Facebook Automated App Ads: Should You Try It?

Advantage+ App Campaigns, also known as Automated App Campaigns, is a campaign type available on Facebook (META) that enables app marketers to create and run ads for their mobile apps automatically.

It closely resembles Google’s Universal App Campaigns (UAC), allowing marketers to set only the budget, location, delivery optimization (installs, events, or value), and creatives. However, demographic targeting, audience inclusion/exclusion, and other parameters are not customizable and are determined by META’s algorithm.

We’ll cover the topic in question completely and see through our data examples if Facebook Automated App Ads are worth your time.

What Are Facebook Automated App Ads?

Because they need less work to set up than individual app campaigns, Facebook (META) Automated App Ads may be somewhat beneficial to marketers. When correctly configured, AAA campaigns may reach high-performance levels since they are backed by Facebook’s (META’s) own machine-learning algorithms.

Although Automated App Ads provide a number of advantages and are simple to set up, there are certain drawbacks. AAA, for example, does not offer a variety of targeting choices such as gender, age, behavior, and more.

However, you can target audiences according to language, operating system, and country. Facebook Automated App Advertising does not support all ad forms, like carousel ads, playable ads, etc.

What Is the Difference Between Automated App Ads and App Ads?

Automated App Ads demand less input from marketers during campaign development, simplify audience choices, and simplify the creative management process compared to manual App Ads.

Automated App Ads also give the ability to optimize app installations and app events in a single campaign. Moreover, dynamic ads are now supported by Automated App adverts. Such ads allow you to make an ad template that incorporates photos and information from your inventory automatically.

How to Set Up Facebook AAA Campaigns

Setting up an Advantage+ App Campaign is a simple process. To get started, open Facebook Ads Manager and click on the “Create” button. Then, select the “App Promotion” objective and choose the “Advantage+ App Campaigns” type.

The next step involves choosing your campaign’s location, optimization goal, and budget.

After you choose a location for your Facebook Automated App Ads, you will now choose the optimization goal and the budget.

Finally, create your ads as you normally would. You can develop up to 50 different creative variations for your Advantage+ App Campaign.

For more detailed information on creating the campaign, visit META Documentation.

When it comes to results, according to Facebook documentation, results for age, gender, and placements are not broken down for Advantage+ App Campaigns.

However, it appears that this information can be viewed in practice. It is possible that the documentation is outdated or that there may be some incorrect information provided by META for its own products.

The user quality in Facebook Automated App Campaigns can often be poor, resulting in a good Cost Per Install (CPI) but no real user engagement and higher Cost Per Action (Purchase, Subscription) (CPA). Cost Per Mille (CPM) and Cost Per Click (CPC) tend to be better than traditional campaigns as well.

Facebook Automated App Ads: Our Data Examples

We ran Automated App Campaigns for two clients with daily news apps, aiming to maximize app installs while maintaining high user quality and engagement.

After comparing our Automated App Campaigns with our traditional app ads using an MMP (AppsFlyer), we found the following results:

For App1, Automated App Campaigns achieved a 98% lower Cost Per Install compared to traditional ads but resulted in a 40% lower loyal user rate* and a 60% lower 1-month retention rate.
For App2, Automated App Campaigns achieved a 117% lower Cost Per Install compared to traditional ads but resulted in an 84% lower loyal user rate* and a 40% lower 1-month retention rate.

*The loyal user trigger was set to “at least 3 sessions with 10-hour intervals for these specific clients.”

Conclusion

If the primary goal is to increase the number of installs, then pursuing Facebook Automated App Ads (Automated App Campaigns) may be a viable option. However, if the goal is to focus on user quality, it may be wise to test the waters with a small budget and see what the results are. Since every app is unique, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Another piece of advice is to take advantage of the available results breakdowns and incorporate them into your traditional campaigns to enhance performance and scalability.

Are you interested in improving your paid user acquisition strategy? Get in touch with our team of experts and start growing your app today.