What happened to this?
Back in January, Meta announced that Advantage Detailed Targeting would be turned on and locked when optimizing for link clicks or landing page views. Otherwise, you had the option of turning it on or off when using Original Audiences.
Expansion and Conversions
This change mimics what we see when optimizing for conversions where it forces you to allow audience expansion.
In the case of optimizing for conversions, Advantage Lookalike is also forced. It appears that won’t be the case when optimizing for link clicks or landing page views (I mistakenly said it would be in this video).
Does it Make Sense?
This rollout seemed to start in March. Do you have it yet? While I have it for some ad accounts, I don’t for all of them.
This was a curious change from the start. While forcing expansion makes plenty of sense for conversions, you’d think it just makes it more likely you’ll get low-quality clicks when optimizing for link clicks or landing page views. Let’s talk about why…
When optimizing for conversions, the algorithm is focused on getting you as many conversions as possible within your budget. There aren’t weaknesses in placements or sources of low-quality purchases that would inflate your numbers. If the algorithm can’t find you purchases, it will keep searching. Expanding your audience can help with that search.
But, this is different when optimizing for link clicks and landing page views. Low-quality traffic due to accidental clicks, bots, click fraud, and people who will click on anything is absolutely a problem. While the Audience Network placement is most notorious for this issue, it’s not eliminated if you remove that placement.
The algorithm only cares about getting you clicks, with no concern for quality. Being able to control your targeting can help limit this problem, even if it won’t eliminate it. Allowing the audience to show your ads to anyone, however, will undoubtedly lead to lots of cheap and low-quality clicks.
I wouldn’t recommend these performance goals anyway, but this update would make them even worse.
My two cents, at least.
