How AI is redefining Meta Advertising

TravelDigitalCreativeStrategyInside AccordWhite papers

29 Sept

Meta’s Advantage+ is more than just a set of advertising tools - it’s a glimpse into the future of digital marketing.

By harnessing the power of AI, Advantage+ simplifies campaign setup, streamlines optimisation, and drives performance at scale. From targeting and placements to creative testing and budget allocation, it handles the heavy lifting, allowing advertisers to focus on strategy.

In many ways, Advantage+ is Meta’s answer to Google’s PMax: a one-stop, AI-powered engine built to meet the rising demand for automation in paid media.

At Accord, we’ve embraced this shift and use Advantage+ in two distinct ways:

1. Complete Advantage+ campaigns

These are fully automated, end-to-end campaigns that lean on Meta’s AI to optimise every element, and Advantage+ sales campaigns are especially relevant for travel brands because they are designed to maximise conversions.

When paired with a Meta Catalogue, these campaigns can dynamically serve ads featuring hotels, cruises, flights, or destinations - based either on what a user has already browsed or what Meta predicts will interest them most. In travel marketing, where timing and relevance can make or break a booking, this is a game-changer.

The results speak for themselves: compared to traditional campaigns, we’ve seen up to:

93% lower cost per purchase (Meta attribution).
152% higher ROAS (Meta attribution).

For travel brands seeking to scale performance while minimising inefficiencies, Advantage+ sales campaigns deliver an impact that is hard to ignore. This isn’t incremental change. It’s a structural advantage. For brands that adopt early, Advantage+ doesn’t just improve performance - it creates competitive distance.

2.Advantage+ single-step solutions

But let’s be clear: AI doesn’t mean handing over the keys completely. At Accord, we see the real strength of Advantage+ in its flexibility. Its single-step solutions - from Advantage+ Audience to Creative Enhancements - enable us to layer AI into traditional campaign frameworks without compromising the precision and nuance that strategists bring. A few examples:

Advantage+ Audience removes human bias and identifies the most relevant users, not just the ones we think are right.
Advantage+ Placements ensures ads appear in the highest-performing placements - whether feeds, stories, reels, or beyond.
Advantage+ Creative Enhancements runs automated creative variations to test what truly resonates.
Advantage+ Budgeting dynamically reallocates spend to the best-performing ad sets, improving efficiency.

Even when used in isolation, these features deliver tangible gains. For instance, when comparing Advantage+ Audience targeting to other methods, we’ve recorded up to 15% lower CPCs.

The bigger picture

Meta’s Advantage+ isn’t just changing how campaigns are built - it’s redefining how we think about paid social as a whole. Automating granular tasks frees marketers to focus on higher-value areas, such as strategy, storytelling, and building brand resonance.

Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg outlined his vision for advertising’s future: a world where advertisers set an objective, link a bank account, and provide a landing page - leaving AI to do the rest.

That vision is compelling, but it raises important questions. While AI may one day replicate a brand’s tone and style, can it ever fully capture the nuance, emotion, and authenticity that set a brand apart? And even if it can, will people embrace AI-generated ads in the same way they respond to human-created content?

Our view is that the future will land somewhere in the middle.

AI will continue to take on more responsibility, but human creativity, oversight, and cultural sensitivity will remain irreplaceable. Audiences are increasingly savvy. They can sense when content is generated, polished, and optimised - but not lived. AI may one day mimic a brand’s voice, but it will struggle to embody its soul. And in a world where authenticity drives trust, that matters.

Steve Jobs once described the computer as a “bicycle for the mind” - a tool that amplifies human potential. We see AI in advertising in the same way: an accelerator, not a replacement. When used thoughtfully, it enables us to move faster, think more creatively, and achieve greater results.

Hence, the agencies and brands that win won’t be the ones who outsource everything to AI, nor the ones who resist it. They’ll be the ones who learn to ride it best: combining machine intelligence with human imagination, empathy and creativity to create campaigns that are not only efficient but also effective.