Top Meta Ad Strategies to Drive Sales in 2024
As we move deeper into 2024, Meta’s advertising platforms continue evolving, and so too does the best practice for advertisers. For brands looking to boost sales and engagement, adapting to Meta’s latest updates is essential. Here’s a look at the top strategies to drive sales with Meta ads in 2024.
1. DON’T use Advantage+ creative!
Before diving into strategies you should implement, let's look at one to approach with caution or avoid altogether; Meta’s Advantage+ creative. The folks at Meta are pushing it hard, often automatically applying it to ads, but quite frankly — it sucks.
With Advantage+ creative, Meta will use AI to edit your images and/or videos. It’s supposed to make changes to your content based on what it thinks your audience is more likely to interact with. This can include adding text or music, superimposing elements into (or out of) your photos, and changing your content’s size/dimensions.
The problem is that AI won’t take into consideration your brand fonts, colours, or identity at all when making its “enhancements”. The result is ads that are way off-brand. Often, they’re also riddled with mistakes. We’ve had Meta add music on top of videos that already have audio. It’s photoshopped models into entirely new settings, added caption overlays to photos that make no sense… If you’re a marketer needing approval from clients before rolling out new creatives, or trying to follow strict style guidelines, this is obviously a huge problem.
TLDR: At this stage in its development, Advantage+ creative should be switched off. It’s simply not smart enough yet to produce quality ads that are within your brand guidelines. The problem is that a lot of the time, Meta will automatically switch it on — so you need to manually toggle all optimisations off.
Toggle ‘All Optimisations’ to off.
2. DO use AI audience targeting
While Meta’s AI creatives aren’t great, its AI audience targeting is another story. With Advantage+ Shopping campaigns, Meta’s AI-driven ad targeting is more advanced than ever, optimising audience selection for better results.
In 2024, it can pinpoint audiences with remarkable precision, taking much of the guesswork out of manual targeting. We’ve been testing Advantage+ audience selection and have found the conversions are above what we were seeing when manually inputting parameters. This is likely because Meta’s AI adjusts audience parameters in real time, and will keep widening the scope to find new customers.
However, it does pose challenges for advertisers who want more control over niche or specific audience groups. The automated approach can sometimes result in generalised targeting, which may miss the mark for brands with highly specialised customer bases.
3. Carousels are in
Video content remains one of the most engaging ad formats on Meta platforms, but they’re starting to face stiff competition from carousels. Carousel ads have actually been shown to receive more clicks compared to both video ads and single-image ads.
This means that in 2024 you should be experimenting with both short-form videos (under 15s) such as Reels Ads and feed carousels.
A tip for video ads is to always include text overlays, as some people will be watching it on mute — and a text hook is generally more eye-catching on the feed.
4. Define custom audiences
Custom Audiences remain a useful tool in Meta’s arsenal, allowing businesses to reconnect with previous website visitors, past customers, and social media followers. The most effective strategy is website retargeting, or showing relevant ads to users who have visited your website but haven’t completed a purchase. Similarly, social media engagers are another high-value audience.
A lesser-known retargeting option, but one that can get some quick wins on the board, is Video Viewers (75%). This will target users who watched over 75% of a video you posted. You can do this for all videos in general, or choose specific posts if you want to focus on a particular product/service.
Read our advice on retargeting ads.
4. Lookalikes are still performing
In 2024, lookalike audiences are still recommended for brands using Meta ads, but with a few nuanced updates. Lookalike audiences remain a powerful way to expand reach by targeting people who share similar characteristics with your existing customers, website visitors, or social followers.
However, with privacy changes and increasing automation in Meta's AI targeting, advertisers are advised to create lookalikes based on their highest-value customers (like past purchasers, adds to cart) or engaged segments (like video viewers) for better quality and ROAS. Stacking up lookalike audiences in their own ad set is our preferred method, or adding a few into a broad targeting campaign (but don’t overdo it or you risk limiting reach).
To maximise effectiveness, focus on using 1-3% lookalike audiences for closer matches to your seed audience, which typically yields higher conversion rates.
5. Go low-fi
Nowadays, advertising in general is far more casual and unpolished — with many brands swapping corporate courtesies for roasting their customers on Tiktok. Since social media normalised a more organic approach to content sharing, it’s no surprise that low-fi ads are performing exceptionally well on Meta in 2024.
Often shot on smartphones or using minimal production, these ads blend seamlessly into social media feeds — and align with the modern consumers growing desire for relatability and authenticity. Unlike high-production ads, low-fi ads mimic the look and feel of user-generated content, making them appear less like traditional advertising and more like genuine, everyday posts. This style resonates especially well with younger audiences.
Additionally, low-fi ads are almost always faster and cheaper to produce, allowing brands to create more content, test variations quickly, and adapt to real-time trends. You can still use your beautiful campaign assets, but make sure you’re adding some low-fi ads into the mix.
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With Meta’s ever-evolving advertising ecosystem, brands have endless opportunities to reach new customers and drive conversions. By knowing when to leverage and avoid AI targeting, prioritising formats like Reels and Carousels, and keeping up with the latest advice on everything from audience to trending creatives, businesses can create high-performing campaigns tailored to today’s consumer habits. Experiment with these top strategies to make the most out of Meta ads in 2024.