Should I use Meta Advantage+ for newsletter ads?

I split Advantage+ in two: yes to the audience, no to the creative tricks.

"We use Advantage+ for targeting, but we don't use it for all these random design things."

Why use the Advantage+ audience?

Because Meta knows its users better than I do. For a free local newsletter, the only targeting I set is location. Everything else is broad, and the creative does the sorting. When I coach someone starting out, the setup is: turn everything off, start a new campaign, no end date, Advantage+ on.

If the creative attracts a certain kind of person, Meta finds more of that person. Even Meta now says not to target, and to let the creative be the target. My general approach is to be very broad: here's what we do for you, you should sign up.

Don't stuff interests in, either. When one publisher showed me their setup, they hadn't added moms or people who read the news. Good. That's how it should be.

Why trust Meta to find the audience?

Because Meta's algorithm is so good now that for most reasons you don't need to target people. You target them with your ad creative. Leave the audience fields blank. Are they local? Are they a mom? Do they like local news? We just don't fill that out.

There's also an incentive reason. Meta wants us to spend more money, and we'll only spend more if it works. That alignment means they're motivated to make it work well for us.

Why turn off Advantage+ creative enhancements?

Three reasons:

• I think those design features work for e-commerce, for products and physical things. A newsletter isn't a physical thing.
• You can't really see a preview of what Meta will show.
• My ads depend on exact text placement, like keeping copy small and centered so no placement crops it. I want the ad to run exactly as designed.

What about Advantage+ placements?

Placement is where text cropping bites, which is why I keep on-screen text centered with lots of margin.

The bigger targeting picture is in how to target Meta ads for a local newsletter.