Meta made an insane number of changes to advertising in 2024, but there is plenty that could be enhanced. This post focuses on specific ways that Meta could further improve the ads product in 2025.
Missing from this list are some of advertisers’ biggest complaints regarding support, ad review, and scams. Those are structural problems without an easy fix.
This list also avoids requests for features that clearly conflict with the current direction of the product. We know that the future of Meta advertising is less control and more automation. The focus here is on finding ways to make that automation better.
In most cases, these are very specific feature requests. I’m no programmer, so I won’t claim to know how easy or difficult it may be to pull them off. But they would improve the product for Meta advertisers.
Let’s get to the list (in no particular order)…
1. Expansion Breakdown
Meta introduced Advantage Detailed Targeting (then called Detailed Targeting Expansion) in 2021. This allowed Meta to expand your audience and reach people beyond the Detailed Targeting inputs if it would result in improved performance.
Many advertisers revolted. I was among this group initially. It was the beginning of our loss of control.
Advantage Detailed Targeting is now on by default and can’t be turned off when the performance goal is to maximize conversions, link clicks, or landing page views. Advantage Lookalike will expand your lookalike audience when maximizing conversions.
Of course, that assumes that you use original audiences. The default targeting approach is now Advantage+ Audience, which treats most of your inputs as suggestions.
While an algorithmic expansion of your audience is not perfect, it is our reality. In 2025, we can expect we’ll further lose targeting control, not gain it back. We need to accept and embrace this.
One way that Meta could improve confidence in audience expansion is by adding a breakdown to reporting. Provide two rows:
- Results from audience that was explicitly targeted from inputs
- Results from audience that was reached beyond targeting inputs
This added transparency can show advertisers how audience expansion is helping them. They may even see that the cost per result is better for the expanded audience. Or not, but this is a necessary breakdown.
Of course, this isn’t a new request. I’ve asked for it from the beginning of audience expansion, and I’ll keep on asking.
2. Audience Segments and Ad Scheduling Availability
Meta added two great new features to manual sales campaigns in 2024…
The addition of Audience Segments was transformative.
It’s because of Audience Segments that I was able to run several tests that changed my opinions about targeting. But, there’s one problem: This feature should be available for all campaign objectives, not just sales.
Another feature added to sales campaigns in 2024 was Ad Scheduling.
Scheduling normally happens on the ad set level, but this allows you to schedule ads individually. This way, you can have ads run within the same ad set based on your promotional schedule.
Once again, it’s a great feature, but it’s only available for sales campaigns. Why?
Both features were originally made available for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns before rolling out to manual sales campaigns, too. Maybe this is the natural progression and we’ll eventually get access for other objectives.
If not, it feels like an unnecessary restriction. There’s nothing special about sales campaigns that would make these features unique to them. They’d be just as valuable when using any of the other campaign objectives.
Until then, I find creative ways to use the Sales objective even when I don’t optimize for a purchase so that I can get access to Audience Segments. That’s how valuable this feature is.
3. Enhancements to Audience Segments
Audience Segments are awesome. They provide important context to algorithmic targeting by breaking down results into three groups:
- Engaged Audience
- Existing Customers
- New Audience
This helps us see how budget and results are distributed between remarketing and prospecting groups. But it can be improved in three specific ways.
1. Add a layer. Right now, you cannot define Engaged Audience using Facebook Page, Instagram Account, and video view custom audiences.
You can certainly make the argument that these are lower quality than the other custom audiences used to define your Audience Segments. But they do make up your remarketing.
Meta could either add these custom audiences to Engaged Audience or create a new one (“In-App Audience”) to give us additional information about algorithmic remarketing.
2. System generated. Something else Meta could do to make Audience Segments accessible to all advertisers is to auto-generate them initially. Meta has the data to create these without our input.
- Engaged Audience: All pixel activity
- Existing Customers: All purchase events
Customer list custom audiences are more complicated since you may need to segment the purchases from non-purchases, but the pixel gives Meta the initial data to generate these segments for us.
Advertisers could then edit these audience segments as necessary, but an initial definition could help expose more advertisers to the value of this tool.
3. Auto update. It’s not 100% clear if this is an actual problem or if I experienced a bug, but if it’s a problem it needs to be fixed.
I stumbled on an issue where it appears that website custom audiences stop updating if they haven’t been used in targeting recently. This is problematic if Meta wants us to trust algorithmic targeting (not use remarketing audiences) while leveraging audience segments (which rely on those same audiences).
Even if website custom audiences stop updating from a lack of activity (nothing in Meta’s documentation suggests this), it would be a simple fix. Define “activity” to include use in audience segments.
4. Address Advantage+ Audience Weaknesses
I use Advantage+ Audience when optimizing for a purchase, but there is potential for issues with this feature for any other optimization. If Meta can get more of the action that you want by going beyond your suggestions, it will.
That shouldn’t be a problem when optimizing for purchases. If Meta can get you more purchases by ignoring your inputs, that’s a means to an end.
But it can be an issue when optimizing for link clicks, landing page views, ThruPlay, post engagement, and even leads. The issue isn’t that Meta can go beyond your suggestions of custom audiences, lookalike audiences, and detailed targeting. The problem is related to age and gender.
When using Advantage+ Audience, both age maximum and gender are audience suggestions. They are not included in Audience Controls, which act as a tight constraint.
Again, this shouldn’t be an issue when optimizing for purchases. Advertisers can restrict their audience unnecessarily, which drives up costs. You may think that your target audience is women between the ages of 25 and 44, but if a 45-year-old man buys your product (possibly for their partner), that’s a good thing.
But this becomes a problem when optimizing for any other type of action. Let’s assume that you serve female entrepreneurs and 99% of your customers are women. But if you optimize for link clicks, landing page views, or engagement of any kind, your ads will be shown to men. Why? Because they will perform the action that you said you want.
Meta doesn’t care that they won’t eventually buy from you because that’s not the focus of the performance goal you chose. Meta will ignore your audience suggestions of gender and age limit.
I’ve seen this become an issue for leads, too, though it isn’t always. Meta can dedicate a high percentage of my budget on people 55+ because it results in cheap leads. But I’ve also found them to be low quality.
The way around this is to use original audiences, where age maximum and gender are tight constraints. But, this shouldn’t be necessary. Meta could make them part of Audience Controls when using Advantage+ Audience, too — or at least make them available when optimizing for something other than purchases.
5. Address Quality Issues with Optimization
Truthfully, the solution above is a Band-Aid on a much bigger problem. That solution also conflicts with what I said at the top — it’s a request for more control. We’re not going to get that.
The lack of control isn’t the central problem here. The more pressing issue is Meta’s inability to sort out low and high-quality actions. If you optimize for link clicks or landing page views, Meta will do all it can to get as many of them for you as possible. The algorithm is unconcerned about whether they come from accidental clicks or from people who are likely to buy from you.
This is not a new problem (I’ve covered it often), but it is magnified with algorithmic targeting. By removing the guardrails of targeting restrictions, the quality of the actions you get are likely to decrease.
It’s a problem that has solutions, if Meta cares about them…
1. Allow ability to prioritize quality actions. This concept isn’t new to Meta advertising. We already have the option of “maximize number” or “maximize value” when optimizing for purchases.
We could also have options of “maximize number” or “maximize quality” of link clicks, landing page views, post engagement, video views, and more. For example, Meta could prioritize landing page views that resulted in more time spent, return visits, and conversions performed. Quality actions would cost more, but it’s a trade-off most advertisers would take.
2. Change Meta’s signals. Of course, Meta could just update their signals to begin with and prioritize quality actions.
3. Incremental conversions. We know that Incremental Conversions are in testing, and I don’t anticipate that this will apply to many of the actions discussed here. But you could make the argument that Meta could find a way to apply this or a similar concept to top of the funnel actions.
6. Organic Conversion Reporting
It baffles me that this isn’t a thing…
Ads Manager reports on all conversions performed by people you paid to reach. This is logical. But it doesn’t reflect the total impact of your ads.
What happens when someone you paid to reach shares your ad? Someone you did not pay to reach may buy from you. This person would not have converted without the existence of your ad, yet the ad won’t receive any credit.
I’m not suggesting that Meta lump organic in with paid conversions. That would be potentially misleading. But Meta could provide a breakdown of Paid vs. Organic to provide a more complete picture of your ad’s impact.
This could extend beyond Ads Manager, too. If Meta has your pixel and event data, there’s no reason why they couldn’t provide some basic conversion reporting with your organic insights. Instead, all we get is information like impressions and link clicks. Meta could surface the conversions, too.
Once again, this is not a new request. I’ll keep asking it.
7. Address Click Attribution Issue
I stumbled on a troubling discovery in late 2024 that forced me to question what I previously believed to be true: Click attribution doesn’t require a click on an outbound link.
There are two ways Meta can give credit to an ad for a conversion…
Click Attribution: Someone clicked on your ad and converted within seven days.
View Attribution: Someone viewed your ad, did not click, and converted within a day.
Up until very recently, I believed that click attribution required a click on a link to your website. It was logical. If they did not, that could be counted as a view-through conversion.
But since click attribution includes any click, reporting gets fuzzier. Advertisers already have trouble with conversion numbers matching up between Ads Manager and third-party sources. While UTM parameters can help when people click on outbound links, they are worthless for this case.
That’s why I’ve always lumped this type of conversion in with view-through attribution. Your ad may have contributed to the conversion, but the value isn’t as clear as when someone clicks an outbound link and converts.
It took me a decade to realize this, but these lower-quality click conversions are lumped into your click conversions. There’s no way to separate them.
I realize I’m way behind on this request since it’s not a new problem, but there are two things that Meta could do:
1. Move these conversions to view attribution. This solution squares with my initial interpretation of click attribution, so it’s my preference. I believe strongly that these should not be counted among click attributed conversions.
2. Create a separate attribution. This adds complexity, so it’s not ideal. But Meta could conceivably break this type of conversion off into it’s own group: “In-App Click.” That way we could see how many of our click conversions didn’t come from an outbound click. You could even turn it off at the ad set level.
8. A Better, Smarter Event Setup Tool
I can’t tell you exactly when Meta introduced the Event Setup Tool, but it’s been around for several years. It’s also been untouched by enhancements since it’s initial rollout.
It’s still buggy. It’s still painfully limited. But it also holds a ton of promise if Meta chose to focus some development on it.
Meta may need to start over to make this tool more useful, but it would be worth it. It could become the primary way advertisers set up and manage their pixel events.
Right now, Meta relies on third-party integrations for the vast majority of pixel and event management. This creates confusion for advertisers since there isn’t one clear way of managing it. It doesn’t need to be this way.
Meta could develop a smarter, more streamlined and integrated tool that detects events and helps you set them up easily. This also does not need to be limited to standard events — it could help you set up custom events as well.
The Event Setup Tool now is manual, slow, and limited. Instead, Meta could offer an auto-detection of events that you can approve. The technology for auto detection of events already exists.
I’m not a designer or programmer, so forgive me if my vision of how this would work isn’t crystal clear. But this is one of many examples where advertisers are forced to use third-party solutions when it shouldn’t be necessary.
9. Smarter Creative Enhancement By Placement
We’re headed in this direction, but we’re not there yet. It may be the most likely improvement on this list to become a reality.
Currently, advertisers are asked to provide three different versions of ad creative when uploading images and videos.
These different aspect ratios are used for different placements. Of course, this system is imperfect because the sizes Meta requests aren’t always consistent with what is recommended in official documentation.
It would be a whole lot easier if advertisers could upload a single creative that Meta adjusts automatically (and productively) for other placements. While you could approach this level of simplicity with a carefully created 9:16 image or video, this could apply to other dimensions as well.
Submit a square image and Meta uses AI to adjust and generate the background where necessary. This exists now, but it’s in testing and not applied in all situations.
Meta could simplify this by skipping the request for three versions. After submitting a single image or video, Meta then presents the versions that were generated using AI and smart cropping.
While most of my feature requests require new development, this feels more like better presenting and utilizing functionality that already exists.
Your Turn
What other features could Meta develop to improve the ad product in 2025?
Let me know in the comments below!
