New Advantage+ Updates You Should Know About

Before we get into the new updates, let’s quickly recap what Advantage+ is:

If you've been poking around Meta’s advertising tools lately, chances are you've run into Advantage+. In short, Advantage+ is Meta’s AI-powered ad system that takes a ton of the manual work off your plate. Instead of spending hours fine-tuning targeting, budgets, placements, and creatives, Advantage+ handles all that automatically using machine learning.

Think of it like autopilot for your campaigns. It determines who’s most likely to convert, serves them the right ad at the right time, and optimizes real-time performance. It’s been handy for e-commerce brands running sales campaigns, but Meta's been steadily rolling it out across more campaign types.

Now for the updates:

Advantage+ is now available for lead gen

Meta has expanded Advantage+ to support lead generation! That means advertisers can now use AI-driven automation to optimize ad delivery and target users who are more likely to convert, which typically results in a lower cost per acquisition (CPA).

Meta designed the system to work like Advantage+ sales campaigns, but optimized it to generate business leads instead of direct sales.

To find the Advantage+ lead generation campaign option, follow these steps:

1. Go to Meta Ads Manager and click + Create to start a new campaign as usual.
2. Select Leads as your campaign objective, and then click ‘Continue’ to proceed.

3. Now you’ll see a pop-up message confirming that campaign setup options have been streamlined, so there’s no need to configure everything manually (more on that later in the blog). It also tells you that a campaign score (0-100) will now be visible in Meta Ads Manager, evaluating how well your campaign follows Meta’s best practices. Meta considers your budget strategy, audience settings, and Advantage+ automation when grading your campaign’s setup quality. A higher score means your campaign is structured optimally, but it does not directly predict performance.

4. Then, in the Conversion location section, choose how you want to generate leads: website (requires Meta Pixel setup), instant forms (on Facebook and Instagram), Messenger (automated Q&A flow), calls (encourages direct calls), or app (for in-app conversions).

5. The Performance goal you choose depends on the conversion location because different lead-generation methods attract different levels of intent.

Simplified campaign setup across objectives

If you're running a lead gen campaign and spot that green “Advantage+ On” label, that’s part of the new streamlined setup I will discuss.

Advantage+ campaigns now activate automatically—if you hit the right combo. When you enable Advantage+ placements, opt into Advantage+ audience, and use Advantage Campaign Budget, Meta recognizes it as an Advantage+ campaign setup, even if you didn’t explicitly choose that path. You’ll see a green label in Ads Manager confirming you're in full automation mode, and from that point on, Meta’s AI takes over: adjusting your targeting, delivery, and budget behind the scenes in real time.

The toggle-based activation, where enabling these three settings automatically converts to an Advantage+ campaign, was already in place for sales and app installs, and now lead generation campaigns also follow the same streamlined setup.

 ⚠️ Oh—and there’s a naming change you should know about...

Advantage+ shopping campaigns are now Advantage+ sales campaigns

Meta has rebranded Advantage+ shopping campaigns to Advantage+ sales campaigns to align the name with this specific objective, as it now supports multiple goals.

There are also more options to customize:

• You get more targeting control now: You can add or exclude custom audiences, and even provide suggestions like gender or age caps—something impossible with the old shopping format. This update gives advertisers more say in who sees their ads, without giving up the core automation benefits.
• You’re no longer stuck with just one ad set. Now, you can create multiple per campaign. Just note: each one maxes out at 50 ads, unlike the single-ad-set 150-ad cap we had before.
• The Existing Customer Budget Cap is gone, but you can still replicate it manually using exclusions or separate ad sets.

And while it’s all designed to be more flexible, the option to build a campaign from scratch as “Manual” or “Automated”? That’s gone. You’re now working within a simplified Advantage+ setup by default, and whether you keep it fully automated is up to how many knobs you choose to turn.

Opportunity score is now available to more advertisers

We already covered that campaign score is part of the Advantage+ setup flow—you’ll see it while building your campaign. Opportunity score, on the other hand, kicks in after your campaign is live. It lives at the campaign and ad account level and reflects how many of Meta’s recommended optimizations you’ve implemented, from formatting fixes to Advantage+ features. The more suggestions you check off, the higher your score climbs.

This score gives you a 0–100 rating that reflects how well your campaign setup aligns with Meta’s performance recommendations. The higher the score, the more your campaign is optimized (according to Meta’s AI). It’s like getting a quick diagnostic check on how efficiently you use Meta’s tools, including Advantage+ features. 

What’s useful here is that the score comes with real-time, AI-generated recommendations based on performance data across accounts. These aren’t vague tips—they’re minor, actionable tweaks, like adjusting formatting or turning on Advantage+ features. It’s not a one-size-fits-all fix, but you can pick what fits your strategy.

And according to Meta, advertisers who followed these suggestions during early testing saw a 5% drop in cost per result. Not life-changing, but in ad land, every percent counts.

Keep an eye out for it next time you’re in Meta Ads Manager—check the Account Overview or look under Campaigns in the Actions tab at the top of your page:

Madgicx’s AI Marketer is the wingman for Meta ads 🦾

Advantage+ might be Meta’s leap into automated ads, but if you’re serious about scaling smarter, not just faster, you’ll want to go beyond the basics. That’s where AI tech like Madgicx’s AI Marketer comes in, giving you deeper insights and guiding your execution with precision to drive better performance. 

The AI Marketer is your 24/7 genius sidekick, built to handle everything from pinpointing high-performing audiences to optimizing your budget and scaling the best creatives—all with just a click.

Here’s what it brings to the table:

👉 Smarter budget optimization - It monitors your ad account non-stop, auditing performance and providing real-time data-driven recommendations to help your budget work harder. From flagging underperforming ads to spotting high-potential scaling opportunities, it keeps your ads at peak performance.

👉 AI-powered audience targeting - With AI-powered analysis, Madgicx's AI Marketer finds patterns in behavior, interests, and actions within your ad data. It then identifies your top-performing audience segments and creates a super lookalike, an audience modeled after the best of the best, so you can reach high-potential users more efficiently.

👉 Creative testing that moves the needle - Instead of hunching what works, the AI Marketer evaluates your ads’ performance, highlights top creatives, and flags underperformers—so you can confidently scale what converts.

👉 Smart comment management – It instantly analyzes post comments, sorts them by type (like questions, spam, or issues), and recommends the best action—hide, respond, or auto-reply. It also suggests responses based on past interactions to keep things on-brand and efficient.

If you’re ready to pair automation and AI-driven strategy, the AI Marketer is the perfect co-pilot. Plus, you get it for just $31/month (annual billing) as part of Madgicx’s All-in-One plan, packed with many more powerful tools.

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