Meta Wants Us To Use Advantage + Audiences To Broaden Our Target Audiences.

By broadening our target audiences, our ads can reach more people and when our ads reach more people, it's possible that conversion rates will increase and we'll pay less for our leads.

But bigger is not always better for course creators.

Because course creators have longer funnels than e-commerce sellers who get a sale from their ads within hours of the lead seeing the ad for the first time.

As course creators, we rely on ads to help us build our email lists so that we have hot audiences on our lists when we launch our courses.

So what can a course creator do to prepare for this new change?

In this article, I'll explain

• Why Meta is forcing us to use Advantage+ Audiences
• How this change impacts who sees our ads and how much control we have over our targeting
• What you can do now to ensure your ads continue to deliver to the right audiences

How Meta's Audience Update Will Impact Your Ad Results.

Have you seen notifications in your Ads Manager about Advantage+ Audience targeting lately?

Or, maybe you’ve been one of the unlucky people who had your audience targeting completely replaced with new audiences by Meta, without ever agreeing to it. 

The reality is that Meta is making some big changes to who we can target and how much control we have over who sees our ads. 

BUT, this doesn’t have to be bad news, as long as you know how to navigate the change. 

And that’s why you have me, right! 🥰

Why Meta Is Changing How We Target Our Audiences.

I think we can all agree, as users of the internet, that protecting our safety and security is a top priority. 

To make the internet a safer and more private space for all of us, the big players (Mostly Apple and Google) have in recent years rolled out changes that restrict how much information the Meta Pixel can “see”. 

From a consumer’s perspective, it’s a good thing. From an advertiser's perspective, it SUCKS!!

Because, when the pixel is ‘blind’ to see who the person is that just downloaded your lead magnet – then the pixel cannot feed that information back to the algorithm to put your ad in the newsfeed of more people like that one!

This means we end up paying a lot more for a half-blind pixel to talk to a cripple algorithm to try to find us some of the right people who will sign up to our email lists. 

What Are The Changes Meta Is Making To Our Audience Targeting?

The solution Meta came up with is called Advantage+ Audiences and it's fast becoming the default setting on some of the ads we run.

Advantage+ Audiences create a wide open targeting group that Meta serves your ad to.

This could include all genders, all ages, and any country on the planet.

To Meta, targeting bigger audiences means our ads have a higher possibility to get clicks which then lead to conversions. 

BUT to us, the marketer, BIGGER DOESN’T MEAN BETTER!

This is especially true for us course creators who need the best quality leads on our email lists because our conversions to sales will only happen weeks, sometimes months later. 

For us, the quality of our leads matter far more than the quantity.

So getting our ad shown to the right person, who lives in the right country and has very specific interests matters!

How You Can Take Control Over Who Sees Your Ads.

For now, I want you to keep an eye on the results you see in your ads manager under ‘Country’ and ‘Age’. 

Are your ads still being shown to people in the countries you defined and the age groups you defined?

If they are, you’re golden!

If they aren’t, you can change some settings in your account to ensure that your ads are only ever shown to people is specified countries. 

You can do that inside your Ad Account by clicking on ‘Advertising Settings’

Then click on ‘Account Controls’

Then click on ‘Audience Controls’

And here you’ll be able to select countries that your ads are allowed (and probably more importantly – not allowed) to be shown in.

If you have active ads running right now, I suggest you do this now and if you plan on running ads in the near future, do it now, too!

When you do this you’ll save yourself lots of money when Meta decides to start running your ads to countries where your customers are not based without your knowledge. 

Make sure you're signed up for regular ad updates from us so that you never miss out on any important updates to your ads, like this one.

You can sign up now by joining the 10,000+ other course creators who have taken our free 5-Day Video Training where we show you exactly how to set up your first list-building ad.

Get started here.

Salome

>> If you enjoyed this post, you'll love this one: 142. Facebook and Instagram Ads Are Hotter Than Ever – Here’s Why

>> You'll also like: 202. Changes To Your Ad Audiences You Must Pay Attention To NOW

>> Here's another post we think you'll like: 5 Marketing Must-Haves For Online Course Creators Looking To Scale To 6 Figures Faster

>> Here's another post we think you'll like: 3 Essential Ads Every Online Course Creator Needs To Grow Their Launches Faster