Meta's Advantage+: Doubling down on everything that's wrong with digital advertising

Meta's digital advertising offering has always been problematic for me. That's not to say that I don't think it has any value but I don't believe it has the level of value that it claims and numerous analytics projects across a number of different clients have demonstrated that to be true.

My issue has always been 3 fold:

1. The resistance and blocking of open comparison of performance to other media channels. Meta says Meta works...shocker.

2. The algorithm looks for those people most likely to convert, then creates as many touchpoints as possible before the point of conversion, in order to claim the conversion.

3. As a result, the majority of the "value" claimed is non-incremental and focuses on "counting" conversions, rather than whether the advertising is "causing" those conversions.

The above issues fly in the face of the fundamentals of effective advertising promoted by such luminaries as Mark Ritson, Les Binet and Byron Sharp but are still ignored or overlooked by many in the industry, either through self interest or an unwillingness to wean themselves and their clients of the highly addictive, face value sales figures.

In an FT.com article yesterday, a number of digital agency executives have (predictably) lauded the arrival of Advantage+ and Meta's application of advanced AI to solve the "problem" of reduced attribution of conversions created by loss of tracking through IOS and to get ahead of the further loss of fidelity when Chrome removes cookies in 2024.

(On a side note, I'd love to get a view as to whether companies investing in Meta, actually saw a reduction in sales when the loss of IOS tracking was introduced, or just saw a loss of sales attributed to Meta.)

But what's being ignored is the fact that this is merely doubling down on the points above.

Advantage+ lowers the cost of impressions, in order to drive greater volumes of touchpoints with users. The increase in volume, means that it's more likely that a touchpoint can be placed in the path of a conversion and then that conversion can be attributed to Meta, regardless of the actual influence.

This is going back to the bad old days of low cost display ad networks, impression bombing the world with largely non-viewable ads and then claiming credit for subsequent conversions, potentially a month later. It focuses on cost and volume, rather than cause and value.

On a more positive note, I do think that the ability to quickly test multiple creatives to understand which combinations are working, is of value. However, I do question the metrics on which "working" is being based.

In the end, I'm sure that lots of agencies will promote the use of Advantage+ to their clients. It's a simple and easy way to claim that media is driving business outcomes and looks incredibly efficient, without having to concern themselves with the harder question of effectiveness.

And, like any new offering, it should be tested, however, I would recommend that it is done so with eyes wide open and in full recognition that as with most things in life, quantity does not equal quality, low cost does not equal value and counting what has happened is not the same as causing that thing to happen.