19 Jul Should Prospecting and Retargeting Live in One Advantage+ Campaign?
Meta’s own guidance often suggests simplifying: put prospecting and retargeting into one automated campaign and let Advantage+ handle the allocation. In practice, this frequently works against the retargeting side specifically — combining both audiences under one delivery strategy can prevent retargeting from reaching the higher frequency it typically needs to actually convert.
This connects to how Advantage+ treats audience settings as suggestions rather than rules — the same dynamic shows up here, but applied specifically to the prospecting/retargeting split rather than interest targeting.
The specific mechanical problem
Prospecting and retargeting need genuinely different frequency profiles — low frequency to reach new people, meaningfully higher frequency to properly warm up a smaller, already-interested audience. When both audiences are folded into a single campaign, the algorithm optimizes across the blended pool rather than treating the retargeting segment with the distinct delivery pattern it needs. The result: retargeting doesn’t reliably reach the frequency that tends to drive conversion, because it’s competing for delivery logic against a much larger prospecting audience within the same campaign.
The practical fix is to keep retargeting as its own separate campaign, structured deliberately around its own frequency target and time window, rather than folding it into a combined automated setup.
The same pattern shows up with ad volume
A related issue shows up when Meta suggests loading 15 or more ads into a single ad set and letting the algorithm optimize which ones get delivered. In practice, a small number of ads — sometimes just one or two — tend to absorb most of the budget, while the rest barely spend at all. It doesn’t always stay consistent either: an ad performing well one week can stop getting meaningful spend the next, without an obvious explanation. That volatility makes it hard to build reliable, repeatable creative strategy around a fully automated ad set.
This isn’t a blanket verdict against Advantage+
None of this means Advantage+ doesn’t work — some accounts genuinely perform very well letting the algorithm handle most of the decision-making, with strong, consistent results over months. Others see much more mixed results. The honest read, based on real accounts, is roughly an even split between advertisers who see it working well and those who don’t. There’s no universal answer here, which means the right move is testing it deliberately on your own account rather than assuming either outcome based on general advice — including this piece.
What to actually test
- Separate prospecting and retargeting into distinct campaigns, rather than combining them, if retargeting frequency isn’t reaching the level you’d expect.
- Watch ad-level spend distribution in a large automated ad set — if a handful of ads are absorbing nearly all the budget while others get almost nothing, that’s worth knowing before assuming the “let Meta pick the best ad” approach is working as intended.
- Give any structural change a real test window before judging it — a few days isn’t enough to see whether a combined or split structure is actually performing better.
Reviews are conducted personally by Jason Gan, a Meta Certified Professional and Badged Meta Business Partner who has personally audited over 1,000 advertiser accounts since 2010. You can see real account breakdowns on the Jason Gan YouTube channel.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I combine prospecting and retargeting into one Advantage+ campaign? Not automatically, even though Meta’s own guidance often suggests it. Combining both into one campaign can prevent the retargeting audience from reaching the higher frequency it typically needs, since the algorithm blends delivery across a broader mixed audience rather than treating the smaller retargeting pool distinctly.
Why does Meta recommend putting many ads into one automated ad set? Meta’s automated systems are designed to test broadly and let performance data determine allocation without manual management. In practice, this often results in one or two ads consuming most of the budget while the rest barely spend, and which ad wins can shift unpredictably from week to week.
Does Advantage+ work well for Meta ads campaigns? Results vary meaningfully by account. Some advertisers see strong, consistent results letting Advantage+ handle most of the campaign; others see inconsistent results and prefer more manual structure. The honest answer is that it requires testing on your own account rather than assuming either outcome.
If you’re not sure whether your combined campaign is holding retargeting back
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