Meta recently announced the roll out of new tools in their ad automation suite, Meta Advantage. The biggest upgrade comes in the form of their Advantage+ shopping campaigns, which will automate part of the campaign set-up process for e-commerce and retail advertisers. 

Additionally, advertisers across all industries will enjoy greater flexibility with the creative side of campaigns. Businesses can now mix and match images or video with different variations of copy, allowing them to test the efficacy of their ads with greater speed.

The Good 

In their press release, Meta highlights the biggest advantage of adtech automation: it leads to significantly less expensive and less time-consuming campaigns. This means that small businesses already operating on thin margins can reinvest that valuable time and money saved into other, more valuable avenues.

Advantage+ is mostly geared towards smaller agencies who might not be as far along in their technological journey as some of their larger counterparts. For these SMBs, the suite is a low-stakes entry point in exploring the opportunity of ad automation and can act as a proof of concept for future investments.

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The Not So Good

Meta's focus here continues to be on e-commerce and retail advertisers, and without any indication as to whether this focus will shift to include more verticals, advertisers outside of these spaces may have to make due with fewer capabilities.

Many people complained back in March during the release of Advantage and Advantage+ that the move was more of a rebrand rather than a release of any new automation tools. This is a fair assessment, but the fact that they're rolling out new features should be a good sign to advertisers that they're committed to broadening the scope of the offering.

Of course, this product and its increased capabilities are still in the early stages of development, so gauging its effectiveness will take some time and patience.

Our Spin

The campaign creation process has been, and continues to be, a huge bottleneck on the advertising industry. The speed at which manual methods can get campaigns off the ground not only drains ad specialists' valuable time in creation, but also leaves clients' new ads in limbo when they should be generating leads. 

Even if Meta remains narrowed in on the e-commerce sector, it's encouraging to see them validate Chassis' mission in combating the antiquated campaign creation processes that plague advertisers, their wallets, and their time.

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