suggestions were “prioritized” before going more broadly if it meant getting more results. But that mention of prioritization disappeared.

I wouldn’t tie my strategy to an audience input that has completely unknown impact. Detailed targeting suggestions can’t hurt, and there’s an argument (even if unproven) that they may be helpful in cases when Meta has less data.

But the biggest mistake you can make is to treat detailed targeting suggestions as tight constraints. They’re not. Do not create separate ad sets based on different detailed targeting inputs. You’re only creating multiple ad sets that have the capability of reaching all of the same people.

Keep it simple. Use detailed targeting suggestions or don’t. But don’t build around them.

Lookalike Audiences

Meta introduced lookalike audiences in 2013 as a way to simplify the process of isolating people most similar to our current customers. Lookalike audiences use custom audiences as the source audience to learn from when developing a larger pool of people.

By default, lookalike audiences are only used as audience suggestions.

Even if you attempt to turn Advantage+ off, you can rarely restrict by lookalike audience inputs. For nine of the most common performance goals, lookalike audiences will always be used as suggestions. You can remove suggestions for the remaining performance goals, when applicable.

How to Approach:

See the approach to detailed targeting above since you can apply the same to lookalike audiences. Your lookalike audience inputs are almost always used as suggestions now, and it is rarely possible to restrict by that audience. So the question is whether the suggestion matters.

You can make an argument it makes sense that Meta could benefit from lookalike audiences in certain circumstances. If you’re running ads for a new account and Meta doesn’t have any data, a lookalike audience suggestion might be beneficial.

But that’s only a theory. Meta also learns quickly in real-time, and we may be putting too much value on that historical data. And since we have no idea how much Meta leans on audience suggestions (and this may not be consistent from case to case), it’s impossible to truly know the impact.

Would a lookalike audience suggestion hurt performance? Probably not. I totally understand why you might use one, particularly with new accounts. But remember that these inputs are almost always suggestions, so don’t approach them as tight constraints.

Do not create multiple ad sets with different lookalike audience and detailed targeting inputs. Because these are only suggestions, all of the ad sets can reach the same people.

But feel free to use these suggestions as a little magic pixie dust.

Custom Audiences (Remarketing)

Custom audiences reflect groups of people connected to your business. Advertisers can create custom audiences based on website activity, customer lists, on-platform activity, and more.

By default, custom audiences are only used as audience suggestions.

If you turn Advantage+ off, you can restrict by custom audiences and remove the suggestion.

This is also known as remarketing.

How to Approach:

As I’ve said repeatedly throughout this post, audience suggestions shouldn’t hurt you. If you want to add a custom audience as a suggestion, knock yourself out. But I have doubts whether it will matter.

Meta already prioritizes remarketing audiences by default. This was made clear with the rollout of Advantage+ Audience in the fall of 2023. If you don’t provide an audience suggestion, Meta will prioritize pixel activity, conversion data, and prior engagement with your ads.

Remarketing happens by default, and you can prove it with audience segments and sales campaigns. Once you’ve defined your engaged audience and existing customers audience segments, you can break down results to see how conversions and ad spend are distributed between remarketing and prospecting groups.

Might custom audience suggestions be more beneficial for new accounts where Meta lacks data to prioritize remarketing groups automatically? It’s certainly possible. Feel free to use custom audiences as suggestions in those cases.

Should you restrict by custom audiences? That’s debatable.

Years ago, about 90% of my advertising leaned on remarketing strategies. I created custom audiences for everything imaginable in an effort to target the most relevant groups possible.

But these days, I understand that most of what I did then is no longer relevant or necessary. Meta doesn’t need me to isolate these people. Remarketing already happens by default. And by not restricting by custom audiences, Meta can dynamically balance budget and performance between remarketing and prospecting audiences.

Are there exceptions when remarketing can be beneficial? Yes, but they are rare. And I use them sometimes. Particularly for high-ticket products, it can make sense to remarket to the people who completed a low-ticket purchase or registration. But even then, these ads are used in addition to the other sales efforts that should be happening to convert these people.

The main thing to understand is that general remarketing should no longer be necessary. There’s rarely a reason to isolate all of your website visitors or entire email list and only target those people. Meta will already be prioritizing them, all while also reaching new people.

The only other exception may be if Meta is leaning too heavily into remarketing and you want to focus more on bringing completely new people into your funnel. Remarketing results are easier, so Meta will take advantage of that. If you need to control remarketing spend, you might create separate ad sets with strict budgets, one for remarketing and one for prospecting (excluding the remarketing audience).

A General Approach

Now let’s put together a general approach to targeting, simplifying the suggestions above and focusing on overarching themes.

1. Take mostly a hands-off approach.

This seems to be the most difficult concept for advertisers. You don’t need to control everything. In many cases now, you can’t. Stop fighting it.

2. Use suggestions — or don’t.

As long as you know they’re suggestions, feel free to use them. I have serious doubts whether they make a difference. Meta removed language indicating they’re prioritized. But as long as you don’t let them control what you do, suggestions can’t hurt. They might even be beneficial in some cases.

3. Avoid restricting by age or gender.

You should restrict by age when selling age-restricted products. But otherwise, you shouldn’t need to restrict by age or gender to match your ideal customer.

That doesn’t mean that Meta is perfect when it comes to distribution by age and gender. Meta can exploit weaknesses based on performance goal in an effort to get you more results. This can lead to low-quality leads or engagement because it’s information that you have and Meta doesn’t.

When this is proven to be a problem, use value rules to adjust bids by age or gender, rather than restricting by demographic group. Your priority should be to avoid restrictions and use other methods, when possible.

4. Remarketing happens by default.

You don’t need to isolate general remarketing groups because Meta already prioritizes them. You can prove this to yourself with sales campaigns and audience segments.

While remarketing is rarely necessary now, there are rare exceptions. Just make sure to approach remarketing as such an exception, rather than the rule.

5. Simple targeting means simple campaign construction.

When you’re following steps 1 to 4, you quickly eliminate many of the reasons you’d previously create separate ad sets. You’ll find that, in most cases, you can get by with only a single ad set. Prioritize that, and only add complexity when it’s completely necessary.

Your Turn

Is there anything else about targeting that you’d add?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post A Guide to Meta Ads Targeting in 2026 appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Most targeting inputs are audience suggestions by default now. And if you use detailed targeting or lookalike audiences, they are only suggestions for the most common performance goals.

But whether Meta actually wants us to provide suggestions isn’t clear. Based on recent changes, you have to wonder.

The Signs

At some point, Meta removed language indicating audience suggestions are prioritized before going more broadly.

Previously, Meta said this:

“If you share an audience suggestion, we’ll prioritize audiences matching this profile before searching more widely.”

But now the language about how suggestions are used is much less committal.

“We’ll also reach people beyond any custom audience, age, gender and detailed targeting settings you apply when it’s likely to improve performance.”

That doesn’t sound like it’ll be prioritized. And Meta recently removed the button to provide suggestions, which draws less attention to that option.

No Clear Stand

Does Meta recommend providing a suggestion now?

I can’t find anything in documentation that it’s what Meta wants. And if suggestions were helpful, you’d think Meta would say that and provide a better way to prove it.

I discuss this topic in my free mini-course. Subscribe to Modern Targeting to learn more.

The post Does Meta Want Audience Suggestions? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Weekly observations from inside Meta ads

A mix of AI-related risk, new automation tools, and ad creation updates stood out this week. Some of these are small, some are potentially more serious, but together they say a lot about where Meta is headed when it comes to control, guidance, and AI inside its business tools.

1. AI-related ad account shutdowns
2. New Meta Manus connectors
3. Meta AI Business Assistant
4. Add Business AI enhancement
5. Format selection is changing
6. ComScore Markets for auto ads

Let’s get to it…

1. AI-Related Ad Account Shutdowns

If you’ve been using the Meta ads connector to connect your ad account to Claude or other AI agents, tread very carefully. Maybe disconnect entirely for now until Meta’s stand on this technology clarifies.

We’ve seen several reports during the past week or so of advertisers getting their accounts shut down without warning. Like this from Naman Bansal, who said on LinkedIn that they’d lost 17 ad accounts due to AI…

Or this, from Tomas Kliment, who tells a similar story…

It sounds like some have been able to get their ad accounts back and some haven’t. But as we all know, the appeal process can be frustrating, with no ability for a second review in some cases.

If I were to guess, I don’t believe this is intentional on Meta’s part. Sure, they want to encourage the use of Manus (coming in the next update below), but this would be overly aggressive even by Meta’s standards. It’s more than likely a scenario of not accounting for the large volume of API calls that are happening.

Does that mean you should continue using these tools? Heck no. Stop until you get the all clear. It’s just not worth the risk.

2. New Meta Manus Connectors

Coincidentally (maybe?), Meta put out an announcement yesterday about the various ways you can unlock the “Power of Manus and in Meta’s Business and Creator Tools.” Meta formally announced the connectors available across Ads Manager, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Ads Manager: While we know about the problems mentioned above, you should be safe using Meta’s official Ads Manager connector to Manus. When connected, “Manus identifies actionable insights, and creates meaningful output formats such as websites, dashboards, slides and infographics.”

Instagram Creator Marketplace: Manus helps match businesses with creators whose audiences align with their marketing goals.

Instagram: Create, publish, and analyze all Instagram content types in one streamlined workflow.

WhatsApp: Beginning to roll out now, Manus handles tasks like checking calendars, drafting responses, and creating to-do lists to help small business owners manage their work directly within WhatsApp chats.

3. Meta AI Business Assistant

I know that this has been rolling out for a while, but I was finally granted access while writing this post. An alert popped up for Meta AI Business Assistant that looks like this…

Once you connect an ad account, Meta opens a panel on the right to initiate a chat with Meta AI.

You can either pick from some generic options or ask a custom question. I asked it how I could get better results from my active ads. While it does give an analysis and makes recommendations, I wouldn’t say there’s any added value. It just recommends the same stuff you’d get from Opportunity Score.

I’m just digging in, but it’s interesting, though I’m not sure it’s useful enough that I’ll make it part of my routine. It’s hopefully most useful for support-related situations where Meta’s human and automated support systems otherwise fail.

4. Add Business AI Enhancement

Speaking of Meta Business AI, I’m now seeing this enhancement when creating ads.

It’s not a new enhancement, but it’s been in testing or rolling out for the past several months. This is the first time I’ve seen it in one of my accounts.

The Add Business AI enhancement is available for Sales campaigns where you utilize any of the website-related conversion locations. It works within Facebook Feed, Facebook Reels, Facebook Stories, Instagram Feed, Instagram Reels, and Instagram Stories placements. An AI agent can instantly answer questions that people have about your product or business that are featured in the ad.

There are a couple of weird things about this enhancement so far…

First, the enhancement may be available even if you’re not currently eligible for the web, Messenger, or WhatsApp integrations of Business AI.

Second, I haven’t seen a way to preview how this would work with my ads. How can we trust that Meta AI will answer questions accurately? Is it based only on the ad copy and landing page information?

Certainly a risk, but maybe you’re adventurous. I turned it on for fun.

5. Format Selection is Changing

You may have spotted this message when creating an ad…

It reads:

Format selection is changing. Soon, Format display options in Ad creative will be the new way to choose formats. This also gives you the flexibility to show ads in multiple formats.

The Format Display Options feature is reasonably new, but I’ve been using it for several months now.

Admittedly, I haven’t seen it as a complete replacement for format selection to this point. I customize site links and they’re used to generate carousel and collection options. And if you choose carousel as the main format, you can use Format Display Options to generate ads that create variations featuring individual carousel cards.

What isn’t clear to me is whether anything else about the ad creation flow will update substantially when format selection goes away. That’s the biggest barrier to me understanding how this change will be executed.

Will we still be able to customize creative by placement? Provide creative options for different aspect ratios? I sure hope so.

6. ComScore Markets for Auto Ads

And finally, Meta announced that it is transitioning from Nielsen DMA to Comscore Markets for automotive mobile ads.

Per Meta, from the announcement:

This transition to Comscore Markets® allows us to provide advertisers with a partner solution that is more sustainable and scalable for long-term performance and measurement.

This change only applies to you if you run automotive ads. Here’s the developer rollout timeline…

• March 23: Advertisers will have the ability to update their vehicle offer feed to include Comscore Market IDs, mapping, and feeds instead of Nielsen DMA.
• April 20: A notification will be issued during feed ingestion for Catalog Ads if dma_codes is still included in the vehicle offer feed.
• June 22: Nielsen’s DMAs will be removed from all Meta targeting and reporting solutions.

Your Turn

What do you think about these updates?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post AI-Related Ad Account Shutdowns, Meta AI Chat, and More appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Sometimes weird stuff happens.

One of the things Meta advertisers need to understand is that most of what happens with their ads is explainable. When you understand how things work, you see the ups and downs of performance as logical and not the work of some rogue algorithm.

Of course, sometimes weird stuff happens, too, and you have to account for it. An example of that is the focus of this post.

“Weird stuff” in this context includes the things that are either difficult to explain or completely oppose how things are expected to work. Performance shifted, but not due to reasonable explanations like creative fatigue, an increase in competition, seasonal behavior, website issues, event delays, or even randomness.

This weird stuff is reflected in data, and not on gut. And it’s rarely found by looking at the surface-level results. You need to dig deeper.

Let me share a story…

A Stable Campaign No More

I was working with a professional service company recently that enjoyed incredible stability and predictability. The goal for one campaign was leads with a budget of more than $20k per month.

You could set a clock to the results. In fact, the cost per lead was only getting better from month to month. Cost per lead hovered around $60 last summer but has slowly come down since. During the months of January and February, cost per lead had settled at a campaign best of about $50.

And then, on precisely March 1st, something happened.

Cost per lead for the first five days of March was $114, with four of the five days over $100. A bad day here or there can happen and is nothing to be all that concerned about. But this was a trend. And for context, there wasn’t a single day of January or February where cost per lead was over $100.

There had been no recent changes made to the campaign, ad set, or ads. But something had caused a drop in performance.

This had become a problem.

Considering Logical Explanations

Whenever you see a drop in performance, the initial focus should be on finding a logical explanation based on how things work. This will lead to a logical solution. You shouldn’t immediately jump to weird stuff since that will be the exception, rather than the rule.

CPM was up to $57 in those initial days of March, which was about 42% higher than normal. While CPM can fluctuate, it otherwise hadn’t been higher than $43, which was in December.

But that increased cost alone wouldn’t explain a more than doubling of cost per lead. The conversion rate (percentage of leads over landing page view) had also more than cut in half, from about 7% to just over 3%.

So the ads, which had been consistently and predictably effective, suddenly weren’t working. One of the ads Meta leaned into most had over 6,000 comments on it. I checked those comments to make sure that there was nothing there that would kill conversion rate.

And that’s when I noticed something. Comments stopped. They normally came in at a dozen or so per day, but now there were no new comments at all in March.

Why?

The Weird Stuff

The ad itself shouldn’t suddenly stop performing unless something changed. Conversion rate should remain stable, but there are reasons competition costs would increase. The ad wasn’t converting and it wasn’t even getting engagement anymore.

And this change wasn’t gradual or the result of some trend. It went from peak performance to falling off a cliff overnight.

This suggested a shift with the ads themselves. First, I performed a breakdown by platform to get a sense of where the ad was being shown in January and February to set a baseline.

Prior to the drop, Facebook made up nearly 92% of the ad spend, followed by Instagram at under 5%.

The ad set was using Advantage+ Placements, so all placements were eligible. But the older demographics on Facebook were the primary audience, so this split made sense.

This shifted completely in March. Instagram now made up 86% of the spend, followed by Facebook at 8%.

That’s not a minor variance in distribution that can be attributed to randomness. That’s a complete structural shift. And that structural shift will also mean reaching a different demographic.

In January and February, all four of the most-used placements occurred on Facebook, with 64% going to the in-app Facebook Feed. That’s where those 6,000+ comments were happening.

But during the first five days of March, both of the top two placements were on Instagram. The top Facebook-related placement was Marketplace, and that didn’t happen until later on the 5th (more on that in a moment).

The weirdest part? The in-app Facebook Feed stopped getting any impressions at all. It went from getting 64% of the ad spend to zero.

That’s undeniably weird.

So the problem wasn’t just that distribution shifted from Facebook to Instagram generally. It was that the one placement that Meta leaned into the most when things were working well was no longer used at all.

The First Attempted Fix

The hope at this point is to shift delivery back to Facebook and away from Instagram. While the old approach to fixing this might be to remove Instagram entirely, my preference was to use value rules. This way, we could adjust Meta’s bids to hopefully shift how ads were delivered.

So during late afternoon of the 5th, a value rule was applied to lower the bid on Instagram placements by 50%.

This would hopefully shift budget back to Facebook without removing Instagram entirely.

Now, data at this point is messy because changes made were happening in the middle of days. But while the value rule “worked” by shifting ad spend back to Facebook, it had unintended consequences.

Instead of shifting ad spend back to the in-app Facebook Feed, Meta sent all of the impressions to Facebook Marketplace. Meta spent a total of $404 on in-app Facebook Marketplace in January and February combined. But in under a 24-hour period, Meta had already spent more than half of that ($222).

And budget still wasn’t getting spent on the in-app Facebook Feed.

The Weird Solution

At this point, something felt structurally wrong. Meta refused to give impressions to a placement that had driven the vast majority of conversions for months. A value rule didn’t fix that, and I had doubts that removing placements would either.

On one hand, it would be easy to panic. But knowing that the performance drop wasn’t due to something explainable was strangely reassuring.

The question would be how to fix something so randomly broken. Because this felt like a bug instead of something explainable, there were a couple of weird options that are intended for such weird situations.

These “solutions” shouldn’t be solutions at all. They don’t make sense. They aren’t based on anything logical. There’s no reason they should work. But when nothing else does and it seems like something is buggy, they’re worth trying.

It seemed as though either the ad set or primary ads were corrupted. Our initial thought was to create a new ad set and start over. But first, we’d try something far more basic.

We duplicated the ad that Meta had previously given so many impressions. But instead of using the existing post, some minor changes were made to it. And then it was published.

When I say that the impact was immediate, I’m not exaggerating. The ad was quickly approved, and the initial wave of impressions made it obvious: Impressions were now flowing back to the in-app Facebook Feed. Marketplace was no longer prioritized.

After a couple of days of this, the value rule was removed. And here were the results from March 9th through the 13th:

• 87% spent on Facebook, 10% on Instagram
• 66% spent on in-app Facebook Feed
• $46 cost per lead

The biggest relief may be that cost per lead not only returned to normal, but has actually been lower than January and February. And that’s even though the original ad with 6,000 comments is no longer getting shown, even though it hasn’t been turned off.

Approach Weird Solutions as Exceptions

I was hesitant to share this story because I know what tends to happen. Anyone who hasn’t seen good results recently will assume they are part of this glitch. “It happened to me, too!”

All indications are that this was an isolated situation. We haven’t seen this across accounts.

That doesn’t mean that other advertisers haven’t seen unexpected shifts in performance. But always start under the assumption that there’s a logical explanation. Resist labeling it “weird stuff” until you’ve not only exhausted those explanations, but you’ve pinpointed what makes it especially weird.

In this case, we had months of data that highlighted expected performance and distribution. That shifted completely on the 1st of March, which impacted results. And despite the use of value rules, nothing could force Meta to show ads on what were previously the primary placements.

That was weird. It felt like a bug. And because of that, a weird solution was attempted as a last resort. Luckily, it worked.

Your Turn

Have you run into similar weird problems that required weird solutions?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post When Weird Stuff Happens to Meta Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The potential power of AI for advertisers is real, so this isn’t meant as an indictment of AI. But I have one primary concern about AI when it comes to Meta advertising.

Let me explain…

Make More Bad Decisions

But I fear AI’s main application for advertisers, particularly early, will be to make more bad decisions more quickly. Whether they are creating dashboards, subscribing to random apps, or even leveraging an AI agent or LLM, there is real risk here.

If you’ve obsessed over the wrong metrics before, you’ll have AI to do it for you automatically. But you’ll have that AI create colorful dashboards so that it looks more important.

If you micromanaged ad results based on small sample sizes before, you’ll have AI highlight these differences for you now. You’ll just have access to more of these meaningless results more quickly.

Advertisers will have AI generate countless ad copy and creative variations to “win in the era of Andromeda.” But too many won’t check the quality of those assets.

When AI Will Be Useful

AI is only useful when it’s based on best practices and good advice. Otherwise, it can do a really good job of creating convincing output that won’t actually help you.

Automating bad strategies will only help you lose money faster. AI will not fill your knowledge gaps if it doesn’t first have a foundation in best practices.

There will be excellent applications of AI for advertisers, but we’ll need to sort through a whole lot of bad ones first. Everywhere you look, someone will have an “Amazing AI App” that looks impressive at first glance. The proof will be in the long-term, sustainable results.

AI can be useful when in the right hands. But it’s otherwise going to be a cool shiny object that results in more frustration. It will be our job to discern value from pretenders.

We’ve been talking a lot about AI in our weekly strategy sessions. Join us at www.jonloomer.com/elite.

The post Concerns About AI for Meta Advertisers appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Weekly observations from inside Meta ads

A handful of smaller updates this week focused on cost, control, and the ways Meta continues to guide advertiser behavior. None require a full deep dive, but they’re all worth paying attention to.

1. Meta announces location fees
2. Advertisers pushed to schedule budget increases
3. Describe your audience with AI
4. New audience restriction flow
5. Breakdown by attribution limitations

Let’s get to it…

1. Meta Announces Location Fees

Advertisers running ads in certain European countries were greeted with an unpleasant surprise on Tuesday. Meta announced location fees, “due to the evolving regulatory landscape, including but not limited to digital services tax legislation.”

Here’s Meta’s explanation:

When your ad is delivered to an audience in a jurisdiction with location-specific fees, such as a digital service tax (DST), a location fee will be added to your bill. This fee is separate from your campaign budget and will appear as a distinct line item on your invoice or transaction statement.

So, these are fees that Meta had previously absorbed, but now they’re passing them on to advertisers. And that fee will be itemized, rather than baked into your overall costs.

Fees are based on the location of the user receiving the ad impression, not the location of the business or advertiser. And fees will only apply to impressions hitting users in specific countries.

Location fees will apply in the following locations:

• Austria: 5%
• France: 3%
• Italy: 3%
• Spain: 3%
• Türkiye: 5%
• United Kingdom: 2%

If you spend $100 on ads to Austria, your total bill will be $105 ($100 + 5% location fee). Not a huge difference, but no one wants to give away money, especially as advertising in Europe gets increasingly difficult.

Users in Europe can already opt into less-personalized ads, which likely makes advertising less effective in the region. And now advertisers will need to spend more to get those results.

While there may be multiple reasons for this move, it could put consumer pressure on the regulatory commissions that are ultimately the source of those fees. Or at least, Meta likely hopes that advertisers see it that way.

2. Meta Wants Me to Schedule a Budget Increase

When I create a campaign with a $100 daily budget, I get this message…

It reads:

Schedule a budget increase and take advantage of higher opportunity for similar costs
​
Our model has identified 5 days with higher opportunity. Increasing your budget to $130.00 may help you achieve additional results at a better cost per result.

That’s interesting enough. So apparently Meta has determined that I can get better results by taking advantage of opportunities that are higher than normal on five days of the week.

When I hover over the tooltip, I get additional details…

In short, this is a high opportunity period, and Meta’s models think I can get a lower cost per result if I take advantage of it.

If I click the button to increase budget, Meta completes the schedule for me.

Meta fills out the schedule to increase my daily budget by $30 from March 14 through March 18. These are apparently my “high opportunity” days. I’m not sure why the increases are scheduled from 12:30 am to 11:30 pm, but I guess that’s what the models want.

For the record, it doesn’t matter what I set my original budget at. Meta is going to detect high opportunities to increase my budget. For fun, I tried a $1,000 daily budget. I bet you can guess what happened next…

I’m not sure what to make of this. It would be helpful if Meta provided more details about what the models are seeing. Otherwise, this feels like a transparent money grab.

3. Detailed Targeting AI Recommendations

While I don’t seem to have this in any accounts, I’ve seen a few advertisers share it now. It’s not clear if it’s a test or the start of a rollout.

If you have it, you’ll see a “Describe your audience” option under detailed targeting. Here’s how it works…

1. Using natural language, describe the audience you’re hoping to reach in under 2,000 characters.

2. Meta will automatically interpret that text and suggest interests and behaviors that match your suggested audience.

3. Keep the suggested audiences or remove them manually.

This is one of those options that would be a whole lot more interesting several years ago, back when our detailed targeting inputs meant more. But they are only suggestions when using 11 of the most popular performance goals (there’s no indication that this would change that).

But this does simplify and automate what can otherwise be a bumbling exercise of trial and error. Again, assuming you actually provide detailed targeting inputs these days, it’s helpful. Especially when using a performance goal where you can restrict by detailed targeting.

Personally, I find it odd that we’re seeing this at all given the direction we’re heading with algorithmic targeting. Does it mean that such suggestions could have more impact than Meta’s been letting on? Otherwise, Meta’s been doing all it can to de-emphasize audience suggestions.

But again, we don’t know whether this is simply a test or an actual rollout at this point. Stay tuned.

4. New Audience Restriction Flow

Some ad accounts are seeing this message after clicking the link to “further limit the reach of my ads.”

This is messaging that Meta has played with a lot over the years. They’ll display various warnings and even highlight stats to suggest that restricting your audience will hurt results. But this is different.

In addition to the seemingly ridiculous options of sticking with the current setting or restricting your audience and increasing costs, Meta provides one more option: Apply value rules with Advantage+ on.

I’ve been pushing value rules pretty hard the past several months, but I’ve been disappointed that Meta hasn’t done more to explain why they’re useful. This is actually a really good start.

While some advertisers surely restrict their audience when it’s unnecessary, there is another segment where there’s a clear problem to be solved. This is often due to low-priced, low-quality optimized actions.

For example, I’ve often talked about how Meta will spend a high percentage of my budget on people aged 65 and up when optimizing for a lead or registration. The reason for this is simple: Meta can get very cheap leads that way, and my goal is to get as many leads as possible.

But quality matters, too, and that demographic does not get me high-quality leads. In the past, I’d restrict my audience by age group. But value rules are a better solution.

With the help of value rules, you can increase or decrease your bid for a specific demographic. In my case, I lowered the bid on people aged 65 and up.

I’m glad that Meta is making this a clearer option here. You should rarely need to restrict by age or gender. If there’s a problem to be solved, Meta wants you to know that you can keep Advantage+ on and use a value rule to fix it instead.

5. Breakdown by Attribution Limitations

I’m a big fan of Meta’s new breakdown by attribution (setting and count) because it lets advertisers get a clear view of how their results are distributed.

It’s great for your optimized conversion event that is the focus of the Results column.

But it’s not so great for any other conversion event.

Why isn’t this data available when using breakdown by attribution? We know it exists because it appears when using the Compare Attribution Settings feature.

Maybe it was an oversight. Maybe it’s a bug. Or maybe we’re seeing the early version of this breakdown while they work out the details.

Whatever the reason, I hope that these breakdowns will be built out further to be even more helpful.

More to Come

I’ll keep sharing observations like this every week, as long as Meta keeps rolling out things that are interesting, confusing, or both.

The post Meta Announces Location Fees (Plus 4 Updates) appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Attribution is how Meta gives credit to an ad for a conversion. While that’s generally what it is, there are several layers of attribution to understand if you’re going to truly know how it works.

When you create an ad set that utilizes the Website conversion location and performance goal to maximize the number of conversions, the default attribution setting is 7-day click-through, 1-day engage-through (changed from engaged-view), and 1-day view-through.

But that’s not it. The default attribution model is Standard…

…and the default conversion count is All Conversions.

That’s a lot, and these layers make attribution far more complicated now than it used to be. Once you thoroughly understand these layers, you can intelligently evaluate results and make better optimization decisions.

In this post, I’ll help you understand each of these elements of attribution as they pertain to Meta advertising and how to approach them in 2026.

1. Click-Through Attribution

Definition

Click-through is when someone clicks your ad link and converts within the period of time that you select. Meta learns from these results and will show your ads to people likely to click through within the same period of time.

Background

Meta changed the definition of click-through attribution in March of 2026. Prior to this change, Meta considered any click on your ad prior to converting under click-through attribution. The old definition included social clicks and other clicks on ad elements other than links.

What Are Link Clicks?

It would be easy to assume that a “link click” and an “outbound click” are the same thing. While an outbound click is a type of link click, a link click isn’t always an outbound click.

Meta’s definition of link clicks includes clicks on links to websites. But it also includes several other actions like click to call, click to message, lead forms, and more.

While it may seem like a long list of potential loopholes, these “other” link clicks should be exceedingly rare when using the Website conversion location and the performance goals to maximize the number or value of conversions.

Conversion Windows

The default click-through conversion window is 7 days. In other words, Meta will count a conversion if it happens within seven days of clicking your ad.

Advertisers have the option of 7 or 1-day click-through attribution in the ad set. This will impact both how results are reported by default as well as how ads are delivered.

Years ago, the default click-through attribution window was 28 days. While it’s no longer available as an optimization element, advertisers can use the Compare Attribution Settings feature to view conversions that happened within the 28-day click-through window.

How to Approach

If your goal conversion event is a purchase, it’s generally recommended to stick with the default 7-day click-through attribution window.

If offering something for free that doesn’t require deliberation, 1-day click-through is recommended to better reflect the typical customer journey. Though the impact on volume when switching from 7-day click to 1-day click should be considered.

2. Engage-Through Attribution

Definition

Meta counts an engage-through conversion when someone converts after clicking anything other than a link on your ad (likes, reactions, comments, shares, saves, and all “other” non-link clicks). It also includes engaged-views.

Background

Engage-through attribution replaced engage-view attribution when Meta made changes to click-through attribution in March of 2026. Prior to this change, the previously named engaged-view attribution only included the situation where someone watched a video for at least five seconds and then converted within a day.

Meta updated click-through attribution to only include conversions that happened after a click on an ad link. Conversions that resulted from social clicks and all other clicks not included under click-through attribution moved to the new engage-through attribution. This new attribution still includes engaged-views.

Conversion Windows

Engage-through attribution is on by default with a 1-day conversion window. Advertisers have the option of turning engage-through attribution off by selecting “none.”

The screenshot above was taken after engage-through attribution was announced, but prior to the completed rollout.

How to Approach

When the goal conversion event is a purchase, it’s recommended to keep the default 1-day engage-through attribution on. This action reflects interest and awareness. Even if the eventual purchase was driven by another channel, the initial click shows that the ad had impact.

On the other hand, it may not make sense to keep 1-day engage-through on when optimizing for any other type of event, like a lead. If the person didn’t click through to get the free thing, your ad’s impact is debatable. You may also want to remove engage-through when restricting by a remarketing audience.

3. View-Through Attribution

Definition

Meta counts a view-through conversion when someone converts within a day of being served an impression. This assumes they never clicked the ad, otherwise it would fall under either click-through or engage-through attribution.

Background

View-through is the most controversial of the attribution settings, and it leads to the most confusion. It’s also the most likely source of inflated results.

While click-through attribution reflects intent and engage-through suggests interest, the value of view-through results is cloudy. While view-through conversions can suggest that your ad impacted a customer decision, we also can’t prove that the impression was even seen.

The most common scenario where this comes up is via remarketing. Someone who is on a customer email list or who engages with a brand on other channels is served an ad that they may not have seen. Within a day, they act on another marketing effort and convert.

Did the ad have an impact? In some cases, even if the impact is less than if a click were made. But in others, that impression may have had no impact at all.

Conversion Windows

View-through attribution is on by default with a 1-day conversion window. This can be turned off by selecting “none.”

How to Approach

The most common example of a view-through conversion that has value is when someone is shown your ad for a product, the person doesn’t click, but it inspires them to later Google your business or product to complete the purchase. While your ad doesn’t deserve full credit, it positively impacted results.

But such an example is limited to purchases and would be rare for any other event. Might someone be interested in your free lead magnet, not click, and then Google it later to complete the form? Sure. But, it’s not normal behavior.

Consider removing 1-day view-through attribution for any non-purchase event. And since inflated results are most often caused by this type of conversion when remarketing, remove view-through attribution in that case.

4. Attribution Model

Attribution Model is set to “Standard” by default, but you do have another option…

Definitions

Standard: Optimize ad delivery for a selected time window and engagement type based on your attribution settings. For example, 7-day click, 1-day engage-through, and 1-day view-through.

Incremental: Optimize delivery for conversions using models that predict whether a conversion is caused by an ad.

Background

Incremental attribution rolled out in 2025. When selected, you lose the ability to edit attribution settings. That makes sense when you understand how each works.

Ultimately, standard attribution doesn’t consider whether someone saw your ad or was influenced by it at all. Sure, that’s difficult to avoid if you get a conversion following a click-through, but it’s certainly plausible that a view-through conversion wasn’t incremental.

The point of incremental attribution isn’t to eliminate view-through conversions. You’ll actually see view-through results when using incremental attribution. The hope is that your results will be limited to those that were actually influenced by your ads.

How to Approach

In theory, incremental attribution should lead to a more accurate reflection of the impact of your ads. And, in theory, it should lead to higher quality results, even if that’s at the expense of volume. And these are tradeoffs most advertisers are willing to make.

Personally, I’ve seen little difference between my standard and incremental results. This may be because I approach attribution settings differently depending on the conversion goal. I prevent Meta from leaning into view-through conversions when they’re otherwise likely to be a problem, for example.

Does it make sense to use incremental attribution and should you prefer it in most cases? Yes. But does it make the difference you’d expect it to make? I just haven’t seen it. And because of that, I’m not all that motivated one way or the other.

I’d consider incremental attribution the best option by default if you deal in high budgets and already have no problem getting high volumes of results. Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend intentionally limiting results if you already struggle to get out of the learning phase (exiting the learning phase is a general rule of thumb, not a requirement).

5. Conversion Count

Conversion Count is set to “All Conversions” by default, but you do have another option…

Definitions

All Conversions: Meta will count every conversion that happens after someone clicks or views your ad and takes an action within your attribution window.

First Conversion: Meta will only count the initial conversion that happens after someone clicks or views your ad and takes an action within your attribution window.

Background

Meta introduced first conversion in 2024, but only as a reporting option at the time. Meta eventually launched the ability to customize how your ad set is optimized by conversion count in late 2025.

The ability to separate “first” from “all conversions” is valuable because it highlights a common point of confusion for advertisers. Your default results can include multiple conversions by the same person.

For example, let’s assume your performance goal is to maximize the number of conversions where the conversion event is a purchase and you’re using the 7-day click-through attribution setting. Someone clicks on your ad and immediately goes to your website and makes a purchase. They then decide to make another purchase five days later (the product doesn’t matter). Both purchases would be reported when using “all conversions.”

But when using first conversion, Meta would only report the first purchase. This would impact both the raw number of results and all value-related data — the value would reflect the value of the first product, not the second.

Refining your results to only the first conversion can also help clear up reporting conflicts. We may assume that Ads Manager is inflated because it doesn’t line up with back-end or third-party reporting. But Ads Manager results can include multiple conversions by the same person.

How to Approach

While I’m a big fan of first conversion for adding context to results, I’m not sure I understand the argument behind customizing conversion count to impact optimization in the ad set. It feels counterintuitive.

By changing the conversion count in the ad set, Meta will only report on the first conversion and make decisions based on that. Meta will not value a customer who makes two purchases more than a customer who makes one. When using first conversion, Meta sees both customers as equals.

But don’t we prefer the scenario where a customer makes multiple conversions? Don’t we want Meta to learn from that? And don’t we want to see that in our results?

The use cases I can think of aren’t particularly strong. Maybe if you’re optimizing for leads and you don’t want to reward a situation where someone completes your form twice in a few days. Or maybe you’re optimizing for an engagement-related website event and you don’t want Meta to lean into inflated results of people performing actions over and over.

I guess it wouldn’t hurt in either case to limit conversion count to first in the ad set. But it’s a limited scope.

General Approach to Attribution

Hopefully this post provides a basic understanding of all of the attribution-related elements so that you can make informed decisions.

The main thing I’d say is that you should normally use the default settings unless there’s a specific problem to be solved. This applies to attribution just as it does to targeting, placements, creative enhancements, and just about anything else.

The default settings are going to be better for the majority of situations, which is why they’re the defaults in the first place. Know what you’re doing and why when making customizations.

Your Turn

Do you have any questions about attribution that aren’t answered here?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How Meta Ads Attribution Works in 2026 appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta made several big updates to attribution recently. The primary change is that they finally updated click-through attribution to require a link click. This could impact some advertisers more than others.

While requiring a link click to qualify for click-through attribution may seem obvious, it wasn’t previously the case. Until now, click-through attribution reflected conversions that happened after any click on your ad.

But social clicks including likes, comments, shares, and saves will no longer be included in click-through attribution. Those will be moving to a new engage-through attribution.

The Lost Conversions

But there’s an important caveat. Click-through attribution uses a default 7-day window while engage-through is only 1-day. That means that any conversions from social clicks that happened beyond a day will no longer be reported.

This is a good thing since that type of conversion isn’t all that different from a view-through conversion. But, unlike view-through conversions, these conversions were previously getting the benefit of a 7-day window.

While I doubt this will noticeably impact results for most advertisers, there is an exception. If you lean heavily into remarketing, you could see your reported conversions drop.

One of the reasons advertisers swear by remarketing strategies is due to the misleading results. While they’ll continue get the benefit of view-through conversions, losing these numbers could start altering perceptions.

The post Conversions Lost Due to Attribution Changes appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Weekly observations from inside Meta ads

A handful of attribution updates, a short Ads Manager outage, rumors about monthly invoicing, and a few observations about how Meta is leaning further into creative diversification. None of these require a full deep dive, but each one says something about where things are heading.

1. Will Remarketing Take the Biggest Hit?
2. How to Approach Engage-Through
3. Breakdown by Attribution is Back
4. Tuesday Outage
5. Related Media Observations
6. What is Monthly Invoicing?

Let’s get to it…

1. Will Remarketing Take the Biggest Hit?

Ever since Meta announced changes to attribution, I’ve been thinking about how this could impact results. There’s one strategy I keep coming back to as the most likely to see a substantive drop in results: Remarketing.

First, let’s summarize the changes…

Click-through attribution now requires a click on a link.

The previous definition of click-through attribution required any click on your ad prior to converting. The change eliminated situations where the only clicks were social (like/reaction, comment, share, save) or other non-link clicks.

Engage-through attribution replaces engaged-view.

The clicks that moved out of click-through attribution moved into the new engage-through attribution, which also includes engaged-view actions (someone watched at least 5 seconds of a video prior to converting).

But this means that some previously reported conversions will disappear. While all types of clicks that were previously included under click-through attribution are now covered in engage-through, there’s a major caveat: The window has changed from 7 days to 1 day. This means that conversions that happened within 2-7 days following an engage-through action will no longer be counted.

What percentage of total conversions will be lost? It’s impossible to say. I assume the impact will be minimal, if not inconsequential, for most advertisers. But there’s a reason I think advertisers stuck on remarketing strategies will see the biggest change.

Let’s consider the most likely scenario where these kinds of conversions would happen…

1. Person sees your ad and likes, comments, shares, or saves it
2. They do not click the link, CTA, or thumbnail image to go to your website
3. They get a marketing message from you on another channel
4. 2-7 days after the initial ad was clicked, they convert

The scenario above is very similar to what we would normally consider a view-through conversion. In both cases, they didn’t click through to your website, but they ended up going back to your website later — usually driven by another channel. But the biggest difference here is that the social clicks were previously given 7 days to convert, not 1.

I often talk about the misleading results of remarketing, particularly related to Cost Per Result and ROAS. Those results tend to look far different when you remove the view-through conversions.

But we may not have considered the potentially bigger source of fluff results. These are essentially view-through conversions that were given a 7-day limit.

Of course, some level of remarketing happens naturally, so it’s entirely possible that all advertisers will see some impact from this. But if your entire strategy is built around remarketing because of the results, they’re likely to look less impressive soon. And the view-through conversions might not save you.

2. How to Approach Engage-Through

Because of this change, you’re likely to see far more results from engage-through attribution than you ever did from engaged-view. That assumes, of course, that you turn it on in the ad set.

This change will officially go into effect in March, and I don’t have it yet. But the default attribution setting will be 7-day click, 1-day engage-through (currently engaged-view), and 1-day view.

But there are reasons to consider changing from the default, and those changes certainly involve the new engage-through attribution setting.

If your goal event is a purchase, stick with the default 7-day click, 1-day engage-through, and 1-day view in most cases. View-through and engage-through conversions make sense when it requires a financial commitment. Someone may need to think about it longer or discuss with a partner. Then they’ll either Google the product or go directly to the website to convert.

But if you’re giving something away for free, this behavior makes much less sense. If it’s a lead magnet of any kind where you offer something of value in exchange for an email address, the behavior should be straightforward. If the ad inspires them to act, they’ll click the ad, go to the website, and complete the form. There are fewer reasons for deliberation.

So in those cases, I recommend using 1-day click only. You could conceivably use 7-day click, especially for a lead that may be to discuss a financial commitment. But I’d want Meta to focus on the clicks — and for my results to reflect that type of conversion.

Remarketing, of course, is where both engage-through and view-through could make up a very large percentage of your results. If you are showing ads to someone who also gets emails from you, a high number of view-through conversions would be natural. They may not have even seen the ad when it was displayed, and then they acted on an email that day.

A similar behavior can be true of the new engage-through conversion. You reach someone who receives emails from you, but they definitely see the ad. They may not even put much thought into what you’re promoting, but they like it to show support. But it didn’t inspire an action. Then they act on an email later.

As mentioned earlier, you should see fewer of these than before because of the 1-day window, but they’ll now stand out since they’re separated from clicks. And because of that, this type of fluff conversion will be easier to spot.

You want to eliminate those fluff conversions when Meta can lean heavily into them to get you results. If you at least limit conversions to click-through where they require a click on a link, the results should be more realistic.

Of course, I still think you should stop remarketing entirely, but you do you.

3. Breakdown by Attribution is Back

In a relevant development, the Breakdown by Attribution feature is back (at least for me). I had it long enough to write about it more than a month ago, but then it disappeared. It strangely reappeared while I was writing about Meta’s changes to attribution.

The most useful element of this breakdown given the latest changes will be to see how many of our reported conversions come from engage-through (when the change officially rolls out). This breakdown allows you to generate rows to see how conversions break out by each attribution type.

That assumes, of course, that you use the default attribution setting. Unlike the Compare Attribution Settings feature, which can uncover conversions that weren’t reported by default, this breakdown will only segment results based on your attribution settings.

Come back to this feature once the attribution changes are complete. I’ll be especially interested in breaking down remarketing results.

4. Tuesday Outage

I hope you weren’t wanting to create any new ads on Tuesday because it was an absolute blood bath. I obsessively check Ads Manager throughout the day, and I noticed everything was down around mid-afternoon. When that happens, I know my next step: Check metastatus.com.

Yep, there was a known outage. “High disruptions” impacting Ads Manager.

These high disruptions lasted a couple of hours, and then there were a couple of moderate blips after. But it wasn’t pretty.

It’s a good time to remind you that if something like this happens to you, use Metastatus to see if there’s a widespread problem. You can save a lot of headaches if you’re at least able to verify that it’s nothing on your end.

5. Related Media Observations

When you create an ad, Meta will recommend adding Related Media. This is creative that Meta detects you’ve used in other ads to promote the same thing.

When selected, Meta will include that media as options for your ad. In other words, Meta may replace the primary media you provided with Related Media.

Something I’ve noticed is how well this works with my approach to “stack” creative diversity in phases. I won’t create a bunch of ads at once. I’ll create a couple at a time, based on a unique theme. I’ll learn from those ads and then create new ads later based on a uniquely different visual and theme.

The thing is, you won’t get Related Media recommended if you create all of your ads at once. But more and more will be recommended the longer you go. In the example above, these are creative I used during the past few months.

My point is that eventually I can create one monster ad that makes use of all creative I’ve used to promote the same product. Meta can then mix and match to find the creative that works best for the right people and in the right placement. I might even be able to turn the old ads off (or I wouldn’t be surprised if Meta stopped showing the old ones that become overlap).

As I’ve thought about this more, I have a couple of primary observations…

It’s well past time that we stop trying to find “winning” creative.

I had already been saying this for a while now. The point of creative diversification is to generate lots of options — creative and text — for Meta to help find the right combination for the right person. Once you include Related Media, this becomes all the more obvious.

When discussing the Breakdown Effect, Meta stresses how important it is not to micromanage results. Instead of focusing on the performance of individual ads, we should evaluate results in aggregate. We can drill down even lower. If you use multiple media for one ad, worry less about the performance of each creative and more about the ad itself — if we even care about that.

Meta really leans into Related Media.

I hadn’t used the Breakdown by Related Media in a while, but I guess I also hadn’t used Related Media all that much until recently. And, wow, what it reveals is pretty interesting.

When you use this breakdown, Meta will generate separate rows (for a single campaign, ad set or ad) for your original media and Related Media. Take a look at this breakdown for an ad where I experimented with Related Media recently…

Meta spent six times more on Related Media than on the original media. If your instant reaction is “Oh, no!” you’re looking at this all wrong.

Do you know why Meta spent six times more on Related Media? Because the results were better. And that’s good validation for providing creative variation.

6. What is Monthly Invoicing?

I’ve seen some rumors recently that all Meta advertisers will be forced to use monthly invoicing instead of paying for ads with credit cards. I’ve been digging into the source and accuracy of the rumor, and here’s what I’ve been able to figure out so far…

Monthly invoicing is a billing option for eligible businesses that replaces Meta’s standard threshold-based charging with a single monthly invoice. You’re given a credit limit, spend accumulates throughout the month, and you have 30 days to pay once the invoice is issued. If you hit your limit before the month ends, ads pause until payment is made.

Unlike the standard payment system, you connect your bank account to pay these invoices, rather than use a credit card. And that, I believe, is where the panic begins.

First, it doesn’t appear that all advertisers are being forced into monthly invoices. It’s an option that Meta lists as a benefit. Though Meta’s documentation does indicate that “some” advertisers are being forced into monthly invoicing.

What’s not clear is what the circumstances are for an ad account to be forced into this. Is it due to high ad spend? Or is it the opposite, because of an account that lacks history?

One concern I’ve heard from advertisers is that forcing them into monthly invoicing would be problematic for situations where credit cards are used for points and other benefits. That element would be lost.

I’ve also seen the rumor that this is Meta’s way of taking more money on financing and interest, but that doesn’t seem to be true either. Meta says that “Your credit limit is not a form of credit or financing.”

I haven’t heard anything directly from Meta on this, but what appears in their official documentation conflicts with many of the rumors I’ve seen. Are some advertisers being forced into monthly invoicing? Yes. The details behind that are murky.

More to Come

I’ll be sharing observations like this every week, as long as there’s something interesting or confusing to write about.

The post Attribution Changes Could Hit Remarketing Hardest (Plus 5 Updates) appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Conversion results in Ads Manager attributed to a click have historically included more layers than most advertisers understood. It led to confusion about what results meant. Thankfully, Meta is making an important change.

Click attribution will finally require a click on a link — no other clicks will be included. In addition to announcing this change today, “engaged-view” will be updated in name and substance to “engage-through.”

Here’s what you need to know…

The Change to Click-Through Attribution

Click-through attribution is how Meta gives credit for a conversion when someone converts after clicking an ad. While that may seem straight-forward, it’s not — and certainly wasn’t.

In fact, I misunderstood the underlying meaning for a decade. It wasn’t until I ran a test more than a year ago that I was able to confirm the truth behind click-through attribution: Meta counted a conversion when it happened following any click on your ad.

It didn’t need to be a click on a link. It could have been a like, share, comment, or other click. If someone clicked your ad and then converted within seven days, Meta counted it under click-through attribution.

I found this to be unnecessarily confusing, if not misleading. It was easy to assume that a link click would have been required. But part of the reason that this was easy to miss was that Meta’s old definition was vague.

Eventually, Meta updated the definition of click attribution to accurately reflect any click. But now, Meta is changing the definition of click attribution again.

From Meta:

“Going forward, we are changing the definition of click-through attribution for website and in-store conversions to exclusively include link clicks.”

This is good news. It should help align conversion results with expectations based on traffic driven from ads.

The New Engage-Through Attribution

Meta isn’t done making changes to attribution.

Conversions that resulted from reactions, comments, shares, saves, or other non-link click actions will be included in engaged-view attribution. To account for this change, Meta is renaming it “engage-through attribution.”

If you’re not familiar with the formerly named “engaged-view” attribution, it is part of the default attribution setting (7-day click, 1-day engaged-view, and 1-day view).

An engaged-view is counted when someone views your video for at least five seconds (formerly 10) and converts within a day. If the video is less than 5 seconds long, at least 97% of it needs to be watched.

So the new engage-through attribution will include the former engaged-view conversions, but also all conversions that resulted from clicks that weren’t link clicks. And unlike engaged-view, which applied only to videos, the new engage-through will apply to all formats.

What Are Link Clicks?

Some further clarification is required here about link clicks because it’s not quite as obvious as you may think.

Meta’s definition of link clicks includes clicks on links to websites. But it also includes several other clicks.

• Websites
• App stores or app deep links
• Click to call
• Click to message
• Maps/directions
• Shops
• Lead forms
• Marketplace
• Link clicks to Instagram profiles for ads promoting Instagram profile views
• Playable experiences
• Videos that launch the watch & browse experience
• Videos hosted by another website (including videos embedded in Feed ads but hosted on a video platform such as YouTube or Vimeo)

While this may seem like a long list of potential loopholes, these “other” link clicks should be exceedingly rare when using the Website conversion location and the performance goals to maximize the number or value of conversions. And that’s when limiting link clicks to those to an external website will be most important.

Still, it would have been better if Meta had gone all the way on this. Why not change the definition of click-through attribution to require a click to an outbound link?

Summary of Changes

Let’s simplify what happened…

1. Click-through attribution now requires a click on a link prior to a conversion.

2. Engage-through attribution replaces engaged-view.

3. Engage-through includes engaged-view and all other clicks that aren’t clicks on links.

Attribution is messy, so this remains somewhat complicated. But it’s a positive change.

Impact of Changes

In order to project the impact of changes, we’d first need to be able to isolate the conversions that were previously reported as click-through that would no longer qualify. Unfortunately, there’s no way to reliably do that.

But it may help to summarize what this behavior looks like. Someone would have clicked on your ad, but without clicking the CTA button or thumbnail if a static image link ad. The most likely types of clicks would have been a like, reaction, comment, share, save, or media expansion.

Of course, just clicking those things without clicking the link wouldn’t have been enough. They also would have needed to go to your website (via another method or later on) and convert within seven days. This behavior is similar to that of a view-through conversion, which is when it would be most common. And especially if you reach someone via a remarketing audience (intentionally or algorithmically) and they are driven to the conversion from another channel.

Will it happen? Yes. But how often is tough to say, and it is likely to happen more often when restricting your audience to remarketing. Especially since the default click-through attribution window is 7 days.

Something to remember is that some of these conversions will move to engage-through, but not all. If someone performed a click that now qualifies as engage-through and converts within 2-7 days, it will no longer be counted. Engage-through, like view-through, only has a 1-day window. You may lose some of those conversions.

My guess is that any impact on total results will be subtle, so most won’t notice it. You may be able to spot changes if you use the Compare Attribution Settings feature or Breakdown by Attribution to see how click-through and engage-through numbers evolve. But it may not be more than a loose correlation to these changes.

But it’s those who focus on remarketing strategies who are most likely to notice a difference. This is when view-through conversions often prop up results. This type of conversion that is moving to engage-through is very similar. And since you’ll lose the engage-through conversions that happened beyond the first day — which were previously reported under click-through — a drop is possible.

The other group of advertisers who may see an impact will be those who regularly turned off engaged-view, and now engage-through. They won’t have the safety net of some conversions moving from click-through to engage-through. They’ll just disappear entirely.

Your Turn

What do you think of this change?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Click-Through Attribution Now Requires a Link Click appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Ignore most of the nonsense about Andromeda. Stick to the facts…

What is Meta Andromeda?

Andromeda is responsible for ad retrieval, which is the first of many steps to determine who sees your ads. It was a necessary upgrade to hardware and software that couldn’t handle the current scale.

Ads are different now due to multiple text options, creative enhancements, related media, and so much more. Advertisers are generating thousands of combinations of copy and creative for a single ad.

Because of that, the ad retrieval step can handle more variations to help find the right audience. It’s why Meta recommends creative diversification.

More options give you more opportunities to reach your audience. Targeting is controlled with your ad variations.

But so many advertisers make Andromeda into more than it is. And they completely misunderstand creative diversification and what it means.

Free Mini-Course

I created a free mini-course to clear it up. It consists of seven lessons to walk you through what Andromeda is and how to approach creative diversification. Subscribe here.

The post Avoid Meta Andromeda Misinformation appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Wednesday observations from inside Meta ads

A mix of subtle language changes, a meaningful update to the Manus AI integration, a display bug that caused panic, and a few observations about how I’m evolving my own creative process. None of these require a full deep dive, but each one reflects something about where Meta is heading.

1. Meta changed wording about how they use suggestions
2. Manus AI Integration with Ads Manager
3. “Conversion event blocked” message in Ads Manager
4. Evolution of my process to stack creative diversity
5. Move to “Ad” from “Sponsored”
6. Advantage+ Creative Video Generation example

Let’s get to it…

1. Meta Changed Audience Suggestions Language

This is one of those changes that was easy to miss. It was so subtle that you may have noticed but didn’t think much about it. But language changes like this one aren’t accidental.

When Meta initially rolled out Advantage+ Audience in 2023, the concept of audience suggestions was new. Meta had already introduced audience expansion in prior years, but “suggestions” attempted to reposition what targeting inputs meant.

Pay close attention to how Meta defined how your suggestions were handled in those initial versions…

Meta said:

If you share an audience suggestion, we’ll prioritize audiences matching this profile before searching more widely.

A variation of this was also stated in Meta’s documentation about Advantage+ Audience…

In that explanation, Meta said that data like your prior conversions, pixel data, and prior interactions with your ads would be used to find your audience. But if you provided a suggestion, Meta “prioritizes audiences matching your suggestions, before searching more broadly.”

Well, that mention of “prioritizing” your suggestions seems to have disappeared. First, from Advantage+ Audience in the ad set…

Under “Suggest an audience,” Meta says:

We’ll also reach people beyond any custom audience, age, gender and detailed targeting settings you apply when it’s likely to improve performance.

No mention of prioritizing suggestions. Also notice how Meta de-emphasizes suggestions now (no more button).

The mention of prioritizing your suggestions also disappeared from Meta’s documentation on Advantage+ Audience.

This is a very loose commitment to your suggestions…

We’ll show ads to people matching your suggestion, and other audiences when it’s likely to improve performance.

That could be one impression. It’s not particularly difficult to commit to showing ads to people matching your suggestion, even if it’s by accident. And it’s also impossible to prove in most cases.

You may think this language change is too subtle to be meaningful. My response is that Meta doesn’t make language changes unless there’s a reason.

Combined with the removal of the Audience Suggestions button, this language change is consistent with my belief that Meta could (and possibly should) eliminate suggestions entirely at some point. It’s clear that Meta doesn’t want you to think suggestions are all that important now.

2. Manus AI Integration with Ads Manager

Last week, advertisers started seeing mentions of Manus AI, Meta’s acquisition in late 2025, in Ads Manager. Based on my initial findings, this was little more than promotional links to Meta’s new AI agent. But whether I was just missing it or it happened since then, I am now seeing where the integration can happen.

First, a reminder. You can click the link to Manus AI in the Tools menu of Business Suite.

You’ll be redirected to the Manus AI interface, which looks similar to ChatGPT and Claude.

You may need to first create an account. While it initially appeared you’d need to sign up for a paid Manus subscription, that doesn’t seem to be necessary now. You’ll have limited credits if you use Manus 1.6 Lite, but you will be able to use it.

Then you’ll see a button to “Connect your tools to Manus.”

Right at the top, you should see a new connector for Meta Ads Manager.

You’ll see this…

It reads that you can “Connect Meta Ads to Manus to analyze performance, get optimization recommendations in natural language, and automate reporting.” Click the button to “connect.”

Once connected, you’ll see this…

You can click one of the example prompts or “Try it out.” Then it will prefill a prompt to show you what is possible with this connection.

After selecting ad accounts, Manus generates a “Meta Ads Manager Connector Capabilities Brief.” Here are the primary capabilities…

At the bottom is this message: “Great Meta Ads breakdown! Turn this into a live dashboard to monitor campaigns?” And a button to create a website.

That’s where this falls over my pay grade and I start to get nervous. I’ve built some dashboards during the past month using Claude Code, and this is similar. If you have expertise in that area, you may be more eager than I was to keep digging.

But you’ll be able to create custom dashboards of your advertising. Personally, I’d rather see Meta integrate something like this into Ads Manager than force us to build stuff ourselves (and run into extra costs). Still, there is promise here.

3. “Conversion Event Blocked” Message in Ads Manager

If you saw this “Conversion Event Blocked” message in Ads Manager recently like I did, you probably had a temporary panic attack. Or maybe that was just me.

It reads:

One or more conversion events are blocked because they suggest the use of information not allowed under Meta’s terms.

It was probably good that this was reported by someone in my community first. So when I saw it, I was immediately skeptical.

If you ever see a message like this, be sure to click the “View Details” button. That will take you to your blocked events in Events Manager.

It’s not uncommon to have blocked events. The question is whether Meta blocked those events or you did. In my case, I have several events I’ve blocked for various reasons.

I have 55 blocked events in all.

But I blocked all of those events myself. When I filter to view the events blocked by Meta, nothing appears.

So once I saw that Meta hadn’t blocked any of my events, the odds that this was a display bug increased significantly. I headed back to Ads Manager and took a closer look at the events dropdown menu when using the “Maximize number of conversions” performance goal.

There was no indication that an event wasn’t selectable because it had been blocked. And since it seemed many others were having the same issue, it was obviously a bug. And it cleared up within the day.

My theory is that this message was appearing for all ad accounts when an event had been blocked, regardless of whether it was blocked by the advertiser or by Meta. Or maybe it appeared for everyone, I don’t know.

I realize it’s easy to freak out when you see stuff like this, but always remember the likely possibility of bugs. In most cases, it’s nothing.

4. Evolution of My Process to Stack Creative Diversity

When Andromeda became all the rage last year and Meta started recommending creative diversity, I reacted the way many advertisers did: I overreacted.

I created ad sets with 20, 30, and even 50 ads, regardless of the budget. I wanted to push this new Andromeda to the limit. And maybe, we thought, more ads would mean better results.

But most of us quickly realized a couple of things. First, more ads does not mean better results. In fact, you’ll likely cut corners in an effort to create more ads, so you’ll create worse ads. Most importantly, creating a whole bunch of ads is exhausting, especially when you don’t get the payoff.

As a result, my approach to creative diversity has steadily evolved since those early days. I started focusing more on creating ads “in the spirit of diversity.” In other words, a single ad might leverage multiple formats, Advantage+ Creative enhancements, and the maximum number of text options.

How I do things now is much more deliberate. Here’s how it goes…

1. Create two ads around a single theme.

These two ads share a visual theme and text approach. The difference is that one ad is a static image and one is a video.

Here’s an example promoting my Modern Targeting mini-course. Both have similar visual branding, but the presentation is different.

I like to start new ads with a creative test, just so I know what will happen if the ads get the same (or similar) distribution.

2. Create two ads around a completely different theme.

After the test is complete, I might let the ads run naturally for a while. Once things have stabilized, I create new ads if I feel it’s necessary. No matter how well the first two ads are doing, I’ll tend to at least create one more batch to add some variation.

So this second set of ads will look completely different from the first set. The text that the two new ads share will also be completely unique from the first.

My first two ads utilized a dark gray theme, so I went with something more colorful this time. The first video was a slide show of the lessons, where this was more of an animation of the ad creative.

Once again, I used a creative test in the existing ad set to introduce these two ads. I know that this isn’t for everyone, but it at least guarantees (or should guarantee) impressions during the test. There’s nothing more annoying than spending a bunch of time on new ads, only to see them get zero visibility.

3. Utilize opportunities for further diversification.

For all of these ads, I embrace the options that will increase creative diversity. That means accepting things like Advantage+ Creative enhancements, AI-generated images or backgrounds, Format Display Options, and AI-generated text when possible. I don’t do so blindly, but I accept what I can.

I also customize my creative by placement to be sure there are multiple options of each creative that will appear differently depending on the placement.

4. Add more as needed.

Four ads should be enough for an initial push. One of the main things I’m trying to avoid is creative fatigue. But I also want to generate multiple variations so that Meta can show the right combination to the right group of people.

I don’t micromanage my results by ad. I evaluate the ad set in aggregate, knowing that what is being shown today may not be what Meta chooses to show tomorrow or next week. What works may also shift.

But once it seems like the ads are getting stale or results aren’t consistently solid anymore, I’ll revisit things and publish two new ads to the ad set.

How you approach this is up to you. I prefer this slower approach since I can also learn from the results early and apply these lessons to later ads. It also allows me to think through what I want to do next, rather than feeling rushed into creative directions.

5. Move to “Ad” from “Sponsored”

I can’t say for sure when this happened, but I believe it was during the past couple of months. Meta seems to be transitioning from the “Sponsored” label to “Ad.”

The ads I see on Facebook still read “Sponsored.”

Ads on Instagram are getting the “Ad” label.

For some reason, I’m not currently seeing any ads on Threads. But that was the first place I spotted this.

Meanwhile, Meta has transitioned to using the “Ad” label for nearly all placements in the advanced preview when creating an ad.

I know. Big deal, right? But my theory is that “Ad” is much tougher to spot than “Sponsored” because it’s only two letters. Maybe it will make an incremental difference.

6. Advantage+ Creative Video Generation Example

A few weeks ago, I shared that I had access to the new Advantage+ Creative video generation feature. I planned to spend a lot of time on it so that I could provide some thoughts and examples.

Unfortunately, I no longer have that feature. But I assume I saw it in the middle of a test, and I’ll likely see it again. While I had hoped to share some polished examples, the only example I have isn’t all that great. But it at least gives you an idea of what it can do.

Meta generates video concepts that are built around your ad copy and creative. If there isn’t much creative to go off of, Meta will add in scenes that use what looks like AI-generated stock imagery. Once you approve it, Meta will turn those scenes into a moving video.

In my case, my ad lacked interesting visuals. But you can also add images that Meta can use to generate concepts and videos based on your product or business. So I added several portrait photos of myself, and this is what Meta generated…

It’s not amazing. I wish I could have had more time with it to show you something better. But no matter what you think of this, we’ve come pretty darn far in a year or two. This stuff is only going to get better.

More to Come

I’ll be sharing observations like this every Wednesday, as long as Meta keeps giving me things to write about.

The post Meta No Longer Prioritizes Suggestions (Plus Manus AI and 4 Updates) appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Last week, I walked through all of the various scenarios where your audience inputs are seen as suggestions. Today, let’s discuss when you might restrict your audience and the recommended ways to do that.

I recommend a very hands-off approach to targeting these days. I rarely restrict my audience. When possible, I use other solutions.

The reason to restrict your audience will typically fall into one of two categories:

1. Legal requirements: You are not legally able to sell to certain people.

2. Performance-related: You need to solve a problem of low-quality, optimized results which are tied to the selected performance goal.

Let’s run through all of the various targeting inputs and the considerations related to when and how you might restrict your audience…

Age Range

The default age settings are used as suggestions only. But there are times when it may seem reasonable, if not best practice, to restrict targeting by age.

Performance-Related Restrictions

The danger of age restrictions is that an advertiser will consider their ideal customer and prevent Meta from showing ads to anyone outside of that customer persona. This actually looks at age restrictions backwards, assuming Meta will waste your money on a group of people who won’t convert.

Instead, the reason age-related restrictions might be required for performance reasons is that Meta can get cheap and low-quality optimized actions from a specific age group. Since the algorithm is literal, the only focus is getting you as many optimized events as possible, as defined by your performance goal.

An example I often use that reflects this problem is related to leads. I found I was getting cheap leads, but I was suspicious about the quality of them. So I performed a breakdown by age and discovered that I was spending a very high percentage of my budget on people 65 and up. Meta found that I could get cheap leads that way, so a weakness was exploited to get me more optimized actions.

So it’s important to remember that the need for age-related restrictions will be in response to a discovery that Meta is wasting your budget on an age group that is resulting in low-quality, optimized results. Meta will rarely waste significant budget (for a prolonged time, at least) on an age group that doesn’t perform.

Address with Value Rules

In the past, I’d recommend restricting by age to address this situation. But a full restriction is rarely necessary now. You can use value rules instead.

Let’s revisit my issue with low-quality leads. The problem was that if I restricted by age and eliminated people over 65, Meta would move that budget to people 55 to 64. And while I’m fine reaching either group, I also don’t want to spend a majority of my budget there.

I used value rules to bid 50% less on people over 65 and 20% less on people aged 55 to 64.

The result was that I could limit my spend on people aged 55 and up without eliminating them entirely.

Legal-Related Restrictions

Another reason you might want to restrict by age is that you sell an age-restricted product. The obvious example would be alcohol, but you also may offer something that is only available to seniors.

Either situation can be addressed within the ad set, assuming you’re not dealing with a special ad category.

You also might be able to apply an account-wide restriction. Within Advertising Settings, click on Account Controls.

Then select Audience Controls.

One of the options is “My business advertises age-restricted goods or services.” Turn it on, and you can set a minimum age to prevent your ads from being shown to younger people.

Of course, this account-wide restriction is only for setting a minimum between 18 and 25. You can’t set an account-wide maximum or set a minimum higher than 25.

Bottom Line

1. Do not restrict by age to reflect what you believe is your ideal customer.

2. If Meta is wasting your money on an age group because they lead to a high volume of low-quality optimized actions, use value rules instead of restricting by age.

3. If you need to restrict by age due to legal reasons (you sell age-restricted goods), apply this restriction in the ad set or use Audience Controls in your Advertising Settings to restrict by age account-wide.

Gender

In many ways, gender is lumped with age range when discussing demographic restrictions. But how you approach gender restrictions is actually a bit different.

Performance-Related Restrictions

As with age range, the danger is that an advertiser will envision their ideal customer and then restrict by gender. But gender-related restrictions are rarely necessary.

The only time you should need to restrict by gender is because not doing so leads to a high volume of low-quality optimized actions. If your primary customer is women, Meta’s unlikely to waste a significant portion of your budget on men if you’re optimizing for purchases and men don’t buy. The bigger problem, sticking to this example, would be if men perform a high volume of cheap, low-quality optimized actions.

The most likely scenario when this might come up would be when optimizing for an engagement-level event (link clicks, landing page views, post engagement, video views, etc.), which eliminates the level of commitment required to perform the action that you want. If you want engagement, Meta won’t care if men aren’t likely to buy from you. If they’re likely to engage, men will be shown your ads.

Now I wouldn’t typically advise optimizing for engagement-level actions because the quality issue is impossible to eliminate. But restricting by gender, particularly if your customers are only one gender or another, may be a reasonable consideration in those cases.

Address with Value Rules

While it might be reasonable to restrict by gender in certain situations, I’d consider it a last resort. You can keep Advantage+ on and use value rules instead. If Meta’s spending too much of your budget on men, resulting in empty optimized actions, use value rules to lower the bid.

By lowering the bid by 90% for men, you’re likely to eliminate men from your ad spend entirely without needing to restrict your audience.

Bottom Line

1. Do not restrict by gender to reflect what you believe is your ideal customer.

2. If Meta is wasting your money on a gender because they lead to a high volume of low-quality optimized actions, use value rules instead of restricting by gender.

Detailed Targeting

The challenge here is that you can rarely restrict by detailed targeting (interests and behaviors) options now anyway. If you choose one of 11 performance goals, any detailed targeting inputs will be used as suggestions. This can’t be turned off.

So any exceptions to this, where restricting an audience by detailed targeting is possible, would need to fall within the performance goals not impacted.

Performance-Related Restrictions

If you are going to restrict by detailed targeting, it will need to be while using one of these performance goals:

• Daily unique reach
• Impressions
• 2-second continuous video plays
• ThruPlay views
• Ad recall lift
• Interactions
• Event responses
• Page likes
• Reach

These aren’t the most commonly used performance goals, and they all represent light-touch, surface-level actions. Which, if we’re to be honest, are also the times when you’d want to have some control over your targeting.

If you optimize for daily unique reach, impressions, or reach, Meta only cares about getting your ads shown. The rest require some sort of engagement. But the level of engagement is so basic, it’s difficult to avoid extremely low-quality results.

Restricting by detailed targeting could help in these cases. If you’re going to focus on getting thru-play views or interactions, it would be helpful if you can at least put some guardrails on who performs those actions.

That guarantees nothing, of course. It’s nearly impossible to avoid low-quality results from any of these performance goals. But if the option is to let Meta find these results wherever they can be found or restrict the pool to people by detailed targeting, I’d prefer the restrictions.

Actually, I’d prefer doing neither and optimize for a conversion of some kind. But if you forced me to use one of these performance goals, restrictions would be required.

Bottom Line

1. You cannot restrict by detailed targeting when using 11 of the most common performance goals.

2. If you’re using one of the remaining nine performance goals (rarely recommended), adding some guardrails with detailed targeting restrictions will help, though it won’t fully solve the likely problems you’ll have related to quality.

Lookalike Audiences

The approach to lookalike audiences, and the challenges associated with them, are similar to those of detailed targeting. If you choose one of nine performance goals, any lookalike audience you provide will be used as a suggestion. This can’t be turned off.

So any exceptions to this, where restricting an audience by lookalike audience is possible, would need to fall within the performance goals not impacted.

Performance-Related Restrictions

If you are going to restrict by lookalike audience, it will need to be when using one of these performance goals:

• Daily unique reach
• Impressions
• 2-second continuous video plays
• ThruPlay views
• Ad recall lift
• Interactions
• Event responses
• Page likes
• Reach
• Instagram profile and Facebook page visits
• Reminders set

Once again, these performance goals represent light-touch, surface-level actions. If you optimize for any of them, it’s difficult to avoid extremely low-quality results.

Restricting by lookalike audience could help. You’re not going to completely solve the problem of low-quality results with these types of optimization, but lookalike audiences and detailed targeting at least provide some basic guardrails.

Bottom Line

1. You cannot restrict by lookalike audience when using nine of the most common performance goals.

2. If you’re using one of the remaining 11 performance goals (rarely recommended), adding some guardrails with lookalike audience restrictions will help, though it won’t fully solve the likely problems you’ll have related to quality.

Custom Audiences (Remarketing)

If you want to target a specific group of people who are connected to your business (visited your website, on your email list, used your app, an existing customer, or engaged with your social content), you can restrict by custom audience.

Of course, the question is whether you should.

Remarketing Happens Automatically

A common mistake is assuming that Meta needs you to target custom audiences to focus on people most likely to convert. But assuming you’re passing events and creating custom audiences, Meta already knows about this activity and prioritizes them automatically.

You can prove this to yourself by thoroughly defining your audience segments and running Sales campaigns. Then you can use the breakdown by audience segments to see how much of your budget was spent on your engaged audience, existing customers, and new audience.

I do not restrict my targeting, yet I regularly see that anywhere from 10 to 25% of my budget is spent on remarketing. This happens naturally because Meta knows that people who visit my website, are on my email list, and have bought from me before are those who are likely to convert.

So you don’t need to restrict targeting to all of your website visitors, email list, or social media followers. That stuff happens already.

Other Remarketing Issues

There are other issues related to remarketing that are easy to miss.

First, the results are almost always misleading. Conversions from remarketing are almost always heavily inflated by 1-day view. In other words, your ad appeared for someone who made an action within a day — an action that likely would have happened anyway.

Second, remarketing results simply aren’t incremental. If someone clicked your ad and converted, you can make the argument that the ad contributed to that conversion. But if they regularly visit your website or are closely connected to you already, how much that ad contributed is debatable.

And finally, the great (and misleading) performance you receive from remarketing isn’t scalable. You’ll eventually run into a wall because it’s so easy to exhaust these small audiences.

Rare Exceptions

While I’m generally anti-remarketing, I also acknowledge the rare exception when it can make sense.

The type of scenario that could benefit from remarketing is where you are selling a high-priced product and want to help your other marketing efforts with ads. For example, you know that you’ll be sending emails and having your sales team reach out to a recent lead. You can run ads at the same time to keep your product top of mind.

Of course, doing so would be while understanding that any results you get in Ads Manager are a combined effort. Your ads were not fully responsible for the conversions — and they may not have done much of anything. But they can help in a situation when your emails and sales team could use a bit of reinforcement.

This makes most sense for high-priced upsells because any benefit is worthwhile. You won’t get that same benefit from trying to convince people to buy a low-priced product, and those ads will quickly get expensive.

Bottom Line

1. General remarketing is mostly unnecessary now because Meta prioritizes those closest to you automatically. This can be proven with Sales campaigns and audience segments.

2. Remarketing results are misleading, inflated by view-through conversions, not incremental, and not scalable.

3. A rare exception for remarketing can be to help with high-ticket upsells. In this case, you know that these people are also getting emails and calls from you, and the hope is that the ads can contribute to the overall messaging.

Summary of Audience Restrictions

I recommend prioritizing a hands-off approach to targeting these days. While there are some exceptions when you should take control, they are exceedingly rare.

Here’s a summary of the general approach that you should take to audience restrictions…

Age Range: Rarely necessary. Consider restricting when selling age-restricted goods. This can also be controlled at the account-level, though only up to a 25 year-old minimum. If age restrictions are necessary to solve a performance problem related to cheap and low-quality optimized results from an age group, use value rules instead.

Gender: Rarely necessary. Do not restrict by gender because you believe it represents your target customer. If gender restrictions are necessary to solve a performance problem related to cheap and low-quality optimized results from a gender, use value rules instead.

Detailed Targeting: Rarely possible since detailed targeting is only seen as a suggestion when used with 11 of the most common performance goals. But if using any of the other nine performance goals (not recommended), restrictions by detailed targeting would be a reasonable guardrail.

Lookalike Audiences: Rarely possible since lookalike audiences are only seen as suggestions when used with nine of the most common performance goals. But if using any of the other 11 performance goals (not recommended), restrictions by lookalike audiences would be a reasonable guardrail.

Custom Audiences: General remarketing is rarely necessary because it happens naturally. This can be proven with Sales campaigns and audience segments. Remarketing leads to misleading results and is neither incremental nor scalable. The rare exception when remarketing might make sense is when used in addition to other marketing efforts to encourage high ticket upsells.

Your Turn

Anything you’d add to this summary of how to approach audience restrictions?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post When to Restrict Your Audience in Meta Advertising appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Nothing about targeting is the same as it once was. If you’re still trying to control targeting like it’s 2018 — or even 2021 — the changes have passed you by.

Consider just a few of the way things have changed…

Targeting Changes

When you provide detailed targeting inputs, they’re only seen as suggestions when used with 11 performance goals.

This expansion of how detailed targeting inputs are handled happened recently.

When you provide lookalike audiences, they’re only suggestions with 9 performance goals.

Meta made this update late last year. In each case, you can’t turn suggestions off. We don’t know how much your suggestions matter, if at all.

Age and gender inputs are seen as suggestions by default, but you can restrict both. Sure, you can, but you probably don’t need to. Even if there’s a problem to be solved, you should use value rules instead.

Some advertisers provide custom audiences as suggestions, thinking they’re remarketing. They’re not. But even if you restrict by those audiences, it’s rarely necessary. Meta prioritizes remarketing audiences automatically.

It doesn’t stop here. You’re probably getting location targeting and exclusions wrong, too.

What to Do

So, what should you do to catch up?

I built a free mini-course to help you master modern targeting. It consists of eight lessons to clarify best practices on all of these things. Subscribe to the Modern Targeting Mini-Course here.

The post Nothing About Targeting is the Same appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Wednesday observations from inside Meta ads

A mix of clarification, deprecations, reporting quirks, and a few “what exactly is this?” moments this week. None of these updates require a full deep dive on their own, but each one impacts how we think about targeting, attribution, or the direction Meta is heading.

1. Manus AI Ads Manager integration
2. Exclusions aren’t suggestions
3. Modern Targeting mini-course
4. Final ASC deprecation schedule
5. Recurring Notifications ending
6. Conversions from other products
7. Meta Pixel Helper gets an update
8. Shops 3rd party reporting integration

Let’s get to it…

1. Manus AI Ads Manager Integration

If you’ve been on your Account Overview page lately, you may have noticed something new: “Automate your workflows with Manus AI.”

You may also see a new option for Manus AI in the Tools menu.

Meta acquired Manus AI at the end of last year. The focus of Manus AI is to develop “general-purpose AI agents designed to help users tackle research, automation, and complex tasks.”

Cool! Is Meta offering a direct integration with Manus AI to automate advertising workflows? Sounds promising!

If you click “Try it now,” you may be disappointed. This isn’t a direct integration, at least yet. Instead, you’ll be redirected to the Manus AI LLM interface.

But I’ve seen some examples of this page with example prompts for things like “Instagram Ads Generator” and “Product Image Enhancement.”

Here’s the prompt for the Instagram Ads Generator, based on a random pottery course scenario.

When I submit the prompt, I’m asked to log in. And once I log in, I quickly realize Manus AI is a paid product with a 7-day trial.

This feels like something Meta slapped together. There’s no integration at this point, from what I can tell. The Manus AI mention is little more than an ad promoting a Meta-owned product.

I read other reports (here and here) of an actual integration. So either I don’t have it yet, or the other reports out there are based on something more that isn’t available yet.

So, maybe this will eventually give advertisers the ability to seamlessly integrate AI agents to automate their advertising. And that may even be possible now, but it’s far from seamless. It’s confusing and sloppy.

Keep an eye on this.

2. Exclusions Aren’t Suggestions

I’ve realized lately that Meta’s created a mess related to targeting. Because terminology and functionality change so often, very few advertisers understand how their targeting inputs work. And when things frequently go the opposite way they expect, advertisers lose trust in the entire targeting process.

It’s why I wrote this week’s blog post regarding audience suggestions. More often than not, the targeting inputs advertisers provide are audience suggestions now. And when they don’t know that, that misunderstanding spills down to distrust in functions like exclusions.

I’ve heard multiple claims over the past several months that Meta ignores custom audience exclusions. In some cases, the theory is that Meta treats exclusions differently depending on whether you’re using Advantage+ or not. My interpretation of that claim is that your exclusion would be seen as a suggestion.

But it’s not. Exclusions (and Locations, for that matter) are part of Audience Controls. This section is separate from suggestions, and Meta will respect these inputs.

It seems that Meta is well aware of the conspiracy theories, though, because the description of how controls are handled in Ads Manager is different than I remember.

Meta says in the description of Controls that they “won’t reach people beyond these settings, even with Advantage+ on” (emphasis is mine). And the tooltip for excluded custom audiences reads that “any custom audiences added here will be excluded from the audience for this ad set.”

Even with that clarification, there will be advertisers who swear this is false. And the reason for this is the perfect combination to make conspiracy theories thrive.

First, you are much more likely to notice when you reach someone you think you shouldn’t than if you don’t reach someone you think you should. And second, custom audiences are generally incomplete and imperfect.

Let’s assume you are trying to exclude the members of your community. Meta will not be able to match up 100% of the users in a website custom audience to users who can be excluded. This is largely due to privacy and browser settings, but also due to a maximum time window of 180 days.

Okay, fine. So you add a data file custom audience of your members, too. Once again, Meta will not be able to match up 100% of that customer list to users. Your members may have provided different email addresses and phone numbers than Meta is able to attribute to them.

What I’m describing is precisely my experience. I gave up long ago on being able to exclude all of my members from seeing membership-related ads with 100% completeness. It’s frustrating. I try to make it as complete as possible. But it is what it is.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that the exclusions are suggestions and Meta ignores them. It just means that, no matter how hard you try, a person here or there is going to slip through.

3. Free Modern Targeting Mini-Course

This year, I’ve focused on doing something new. Every month or so, I will launch a new free mini-course on a popular topic. These mini-courses consolidate my recommendations into a small number of easily consumed lessons.

I started with Andromeda and Creative Diversification. I surveyed those who subscribed to that course, and they overwhelmingly wanted me to design my next course around modern targeting.

And that’s what I did. I created eight lessons that break down each category of targeting (age, gender, location, exclusions, detailed targeting, lookalike audiences, and custom audiences) as follows:

• How things were before
• What changed
• How to approach it now

So it’s both a history lesson and an instruction manual on how to approach targeting now.

Did I mention it’s free? Subscribe here.

4. Final Days Coming for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns

When Advantage+ Sales Campaigns replaced Advantage+ Shopping almost exactly a year ago, the clock officially started on ASC’s numbered days. We’re now approaching the end.

Effective last fall, advertisers using third-party apps were no longer able to create Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns using Marketing API V24. And now, ASC campaigns can no longer be created or updated using Marketing API V25.

But… that doesn’t mean that Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns are dead — yet. Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns created using API V26 will finally pause in September of 2026.

Presumably, the old ASC campaigns created in Ads Manager were stopped long ago, but any such campaigns created externally may still run for a bit. Talk about refusing to let something go.

It’s unlikely that there’s anything magical found in your old setup. Just move on with the new Advantage+ Sales Campaigns.

5. No More Recurring Notifications

Meta’s Marketing Messages (also known as Recurring Notifications) ended effective February 10th. This feature, which allowed marketers to send marketing content to opted-in users via Messenger, was removed from the Messenger API.

Recurring Notifications previously allowed marketers to send one message per subscriber every 24 hours. Once updated to the new Marketing Messages API for Messenger, marketers will be able to send one message every 48 hours.

If you’ve been around for a while, you know that Meta has gone back and forth throughout the years on this type of messaging access for marketers. While it’s desired by brands, there’s understandably potential for abuse. And that balance adjustment is something that Meta appears to be making here once again.

6. Conversions From Other Products

Meta ads attribution is complex. Because of that, it’s easy to misinterpret or misunderstand conversion results.

One attribution quirk that most advertisers don’t understand is that the conversions reported in Ads Manager don’t necessarily reflect the product you’re promoting. Someone might click your ad, go to your website, and then decide to purchase something else. This often leads to confusion.

It came up twice on this week’s strategy session, something I conduct every week for my Power Hitters Club – Elite members. Both examples highlighted common advertiser scenarios, so it inspired me to discuss those scenarios here.

Ad for low-performing product getting the most budget.

This was a fascinating situation. An advertiser running catalog ads was confused that Meta was spending 80% of their budget on an ad promoting a low-performance product. Ads aside, it’s not a popular product for the e-commerce brand.

But as the advertiser shared more information, it started making more sense. The ad was what they described as “click-baity,” driving lots of clicks. While Meta wouldn’t necessarily care about the CTR when optimizing for conversions, this ad was resulting in reported purchases.

The caveat was that people weren’t buying the product in the ad. People clicked the ad (because it generated a high number of clicks) and hung around the site to buy something else.

Meta doesn’t care what product was purchased, only that any product was purchased after engaging with the ad. And that ad was resulting in more purchases than others.

The advertiser’s instinct was to turn off that ad. But while it may not be a popular product overall, it’s doing a better job than other ads to drive traffic that eventually leads to conversions. The better approach may be to improve ads for the more popular products.

Reported attributed conversions are higher than actual conversions.

This is a common scenario. An advertiser gets 20 reported attributed conversions in Ads Manager, but they see only 15 sales of the product they were promoting. Meta isn’t making up these conversions. Assuming there isn’t an issue with your events, the purchases actually happened.

But once again, Meta isn’t reporting the number of purchases of a specific product. Ads Manager is generically reporting purchases that resulted from people engaging with your ad. It doesn’t matter what products were purchased.

These are good reminders as you try to make sense of your conversion reporting.

7. Meta Pixel Helper Gets an Update

The Pixel Helper Chrome extension has been an advertiser staple since the beginning. It’s recently received a long-deserved facelift. And based on the developer notes, this update happened on February 12th.

The first thing you’ll notice is a new icon. The old icon has been replaced with a more colorful version.

And now when you click on it, it opens a new sidebar on the right side of the browser. You can see all of the pixels detected on that page at once.

See the details of detected events on that page, including warnings.

And get details about what could be going wrong.

Otherwise, you may not see anything new, but event details are given a cleaner design.

8. Shops Third-Party Reporting Integration

When creating an ad, you may see a “Third-Party Reporting Tools” section at the very bottom.

It reads:

Meta purchases may not be included in your Google reporting. Connect your account to measure actions on ads that send people to your website or shop.

So the purpose of this integration is to make your third-party reporting (like GA4) more complete, not Ads Manager. If you click the link to learn more, you’re directed to the Help Center article “About connecting a third-party reporting tool to measure Shops ads performance.”

Here’s the detailed description:

Third-party reporting tools may not have direct visibility into events that take place in your shop on Facebook and Instagram. That means mid-funnel events like View Item, Add to cart, Page View Storefront, and Page View Collections may not be included in their reporting.

To address this gap in reporting, you can connect third-party reporting tool Google Analytics in Commerce Manager, Ads Manager or the Facebook & Instagram by Meta app for Shopify, Facebook & Instagram app for Magento, or Facebook & Instagram app for Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

When you click to connect, you’ll need to select your third-party reporting tool (only GA4 for now) and your unique measurement ID.

So, to summarize:

1. This is only for advertisers who drive traffic to Shops.

2. The integration is to give GA4 (and potentially other third-party reporting tools) more visibility into the funnel from Shop to website.

3. It won’t impact your attributed results in Ads Manager.

This reminds me a bit of the GA4 integration in Events Manager that we were all talking about last year (and I still have no idea what it does).

More to Come

Meta isn’t slowing down anytime soon. So I’ll keep watching, testing, and reporting back each Wednesday.

The post Manus AI Ads Manager Integration (Plus 7 Updates) appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Targeting is the primary source of confusion among advertisers today. It’s so bad that most advertisers don’t even realize how confused they are. They completely misunderstand their level of control and required involvement in the process.

It’s not the advertisers’ fault. Meta has made so many changes during the past five years to targeting terminology and functionality that any confusion is understandable.

Ultimately, the bulk of the confusion centers around the idea of audience suggestions. Even the way Meta defines audience suggestions has changed.

Originally, Meta said that your audience suggestions would be prioritized before searching more broadly.

But Meta makes no such guarantees now, only that your ads will be shown to people outside of your suggestions “when it’s likely to improve performance.”

In my experience, suggestions are not prioritized. They may even be ignored. We can prove this when using breakdowns by age, gender, and even audience segments (when using suggestions that match our defined audience segments).

And since suggestions may not even be prioritized, it’s more important than ever to understand when our inputs are used as suggestions in the first place. Confusion isn’t limited to the inputs that Meta uses as suggestions. There are also baseless conspiracies related to location targeting and exclusions.

Let’s clear up all of this nonsense. Here’s a summary of the level of control that’s possible, focusing primarily on turning suggestions on and off, for each targeting type…

Detailed Targeting

In the default Audience section of the ad set, advertisers can provide detailed targeting inputs (interests and behaviors). When provided here, detailed targeting is only an audience suggestion.

From there, it gets complicated. You can click the “Further limit the reach of your ads” button at the bottom and switch your setup.

When you do, you might be able to turn off suggestions for detailed targeting. In reality, you probably won’t.

There’s a bit of history here. Ever since the original Detailed Targeting Expansion feature was released in 2021, Meta has repeatedly further limited advertiser control. The original feature was optional. Eventually, it was forced for three performance goals, including number and value of conversions. Then it expanded to link clicks and landing page views.

Today, advertisers are unable to restrict an audience to detailed targeting inputs when using any of the following 11 performance goals:

• Maximize number of conversions
• Maximize value of conversions
• Maximize number of landing page views
• Maximize number of link clicks
• Maximize number of app events
• Maximize number of conversations
• Maximize number of Instagram profile and Facebook page visits
• Maximize number of calls
• Maximize number of reminders set
• Maximize number of leads
• Maximize number of conversion leads

When any of these are selected, detailed targeting is only seen as an audience suggestion. This list consists of a large portion of the most commonly used performance goals, so your options for control are severely limited. But if you use one of the few performance goals not listed above, you’ll be able to turn suggestions off.

But again, this is the rare exception, not the rule.

Lookalike Audiences

When you provide a lookalike audience in the main Audience section of an ad set, it will only be seen as a suggestion.

Your options for restricting targeting to a lookalike audience, like with detailed targeting, are severely limited. You can choose to “further limit the reach of your ads.”

When you do, you might be able to remove suggestions. But, like with detailed targeting, your ability to do so is limited by the performance goal.

For the longest time, Meta only prevented advertisers from restricting targeting to a lookalike audience when using performance goals to maximize the number or value of conversions. But in late 2025, that changed.

You cannot turn off suggestions from lookalike audiences when using the following nine performance goals:

• Maximize number of conversions
• Maximize value of conversions
• Maximize number of landing page views
• Maximize number of link clicks
• Maximize number of app events
• Maximize number of conversations
• Maximize number of calls
• Maximize number of leads
• Maximize number of conversion leads

But if you use any of the less common performance goals not listed, you can still remove suggestions.

More often than not, however, the inputs you use for detailed targeting and lookalike audiences will be suggestions only.

Custom Audiences

If you provide custom audiences in the initial Audiences section, they’ll only be seen as a suggestion. Meta can and will completely ignore these inputs to get you more results.

It is incredibly common for advertisers to completely miss this. Based on my experience, many advertisers who think they’re remarketing aren’t actually remarketing at all. The audience was only a suggestion.

It’s still possible to restrict targeting to a custom audience, of course. But first you’ll need to click “Further limit the reach of your ads.”

Once you switch the setup, you’ll need to uncheck the box to use your selected custom audiences as a suggestion.

There’s a separate conversation about whether remarketing is necessary in most cases now. But you can remove suggestions when targeting custom audiences if you want.

Age and Gender

Within Audience Controls, advertisers have the option of providing a strict age minimum up to 25 that Meta will respect.

Otherwise, when customizing age and gender selections in the main Audience section, you’ll be doing this as a suggestion.

But Meta can and will ignore those suggestions to get you more results. Unlike suggestions for detailed targeting and lookalike audiences, you can use breakdowns to prove how much Meta goes beyond demographic suggestions. And I’ve found these suggestions make very little impact, if any at all.

You’re not required to use suggestions with age and gender settings. You can click the link to “Further limit the reach of your ads” to apply more control.

When you switch setups, you’ll need to uncheck the box to use your age or gender inputs as suggestions.

This should be avoided when possible. Even if there’s a specific problem to be solved related to information that you have and Meta doesn’t, you should use value rules to influence delivery instead of restricting by demographics.

Locations

Locations are part of Audience Controls, which are separate from Audience Suggestions. They will never be seen as suggestions.

It’s apparent that Meta knows about the conspiracy theories related to location targeting, though. I’ve often heard the claim that locations aren’t respected when using certain setups. But Meta states explicitly that “We won’t reach people beyond these settings, even with Advantage+ on.”

Location targeting isn’t perfect, of course, and the only option is to reach people “living in or recently in” your selected location. You can’t restrict your targeting only to locals or tourists, and people can get around these controls with VPNs.

But the locations you define are not suggestions, and Meta won’t choose to simply ignore these controls to get you more results. Your location inputs are respected.

Exclusions

You can exclude either custom audiences or lookalike audiences. In the fall of 2024, Meta removed the ability to exclude detailed targeting.

Like Locations, exclusions are part of Audience Controls. Exclusions will never be seen as suggestions.

As is the case with location targeting, I’ve seen the claim that Meta will ignore your exclusions when using certain setups. This just isn’t true.

That doesn’t mean that exclusions are perfect. You will undoubtedly reach people you were hoping to exclude. But that’s not because Meta ignored this control, and it’s not because exclusions are suggestions.

Your ability to exclude a given custom audience is only as good as the completeness of that audience. User error assembling these audiences aside, it’s virtually impossible to guarantee you won’t reach any of the people you’re trying to avoid.

Accept that this is normal. Make it a goal to provide custom audiences that are as complete as possible to limit the number of people who slip through. But it’s going to happen.

Summary of Control

Your inputs used for locations and exclusions are always respected. They are audience controls and never seen as suggestions. That doesn’t mean there aren’t holes in each, of course, but Meta won’t randomly show your ads to people outside of these controls.

When you provide age and gender settings within the main Audience section, these are suggestions. Meta can and will show your ads to people outside of those demographics to help get you more results. While you can restrict by age and gender, you should usually use value rules when there’s a problem to be solved.

The custom audiences provided in the main Audience section are suggestions only. Meta will show your ads to people outside of these inputs, so you aren’t technically remarketing when taking this approach. You can restrict targeting to custom audiences by removing suggestions, though Meta will prioritize remarketing audiences automatically.

Detailed targeting and lookalike audience inputs are suggestions when provided in the main Audience section. In most cases, you will not be able to remove suggestions and restrict targeting to either of these audience inputs. You cannot remove suggestions from detailed targeting inputs when using 11 performance goals or from lookalike audiences when using nine.

General Approach

It’s important to understand that even if you want to control targeting, it’s rarely possible. And when it’s possible, it’s rarely recommended.

Age and gender should rarely be restricted. Meta will go beyond your suggestions to get results. If there’s a problem to be solved (you have information that Meta doesn’t), use value rules.

Detailed targeting and lookalike audience inputs are almost always suggestions. You can’t avoid it. We have no way to reliably prove the impact of these suggestions or whether Meta follows them all that closely. Spend very little time worrying about detailed targeting and lookalike audiences as a result, and never create multiple ad sets based on these inputs.

Your custom audience suggestions are not tight constraints. You are not remarketing, and a separate ad set with custom audience suggestions is unnecessary and counterproductive. Restricting by custom audiences is rarely necessary since Meta will prioritize these audiences anyway. You can prove this with sales campaigns and audience suggestions.

The bottom line: The less you obsess over targeting inputs now, the better. Suggestions aren’t restrictions. Restrictions are not always possible or even helpful.

Let go of the targeting control you do not have. Question whether you need the control that’s possible. And dedicate your time and energy to the areas that make the most impact: Your ad copy and creative.

Your Turn

Anything you’d add related to targeting suggestions and control?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post When Your Targeting Inputs Are Only Suggestions appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

You’re overthinking it. If I can get anything through to advertisers, I want it to be this:

Don’t assume a complex campaign construction is necessary.

Let me explain…

What Advertisers Think

You think you need to control targeting and segment your audience. But Meta has more data on your ideal audience than you can imagine.

You think that Meta doesn’t know who is most likely to convert, so you focus on remarketing. But Meta is doing that automatically already.

You think you need multiple campaigns and ad sets for testing, awareness, and top of funnel. But you’re doing this based on a flawed understanding of how things work, rather than solving actual problems.

All you do in the process is water down a modest budget. You make your results worse.

What to Do Instead

You don’t need to do this. It’s often way simpler than we assume. Limit the unnecessary complexity. Optimize for the action that you want.

If you aren’t getting good results, start with the obvious things in your control.

1. The ads
2. The landing page
3. The purchase flow
4. The post-lead process

But start with the ads because it’s almost always the ads. Keep it simple.

I created an Ad Brief that summarizes my feelings on a simplified approach to campaign construction. Read the free sample here.

The post You’re Overthinking Meta Advertising appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Wednesday observations from inside Meta ads

These are mostly smaller things I stumbled upon during the past week, either while fumbling through Ads Manager or reading up on the latest news relevant to Meta advertisers. While none warranted a full post on their own, all are worth knowing about.

1. Detailed Targeting suggestions update
2. URL parameters update
3. What happened to the breakdown by attribution?
4. Combined Sales and Awareness objective
5. Meta AI Business Assistant chatbot thing
6. US bill may require advertiser verification
7. New custom event attribution lag?
8. Preview to Publish

Let’s get to it…

1. Detailed Targeting Suggestions Update

This isn’t a shocking update. You might even call it expected. But advertisers should take it as a sign of what’s to come.

You have even less control when using detailed targeting inputs now.

Meta introduced Detailed Targeting Expansion (as it was originally named) in 2021. This gave advertisers the option, with the check of a box, to allow their ads to be shown to people beyond your detailed targeting inputs if doing so was likely to improve performance.

By the end of 2021, this setting was moved to a fixed default for performance goals that maximized the number of conversions, value of conversions, and app events. You could not turn that expansion off.

What has happened since then is a confusing web of changes in labels and functionality. Detailed Targeting Expansion became Advantage Detailed Targeting, which became Advantage+ Detailed Targeting. That final “+” was added with the rollout of Advantage+ Campaigns.

Along the way, Advantage+ Audience became the recommended default, making any initial inputs an audience suggestion. If you turned Advantage+ off — also worded as “switching to original audiences” or “further limit the reach of your ads” — you could turn suggestions off for some targeting inputs, though it would depend on the performance goal.

Initially, using performance goals that maximized the number or value of conversions, app events, link clicks, or landing page views would force Advantage+ Detailed Targeting (Meta added link clicks and landing page views in 2024). In these cases, any detailed targeting inputs were only seen as suggestions and could not be turned off.

In late 2025, Meta expanded the performance goals that would force suggestions with lookalike audiences. At some point since then, the same has happened to detailed targeting.

Advantage+ Detailed Targeting cannot be turned off for the following performance goals:

• Maximize number of conversions
• Maximize value of conversions
• Maximize number of landing page views
• Maximize number of link clicks
• Maximize number of app events
• Maximize number of conversations
• Maximize number of Instagram profile and Facebook page visits
• Maximize number of calls
• Maximize number of reminders set
• Maximize number of leads
• Maximize number of conversion leads

The key additions are all of the performance goals after “app events.” It does not matter if you turn Advantage+ off, switch to original audiences, or whatever else you want to call it. When using these performance goals, detailed targeting will only be used as suggestions.

If you use any performance goal not listed (which is a shrinking group), you can still turn off suggestions.

I have a lot of thoughts on this that will require a separate post. But the main thing to understand for now is that your detailed targeting inputs are almost always used as suggestions now, not tight constraints. And it puts the usefulness and impact of detailed targeting in significant doubt.

2. URL Parameters Update

In an update that’s at least five years too late, Meta has finally consolidated the URL Parameters builder when creating an ad.

For whatever reason, there have always been two different places to build and add URL parameters when creating an ad:

1. Within the Destination section when providing the URL
2. Within the Tracking section at the bottom

You may now see this message in the Destination section:

URL parameters have been moved to Tracking so you can manage them in one place.

So now you should build and add URL parameters at the bottom.

The builder hasn’t changed much at all over the years, but it remains useful.

Because it hasn’t changed, this tutorial I wrote five years ago remains mostly relevant (except for the stuff about Universal Analytics).

3. What Happened to Breakdown by Attribution?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the new Breakdown by Attribution options.

I was excited about it. I was using it regularly.

And then it disappeared…

This appears to be a random quirk with the rollout — unless it’s merely in testing right now. I’m still seeing it in some accounts. But if you lost it or never had it at all, you’re not alone.

It’s a great feature, so I hope it comes back soon!

4. Combined Sales and Awareness Objective

I’ve been holding this one in my back pocket for a while now. I’ve known it’s a thing for a month or two, but I’ve been waiting to actually get access to it in one of my accounts before writing about it. I’m sick of waiting, so I’ll just tell you what I know for now.

There’s a Help Center article about how to create combined Awareness and Sales campaigns. Here’s how Meta describes it:

A Combined awareness and sales campaign is a new campaign type in Meta Ads Manager that enables advertisers to run both awareness and sales ads together under one campaign. By leveraging Meta’s automation, your budget is optimized across both objectives to help drive more conversions and deliver more efficient results. This campaign type is designed for advertisers focusing on lower-funnel goals such as conversions.

I find this very confusing. On one hand, you are combining sales and awareness into one campaign, optimizing across both objectives. On the other hand, you’re still optimizing for lower-funnel goals, such as conversions. So where does the “awareness” side of this come into play?

I have no idea, but I’m sure it would be clearer if I actually had access to the feature. To find out if you do, follow these steps:

1. Create a campaign
2. Select “Awareness” as your campaign objective
3. In Campaign details, select “Combine Awareness and Sales”

It’s pretty straightforward, so I don’t think I have it. When I create an Awareness campaign, no such option is available in Campaign Details.

If you have this and can shed any light on how it works and its effectiveness, let me know!

5. Meta AI Business Assistant Chatbot Thing

If you haven’t already, you’re going to start seeing the Meta AI logo all around Ads Manager. The Meta AI Business Assistant will give you easy access to Meta’s AI-powered chatbot to get answers on things like campaign performance and account issues.

Here are some examples Meta provided of how you might use it:

Identify Performance Trends: The assistant uses your current and past campaign performance to quickly generate actionable insights and performance visualizations that help you achieve your goals.

Resolve Issues Quickly: Automatically resolve issues for disabled accounts, daily spend limits and more by simply asking the assistant for help in the chat.

Populate Campaign Data Instantly: Simply select in your Ads Manager what you want to analyze to get personalized recommendations. No need for screenshots or pasting of information.

Chat to Take Action: Quickly apply the recommendations for your campaigns or follow links to learn more, directly from the chat.

I’m sure the ability to resolve account issues “quickly” will be of special interest to advertisers. We’ll see if that’s fool’s gold or a reality.

If you don’t have it yet, you’re not alone (I don’t have it). Meta AI Business Assistant is launching in Beta in English only for select small businesses, and it will be rolled out to more advertisers throughout 2026.

6. US Bill May Require Advertiser Verification

Apparently motivated by the recent report that Meta made as much as $16 billion on scam ads in 2024, US senators introduced a bill that would require ad platforms to verify their advertisers.

According to a report from Reuters, the bill “would require social media platforms to verify government-issued identification of advertisers or the ‘legal existence’ of businesses, as well as promptly review and act on reports of scams by users or government entities.”

Such levels of verification aren’t new to advertisers. This is already common for certain special ad categories, particularly when running ads for political causes and social issues. But requiring all advertisers (only enforceable in the US) would certainly involve a much larger group.

This would certainly require more staff for review. It’s also a potential headache for advertisers, depending on how accurate and efficient the review process is.

All that said, I fully support any measure that would help limit scam ads and make them easier to cut off. In theory, a verified advertiser may be less willing to risk a ban with their name attached. And it should be easier to ban those who are caught from creating ads in the future.

Personally, I’d love to see some sort of verification on social media generally. We’re flooded with bots, fake profiles, and internet tough guys hiding behind anonymous profiles. I’d support a verification-required social media platform — and not one that charges you a monthly fee for that initial verification.

7. New Custom Event Attribution Lag?

I don’t create new custom events often these days, but I’ve now experienced this each time I did. For whatever reason, Meta wouldn’t report on attributed conversions using that event.

Now, allow me to clarify a couple of things. When Meta detects a new custom event, it’s initially blocked. You need to first verify it before Meta will track it.

I created an event that would only happen after registering for a specific lead magnet. Once registered, there was a button to access the first lesson. When that button was clicked, it fired the event (called Lesson1).

This event fired 160 times in a matter of a couple of days, according to Events Manager. After deduplication, that would mean 80 separate events.

But Meta didn’t report a single attributed conversion.

Trust me, I’ve considered all of the same explanations I’d give if someone came to me with this. The event was set up and firing properly. While there would have been some organic fires of that event as well from organic subscriptions, the likelihood that NONE of them came from an ad is between slim and none.

I have a few dozen custom events that I’ve created in years past, and I use them for reporting. So the issue isn’t that I can’t get reporting from custom events at all. The question is whether there’s an initial lag (beyond what is normal) for a newly created custom event.

Anyway, I gave up on this event. I’m not using it anymore, so I can’t say for sure if it would eventually start working. But it reminded me that I had a similar experience about six months ago when I created a different custom event.

So if you’re running into this, know that you’re not alone. I just don’t have a solution for you.

8. Preview to Publish

You may have noticed this new “Preview to Publish” button when creating an ad.

When you click it, you’ll get a summary of all of the settings, including previews of the ad creative.

Considering the number of settings Meta seems to activate automatically now, this final reminder is actually pretty useful.

More to Come

I’ll be sharing observations like this every Wednesday, as long as Meta keeps shipping changes faster than they explain them.

The post Detailed Targeting Is Mostly a Suggestion (And Other Updates) appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

It’s easy to take for granted how complicated Meta advertising is. But the problem is that so many advertisers make it far more complex than it needs to be.

That’s a huge problem for beginners and those still figuring it out. It’s why I created the following checklist of the 10 things you should focus on.

While beginners were the inspiration for this post, there’s value here for everyone. Consider each item a reminder about what’s truly important and what’s not when creating your campaigns and analyzing results.

Start here…

1. Create a Simple Campaign

One of the most common mistakes that all advertisers make is that they overcomplicate things. Since most advertisers do it, you can bet that beginners do, too.

The instinct is to create multiple campaigns and ad sets, for a long list of reasons. It could be to promote different things or to test or to segment your audience. None of these are particularly great reasons, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Focus on one goal. Create one campaign. Create only a single ad set within it. Avoid customizing any of Meta’s default settings unless you have a very clear reason for doing so.

This doesn’t mean that there’s never a reason to add complexity and create multiple campaigns or ad sets. But beginners are the absolute last group of people who should be doing this. You want fewer moving parts, not more.

My recommendation of a simplified approach doesn’t only go out to beginners, of course. It’s a philosophy that I follow. You can read all about it in my free Ad Brief.

2. Know the Impact of Budget

One of the reasons that you should simplify your campaign structure is that every extra campaign and ad set waters down whatever budget you have. If you’re closer to a beginner than an expert, you’re rarely working with much budget to start with.

Know that spending $10 to $20 per day is going to make very little impact. But spending at the lowest amounts can still be worthwhile, if for nothing more than the experience. It’s a good way to gain confidence before turning up the spend.

Do not spend more than you’re comfortable spending, particularly when you’re still figuring things out. Yes, more budget will lead to more data for Meta, more results for you to learn from, and more of an impact overall. But you can also waste money quickly if you’re not careful.

There’s a general approach to setting your budget that I recommend. If it seems that you’re more comfortable spending far less than what’s optimal, don’t be discouraged. Spend what you’re comfortable spending and then start increasing your budget as you see the benefits.

3. Set Up Tracking

You will not get the full benefits of Meta advertising without setting up conversion tracking. You won’t know when ads drive conversions. Just as important, Meta won’t know when conversions happened to help you get more of them.

It would be easy to overwhelm you with a long list of things you should do here, including setting up the Conversions API (for both web and CRM), standard events for every important action, custom events for every important action not defined by a standard event, and custom conversions to help segment your results.

But that’s not necessary to get started. You eventually want to get there, but it’s not required before you start running ads.

At the bare minimum, make sure to install the Meta pixel on your website. This could be very simple, depending on your business. Most commerce platforms have integration solutions built in.

After that, you’ll need to confirm you have standard events set up for the most important actions that happen on your website. When someone completes a purchase, the Purchase standard event should fire. When they complete a lead form, it would be the Lead event.

Once again, partner integration is the easiest way to accomplish this. Another would be Meta’s Event Setup Tool. While it’s a bit limiting, it doesn’t require code and is reasonably straight forward.

Long-term, you’ll want to do much more than this to be sure you’re sending the most complete set of events possible. But for now, do enough to get started.

4. Focus on Conversions

When you create a campaign, you should use either the Sales or Leads objective. The objective itself does nothing (a common misconception), but it does assure you’ll have access to the settings you need to focus on conversions.

In most cases, you’ll want to use the “Website” conversion location in the ad set. The performance goal is where you define the action that you want.

Don’t get cute here. It’s easy to go off track by optimizing for top-of-the-funnel actions like link clicks, landing page views, ThruPlay views, post engagement, and more. Just know that you’ll almost always end up with low-quality actions when you do.

You should use “Maximize number of conversions.” When you do, Meta’s focus will be on getting you as many conversions as possible within your budget. The type of conversion you want is defined by the conversion event.

This would need to be an event that you’ve already set up successfully and that Meta detects, of course. Refer back to budget considerations and the expected cost per conversion before defining this. For modest budgets, it’s usually better to go for cheaper actions, like a lead.

If you use the Sales campaign objective, you’ll have access to conversion events like Purchase and Complete Registration. If you want to optimize for the Lead event, you’ll need to use the Leads campaign objective (an annoying quirk of Meta campaign setup).

One alternative would be to use instant forms with the Leads objective instead of sending people to a landing page.

When you go this route, users will be kept on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Messenger (depending on where they see your ad) and won’t be sent to your website. It’s not a bad option if your website isn’t ready or tracking isn’t set up properly.

Just know that you’ll need to either manually download the leads that come in or set up an integration to send new leads to your CRM.

5. Spend Little Time on Targeting

I want you to resist the urge to micromanage the audience section.

You’re going to hear a lot of outdated advice about targeting. Don’t let it distract you. It’s not relevant now.

You should define the countries that are eligible to be shown your ads.

If you’re a local business, define the relevant region.

While this is a tight constraint, it’s important to remember that location targeting is based on people “living in or recently in” a location. You will never completely avoid reaching people outside of your target location, but you can control it.

Otherwise, know that age and gender are suggestions by default.

While you can technically restrict by age or gender, I wouldn’t do it unless you had a very good reason for it. And when there’s a problem to solve, I’d recommend using value rules instead of restricting by demographic anyway.

You can provide detailed targeting (interests and behaviors) and lookalike audiences, but know that these inputs will almost always be audience suggestions. You can rarely restrict by these groups — especially when optimizing for conversions.

You’ll also hear all about “magical” remarketing strategies, where you target your existing customers, website visitors, social media engagers, and email list. While you can technically restrict by custom audience, you often don’t need to.

Assuming Meta has conversion events from you, remarketing will happen naturally anyway.

My main point here is this: You can waste a lot of time and money obsessing over targeting inputs that rarely do what many advertisers think they do. While there are always rare times when restrictions may be necessary or remarketing might be helpful, these are exceptions that should not be approached as the rule.

Feel free to use targeting inputs as suggestions, though there’s little evidence they do much. Otherwise, prioritize taking a hands-off approach to this area, as counterintuitive as that advice may seem.

6. Do Not Touch Placements

The default setting for placements is Advantage+ Placements. Meta will distribute impressions between all of the various options in an optimal way with the goal of getting you the most results possible.

Ignore the urge to remove placements based on where you think your ideal customers are. Also avoid removing placements that you believe are less effective. These adjustments often do little more than limit your impressions and drive up costs.

Some placements are more effective than others. Costs also reflect that effectiveness. Meta will balance volume of impressions with trying to serve your ad in placements that will help give you the most results overall.

While there are problematic placements, these are rarely an issue when optimizing for a conversion of any kind. Understand that because the algorithm is literal (Meta wants to get you the action you’re optimizing for), you’ll rarely see Meta waste your budget on those ineffective placements when optimizing for conversions.

That doesn’t mean that every placement will lead to conversions. But some impressions are an important part of a customer’s decision-making process, whether they directly inspired the conversion or not.

The bottom line is that you should rarely touch anything here. Even if you’re having an issue with a problematic placement (you’ve proven this in your results), the solution is usually found with value rules.

7. Start with Two Ads

You’re going to hear a lot about Meta Andromeda and creative diversification. Ignore most of it. Most of what you hear about this assumes scale, volume, and testing velocity that beginners simply don’t have. Your main takeaway should be to approach ad creation in the spirit of diversity: Diverse formats, text, angles, and visuals.

But it doesn’t mean that you need to create a lot of ads. In fact, you can still get good results from one or two ads, especially at modest budgets. If the thought of creating five ads or more overwhelms you, it’s okay. Start small.

Keep it simple and start with two ads. When you do, focus on the following…

Video and Static Image

Create one of those ads with a video and one with a static image. That way, you don’t commit to one format and you give Meta options based on placements.

Utilize Text Options

You are able to generate up to five primary text and five headline options. Use them. Lean into different pain points, solutions, or customer personas. Or just come up with different angles.

This isn’t so that you can find the best performing primary text or headline option. It’s to give Meta options that work for the right people — or the right segment of your audience.

You can also use Meta’s AI-generated text options, but I’d recommend reading them first before blindly accepting them.

Customize Creative by Placement

Meta isn’t particularly great about walking advertisers through the ideal aspect ratios. But typically, you should provide square or 4:5 creative for feeds, 9:16 for stories and reels, and 1:1 for right column and search results.

Don’t Obsess Over Enhancements

You’re likely to hear a lot of complaints about Meta’s AI-generated enhancements. Whether you turn them all off or leave them all on, they won’t make or break your results. While this is something you can eventually spend more time on and even customize for optimal results, it’s not worth stressing over.

8. Simplify Analysis of Results

Meta offers dozens and dozens of possible metrics to look at. You can ignore most of them. Many of them may seem important, but they offer little more than secondary metric value.

You should care about one primary metric: Results. The Results column will reflect the conversion event you’re optimizing for. The number of results and your cost per result will be the most important metrics.

It’s not that secondary metrics like CPC, CTR, CPM, and others have no value at all. But they are often little more than distractions, particularly for advertisers who don’t know what to do with them.

Also, focus your analysis on aggregate results. In other words, focus on results by ad set instead of individual ad performance. The assumption is often that if you turn off the “low performing” ads, you’ll get better results. That’s rarely the case.

You’ll eventually need to dig deeper into the meaning of your conversion results since they can be deceptive. The Compare Attribution Settings and Breakdown by Attribution features will prove valuable for understanding what your results mean.

For now, of course, keep it simple. How many results are you getting in the campaign? What is your cost per result? Is this good enough?

9. Know Where to Turn to Improve Performance

If your results aren’t where you want them to be, avoid tweaking settings in the campaign and ad set. Don’t add more complexity by creating more campaigns or ad sets. These aren’t solutions, and they’ll likely just make results worse while watering down your budget.

Start With the Ads

Opportunities for improved results almost always start with your ads. Why aren’t people acting on them? How could you make your ads better?

This often starts with the psychology of sales and using language in a way to inspire action. It’s the pain point, the solution, and the call-to-action. It’s the image or video you use to grab attention. These can always be better, if not simply different.

Create two new ads that are unique to the first two. You don’t need to turn off your active ads. One day, you might use the creative testing tool to launch these new ads. For now, just get them published.

Don’t Forget the Offer

While evaluating your ads, you should ask whether your offer is compelling. That “offer” could be a discount on a paid product. Or it could be a lead magnet to collect subscriber information. In either case, is it good enough to inspire the action that you want?

You may need to try different things here.

Sometimes the Problem is Outside of Your Ads

One of the many mistakes advertisers make is when they can’t get good results, it’s because Meta ads don’t work. You can do everything right on the ads side and still get bad results. Why?

Meta ads aren’t magical and people aren’t robots. Even if you have good ads with a good offer, the source of your problems may be happening away from your ads.

If you’re selling something, are you sending people to a bad website? Does it load slowly? Is it buggy? Is the purchase process long and confusing? You may need to fix this.

If you’re collecting leads, what are you doing after collecting a person’s information? Are you immediately contacting them? How? What is your outreach process?

Do not ignore the impact of these things to your overall ad performance. This is an especially important reminder when you run ads for clients. Those clients have an impact on your potential results.

10. Have Realistic Expectations

Meta advertising is a constant process of experimenting, learning from results, and iterating. If you expect immediate profitability with your first campaign, you’re going to be frustrated.

And that’s especially the case when you have a modest budget. While budget doesn’t guarantee performance, it’s certainly a greater challenge to get good results from a lower budget. Fewer impressions give you fewer opportunities and less data for Meta to learn from. And any results you get are difficult to act on.

If you’re new to advertising, be realistic about what you should expect. You are unlikely to get great results right away. The main initial goal should be to get started, gain a comfort level of how things work, and learn from your early results.

If you approach Meta advertising as a magical solution like a vending machine that will automatically spit out profits when you follow a specific blueprint, you’re going to be frustrated.

Keep campaign construction simple. Understand how things work, at least on a basic level. Focus most of your time on your ads, product, and landing page. And when results aren’t there, the solution starts with new ads.

Your Turn

Is there anything else you’d add to this checklist?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post A Beginner’s Checklist for Meta Advertising appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Andromeda doesn’t want anything…

A phrase I keep hearing from advertisers that just hits wrong is “what Andromeda wants.” They theorize that there’s a certain number of ads or structure or strategy that will make Andromeda happy.

“I need to do this because it’s what Andromeda wants,” or “Should I do that to make Andromeda happy?”

They talk about Andromeda like it’s a living, breathing entity.

The Distraction

What are we doing? It’s all complete nonsense and a distraction.

Andromeda is the ad retrieval engine that can handle more creative variations than in the past. But that doesn’t mean it actually wants anything at all. And there’s certainly no approach that guarantees results.

Don’t focus on making Andromeda happy. Focus on PEOPLE.

Why don’t people like your ads?

Why haven’t you convinced people to make a purchase?

What’s the offer that will make people act?

What People Want

Your bad performance has nothing to do with what Andromeda wants. While you’ve obsessed over mechanics, you’ve lost sight of what’s most important: What people want.

I recently created a free mini-course to help you sort fact from fiction with Meta Andromeda. Subscribe here.

The post What Andromeda Wants appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Wednesday observations from inside Meta ads

There’s a whole lot going on. I documented several important things that Meta advertisers might find interesting from the past week. Some are new features or things I discovered. Others come from specific projects I’m working on. None warranted a full post on their own, but all are worth paying attention to.

1. Short, living references for Meta advertisers
2. Meta ad revenue increases 24% YOY
3. Add Threads account to Business Portfolio
4. ChatGPT ads $200,000 minimum commitment
5. Where did Page Transparency go?
6. Impression count in Ad Library
7. Conversion count reporting fixed
8. Test Flight and a Meta ads scam

Let’s get to it…

1. Ad Briefs: Short, Living References for Meta Advertisers

I know how overwhelming Meta advertising can be for those looking for direction. There are conflicting opinions everywhere. And even my own content is a lot to digest — not to mention the problem of constantly evolving best practices.

That’s why I created Ad Briefs. I developed briefs for 18 of the most important, confusing, and controversial topics. Ad Briefs include:

• Simplified Campaign Construction
• General Targeting Approach
• Attribution Optimization
• Ad Creation
• Meta Andromeda
• Creative Testing
• Advertising Philosophies

Each Ad Brief is a living document, regularly updated to reflect my recommended approach and best practices. A brief consists of a written summary, key takeaways, and linked sources to learn more.

You can view an example here for Simplified Campaign Construction, my recommended approach to creating campaigns. This is a free preview. To get access to all 18 Ad Briefs (and more, as needed), go here to join my membership.

2. Meta Ad Revenue Increases 24% Year Over Year

Meta’s Q4 2025 earnings are out. If you expected trouble, you haven’t been paying attention. Meta consistently beats expectations.

Here are a couple of highlights related to advertising…

Ad revenue for Q4 exceeded $58 billion, which was up 24% over Q4 in 2024.

Peaking in Q4 during the holidays isn’t a surprise. But the 24% increase is greater than the 20% increase seen from Q4 2023 to 2024. Performance wasn’t limited to one part of the world, as revenue increased 22% in the US and Canada, and 27% in Europe.

Ad impressions increased 18% worldwide, driven most by a 24% increase in Asia-Pacific.

And while costs are up slightly overall, the biggest increase is coming from “Rest of World” (not the United States, Canada, Europe, or Asia-Pacific), which is up 15%.

So, Meta is making more money from ads, driven both by increased impressions and costs. And those increased impressions are at least partially due to continued user growth (if that seems possible).

That’s right. Nearly half the planet is on a Meta app.

3. Add Threads Account to Business Portfolio

For a while now, Meta advertisers have been able to utilize the Threads Feed placement and run ads from their Threads accounts in Ads Manager. And now Meta is allowing advertisers to add Threads accounts to Business Portfolios.

If you want to add your public Threads account to your Business Portfolio, you’ll first need an Instagram Business account. If you want to add a new Threads account created after January 29th, and its username matches your Instagram’s, you’re in luck. Your Threads account will be added automatically to the same business portfolio as the associated Instagram account. You’ll inherit the same user permission settings that applied to the Instagram account.

If you want to add a new Threads account created after January 29th, you’ll need to do so manually in your Business Portfolio. Learn how here.

4. About Those ChatGPT Ads…

A couple of weeks ago, we received the news that ChatGPT ads are coming soon. That got me pretty excited and eager to be part of the initial rollout.

Yeah, I might need to wait. OpenAI is telling advertisers that they’ll need to commit to spending at least $200,000 on ads. Up front.

This comes a week after rumors surfaced that initial CPM costs are expected to be around $60. Honestly, that doesn’t bother me. If the ads are as relevant as they could be, most advertisers would be willing to pay more.

But I don’t have $200,000 sitting around to experiment. So I guess I’ll need to wait for a later phase.

5. Where Did Page Transparency Go?

One of the easiest ways to snoop on another brand to see what ads they were running at any given moment was via the Page Transparency section of that brand’s Facebook page.

Maybe I’m blind, but I’m not seeing it in the About section, or anywhere else on the page…

That information is still available in the Meta Ad Library, of course. But it’s interesting that it appears this information is now more difficult to find.

6. Impression Count in Ad Library

Oh, yeah, about that. I’ve heard from a few advertisers now who have noticed that the Ad Library is providing a bit more insight into the distribution of an ad. Any ads getting fewer than 100 impressions will be labeled as such.

Interesting? Maybe. If you’re busy copying your competitors’ ads, you may want to stop short of swiping ideas that haven’t proven to work.

7. Conversion Count Reporting Fixed

Late last year, Meta rolled out the ability to customize Conversion Count in the ad set. Instead of optimizing for the standard All Conversions, you could optimize for First Conversion.

There was one pretty big problem, though: Even if you changed optimization to First Conversion, Meta was still reporting all conversions by default.

Meta said the problem would be fixed by the end of January, and they followed through. You may have seen this message in Ads Manager…

I’m still not convinced optimizing for First Conversion makes sense. But if you do, know that the default reporting will be representative of that optimization going forward.

8. Test Flight and Meta Ads Scam

One of my biggest worries about LLMs is that scammers, long ridiculed for their easily spotted schemes, would be able to write more persuasive emails. We’re seeing that now.

I’m not typically an easy mark for these folks. I do everything I can to resist clicking links in emails, especially from people I don’t know. But this one almost had me.

The scam itself isn’t particularly new (here’s a post on Reddit about it from two years ago). But the email is far more convincing.

First, the email certainly appears to be coming from support@meta.com. Second, well done on buttering me up. And third, it seems reasonable that this might be an exclusive opportunity to test out Meta AI Ads.

But luckily, I took a very close look at that link and saw “testflight” in the URL. I’ve received several similar invitations during the past few months for supposed test runs of ChatGPT ads using Test Flight.

As I said, the scam itself is reasonably well known. They get you to access their app and give up all of your details or something (I don’t know exactly, but I’m not going to do it).

I’ve generally learned to be ultra skeptical of anything that seems just a bit off. But in the world of LLMs, you have to be extra vigilant now. It’s getting tougher.

Stay safe out there, kids.

More to Come

I’ll be sharing observations like this every Wednesday, as long as Meta keeps shipping changes faster than they explain them.

The post Meta Ad Revenue Up 24% as ChatGPT Ads Start at $200,000 appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

One of the most common questions I get from Meta advertisers is about budget. How much should you spend to get meaningful results?

There isn’t a universal answer. The right budget depends on your goal, your expectations, and how complicated you make your setup.

This exercise will help you think through what your ideal budget would be, based on your situation. That doesn’t mean you should change anything today. But it will help you see whether your current approach is inefficient or unnecessarily complex.

Let’s think this through…

1. What is Your Goal?

It all starts with your goal. There isn’t a generic budget that everyone should use for any situation. What you can accomplish with a given budget will depend on your goal.

Allow me to help you here. Prioritize some sort of conversion event. If not a purchase, it should probably be a lead.

While you can certainly have a goal of awareness, traffic, or engagement, and you can get “results” on very little spend, you will get what you pay for. In most cases, you won’t be paying for much.

2. What is the Expected Cost Per Goal Action?

This is where there may need to be an adjustment of expectations. This isn’t about what you hope your cost per goal action will be. Base this in reality.

If you’ve already been running ads, start with an average. But if you don’t have historical data to base this projection on, guess conservatively. For example: If you have a $100 product, assume that it will cost $100 to get a goal action — not because that’s what it will ultimately cost, but because it establishes a conservative expectation.

You will undoubtedly hear all kinds of success stories of high ROAS, and you may think that’s where you should start. But do not set your own expectations against someone else’s claimed experience. Results can be manipulated. Even if they’re true, good results often require plenty of fine tuning to get there.

But obviously, the expected cost to sell a $10 product will be far different than that of a $10,000 product. Be realistic.

Lead generation provides similar ranges. The cost to get someone to subscribe to your free thing will be far different than the cost to get a client lead for a realtor. The range for lead costs can be as low as $1 or as high as into the hundreds of dollars.

There’s an entirely separate conversation about what your cost per goal action needs to be for profitability. That’s your ultimate objective. And that shouldn’t only be based on the immediate return, but the value of this new lead or customer over months. But you can’t start there with your budget.

3. How Many Campaigns and Ad Sets Are Required?

This is where those who insist on complicated campaign strategies start seeing red. They created multiple campaigns for testing, audience segmentation, and who knows what else. These rules apply to all ad sets for a single goal.

How many ad sets for testing? How many for audience segmentation? Remarketing? Promoting different products? Different locations? Or whatever crazy goals you have?

Add up all of the ad sets. This will matter.

4. Calculate Your Budget

For now, let’s assume that you have an expected cost per goal action of $50. There’s an old rule of thumb of needing 50 optimized actions per week to exit the learning phase. While that isn’t a rigid requirement, and you can still have decent results without exiting learning, it’s still a good goal.

You need meaningful volume. Not only does that give Meta data to learn from, but the more results you get, the more predictable performance tends to be. So aiming for 50 optimized actions per week remains a good target.

With an expected cost per goal action of $50, that would mean $2,500 per week — or around $350 per day and $10,000 per month for a single campaign and ad set. Ranges are fine, these numbers don’t need to be exact.

If you decide to create multiple campaigns or ad sets for this goal, you’ll need to multiply that rate across ad sets. So if you set up three separate ad sets (regardless of whether they’re in the same campaign), that’s $1,050 per day and $30,000 per month.

You could reasonably lower that expectation if you’re using CBO (Advantage+ Campaign Budget, Campaign Budget, or whatever we’re calling it now). You should still want at least one of the ad sets to reach your goal action rate.

If your response is that you’ll just spend way less on a separate campaign for testing or audience segmentation, you’re missing the point. You’re not going to get meaningful data from a test if you’re spending very little on it.

5. Budget and Ad Volume

I’m often asked how budget should impact ad volume and vice versa. For the most part, it’s overthinking things.

You don’t generally need to worry about watering down results or hurting performance if you create too many ads. The main thing to remember is that we should have moved beyond trying to find the “best ad” by obsessing over the best combination of ad copy and creative. You will need countless good combinations to get great results.

Meta wants creative diversification. That doesn’t necessarily mean more ads, and you can create diverse ads without necessarily creating a lot of ads.

The bottom line is this: The higher your budget and greater your volume of impressions, the greater your flexibility for creating more ads. Assuming you have the resources, advertisers with higher budgets can benefit from generating more ads. Don’t create more ads for the sake of creating more ads (good ads still matter), but you are also likely to run into creative fatigue issues if variation is limited with a high budget.

On the flip side, those with lower budgets will have diminishing returns from creating more ads. There’s just not much benefit when a small budget is spread out over more variations.

6. Keep It Simple

If you ran these calculations and you’re shaking your head because they suggest you should be spending multiples of what you are right now, this is important. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you should be spending more. It might mean that things are way too complicated.

If you’re spending way below the calculated budget, simplify things. Create only one campaign and ad set. If you’re unable to generate meaningful data with a complex web of ad sets, see if you can get there by consolidating your budget with a single campaign and ad set.

And I know that sometimes there are legitimate reasons to create a separate ad set. But ask yourself whether each extra ad set is actually required. If not, scrap it.

And even after consolidating, it’s possible you won’t be able to get to 50 goal actions per week, per ad set. You have a couple of options:

1. Accept it and do nothing.

You’ve consolidated as much as you can. You can only get 30 goal actions per week. That might be just fine. If you can get to 50 in a week, great. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t get decent results with fewer than that. Just know that performance is likely to be unpredictable.

2. Optimize for a different goal action.

If you were hoping for purchases but can’t get enough volume with the budget you have, you may need to go for a cheaper goal action. I wouldn’t recommend optimizing for add-to-cart or initiate checkout conversion events. While it may be worth an experiment, it usually doesn’t go well. Instead, I’d focus on a lower-priced product or lead.

7. Don’t Spend Money You Don’t Have

Whenever someone asks me what their budget should be, I start with this exercise. But I always preface it with, “It’s not my money.”

This isn’t Monopoly. This is the real world. So if you’re running ads now, use this exercise to determine if you’re in a good budget range. If you’re not, see if you can get there by consolidating. Don’t spend more money than you’re comfortable spending.

If you haven’t started advertising, start with a more conservative budget. You’re going to waste money in the early going. You’ll learn from the results and get better along the way. As that happens, you can begin to spend more and be confident in those increases.

Just remember that increasing your budget isn’t a guarantee that you’ll get better results. But spending your budget more wisely without watering it down with multiple campaigns and ad sets will often improve performance.

Your budget isn’t just about how much you can spend. It’s about whether you’re giving Meta enough focus and volume to work with.

Your Turn

How do you approach setting your budget?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Think About Your Meta Advertising Budget appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

This mistake is far too common. I’d love to say it’s limited to new advertisers, but it’s not.

Advertisers give up on ad sets a few days after they start. Or they freak out because there’s a dip for a day or two a few weeks in.

This isn’t just related to volume and budget. They are giving up way too soon.

The Purchase Journey

Short-term results are mostly meaningless. Especially when optimizing for a purchase.

The default attribution setting is 7-day click and 1-day view.

When someone clicks your ad, they may not convert for up to seven days. Some of your initial clicks have not converted yet.

There’s also the matter of assuming that people convert immediately. Why aren’t people converting after seeing your ad for three days?

Huh?

Most people need to see an ad several times before converting. They may need to click several times. Or they may need to see several different ads before making the purchase.

What to Do Instead

Ignore today’s results, at least in terms of evaluating ups and downs. In fact, minimize your focus on anything during the past few days.

Focus on seven-day windows. And the best evaluation is a seven-day window that is at least two weeks into the ad set.

This will give you a much more accurate representation of how things are going.

The post Stop Obsessing Over Short-Term Results appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Wednesday observations from inside Meta ads

These are smaller things I noticed this week and not just related to Meta advertising. Some are new features I discovered or related to settings I use. Others come from specific projects I’m working on. None warranted a full post on their own, but all are worth paying attention to.

1. Advantage+ Creative video generation beta
2. ChatGPT ads at a $60 CPM?
3. Building dashboards with Claude Code
4. How Related Media could be even more useful
5. Audience segments bug?
6. The most useful button in Ads Manager
7. Daily Budget Flexibility weirdness
8. How Meta could auto-generate audience segments

Let’s get to it…

1. Advantage+ Creative Video Generation

And now it gets interesting.

Within the past year (I can’t find the official announcement, but it was likely from an earnings call), Meta announced that advertisers would soon have the ability to create AI-generated videos based on product images. I now have access to this beta feature.

When creating a new ad, there’s a section for Advantage+ Creative Video Generation (Beta) between creative and text settings.

The process starts with three video concepts that Meta generates based on your text and creative. One video is composed of five video clips, based on your ad creative. Meta will also fill in the blanks with stock imagery.

You can edit the product or service description and submit as many additional images as you like to update these concepts.

Meta will then take those images and concepts and turn them into 15 to 20 second videos. Understand that these aren’t slide shows. Each clip will use the submitted images to generate videos.

You can edit the text used in overlays and select from a small handful of music options (very limited options here).

This feature has promise. I’ll certainly be working with it and will report back.

2. ChatGPT Ads at a $60 CPM?

OpenAI announced last week that they’ll be opening tests for ChatGPT ads in the US soon. This got my attention since the potential could be huge given the level of intent that is possible for matching ads with conversations.

Thanks to a report from The Information, we have some additional details related to initial pricing and data given to advertisers.

OpenAI is pricing these ads at roughly a $60 CPM. The initial response I’ve seen to this price is shock, given that it is about three times that of Meta (on average). But context is important here.

A $60 CPM isn’t unheard of for Meta advertisers. Several factors, including industry, goal, audience, and competition, can drive CPM costs up to and potentially beyond $60. The question is always whether you can get worthwhile results from whatever the price may be.

Of course, I wouldn’t advise you run ChatGPT ads for the purpose of driving empty traffic or selling $10 t-shirts. You’re unlikely to get the return to make such costs worthwhile. But, it could certainly be worth it to those in the service and hospitality industries, or those with high-ticket offers. If that relevance results in profitability, advertisers will be willing to pay more.

OpenAI will provide very basic stats for advertisers, like impressions and clicks. And that’s not great. So advertisers will need to set up UTM parameters and any third-party tracking they can to connect their results to ad spend.

From an advertiser’s point of view, this final point sounds a bit problematic. If we’re not sending events using a pixel or API, OpenAI has no idea whether an ad is successful beyond the impressions and clicks. So, presumably, it will be the clicks that tell OpenAI that an ad is desirable.

We’re dealing with a different animal here, so I also don’t want to assume that it can’t work. And it’s always possible that the amount of data to and from OpenAI will increase. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the days of using a pixel are over.

Stay tuned.

3. Building Dashboards with Claude Code

Claude Code is a hot topic right now, and I decided to test it out and see what the fuss is about. If you’re not familiar, it’s an extension of the Claude LLM that helps expert developers build at scale while enabling complete noobs build things they never could have imagined.

There are of course potential risks involved with non-programmers building things. So when I took a swing at Claude Code, I’d only build things locally on my computer. And so far, wow…

My first goal was to see what I could do with the Meta ads API. I set up a dashboard that reflected the stats I cared about most. The API is limited a bit regarding some of the breakdown data, which made such a dashboard less useful for me. But it was still a cool experiment.

I’d eventually like to set up dashboards in the hopes of replacing much of the manual work I’ve done monitoring my email list and podcast. This is where I’ve found much more value so far.

I was able to utilize the Keap/Infusionsoft API to create a dashboard that highlights all of the important data that I track every day. Keap’s native reporting is pretty awful, and this allows me to generate charts and graphs that highlight what I care about most. I’m still polishing, but it has a lot of promise.

The most value I’ve seen from this exercise so far has been with the monitoring of my podcast. It doesn’t even matter that there isn’t an accessible API to feed in the data to automate this. I drop exports from Libsyn, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts to get one easily digestible report that highlights the things I care about most.

Data from each source is different, of course. Different metrics, different reporting filters, different everything. But this helps me keep an eye on each one and make better sense of the metrics.

For example, Spotify doesn’t natively provide weekly and monthly data. So I set up my dashboard in a way to view this information, and it’s helped me uncover the fact that I just had my biggest week of plays.

I know this isn’t advertising related, but the main takeaway is that you can build some pretty amazing things to help polish up your workflow. Advertising is certainly one of them. Just be safe out there if you aren’t a programmer.

4. How Related Media Could Be More Useful

When you create an ad that promotes something you’ve promoted before, Meta may recommend adding Related Media.

It occurred to me recently how incredibly useful this could be as a tool for generating diverse creative. Let me explain…

For the past few weeks, I’ve been promoting my new Andromeda mini-course. I started with five static ads and then added on a couple of videos. Since I created all of these ads, what if I could then create one ad that leveraged all of this creative?

In theory, this should be possible due to Related Media. So I duplicated an ad to see what would be recommended.

Admittedly, this is really close. The five static images that Meta recommends are the first versions that I created, and quickly turned off. Unfortunately, Meta doesn’t include my five active static ads as options.

And that’s where this could become really valuable. After a process of testing and running several different ads to promote something, you could consolidate everything down to a single ad. Imagine I stopped the seven ads I had running and simply created one ad that included all seven creative options.

You can even customize the text for each Related Media variation.

Suddenly, this is getting much closer to my vision of being able to provide several creative variations per placement for a single ad. While this still doesn’t let me select the creative by placement, we’re at least making it so that Meta can choose from any of my preferred creative options within one ad.

The biggest barrier at this point is that you’re at Meta’s mercy as far as which Related Media are made available. I have no idea why the five static images Meta gave me were the ones that were chosen.

And, yeah, it would be super cool to designate options by placement, but that’s still my long-term dream.

5. Audience Segments Bug?

Someone in my private community shared an experience about Audience Segments recently that has me concerned:

Our engaged audience had dropped to 0.5% of spend for most of this month. Far below what we typically see in the 12 to 17% range… We added the audience we use for engaged users as a suggestion and have seen allocation jump to 10% over the last two days.

On the surface, this sounds like a situation where Meta simply stopped prioritizing remarketing audiences, and the solution was to add those same audiences as suggestions. So one might also see this as proof that audience suggestions impact delivery.

And I may have believed that if this story hadn’t immediately reminded me of a problem I ran into with Audience Segments more than a year ago. It went like this…

1. My Engaged Audience included All Website Visitors – 180 days.

2. I created an ad set targeting website visitors who visited during the past 1 day (restricted, not as a suggestion).

3. Using the breakdown by Audience Segments, Meta claimed that 60% of my delivery was to New Audience.

4. This, of course, made no sense since the 1-day audience should be included 100% in the 180-day audience.

5. I started an ad set targeting the 180-day website audience that ran for two days.

6. I restarted the ad set that targeted the 1-day audience.

7. Using the breakdown by Audience Segments, Meta was then reporting 0% new audience.

I rarely use custom audiences for targeting these days (and I hadn’t used the 180-day audience for many months when this happened). So my theory was that the 180-day audience became inactive from a lack of use. And as a result, that audience became useless for Audience Segments.

If my theory is right and the issue reported in my group reflects the same issue, this is a huge oversight by Meta. You can’t do these things simultaneously:

1. Encourage algorithmic targeting
2. Encourage the use of Audience Segments with breakdowns

…if custom audiences need to be used every few months to remain active for use in Audience Segments. These are completely contradictory.

It’s especially concerning that I ran into this more than a year ago and it’s possible it’s still an issue now. If you’re running into a situation where your breakdown by Audience Segments is suddenly not making sense, consider this as a possible explanation — especially if you rarely use the custom audiences that define those segments for targeting.

6. The Most Useful Button in Ads Manager

It’s such a small thing, but I’m telling you. This button will change your life.

Quick Views are buttons that make frequent searches and settings easily accessible with a single click. While the feature isn’t new, it was improved recently. But that’s not even my point here.

That “Had Delivery” button is a lifesaver. Click it, and only the ad sets that have had at least one impression during the selected date range will appear. It’s possible that I edited mine from campaign or ad delivery to ad set delivery, but you get the point. All of the inactive stuff disappears.

When all of your campaigns appear by default, Ads Manager is super messy with distractions everywhere. And all of those campaigns in a single view could slow things down. This little button will hide all of the inactive campaigns that you don’t need to worry about.

Try it. I guarantee you’ll start using it.

7. Daily Budget Flexibility Weirdness

I had a weird experience with a new ad set recently with a $100 daily budget. On the second day of delivery, Meta spent $169.51, or nearly 70% over my budget.

Now, that isn’t exactly the weird part. What I was seeing was an example of Daily Budget Flexibility. Meta can spend up to 75% over your budget on a given day to take advantage of opportunities. When that happens, you still won’t spend more than your budget for a given week.

So, the weird part. This happened on the second day of the ad set. It was still in learning. The ad set wasn’t even performing particularly well. How is it that Meta could possibly see this as a good opportunity to spend 70% over my budget?

The other weird part is that I rarely see Meta spend this much over my budget. Actually, I can’t document a single time. I took a look at a similar ad set with a daily budget of $100, and Meta never spent more than $114. I routinely see a variance of 5-10% in spend from day-to-day.

Except for this example, of course. And on day two, while learning.

For the record, Meta did what it was supposed to do after exceeding my budget. It made up for it in upcoming days, and I spent a shade under $700 during that seven-day period.

But overspending on the second day didn’t seem at all warranted or productive. It likely made my results worse since Meta was forced to spend less when things were improving.

If anything, it felt like a bug.

8. How Meta Could Auto-Generate Audience Segments

One of the most frustrating things for me is seeing how rarely other advertisers define and use Audience Segments. Even when the small percentage of advertisers define them, they often do so incorrectly.

The problem is that it requires using custom audiences to define Audience Segments. But really, Meta should know what makes up these groups already.

What’s weird to me is that Meta hasn’t come up with a way to generate Audience Segment definitions automatically. I’ve decided there’s one very easy way this could happen, using datasets.

Datasets make up the conversion events that you send from your owned assets — usually from website, CRM, and app sources. Meta has this data, and they know which datasets are used with which ad accounts.

Audience Segments could be predefined like this:

• Engaged Audience: All website events, all CRM events, all app events
• Existing Customers: All purchase events or events with a value (regardless of the source)

If you don’t send web or CRM events, your Audience Segments will be less complete.

Of course, this is just the predefined version so that anyone can make use of the Breakdown by Audience Segments. But, I imagine there could be a way to make them customizable and potentially add more custom audiences to make them more complete. An example would be using a custom audience for your email list when you don’t send CRM events.

I’m not a programmer, so maybe setting up this direct connection is more difficult than I think it is. But so many advertisers are missing an opportunity to make use of this data, and it feels like Meta could make it more accessible.

More to Come

I’ll be sharing observations like this every Wednesday, so make sure to bookmark my site so that you don’t miss them.

The post Advantage+ Creative Video Generation Beta and What Else I’m Seeing appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertising Settings includes some of the most impactful controls for your ad account. Unfortunately, most advertisers spend very little time here — if they know it exists at all.

In true Meta fashion, the options found here will vary from ad account to ad account, and even the settings within each option will vary. In this post, I’ll highlight all of the options I’m aware of, and why they matter. In some cases, I’ll only hit the top-level points when a dedicated post may be required to discuss it further.

Industry

We’ll start with a setting that may be the least common in Advertising Settings. By defining your industry, Meta says that you can “get access to the right features, guidance and support.”

You can select up to two industries that reflect your business.

Is this useful? Man, it’s tough to say. I’m not sure how much this impacts the features you see and support you get. Maybe it’s there to make you feel like Meta’s listening. I don’t know.

But this feels like a relevant setting to define, and it only takes a minute.

Account Controls

Account Controls allow you to set account-wide controls over things like audience and placement. Now, I wouldn’t touch these in most cases. The danger is that advertisers will use these settings when they don’t need to. But there are specific examples when it may be necessary.

Audience Controls have four available settings. If you can only advertise in certain regions or sell age-restricted goods (like alcohol), you can apply account-wide restrictions to protect yourself.

The bottom option is to exclude your current employees. These only appear for larger companies that have an associated interest.

There’s also an option to exclude audiences based on detailed targeting. I can tell you that I have no idea what interests and behaviors are selectable here. I’ve yet to get one to show up, and there’s no ability to browse options.

Meta also gives you four placements that you can turn off account-wide. While I would fully understand excluding the Audience Network placements, it feels excessive to turn them off this way. I also have no idea why you’d turn off Marketplace or Right Column account-wide.

When possible, you want to avoid turning off placements. If there’s a specific problem to be solved, use value rules instead.

Value Rules

Ah hah! Value rules. Now, this is a feature that requires far more explanation than I care to provide for this post. But if you haven’t started using value rules yet, this is where they’re created.

You create value rules to solve problems that are typically related to information that you have and Meta doesn’t. The delivery algorithm is always trying to get you as many optimized actions as possible within your budget. But you may know that the quality differs by factors like age, gender, placement, location, and more. With value rules, you can increase or decrease bids based on those variables.

To learn more about value rules, feel free to jump into any of this content:

• 4 Ways to Use Value Rules to Avoid Disabling Advantage+
• Video: Use Value Rules to Solve Problems
• Pubcast: Use Value Rules to Solve Problems

Meta Verified

Oh, sweet. Meta added a “setting” to promote Meta Verified. Yeah, I have no idea why this is here…

Creative Features

While everyone should have the box above, not everyone has what’s in it. I think I’ve been spoiled on that front.

Most people have the checkbox grayed out and unchecked to test new creative features. But I have it checkable (and I’ve checked it!).

Because it’s checked, my account qualifies to test new creative features that haven’t been officially launched yet. Meta will show fewer than 5% of impressions with these features.

The list of test features changes every now and then. Some have been on this list for a year or more. Some graduate to being official features and disappear. I’ve had as many as 14 test features at any given time. Right now, I have 11.

If you were to click to “edit tests” at the bottom, you can get more details about each feature. In some cases, Meta will share examples of how the enhancement will look on one of your ads. You can choose to turn any of the features off if you want.

I won’t go through all of the details here. But I cover these new test features as they come up. You can learn about a few of them below:

• New Test Features for AI Generation
• Test New AI Generation Features in Ads Manager
• Answer Suggestions for Instant Forms
• Promotional Text with Product Repositioning Test
• Reword Identified Phrases Test Feature
• Virtual Try On Test Enhancement

Audience Segments

This is where it gets real!

Look, I’ve written and spoken ad nauseam about Audience Segments. I’m not going to cover it all in this post. But Audience Segments are one of my favorite tools, and not nearly enough advertisers are using them. Even many of those who do are using them incorrectly.

The main thing to understand is that this is where you’ll define your Engaged Audience and Existing Customers.

Audience Segments aren’t used for targeting. This is about adding a layer of reporting transparency when leaning into algorithmic targeting. When you’ve accurately and thoroughly defined your Audience Segments, you can perform a Breakdown to view results segmented by Engaged Audience, Existing Customers, and New Audience.

And that’s where this gets awesome. It’s this feature that helped me understand that general remarketing is no longer necessary. It happens naturally now.

Anyway, if you haven’t been hooked by Audience Segments yet, you get started in your Advertising Settings.

Verifications and Transparency

It all started with political ads and the European Union (I think, though I may have the order screwed up).

You probably remember the first time you needed to define the Beneficiary and Payer of an ad. Well, now there are so many times this is required by country that Meta created a section for it within your Advertising Settings. And there’s even a default now.

That’s super helpful since this same section has five region-specific settings for defining Beneficiary and Payer: European Union, India (Securities and Investments), Australia (Financial Services), Singapore, and Taiwan.

And you can bet that more are coming, so that default will come in handy.

Marketing Messages

This is going to matter a lot more to advertisers who have customers in regions who use WhatsApp. Maybe not so much in the US (which is why I’m not using it).

If you have a business WhatsApp account, you can add a Marketing Messages on WhatsApp placement. If it’s relevant to you and your business, this is where you get started.

Datasets and Pixels

I honestly don’t get this section. You’ll get a single table of all of your datasets and pixels that are connected to your ad account, whether they’re active, and the number of ad sets using them.

I’m just not clear what problem this solves, but there you go.

Shops and Reporting

If you manage a Shop, you can integrate reporting with GA4.

Why? As Meta says:

Google Ads reporting doesn’t include all performance metrics by default. You can connect your account to measure actions on ads that send people to your website or shop.

Name Templates

There was a time when I thought that Name Templates were kinda cool. They automate or semi-automate the naming convention for your campaigns, ad sets, and ads based on your various settings.

I set them up once. I may have even used them a couple of times. But I’ve generally found it’s easier to just take the five seconds to name these assets manually.

Social Information

This is an interesting setting that I’ve never seen Meta explain, but it makes a whole lot of sense.

Because there are so many variations of ads these days, it can water down your social proof. But this setting (which is on by default), will consolidate your likes and reactions across ads if the images and text are the same or similar. I assume this also applies to videos, but the description calls out images specifically.

I couldn’t tell you how often this is applied or the impact it makes in this area, but this setting certainly feels like one that should be on.

Your Turn

Do you have any other settings that I didn’t mention above?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post A Complete Guide to Meta Advertising Settings appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Remarketing is an outdated strategy. It’s unnecessary. It no longer makes sense.

Now before you start throwing things at me, let me explain…

It’s Counterintuitive

It’s difficult to convince advertisers of this because it’s counterintuitive. We know these are the people most likely to convert, so the assumption is that you need to target them.

Or another common explanation is that advertisers see amazing results so they think it validates the strategy. But most people who use remarketing do so carelessly.

They don’t understand that a percentage of their budget will automatically go to remarketing anyway. They don’t define their audience segments and use breakdowns with sales campaigns.

If they did, they’d see why isolating these groups is rarely necessary.

They use remarketing because they swear by the ridiculously low costs and high return on ad spend. But they don’t realize those numbers are propped up heavily by view through conversions.

And when I say “heavily,” it’s no exaggeration. It seems many of the advertisers who are most adamant about remarketing rarely, if ever, breakdown results by attribution setting. And when they do, they’ll see something like a 70% split to view-through results.

It’s meaningless.

There’s a Better Way

Meta will prioritize your remarketing audience anyway. Meta will distribute your budget between remarketing and prospecting to get you the most results.

I’ve seen these mistakes with the smallest and biggest budgets. The draw to remarketing doesn’t discriminate.

While I realize there is a rare exception when remarketing can make sense, it is just that — a rare exception. It’s not to isolate general remarketing groups. It’s not to retarget those who have watched your videos and engaged with your content.

That. Happens. Anyway.

Let it go. Keep it simple.

The post Remarketing Doesn’t Make Sense Anymore appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Wednesday observations from inside Meta ads

It’s time for the second Field Notes. These are small things I noticed while working in Meta ads over the past week. They tend to be announcements, new features, or random observations sparked by something I was testing or building. None of these required a full post on their own, but each is worth paying attention to.

1. ChatGPT ads are coming
2. No audience segments for leads
3. Account authentication error
4. Is Incremental breakdown next?
5. Reels Trending Topic breakdown
6. Ad Sequencing experiment
7. Promotions appear before a tap
8. Format display options for carousels

Let’s get to it…

1. ChatGPT Ads Are Coming

In some of the least surprising news of the week, OpenAI announced that they’ll begin testing ads in ChatGPT. Ads will monetize the free and low-cost subscription tier, ChatGPT Go.

From a user’s perspective, it’s important to understand that ads won’t buy answers or recommendations. Instead, ads will appear “at the bottom of answers in ChatGPT when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation.”

The current ad unit that OpenAI offers as an example appears to be a scrollable carousel to flip through multiple products.

This could make for extremely relevant advertising. ChatGPT will have much deeper context to surface relevant ads than simple search terms and phrases. That leads to all kinds of potential opportunities for advertisers.

If you’re wondering, you can’t sign up for ChatGPT ads yet. I’m not sure when or how that process will roll out. But I’ll be eager to test it.

My website already gets steady referrals from ChatGPT, both those that can and can’t be accurately tracked. When I conduct a one-on-one or greet a new member, one of the most common explanations for how they found me was a ChatGPT referral.

Ads could help me protect, if not leverage and further grow, that visibility.

2. No Audience Segments for Leads

One of my favorite features is Audience Segments, because they allow me to break down my results when using algorithmic targeting and see how budget and results were distributed across remarketing and prospecting groups.

Even though Audience Segments date back a few years to Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (which are no more), the feature remains tied to Sales campaigns only. It’s why I use the Sales objective whenever possible, even when it’s for an event that doesn’t result in a purchase (like Complete Registration).

Of course, if you rely on the Lead event, that creates a problem. When using the Sales objective with the website conversion location where the performance goal is to maximize the number of conversions, the Lead event cannot be selected.

This makes some sense, I guess, since Meta wants you to use the Leads objective to make use of that event. But at the same time, it’s weird that you can select virtually any event other than Lead when using the Sales objective.

Now, I’d argue the problem isn’t that we can’t select the Lead event when using the Sales objective. The problem is that Audience Segments are only available for the Sales objective.

I get that the origins of this feature are why they were initially Sales-specific. But it’s been three years since the Existing Customer breakdown was made available. It’s been two years since Audience Segments expanded to manual Sales campaigns. I’ve been asking for further expansion of this feature for just as long.

Why is this so hard?

3. Account Authentication Error

While creating an ad recently, this error appeared at the top right…

It reads:

We think someone may have tried to access your account without permission. For your protection, you won’t be able to create or modify ads until you authenticate your account in Ads Manager. Your existing ads will continue to run normally. (#3858385)

I’m not sure what triggered it, but the authentication itself was far easier than I expected. Click “Start Authentication” and you’ll see the following…

The email address displayed is connected to the account and can’t be changed. Once you click “Send Email,” you’ll see this…

Meta should immediately send a confirmation code to the connected email address. Paste it into that text box and hit Submit.

The process itself was simple. If you can, confirm that there is a reasonable explanation for activity that triggered it.

4. Is Incremental Breakdown Next?

Meta started rolling out a new Attribution breakdown option in Ads Manager that currently consists of two options:

• Attribution Settings
• Conversion Count

This generates separate rows to provide much clearer insight into what goes into your conversion reporting.

My guess is that Meta isn’t done with this breakdown category. A logical next option would be a breakdown by Attribution Model, generating separate rows for Incremental and Not Incremental (or another way of describing the remaining conversions that were reported).

Of course, this would only make sense if a breakdown can be designed in such a way. In other words, all reported conversions would need to be qualifiable as either “Incremental” or “Not Incremental.”

A thought, at least. But maybe there’s a reason why this data is only available via Compare Attribution Settings for now.

5. Reels Trending Topic Breakdown

You may have spotted a new breakdown option under Delivery for Reels Trending Topic.

Reels Trending Ads allow you to “reach already engaged audiences by placing ads alongside popular, curated content.” Sounds great, right?

Access to Reels Trending Ads isn’t built into the main native interface. You’ll need to contact an ads rep.

6. Ad Sequencing Experiment

Meta recently rolled out an ad sequencing feature for Awareness and Engagement campaigns when using Target frequency.

My initial impression was that it could be useful for both sides of the budget spectrum: Big budget awareness and small budget remarketing. After an initial attempt at small budget remarketing with ad sequencing, I’m questioning that original assessment.

The campaign I created utilized three ads and an audience in the multiple hundreds, approaching 1,000. The target frequency I used was one impression in two days.

The results after three days: 4 impressions on 3 people reached.

While the audience size could be the problem, there are other potential explanations. I ran into all kinds of bugs when setting this up in the first place. It wasn’t clear if the bugs were related to any setting in particular (like audience size) because the errors I was getting weren’t specific.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to monitor this, look for ways to get it to run, and report back when I can.

7. Promotions Appear Before a Tap

You may have noticed that Promotions are now part of a growing list of options in Creative Setup when creating an ad.

You can choose to either automatically source a code or manually select one that can be applied to your ad.

Once you turn this on, you should see a new message in your Creative Setup.

Here’s what it says:

Promotions may now appear before people tap on your ads
See variations in Ad preview or Advanced preview. In some cases, your CTA will be updated to See offer.

Normally, promo codes are only highlighted after the tap. Meta shares what appears to be a generic example of this new CTA in Instagram Stories.

8. Format Display Options for Carousels

I recently documented a new feature called Format Display Options.

At the time, I shared an example of a single image ad. With the help of Format Display Options, you can have Meta generate carousel and collections versions of an ad that leverage site links.

But something I hadn’t considered was that Format Display Options would do the opposite when creating an ad using the carousel format.

So in this case, Meta will take the individual carousel cards you’ve created and turn them into separate single-image ad variations. Assuming each carousel card can live on its own, this seems like a nice option!

More to Come

I’ll be sharing observations like this every Wednesday, as long as things keep changing and I keep having thoughts. We should be safe.

The post ChatGPT Ads, Missing Audience Segments, and Account Authentication Errors appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Now that Meta launched a new Attribution Breakdown category, advertisers are figuring out how to use it. And since there’s plenty of overlap with the Compare Attribution Settings feature, there’s understandable confusion.

Advertisers can now break down results by Attribution Settings or Conversion Count.

What makes the Attribution Breakdowns different from Compare Attribution Settings? When would you use one over the other?

Let’s take a closer look…

Breakdown by Attribution Settings

One of the new Attribution Breakdown options is by Attribution Settings.

Here’s how Meta describes it:

View your data by attribution setting to see your conversions for various time windows and engagement types.

When you use this breakdown, Meta will segment your conversion results by generating separate rows for the following attribution settings:

• 1-Day Click
• 2-7 Day Click
• 1-Day Engagement
• 1-Day View

These same rows will appear regardless of the attribution setting used in the ad set.

Here’s an example…

You will only get data for conversion results where attribution settings apply (not amount spent, impressions, reach, clicks, and other non-conversion metrics).

An important point is that the data in the rows generated reflect the attribution setting you used to define delivery in your ad set. In the example above, I only used 1-Day Click.

The fact that there’s no data within the rows for 2-7 Day Click, 1-Day View, and 1-Day Engagement doesn’t mean that such conversions didn’t happen. Uncovering those results isn’t the point of this feature. It’s breaking down what you actually see in your results.

One of the primary benefits of this breakdown is that it provides a clean breakout of results without requiring math.

Compare Attribution Settings

You could otherwise use the Compare Attribution Settings feature and select each setting individually.

When you do, it will generate separate columns for each attribution setting.

The main thing to understand about this feature is that it doesn’t matter what attribution setting you use in the ad set. Compare Attribution Settings will reveal results that happened under each attribution setting — whether they’re displayed by default or not.

In the example above, 1-Day Click was used in the ad set, so that’s what drives the default reporting. But another 82 1-Day View conversions could have been reported. Note that these 1-Day View results wouldn’t be listed when using the Breakdown by Attribution Settings.

Additionally, you’ll recall that the Breakdown by Attribution Settings provides a clean reporting by 1-Day Click and 2-7 Day Click. When using Compare Attribution Settings for the example above, there is a column for 1-Day Click (1,595) and 7-Day Click (1,668). Math is required to understand that 73 conversions happened during the days of 2 to 7.

Possibly the most important distinction between these features is that the breakdown segments your reported results while Compare Attribution Settings can uncover results that weren’t reported by default. For example, 28-Day Click cannot be used for delivery optimization. But you can use Compare Attribution Settings to see how many conversions happened outside of the 7-Day Click window.

It’s a great way to uncover the hidden value of a campaign.

Breakdown by Conversion Count

The second Attribution Breakdown option is by Conversion Count.

Here’s how Meta describes it:

View your data by conversion count to see the first conversion or all other conversions that happened after someone clicked or viewed your ad.

Conversion Count was a new option in 2025 that allows advertisers to separate the first conversion from all other conversions reported. For example, someone might click your ad and immediately complete a purchase, then return to your website and make another purchase six days later. Assuming both actions happened within the attribution window, both would be reported under the default “All Conversions.” But only the first would be reported using First Conversion.

By default, Conversion Count is set to All Conversions in the ad set. But advertisers can choose to optimize for First Conversion, which will also impact the default reporting.

NOTE: When using the First Conversion setting in the ad set, default reporting should be First Conversion. But due to a bug, Meta was still displaying All Conversions through January of 2026.

I’m going to assume that about 99.9% of all ad sets are optimized using the default All Conversions, which will mean all conversions are reported by default. Using this breakdown, Meta will generate separate rows for First Conversion and All Other Conversions.

In the example above, Meta reported 421 registrations by default. But only 285 qualified as First Conversions.

This happened by design. I was promoting The Loop, my weekly email subscription. After completing the form, the confirmation page included cross-promotion and an embedded form for Cornerstone Advertising Tips. The result was that some (approximately 136) of the subscribers to The Loop also subscribed to Cornerstone Advertising Tips.

While All Conversions might reflect the total impact of a campaign, First Conversion provides important context regarding what actually happened.

Remember that breakdowns will only reflect data that appears in default reporting. It does not uncover data. So if you optimize for First Conversion in the ad set, all of the conversions reported will be First Conversion. Using the breakdown wouldn’t uncover additional conversions (once Meta fixes the First Conversion reporting bug, of course).

Compare Attribution Settings

First Conversion was initially a reporting option only. You can use Compare Attribution Settings and choose to add columns for First Conversions, All Conversions, or both.

These settings are used in connection with your other selections of attribution settings (1-Day Click, 7-Day Click, 28-Day Click, 1-Day View, and 1-Day Engage-Through). And when you do, columns will be added for those conversion counts.

Once again, it doesn’t matter what the attribution setting was in your ad set. This will give you a full report of what actually happened.

In the example above, 6,251 registrations were reported. But you can view how many total registrations fall under each of the click attribution settings for both First and All Conversions.

Here are a couple of scenarios where this matters when using Compare Attribution Settings…

1. When Ad Set Conversion Count is All Conversions: Get a better sense of how many of the conversions were first conversions. This also could be seen using the Breakdown by Conversion Count.

2. When Ad Set Conversion Count is First Conversion: Uncover how many more conversions happened after the initial conversion. This information would not have been seen when using the Breakdown option.

Unique Differences

Here’s a general summary of the differences between the Attribution Breakdown options and Compare Attribution Settings…

Attribution Breakdown:

Allows you to break down your reported results into separate rows to get better insight into how reported conversions are distributed by attribution setting and conversion count. It’s the cleanest and easiest way to segment reported results without requiring math.

Compare Attribution Settings:

Allows you to segment results into separate columns without the constraints of your ad set attribution settings. This can uncover other conversions that happened beyond your settings. It’s also several extra clicks and messier, requiring math to understand the breakouts by attribution setting.

While there is some overlap between the two, use cases can be summarized simply like this: Use Breakdowns to break down existing results and use Compare Attribution Settings to uncover hidden conversions.

Your Turn

Have you started using the new Breakdown by Attribution options? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Attribution Breakdowns vs. Compare Attribution Settings Explained appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Why isn’t this a thing?

Look, I am embracing creative diversification. I create ads with diverse formats, text, and visuals.

But Meta could make this so much easier.

The Problem

Right now, a single image or video ad is mostly that. You’re using a single image or video.

Sure, you can customize by placement to show a video in some placements and an image in others. But Meta doesn’t make it easy to build a single ad that’s diverse by format.

Why Not This?

Consider this possibility. I want to be able to customize all feed placements and say, use either this image or this video when shown there. So Meta can choose from one of two versions (one image and one video) for specific placements.

Or provide one set of square, 4×5, and 9×16 videos and another set of square, 4×5, and 9×16 images and Meta can choose which format to use for each placement and when.

Meta has elements of this now. You can accept Related Media so that you could add images and videos used previously to the mix for the current ad.

Flexible Format is close, but without the details. The creative you provide has to work in a carousel. And you can’t customize by placement or even indicate which versions would be used for which placement groups.

In other words, Meta can handle the multiple creative versions per ad. It’s happening in other ways now.

Since Meta encourages creative diversity and already provides ways to include multiple creative versions generally, this feels like something that fits. This has to be coming, right?

The post What If You Could Submit Multiple Creative Versions By Placement? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Advertiser Field Notes
Wednesday observations from inside Meta ads

These are smaller things I noticed while running and managing Meta ads over the past week. Some are new features or things I discovered. Others come from specific projects I’m working on. None warranted a full post on their own, but all are worth paying attention to.

1. Breakdown by attribution
2. What happened to the image generation breakdown?
3. Quality leads: Ads vs. organic
4. Dataset Quality API
5. Bid Cap definition change
6. Should you delete inactive ads?
7. Results without spend or impressions
8. No link ads on desktop Threads

Let’s get to it…

1. Breakdown by Attribution

No, I’m not talking about the Compare Attribution Settings feature, which I love. Meta seems to be rolling out a new breakdown specifically for attribution.

Here’s how Meta describes the two options…

Breakdown by Attribution Settings: View your data by attribution setting to see your conversions for various time windows and engagement types.

Breakdown by Conversion Count: View your data by conversion count to see the first conversion or all other conversions that happened after someone clicked or viewed your ad. (Read more about First Conversion and Conversion Count)

This isn’t necessarily different data from what you’ll get when comparing attribution settings, but it is presented in a new way. Compare Attribution Settings adds columns of data, whereas breakdowns generate separate rows.

Unfortunately, I only have this in one ad account, and it’s a test account with no data (not helpful, I know). But Bram Van der Hallen has it, and he shared some screenshots on LinkedIn.

As soon as I have this, I’ll share more.

2. What Happened to the Image Generation Breakdown?

A few months back, I documented an option to break down your results for AI-generated images.

It was great because it provided some transparency into what happens when you select Meta’s AI-generated image and background options. In my case, I was surprised by how well those images did. And it also showed that Meta still relied mostly on the image I provided.

That Image Generation breakdown option was found under a new Creative category.

Eventually, Meta would add breakdowns for Related Media and Flexible Format to this category. But now, the Image Generation option is gone.

I’ve looked around, and I’m not seeing this option for any account. What happened? Was it just a test? Did Meta decide it’s not ready? Does anyone still have it?

I’m hoping it comes back. It was useful.

3. Quality Leads: Ads vs. Organic

Something I’ve been obsessed with during the past six months or so is improving lead quality. I’ve focused on a long list of ways to impact this, covering my ads, landing page, and CRM automations.

From an advertising perspective, I’ve experimented with optimizing for a second action, rather than completing the form itself. I’m using this with my new free mini-course on Meta Andromeda. The action I ultimately want is for this new lead to open their email from me and click the link to access the lessons. That indicates a quality lead who is engaged and reachable later.

During this test, I’ve set things up in a way that makes it easier to compare the differences in leads from ads to those who subscribed organically. Since I have a sizable number of subscribers already, these differences are potentially meaningful.

I launched this mini-course on January 6th, so it’s only been about a week. But here’s what I have so far…

From Ads:

• Leads: 312
• Accessed Lessons: 124
• Quality Leads: 39.7%

Organic:

• Leads: 530
• Accessed Lessons: 346
• Quality Leads: 65.3%

First, some important background is required.

This data is incomplete. It’s only been a week, and a new lead today may not access the lessons today. I have reminder emails that go out for two days after the initial welcome email. These numbers will climb and will be closer to complete as a smaller percentage of the pool consists of new subscribers.

It’s also to be expected that organic would be a higher quality. Understand that a large chunk of this group acted on an email I sent. These were people who were already on my email list, so it makes sense that they’d be more likely to act on a future email.

All of this is true, but I’d still like to get that lead quality up from ads. One of the challenges we don’t think about enough is related to deliverability. If someone is a new subscriber, there’s no guarantee that my email will go to their main inbox. So I’ve been focused on everything from instructions on the confirmation page to crafting my email in a way that gives it the best chance of avoiding the Promotions folder.

This is all a reminder that lead quality is a multi-layered, complicated topic. We have so many potential levers to impact it, and many of those levers have nothing to do with the advertising at all.

I’ll certainly come back to this experiment later.

4. Dataset Quality API

I pride myself on being on top of every change and new feature, but I seemed to miss this one. I spotted it in my Events Manager settings…

From what I can tell, Dataset Quality API has been around for about six months.

Not to be confused with Conversions API, Signals Gateway, or even Marketing API, Dataset Quality API was designed to help agencies monitor the quality of the data that clients are sending via Conversions API.

Here’s Meta’s explanation for common use cases:

Partners and agencies may use the Dataset Quality API to provide a quality dashboard and insights, while helping their advertisers to enhance and optimize their integrations. Partners may also use this integration to monitor the stability of their Conversions API integration. Advertisers may use this endpoint to aggregate dataset quality data to incorporate in their monitoring.

I haven’t seen an example of this, but it seems to leverage much of the data we can otherwise see in Events Manager:

• Additional Conversions Reported
• Event Coverage
• Event Deduplication
• Data Freshness
• Event Match Quality Diagnostics

While Events Manager provides this information, you have to dig through each event for a single client to get there. My guess is that using the API, you could conceivably set up dashboards to make all of this information more accessible and useful.

Again, it’s still new to me. But that’s my assumption.

5. Bid Cap Definition Change

For the second time this week, my reputation for being on top of things may have been challenged.

During a recent strategy session (join us for a future session!), a member brought up the prospect of using Bid Caps. The way she discussed it, as a way to control the Cost Per Result, I assumed she meant Cost Per Result Goal. Bid Caps were all about controlling your bids on impressions in the auction.

Or, at least, that’s what I thought they were. Because they were at one time. Meta discouraged advertisers from using it unless they had deep marketing insights into what Bid Caps they should use. In an old blog post, I documented that “Bid Cap is considered the ‘very advanced’ method” and “better for the most sophisticated advertiser with high volume and a deep understanding of KPIs and costs.”

Anyway, that’s not how Bid Cap is defined now. Here’s the short definition:

Rather than specifying a max bid per impression, a bid cap specifies a maximum value for the Bid Per Estimated Action (not per impression).

Previously, it was based on the impression, which is what made it advanced and complicated. At least, that’s how I interpreted it.

Cost Per Result goal defines the average Cost Per Result that you want to stay around. A Bid Cap establishes a cap on the most you are willing to pay per result.

Look, maybe I misunderstood Bid Caps this whole time. It’s always possible. But at the very least, Meta changed how they explain it. And it’s much clearer now than it was previously.

6. Should You Delete Inactive Ads?

I spotted a new alert at the top of my Ads Manager that caught my attention…

If you’re struggling to read it, here’s what it says:

Improve how fast your campaign is loading by deleting inactive ads
Campaigns with over 200 ads may load slower. Consider deleting inactive ads to improve how fast this campaign is loading.

When I clicked to review the ads I could delete, I was shown a screen that looks like this…

So, there are a couple of things to unpack here. First, if you’re having issues with Ads Manager loading, it could be related to the number of ads — both active and inactive. Meta seems to suggest that campaigns with over 200 ads may load slower. Since there is a limit of 50 ads per ad set, that would mean a campaign with multiple ad sets totaling 200 ads.

The campaign in question does indeed have more than 200 ads (270 in all), driven primarily by inactive ads. But should I really delete the inactive ads?

Meta provides a link to documentation that explains what happens when you delete an ad. Here’s a key paragraph:

After you delete campaigns, ad sets and ads in Meta Ads Manager, you won’t see them in the default view in Ads Manager, Ads Reporting or Ads Manager app. You can’t restore deleted campaigns, ad sets or ads, but you can duplicate them and view them using search filters.

In other words, kind of a drastic step. You can still view deleted ads when using a filter.

But I’d certainly consider this a last resort. You may otherwise want to create a new campaign once you begin to approach 200 ads (this is mostly a message for myself).

7. Results Without Spend or Impressions

When viewing performance by an individual day, you may notice something unusual.

In the example above, Meta reported five conversions during a three-day period when there was no ad spend and no impressions. How is this possible?

This is directly tied to the attribution setting. In this example, I had defined attribution in the ad set as 7-day click. This means that Meta will report on all conversions that happen within seven days of clicking an ad.

This ad set stopped delivering at midnight, the morning of January 3rd. If someone clicked on an ad on January 2nd, a conversion would be reported if they end up completing the action by January 10th. And when that happens, the conversion will be reported for the day that the action was completed — not the day of the initial click.

It’s a small thing, but this is also a reminder of why we shouldn’t obsess over daily metrics, especially for new ad sets. Your results for a time window aren’t complete until you’ve exceeded the attribution setting. This is easy if you’re using 1-day click, but not when using 7-day click.

When using 7-day click, focus on 7-day reporting windows while evaluating performance. Even better, use a 7-day window that had delivery during the preceding 7-day window.

8. No Link Ads on Desktop Threads

I typically use Threads from my laptop, and I spotted something in my notifications that initially concerned me.

Someone had engaged with one of my link ads. When I pulled up the post in my desktop notifications from the Threads website, the post featured only text and a static image. There was no link. When the image was clicked, it didn’t go anywhere.

If people are seeing this version of my ad, that’s obviously bad. But there was no evidence otherwise of a problem. Nothing was off in my setup. Conversions were reporting normally.

When viewing that same notification from the Threads app on my phone, the link appeared as it should.

So, what was happening? A breakdown of my results by platform and device pointed me in the right direction.

All impressions for this ad that appeared in Threads Feed only appeared on mobile devices. In fact, I haven’t seen any ad impressions on desktop from Threads.

That tells me that Threads ads are only being delivered to mobile right now. I’ll still get notifications when using Threads on my laptop, but it won’t render properly with the link.

That was reassuring. It also means that the full rollout of ads to Threads isn’t yet complete.

More to Come

I’ll be sharing observations like these every Wednesday, as long as Meta keeps shipping changes faster than they explain them.

The post Breakdown by Attribution: What I’m Seeing So Far appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Ad Sequencing is a feature that was previously only available using the Reservation buying type, but many advertisers now have the option to use it with Auction campaigns. It’s not clear if this is a test or a full rollout.

Having the ability to sequence ads is certainly interesting, even if it feels about a decade too late. This is something that I would have loved to use while setting up evergreen campaigns years ago.

Still, there are times when having the ability to order your ads so that people see a structured message could make sense. While I’m not an advocate for remarketing these days (I have taken a complete 180 on this compared to when I used to create evergreen campaigns), there are some exceptions. And you could technically use this more from an awareness perspective, which is what it was intended for originally.

I should warn you that I’m currently experiencing significant bugginess while getting this set up. You can read more about that near the bottom. Before going through the entire process of creating a campaign with multiple ads, I’d first do this:

1. Confirm you have the feature
2. Create a very limited test that starts a day or two in the future

The test doesn’t need to run, but I’d confirm that you can publish such a campaign before you go through the work of creating sequenced messaging. I assume this will all clear up shortly.

Bugginess aside, here’s everything you need to know about ad sequencing…

Required Settings

In order to take advantage of ad sequencing, you’ll need to follow some specific requirements.

First, use either the Awareness or Engagement campaign objectives.

If using Awareness, use the performance goal to maximize reach of ads.

If using Engagement, use the On Your Ad conversion location with the performance goal to maximize ThruPlay views.

In this case, make sure to check the box to set a frequency control.

The most important requirement for ad sequencing is that you must use the Target frequency control. As a result, you can use this feature whenever that option is available.

The default frequency control is “Cap,” so you’ll first need to change it to “Target.”

This is less a requirement than a fixed setting, but Target frequency control only allows you to set a lifetime budget. If you don’t normally use lifetime budgets, keep this in mind. The ad set will also need to run for at least seven days.

How you approach budgeting will be drastically different depending on whether you’re using ad sequencing for micro-remarketing or awareness. Calculate this with your audience size in mind.

Other Setting Considerations

There are a couple of other things that are either unique or you may want to look at differently for such a campaign.

First, let’s talk about targeting. You can make the argument for ad sequencing to be a tool for both big brand awareness and small budget micro-remarketing. While I’m generally opposed to remarketing these days, there is an argument for micro-remarketing. It’s actually the one exception where I’ll occasionally use remarketing.

And that’s how I’m experimenting with this feature. I am targeting a specific group of people who fall into an email sequence for my Power Hitters Club – Elite membership product. This is based on CRM tags and a 14-day timer, so the audience will be updated dynamically. I will exclude everyone who is already a member.

Of course, if you want to restrict your targeting to a custom audience or group of custom audiences, you’ll need to uncheck Advantage+ Custom Audience.

Next, the default Target frequency is 2 impressions in 7 days. Just keep this in mind if you’re micro-remarketing. This can stretch out small audiences, making it difficult to spend. I’ve switched mine to 1 impression in 3 days, but it’s something to experiment with.

Finally, there’s the matter of placements. Once again, my recommendations for how you approach this will be completely different from what I’d typically recommend.

Normally, I’d tell you to use Advantage+ Placements, particularly when optimizing for a conversion. But Reach optimization is different due to the Target Frequency. Once you reach someone, Meta may not show your ad to them again for a few days (depending on your Target frequency settings). So you don’t want that impression wasted.

I’ve restricted my placements significantly to the following:

• Facebook Feed
• Instagram Feed
• Threads Feed
• Instagram Stories
• Facebook Stories
• Instagram Reels
• Facebook Reels

I need to reiterate that this is way out of character from what I’d typically suggest. Feel free to experiment with it, but it makes logical sense to me.

Create and Publish Your Ads

If you have ad sequencing, this option will appear in your ad set after choosing Target frequency.

One odd quirk of ad sequencing is that you can’t turn it on until you’ve published the ad set with at least two ads.

I won’t take you through all of that because what you do with your ads will be up to you. There aren’t any specific requirements, other than you publish at least two.

The main thing I’d suggest is to create ads with this feature in mind. People will see one ad at a time, followed by the next one when they get another impression.

Edit Ad Sequencing

Once you’ve published the campaign, including at least two ads, go back to where Ad Sequencing was in the ad set.

Once you click Edit Sequence, you’ll be able to drag and drop your published ads into your desired order.

Finally, you can define your Repeat Logic.

In other words, what should Meta do once someone has completed their sequence of ads? You have two options:

• Repeat the full sequence
• Repeat the last ad

That’s it!

Ad Sequencing is Buggy

One final note: As I write this, ad sequencing is incredibly buggy. The problem isn’t the ad sequencing itself, but publishing a campaign that utilizes target frequency so that you can set up ad sequencing in the first place. I don’t know what the deal is, but I’ve repeatedly run into issues with this.

I assume this is a temporary glitch that will clear up, but it’s certainly something to be aware of. You can otherwise go through quite a bit of work before running into the errors since you need to first publish the campaign, including the ad sets.

Are You Using Ad Sequencing?

Are you using ad sequencing? I’d love to hear how you’ve implemented this and what results you’re seeing.

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Meta Ad Sequencing: Setup, Requirements, and Caveats appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I need Meta to do this…

Meta’s conversion reporting is far too generic, and it doesn’t need to be this way. Because of that, it’s the source of endless confusion and misinterpretation.

What if Meta provided a separate log of attributed conversions? Not all events like Events Manager, but a clear and simplified log of the results that are attributed to your ads.

The Questions it Could Answer

It would help if this log could help us answer questions like…

1. What were the date and time of each conversion?

2. What page of your website did the conversion happen on?

3. What product was it?

4. Which ad got credit, and was it via a view or click?

5. When did that click or view happen?

6. If it was a click, what specific kind of click was it (link, media, other)?

No More Digging

Right now, Ads Manager reporting is so generic that it’s easy to question its validity on conversion reporting. You can dig to find or infer some of this information now, but not in a single detailed log.

But Meta has all of this information that could clearly paint a picture. As long as it doesn’t violate user privacy, of course, but it should all be anonymous data.

What do you think?

The post Meta Needs a Detailed Log of Attributed Conversions appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

When creating a campaign with the Engagement objective and conversion location of “on your ad,” you may notice that the default performance goal is now “Interactions.”

This is a change from the previous default for such a setup, which was Post Engagement.

This isn’t just a name change, which was my initial question (a question that could be answered by reading Meta’s note about the change).

Let’s take a closer look…

Interactions vs. Post Engagement

When using the Interactions performance goal, Meta says the following:

We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to like and react, comment, or share your post.

What’s interesting is that I found the old definition that was used in the same location for Post Engagement, and this is how Meta described it:

We’ll try to show your ads to the people most likely to like, share or comment on your post.

And that, my friends, is why I initially thought this was just a name change. But when you dig a little bit deeper, you’ll see what’s actually changing.

Meta’s definition for Post Engagement includes all of the following metrics:

• Post shares
• Post reactions
• Post saves
• Post comments
• 3-second video plays
• Photo views
• Link clicks
• Profile clicks
• Profile follows
• Location clicks
• Hashtag clicks
• Poll sticker clicks

But the definition for Interactions is this:

• Likes and reactions
• Comments
• Shares
• Saves

In fact, Meta is very clear that this is a change and that the eight other metrics listed under Post Engagement aren’t included in Interactions.

What’s confusing is that I’m not yet seeing an ads metric for Interactions, but that would presumably be what the Results column represents.

What This Means

If you’ve previously used the Post Engagement performance goal, just know that your results are likely to drop significantly when using Interactions. Particularly when running ads that feature a video, those 3-second views will add up in a hurry.

So you’ll see less volume, and the Cost Per Result will be much higher for Interactions. Reactions, comments, shares, and saves are still relatively low-barrier actions, so you should still get a decent number of them.

The bottom line is that this is a good thing. Optimizing for Post Engagement was an obvious risk since it’s so easy to get a high volume of low-quality actions. A post engagement simply doesn’t mean that much, particularly when it includes passive actions like 3-second views.

Interactions, while not on the level of a conversion, will represent a higher quality action.

Should You Optimize for Interactions?

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should be rushing to use this new option. Reactions and comments, in particular, may not even represent a positive interaction. People love using the “angry” emoji when reacting to ads they disagree with. And comments could easily be trolls or spam, and you’re telling Meta that you want more of that.

That said, two of the most valuable engagement types may be the Save and Share, and these will get higher priority without the noise of the extra engagement metrics. Still, there’s no guarantee that even these metrics will represent the quality interaction you expect.

Since the algorithm is literal, Meta will search out ways to get you the cheapest optimized actions possible. That’s not typically a problem for a purchase. But it can be for virtually any other action. Meta will exploit weaknesses related to placement, age group, location, bots, and more to get you more of those actions that you want.

I’m not saying I know of a specific source of low-quality saves and shares. But if there’s a weakness, the algorithm will find it.

So, is an Interaction better than a Post Engagement? Sure. It’s worth experimenting with, particularly if you’re limited on options. I just wouldn’t expect miracles.

Whenever possible, prioritize optimizing for conversions. It’s much easier to control quality so that you get the actions you’re actually wanting.

Your Turn

Have you experimented with the Interactions performance goal? What are you seeing?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Interactions vs. Post Engagement: What Changed and Why It Matters appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Every year, I assess my efforts over the past 12 months. What worked? What didn’t? What did I enjoy doing? What would I like to do more or less of?

After taking inventory of these results, feelings, and adjustments, I put together a plan for the following year. And when I do, I fully commit to it.

During 2025, I published 52 blog posts (one every Monday), 157 short-form videos (one every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday), and 53 podcast episodes (one every Wednesday). When I say that I committed to it, I mean it. Obsessively.

I didn’t stop creating and publishing because I was busy, wasn’t in the mood, or the results were uninspiring. I plan for it. I prioritize it. I know that content creation is a long haul, and a full year is necessary to get a sense of what is worthwhile and what isn’t.

During the year, I refine my process and find ways to get better and more efficient at creating content. I plan and create better. If the results come, great! If not, I worry about it later. Numbers don’t motivate or stop me.

But that all changes once the year is over. I’ve completed my goals. Now it’s time to look back and assess whether I keep doing what I was doing or make a pivot.

In 2026, you may not see dramatic changes. But there will be more variety.

Here’s what you can expect…

Sunday: Short-Form Video

My journey with short-form video may not be long, but it’s covered a ton of real estate in a short amount of time.

I started with short-form video in the fall of 2022 out of necessity. I knew it was a missing piece of my content. I published a video every day in 2023 and most of 2024. Along the way, I adapted the Quick Video Tutorial post type on my website to expand on these videos with written content.

In 2025, I cut back my short-form video production to three per week. And in 2026, I’m going to cut it back one more time to a single video per week.

The reason for this move isn’t that I see less value in short-form video as a format. Instead, I think I can make close to the same impact with one video as I have with three. And I think I can make a bigger impact by dedicating some of the time I’ve spent with short-form videos elsewhere.

In 2025, I had a constant list of topics I could cover. The most common category was sharing information about a new feature. But since such content required images and screen sharing, it resulted in more effort. Once again, it wasn’t as efficient as it could be. And it didn’t feel like the ideal format for that information.

In 2026, I’m going to focus on efficiency, and that starts with my short-form videos. You can see this with some of the videos I’ve published most recently (here’s an example). These will all be talking head videos that don’t require sharing steps or screens. I’ll use green screen effects to add variety, but that’s it.

I know that the short-form video format is valuable, but the primary reason for that is video creates a level of connection that can’t be found elsewhere. I look forward to continuing to make that connection with my videos in 2026. They’ll be less complicated and will take less time to create, but not at the expense of value or impact.

Monday: Full Blog Post

While I’m always open to evolving, the role of my blog remains the most critical piece.

I started my website in the fall of 2011, and my blog was immediately central to its success. It’s why I have a business at all. I created informational content to help teach people how advertising works. It attracted traffic, which led to the growth of my email list and revenue opportunities.

I’ve applied a standard approach to my blog over the years: Thorough guides and detailed, step-by-step tutorials on how to approach Meta advertising. These aren’t short posts. They’re an investment, both to produce and consume.

My Monday blog posts will maintain the style you’re used to. Details and screenshots, shared in a way that’s easy to understand.

Tuesday: Pubcast Shot

I started my podcast in 2012, but the format and my commitment level have varied over the years. For most of that time, it was an open 30-45 minute discussion. After mostly abandoning it, I brought The Pubcast back with a focus on efficiency and digestibility in 2025.

The Pubcast was initially branded as a casual conversation about marketing, advertising, and other business topics over a beer. A Pubcast Shot is a much more focused, consolidated, and tightly edited format.

I introduced Pubcast Shots in 2025 as 6-8 minute episodes dedicated to a single topic. They were scripted, but hopefully didn’t give off a scripted feel. Scripting them gave these episodes more purpose and structure, making them easier to consume.

After publishing an episode every Wednesday in 2025, I’m continuing the Pubcast Shot format into 2026. The only change is that I’m moving the publication date to Tuesdays.

Listen to a recent Pubcast Shot here. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review if you like it!

Wednesday: Short Blog Post

By trimming back my commitment to short-form videos, I’m able to recategorize some of that time toward my blog.

One of the primary ways I used short-form videos in 2025 was to share new features. The problem was that the videos themselves weren’t the best format for sharing this information. It was the Quick Video Tutorial posts that shared screenshots and other details.

That’s where this second blog post will pick up the slack. These will be shorter posts focused on new functionality. Considering I documented 83 changes and new features in 2025, I don’t expect there to be a shortage of features to pull from.

These posts could end up being collections that document multiple new features at a time, rather than the single feature my videos focused on. Regardless, I don’t intend these posts to be full tutorials, as that will be reserved for Mondays. Instead, these will more briefly highlight what is new and what you need to know.

Thursday: Pubcast Question

I’m grateful that I brought The Pubcast back this year and found a way to prioritize it and make it part of my routine. I have a system for scripting and recording that makes podcasting easier for me to create than any other format. I truly enjoy the creation process.

And since I feel as though I’m just scratching the surface, I wanted to invest more time and effort into it. My podcast is one of the beneficiaries of cutting back on my commitment to short-form videos.

I have a good idea of what would happen if I recorded more videos or wrote more blog posts. I’ve done it. But I’ve never consistently published two podcast episodes per week for a year, and I’m curious what would happen.

Will my show gain more traction? Will it grow more quickly? We’re about to find out.

What I didn’t want to do is record a second Pubcast Shot every week. I already know that I have a limited tank to pull from when it comes to ideas for that format. But I could do something else that further leans into the theme of efficiency and involves my listeners.

I’ve decided to start a weekly Pubcast Question format where I answer a listener’s question every week. These are intended to be even shorter than the typical Pubcast Shot (about 4-5 minutes).

You can submit your own Pubcast Question here. Who knows? Maybe I’ll answer it on a future episode.

Listen to a recent Pubcast Question here.

Mini-Courses

Like most content creators, paid courses were once an important source of revenue for me. But my reliance on them has dwindled to the point of mostly disappearing.

I will only create a course if I can do it right. It will be thorough, helpful, and polished. So that means a great deal of work behind what is often a 20 to 40 module course, consisting of videos and text.

The work became less worthwhile over time. Not only did I start to sell fewer of them, but I began dreading creating them. It seemed that every time I’d publish a new course, it would almost immediately become outdated.

As a result, I’ve redirected my revenue-generating time to my paid community and real-time training. What was once only a private Facebook group with weekly webinars now consists of weekly strategy sessions, access to a chatbot trained on my content, deep discounts on one-on-one sessions, and more.

But it occurred to me recently that I could bring course work back in a different way. I could create short mini-courses that are hyper-focused on a single topic. These don’t reinvent the wheel, but instead leverage the content I’ve already published on that topic and restate it in a more organized way.

And while my courses have historically been a paid product, I’m going to start with a handful of free ones as list builders. The goal is to eventually make a few, foundational mini-courses that only exist behind a membership.

I’ve already sketched out the training for nine mini-courses. The first is Meta Andromeda: A Step-by-Step System for Building Creative Diversity. Much more is to come.

Stay in The Loop

Finally, I fully recognize that I publish a whole lot of content and it’s difficult to keep up. I published 262 pieces of content in 2025 (!!), and I expect to publish about the same in 2026. Keeping up with that can be a difficult task.

That’s why I created The Loop, a weekly summary of everything I published during the past week. Go here to subscribe and you’ll never fall behind.

Your Turn

Is there anything else you’d like to see me do from a content perspective in 2026?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post My Content Plan for 2026 appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Conspiracy theories are common among advertisers. When I’m asked about whether Meta can make up conversions, I have a pretty standard response:

The likelihood that there’s a reasonable explanation for inflated results is way higher than the likelihood Meta is lying.

Reasonable Explanations

The list of potential reasonable explanations that would explain your inflated results is a long one…

1. It could be an event setup problem. Is the event firing in places it shouldn’t be?

2. It could be an attribution quirk. Do you have members of your team working on confirmation pages that fire the pixel every time they load? If they see your ad and later fire a confirmation page, conversions can be reported.

3. It could be a deduplication issue. Are you sending both CRM and web events, and are you counting them twice?

4. It could be an interpretation of results issue. The Results column reflects all of your attributed conversions. That could include products that weren’t promoted in your ad.

It could also include multiple conversions by the same person. You can use First Conversion to help isolate unique customers.

And it can include view-through and 7-day click conversions that can conflict with third-party data. Even 1-day click results include clicks that don’t require a click on your link.

Convoluted Results

The results column represents what is actually a convoluted number. Not only is it easy to misinterpret, but its accuracy relies heavily on the quality of data you send Meta.

And that’s why the most likely explanation for inflated results isn’t that Meta is randomly making up numbers to make them look better. Start with understanding why the results are what they are and go from there.

The post Can Meta Make Up Conversions? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Have you had issues with the creative testing tool? I’ve heard from several people now, so something is up.

The Problem

Advertisers are reporting a consistent problem. When testing multiple ads, Meta isn’t distributing budget evenly during the test. In fact, Meta’s barely spending anything at all on the test in some cases.

This, of course, wouldn’t be the expected behavior. The entire point of a creative test is to force budget to your ads to see what would happen when given impressions.

A Reasonable Explanation?

Initially, when I started hearing about this issue, I assumed user error. I went through a list of potential explanations like audience size, test start date, overall budget used, and more.

I’ve used the creative testing tool several times without problems. It distributes budget evenly between all ads in the test, as expected. Every time. It doesn’t matter how the ads are performing.

But enough advertisers have complained about this now that I can’t ignore it. Is there a specific setting or situation where this happens for some tests?

Is it just a bug? Because I have a hard time believing it’s by design.

Still New

The problem is that there isn’t official documentation on it yet to know if this is normal. And if it’s normal, why? This experience doesn’t make sense.

And if you’re wondering, Meta Support isn’t particularly helpful on this. They tend to be quick to share a definitive reason, but it’s almost always inconsistent with reality.

What are you seeing?

The post Creative Testing Tool Bugs appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

You need to use value rules…

Advertisers are stuck in the habit of making certain restrictions that aren’t necessary now. It’s not that there aren’t problems to address with such restrictions, but there’s a better way.

Apply Value Rules

The next time you want to restrict your audience by gender, stop. Leave it open and use value rules to impact the bids.

The next time you think you need to restrict by age group, stop. Target all ages, but create a value rule to spend less on certain age groups if you need to.

The next time you want to remove Audience Network, stop. Create a value rule to bid less on it.

Control is Needed

I get it, there are times when you need to control things a bit more, particularly related to age, gender, or placement. This happens because you have information that Meta doesn’t. Meta is only focused on getting you cheap optimized actions.

If you know that you’re getting low-quality actions by age, gender, or placement, there’s another way. Instead of removing them entirely, apply value rules. This allows you to impact spend without having to completely abandon certain options.

The post Use Value Rules to Solve Problems appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

It is difficult to keep up with all of the changes and conflicting recommendations related to Meta advertising. There is no single source of truth that is easy to consume or consistently reliable. So where do you turn?

Whenever an advertiser comes to me looking for a solution to this struggle, I refer them to my podcast. Yes, my blog and videos are helpful, too. But The Pubcast is best at condensing problems, solutions, and best practices into six to eight-minute bursts.

I published an episode every week in 2025, following this simplified format. I went through the playlist to isolate those that I’d recommend to give you the best grasp of Meta advertising today.

Listen to the eight episodes below to improve your knowledge of how things work and establish a confident approach to Meta advertising going forward.

1. Abandon Complexity and Strategy Myths

Advertisers remain obsessed with secret strategies and complex structures that promise certainty. These episodes explain why complexity is often the problem, not the solution.

Stop Searching for the Magical Ad Strategy (June 4, 2025)

There’s a reason that complex, branded strategies with cool names are popular. Advertisers, in search of a solution to their bad results, assume there’s some secret solution. And those complicated strategies seem sophisticated, so they’re convincing.

More often than not, the implementation of these strategies only leads to disappointment. Not only do the great results not follow that were promised, but performance may suffer more due to the segmentation and watered-down budgets inherent in complex strategies.

Listen Here

The Case for Simple Meta Ad Campaigns (March 12, 2025)

When you’re not getting the results you want, the best first step is to strip away unnecessary complexity. Not only may you be getting in your own way, but a simplified approach helps better isolate what does and doesn’t work.

Too many campaigns and ad sets fragment budget and results. It prevents Meta from spending your budget optimally, and puts you in a position of attempting to compete against yourself.

Most advertisers can succeed with a single conversion-focused campaign and ad set. Simplicity shifts focus back to ads, offers, landing pages, and attribution.

It doesn’t mean that you should only create one campaign with one ad set. There are always exceptions. But a simplified approach means starting simple and adding complexity only to solve a problem.

Listen Here

2. Stop Fighting the Platform

Success is increasingly less dependent on advertiser control. These episodes challenge conspiracy thinking and resistance to automation, replacing frustration with clarity. Once you understand how Meta actually works and how literal the algorithm is, many perceived problems make more sense.

Embrace Your Lack of Control (October 22, 2025)

Meta has increasingly prioritized a streamlined, automated, and templated approach over the past few years. Advertisers have fought these changes every step of the way.

And that creates problems. Most advertiser frustrations come from a desire to control everything, including the things they can’t control now. Automation is often rejected because it threatens traditional perceptions of advertiser value.

As much as advertisers may want to reject automation, Meta has a business incentive for your ads to succeed, not fail. So there’s no good reason to force you to get worse results.

Resisting automation limits performance and long-term relevance. So instead, embrace it.

Listen Here

Understand How Meta Advertising Actually Works (November 26, 2025)

Conspiracy theories thrive without a foundation in how things work. Advertisers will believe every explanation for their bad performance that removes the blame from themselves.

That changes when you understand what is and isn’t possible. Meta’s Help Center documents provable facts about the mechanics of advertising. Prioritize understanding these things.

Understanding how things work will lead to clearer analysis and better, more confident decisions. And these decisions are based in fact, not theory.

Listen Here

3. Focus on What Makes a Difference

When ads don’t work, the instinct is to blame Meta or change structure. These episodes bring the focus back to responsibility, fundamentals, and execution. The biggest gains still come from better ads, better offers, better understanding, and better decisions.

Why Aren’t People Acting on Your Ads? (August 27, 2025)

When ads aren’t working, advertisers are quick to consider the various levers they can pull. They start tweaking targeting, bidding, placements, and campaign construction in the hope of improving performance. They’re focusing on all of the wrong things.

It’s not that these levers never make an impact. But changing them isn’t nearly as dependable as focusing on your ads. Because your ads can always be better, the time spent on improving them is worthwhile.

When you’re not getting good results, the key question to answer is why people aren’t acting on the ads. Weak performance is usually an ad, offer, or landing page problem. Focus on the psychological levers of your ads, rather than the structural levers that may not make a difference.

Listen Here

The Four Traits of Successful Advertisers (April 23, 2025)

The most successful Meta advertisers share a small set of consistent traits.

They prioritize simplicity and avoid unnecessary complexity, knowing that complicated isn’t necessarily better. In fact, it’s often the opposite.

They are willing to change as the platform evolves. We’ve seen so many changes to Meta advertising during the past decade, and the instinct is to resist. This resistance is rarely a path to long-term success.

They learn primarily from doing, not from chasing gurus. They know that their brand, website, product, and problems are unique to them. There’s no better teacher than their own experimentation.

And they take responsibility for results instead of blaming Meta. While Meta isn’t perfect, blaming the platform isn’t productive. By focusing on yourself, you have more control.

These traits create clarity, confidence, and better decisions.

Listen Here

4. Fix How You Think About Results

A common advertising mistake is making confident decisions based on weak or misleading information. These episodes reinforce that interpreting performance matters as much as performance itself. If you don’t understand what results actually mean, every optimization decision that follows is at risk.

Correlation, Causation, and Meta Ads Mistakes (June 25, 2025)

What actually caused your shift in performance? Was it the change you made? Or was it an external factor you aren’t considering?

Advertisers are quick to put far too much value on correlation. But small sample sizes, randomness, and factors outside of our control often have far more impact on results than we recognize. The result is that we make bad decisions based on unreliable information.

The ability to decipher the difference between causation and mere correlation is the sign of a sophisticated advertiser.

Listen Here

Let Results Be Your Guide (May 14, 2025)

Avoid rigid rules and universal best practices. They rarely apply cleanly across ad accounts and industries. Decisions like creative cadence and targeting restrictions depend entirely on context.

Meaningful trends that are unique to your situation are far more useful than another advertiser’s strategy. When deciding how to adjust, let your results be your guide.

Listen Here

Subscribe to The Pubcast

I will be expanding The Pubcast in 2026, moving from one to two weekly episodes:

1. Pubcast Shots (Tuesdays)

These follow the format of the episodes above. Short (6-8 minutes), power-packed episodes on a single topic that quickly describe a problem and outline a solution.

2. Pubcast Questions (Thursdays)

New for 2026, these will be 4-5 minute episodes that answer listener questions. You can listen to the first episode for an example and submit your own question here. Who knows? Maybe your question will be answered on a future episode!

You can listen to The Pubcast on my website and from your favorite podcast platform (such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify). You can also subscribe to Podcast Alerts and you’ll be notified whenever I’ve published a new episode.

The post 8 Episodes to Understand Meta Advertising Today appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

I’m a big fan of Meta’s new creative testing tool. It allows you to test ads in your existing ad set so they’ll stay there when the test is complete.

But I wouldn’t recommend testing non-stop. Here’s why…

When to Test

Test creative because your results could be better and you’re trying to improve performance. If you’re getting amazing results in aggregate, there’s no great reason to test.

Creative tests will negatively impact performance because they force budget away from what’s working best. It doesn’t matter whether you create a separate campaign, separate ad set, or test within the existing ad set using the Creative Testing Tool.

It’s a suboptimal condition for peak performance.

Why Test?

Creative Testing is great for learning, especially when your results could be better. But when your results are great, take a break, and enjoy it. This is when you should clear the distractions and let those successful ads shine.

The post When Should You Test Creative? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

This can’t be good…

While the battle between Meta and EU regulators may finally be over, it’s at a cost.

If this sounds familiar, you’d be forgiven. The same thing supposedly happened about a year ago. I’m confused, too.

The Agreement

Meta will give users in the EU three options:

1. Use Facebook and Instagram for free, as they always have, and your data will be used to inform the ads you see.

2. Pay for an ad-free subscription and your data won’t be used for ads.

3. Opt into sharing less personal data for an experience with limited personalized advertising.

This is a Mess

Meta can’t be happy about this. Two years ago, Meta launched an ad-free subscription option, thinking it would appease regulators. It didn’t, so Meta cut the price multiple times. It still didn’t do it.

So now Meta offers a paid subscription that’s cheaper than it’s ever been — and Meta probably doesn’t want anyone to buy — and a new free option to share less data. That’s a rough deal.

Users who choose the less personal data option will see less relevant ads. That will hurt the user experience, and it will make ads less effective. It will also shrink the pool of users who can be targeted in the EU who provide their data. So the cost of advertising could also go up.

Keep an eye on this since it will likely set a precedent for other parts of the world.

The post Meta Agrees to Less Personalized Advertising Option in the EU appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.