126. How to fix weird looking Meta ads (what online store owners need to know about Advantage + Creative Enhancements)
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Introduction to Advantage Plus Creative Enhancements
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Hello. Welcome to this week's episode where we are unlocking the Advantage plus creative enhancements Pandora's Box when it comes to building your meta ads for your online store. No doubt you've seen these, perhaps you've even seen them by accident, where you've actually started seeing your own ads and they look weird.
It's not the text that you created. There's strange music. There is weird brown box overlays over the top of your images. If that is what you have seen or you're not really sure what even is, disadvantage plus creative enhancements setting this episode is for you. I'm gonna break it down for you. I'm gonna share with you exactly what it is and exactly which ones to toggle on and which ones to toggle off.
All right, let's get started. Hi. Welcome to the Online Store Success Podcast. I'm your host, Jody Minto, an e-commerce coach and meta ads specialist. Each week I share with you practical strategies to help you grow a profitable online store that runs in school hours and supports your [00:01:00] lifestyle. Let's get into it.
Understanding Meta's Advantage Plus Settings
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So today I want to dive deep into the world of AI and in particular, advantage Plus settings and enhancements inside of Meta's system. Because if you've been running ads recently, you would've no doubt noticed. There's a lot of things in there that have called Advantage Plus. Something at various different points.
In the campaign building stage, you will be presented with some sort of advantage plus toggle me on or toggle me off option. And I want to share with you what the impact is for some of these settings. Now, for those of you that are not, uh, familiar with what these advantage plus. Settings are basically anything labeled Advantage Plus in meta's.
Ads Manager refers to their suite of AI powered automation tools. They are designed, and I say that in inverted commas to streamline and optimize your campaigns, however. If [00:02:00] you've dabbled with any kind of ai, you would know firsthand that sometimes AI works brilliantly. It's like the smartest person in the room, and then other times the output that it gives us is absolute garbage.
And the same goes. In Metas at Builtin Advantage plus AI features. Today I really want to talk with you about the Advantage Plus Creative. And the reason I want to talk to you and explain this in more detail and also share which of the settings you should talk on and which you should avoid is because a lot of my clients and students will come along to the coaching calls and say, Hey, Jody, I saw my own ads and they looked so weird.
It's different text. There's weird. Buttons. There's strange music over the top of my videos and I never selected those. I never added that, and I don't remember where exactly. That setting even was because it's a sneaky little bugger. The very final [00:03:00] ad stage where you're building your actual ad creative and it's automatically turned on.
You have to actually go in and toggle it off one by one. Depending on which of these elements you want.
Navigating the Ads Manager
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Now as I record this episode, I have got my ads manager open in the background so I can take you through it because again, it is sneaky when you go to actually build your ads. So this is where you've at the third and final tab inside of your ads manager, you've uploaded your video, you've uploaded your copy, you've uploaded your.
Uh, like your primary text, your headline, your description, you've added in your final destination, URL. It's all looking good. You can see it in your right hand side, the window preview. You're like, yes, I'm happy with this, but what do you probably sometimes miss? And hopefully this episode will help highlight where it is exactly.
Is a little blue, little blue line, a piece of words where it says Advantage plus creative enhancements. There is [00:04:00] a couple of different places where this can actually sit, but I want you to be eagle eyed looking out for this advantage, plus creative enhancements because these guys can really mess up your ads and make them look garbage and add on things and, and change your, uh, text that you spent all this time crafting when you don't want it.
So right now I've got a tab open in front of me and it's faced, it's given me the options, right? I've got full review and other active enhancements. And let me talk you through what it is proposing to me.
Disabling Unwanted Enhancements
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First and foremost, it's asking me whether I want to translate the text. No, I don't want this. And the reason I don't want this is because if this does translate my text and it's showing me a Spanish, uh, variation of my ad, is that I don't.
I don't want people to think that I actually speak Spanish and then start commenting and asking questions, or even inquire about coaching if we don't even speak the same language. And so this might be the same for you, unless of course you speak that other language and you want to translate the text.
But me, no, [00:05:00] thank you. I don't want to mislead anyone thinking that I can deliver coaching of, of any kind in any other language than, uh, Bogan Australian. Um, then I, we have faced with the second one, which is. Ad overlays. These guys kill me. The ad overlays puts this often brown. I don't know why it defaults to this kind of poo brown color.
This big poo brown color text box. With your some sort of snippet of text, it's decided to pick up from your ad and put it over the top of your beautiful image or video. No thank you. So we've gotta come in and toggle these off, right? Like as I'm reviewing them, I've gotta toggle them off. But let's keep going.
Visual touchup, touchups. This will even animate the text increasing visual element. And you'll see underneath each of these, uh, options that it will actually even give you little samples of what this looks like. Music, music is a, like, it is a [00:06:00] disaster. I always toggle this off. However, if you wanna add in music.
Again, underneath the music option, you can toggle through and see which ones you like and which ones you don't like. The reason why it's a disaster is that there's a real disconnect between the music it picks for you and what the context of your ad is. So some horror stories I've heard about is having happy birthday music put over the top of your ad for whatever it is.
Certainly nothing related to. A birthday. I've also seen circus music added to very serious toned ads, like political type of ads. We don't know what music is going to upload, so we have to go through and see if we can select it here, or my hot tip is actually add the music outside in a different. Tools such as Canva, make sure you search for royalty free music, IE music that's not licensed or copyrighted.
Um, and then add it there, and then upload the whole video or image with the music attached rather than [00:07:00] use that. So some other hideous advantage plus creative enhancements. I suggest you toggle off, uh, also 3D animation. This is where it can zoom in and out on whether it's your face or your products. Uh, I've seen this where I've got a lot of baby clients where they have these beautiful baby, uh, jumpsuits and things like that, and it starts zooming in and out on this.
Baby's face. There's also an image animation one where it starts spinning your image or the baby around in circles, like it's, it's being possessed, like it's not a good look, right? It's very, very weird. A lot of these advantage plus creative enhancements, this AI fueled, uh, let's make your ad creative better.
Settings are garbage. Sorry, meta don't come for me. There's also text improvements. It will chop and change your text around. And, and I, it's given me a sample as I record this and it's horrible. Right? Um, it's, it's just taken like a little snippet of a sentence. It's not even [00:08:00] used. Proper punctuation or grammar, like rubbish.
Turn it off. Another one it's got is enhance your call to action CTA. So this will replace the text and my particular ad that it's previewing, it's saying, see for yourself with a big pointy finger, it doesn't really relate. It's got, you know, nothing to do really with what I'm talking about. So I toggle off all of these.
In all honesty, the only. Creative enhancement. I suggest you toggle on, unless of course you like any of those things that it does to your ad is the ad products or the tag and add the catalog items underneath it. If you've got your Shopify or your your product catalog connected, they're the only ones that I would suggest turning on.
Now, again, this is very sneaky. Sometimes when you go to build your ad and you're coming in and toggling these off, you'll only see the first. Two, one or two lines, [00:09:00] and then there's a tiny little blue hyperlink that says, show more, because often it just keeps hiding them. It, for some reason is making this very difficult for us to turn these off, but these can really make hideous looking ads.
There's also another one that's floating around in the background where it generates an image for us. So it takes our original image and it throws in a different background. It even sometimes switches out the human in the actual product, or sorry, in the actual video or, or, uh, image and like it looks.
Again, garbage. So we wanna make sure that if you are, uh, being preselected, we're coming in and unticking them all. And we are saying, no thank you. These are garbage and I don't want any of them because I want you to spend time. Really crafting and, and building your ad when it comes to your primary text, your hook or headline, your description, uh, and so on and so forth.
And really taking, uh, time to think [00:10:00] about how you wanna present your, your brand to your audience. So we wanna make sure that we are turning these guys off. So not only are those hidden ones in there, there's also, um, built in uni different options where you can tick all the boxes where it's built in chat, GPT, uh, where it will.
Offer you different variations of your primary tech. So say you've. You've crafted your primary text and you're happy with that. And then what happens a lot of the time is people don't even realize they've done it. They have ticked all of the other five options that it's popped up underneath. The Advantage Plus Creative Text Generation where it has given you different variations of that primary text and even that headline.
So you wanna just make sure that you are unticking boxes that you probably don't necessarily want. Sometimes the Advantage plus Creative Text Generation. Does actually have some good suggestions from time to time. It's worth testing, but what I would say to you is make sure that you're only [00:11:00] selecting one or two.
Don't select all five, uh, because those five. Options will be added to your existing option that you've already built. And now, now there'll be six versions of this one particular ad, which can spread your budget quite thin and takes quite a bit of time to find out what the actual winners are. So Advantage Plus Creative Enhancements, I want you to take the time to toggle off.
90% of them, if not 95% of them. Or make sure that you're really discerning when it comes to which ones you are using because you can spend all this time building this beautiful ad. At next minute. There's that ugly poo brown text overlay banner on your ad and you are going, what on earth has happened?
Final Tips and Course Promotion
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Alright, I hope this episode was helpful. Uh, your homework, my friend, is to go away into your active ads and see where this actual setting is and go in and toggle off as much as you need to in order to make sure your ads are presenting [00:12:00] you and your brand in the best possible light. Now, if you are confused about what you should actually be doing when it comes to Facebook ads for your online store, you're not sure which of the best practices or ai.
Settings you should be using. I've got very good news. I've been busy working behind the scenes to rebuild and rerecord my one Add Wonder mini course. This has been one of my bestselling courses of all time. People every week come and say, oh my gosh, I loved your one Add Wonder course. It was so good. And as we know.
Meta ad changes happen every other week, so I've been busy rerecording this and it is going live. As you listen to this, it is live. You'll be able to go in and access it. It's dirt cheap. It's only $97 for lifetime access to this powerful one ad Wonder mini course where I teach you how to create, set up and install my high-converting hero campaign system that drives traffic and sales on autopilot.
[00:13:00] For your online store and in under 90 minutes, this shows you step by step what's working right now when it comes to e-comm, meta ads, uh, what settings you should be using and things like those advantage plus settings. Which ones we should, we use toggling on, and which ones should we should be toggling off.
So go ahead, have a look at that. I'll share, uh, the details for the program in the show notes, and I've got some extra bonuses and goodies for the relaunch of it. Our one I wonder. 2.0, uh, happening right now. Alright, I hope this episode was helpful and I will chat with you next week. Bye for now.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
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Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Online Store Success with me, Jody Minto.
If you loved it, please share it with your friends on Instagram and tag me at I am Jody Minto, so I can say thank you. And if you really wanna make my day, please go ahead and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts and give me a follow. If you'd like my help in starting or scaling your online store, be sure to check out my [00:14:00] free resources and [email protected].
Thanks again, and same time, same place next week. Bye for now.