Podcast Summary: Perpetual Traffic – "How Advantage+ Sales is Changing the Meta Ads Game Forever"

Date: January 9, 2026
Hosts: Ralph Burns (Tier 11) & John Moran (guest, Meta/Google Ads expert)
Episode Focus: Examining how Meta’s new Advantage+ Sales (formerly Advantage+ Shopping) and custom CAPI events are overhauling paid advertising—what’s changed, what’s working now, and how advanced advertisers can regain control in an AI-driven landscape.

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode delivers a deep dive into Meta’s shift from manual ad controls to the AI-driven Advantage+ Sales campaign structure. The hosts discuss what’s changing, how it upends traditional paid media strategies, and—most importantly—how agencies and advertisers can adapt by leveraging advanced CAPI (Conversions API) custom events and smart campaign segmentation. Rather than lamenting lost control, the show zeroes in on actionable solutions, direct test results, and the new skills needed to win in the evolving Meta Ads landscape.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Meta Advantage+ Shift: What Changed and Why it Matters

• End of Manual Control:

  • Meta is progressively killing off manual targeting and exclusions; Advantage+ Sales now defaults in most accounts, relegating previous options to mere "suggestions" (06:58, 41:00).
  • Technical media buying levers (audiences, exclusions, budget allocations) are being replaced by algorithms and AI.

    "Advantage plus now says, I'm gonna go after anybody I want, regardless of what you say, regardless of your targeting, regardless of your exclusions." – John Moran [27:39]

• AI & Deduplication Algorithm:

  • Introduction of Meta’s new dedupe ad set algorithm means overlapping conversion events across campaigns will be attributed to only one campaign—chosen by Meta, not advertisers (11:47).
  • Practical impact: You can’t "dogpile" audiences across multiple campaigns; content/creative becomes primary targeting lever.

    "Meta will now dedupe that opportunity into one and you do not get to choose or identify which one that is." – John Moran [11:52]

• Shift to Creative and Conversions as Targeting:

  • Campaign performance now hinges on creative, landing page, and defined conversion actions—not hand-curated audiences.

    "Now that definition is gone and now it is prospecting based on your words, phrases, your creative, the interpretation of that creative and the landing page that you're sending those users to right now, that is now your targeting." – John Moran [11:29]

• Analogy for the AI Era:

  • “Meta is now Genie. What we ask for we get. But it’s like if Genie had a weird, sick, twisted sense of humor." – John Moran [13:14]

2. Why This Happened: The Macro View

• Meta’s AI Gamble:

  • Meta signaled this shift in their February earnings, revealing a $65 billion investment in AI infrastructure for advertising (15:42).

    "There is a reason why in that same earnings call Meta said we are investing 60 to 65 billion in AI in 2025." – Ralph Burns [15:45]

• Comparison to Google’s PMAX:

  • Hosts drew parallels to Google’s Performance Max, noting both platforms are putting more “faith” in AI while shifting control away from expert buyers (18:11).
  • Still, Advantage+ relies more on creative-based targeting, and less on defined audiences/interests (20:46, 21:35).

3. Results from the “Lab”: Testing Advantage+ Sales and CAPI Strategy

• Testing Outcomes:

  • John Moran describes $1M+ in ad spend testing, demonstrating that Meta’s systems can deliver strong conversion numbers—but not always the "right" kind (new vs. returning customers, correct product, etc.) (06:58, 22:35).

    "I put a million bucks into this model and it worked." – John Moran [22:35]

  • Key data: When optimizing for "all purchases", Meta's AI prioritized volume, delivering more existing customers (expensive and less valuable for growth). Explicit new customer CAPI import increased new customer share from ~30% to over 80% in campaigns (13:14–15:42).

    “We've increased this from a 50 to now like an 85 or 42 out of 50. Yeah. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. An 80% increase in the amount of new customers in the campaign—that’s massive.” – John Moran [14:11]

  • Cost per new customer also improved with precise CAPI optimization.

4. Taking Back Control: The “Diabolical” CAPI Custom Event Strategy

• Key Tactic:

  • By using CAPI to import only specific first-click conversions (e.g., new purchase of a specific product), agencies can dictate exactly which conversions Meta optimizes for (32:05).
  • This allows advertisers to:
    • Differentiate campaigns by product, new vs. returning customers, and even cross-sell/upsell pathways.
    • Prevent Meta from taking credit for conversions they didn’t actually originate (e.g., influencer traffic, organic, email reactivations).
    • Achieve true campaign segmentation and better product-level CAC control.

    "We get to import the conversions from our own data. We essentially removed the pixel’s capability of feeding itself the conversion and now we feed the pixel the data we want the pixel to optimize for. We're back in control now." – John Moran [32:05]

• Why Custom Events Are Critical NOW (35:09–36:23):

  • While custom events aren't new, the meta-determined nature of targeting has made precision more important than ever. Precise data sources (first-click, not last-click or attributed by other models) are essential for accurate optimizations.
  • Blended or inaccurate imports (e.g., direct from Shopify, linear data) give the AI the wrong signals and damage campaign results.

5. Hands-On: New Campaign Setup Walkthrough (37:02–44:26)

• Rapid Demo (38:16–41:00):
  • Campaign setup is now heavily defaulted to Advantage+ Sales—manual options are vanishing from more accounts every week.
  • Remaining controls: Spend limits, basic demographic targeting, audience “suggestions” (not hard exclusions), placements.
  • Interest targeting, exclusions, and traditional audience-building are near gone.

    "Custom audience exclusions that is now basically used also with Advantage plus audiences as a suggestion. This is now considered a suggestion." – John Moran [41:16]

6. What’s Next? Campaign Segmentation in the Post-Manual World

• Best Practices Moving Forward:

  • Agencies should segment campaigns by product, conversion event, and customer type (new/return)—using unique custom events for each.
  • Creative testing should be done within these tight segments to maximize learnings and ROAS (54:47).

    "If you can target, you create one Advantage plus campaign for one specific product and one specific custom event and it targets that based upon all the creative that's geared towards that particular product." – Ralph Burns [54:47]

• Why This Is “Back to the Future”:

  • The future may resemble old-school account structure—highly segmented and granular—but enforced/controlled by AI rather than manual audiences.
  • Testing frameworks now resemble email subject line tests: test creative on small spends, scale what works to the broader set (55:36).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Meta’s New Attitude (AI vs. Media Buyers):

  "My AI is smarter than your technical media buying. And sometimes that's right. Now, a lot of times that's right. The problem is it is so powerful that the technical media buying that has now gone away... is in fact so powerful that that it can attribute and contribute conversions extremely well. The problem is it may be on conversions you don't necessarily want." – John Moran [09:09]

• Summing Up the CAPI Control Revolution:

  "If you are going to be so good at getting conversions, what if I only allow you to be good at the conversions I want? That was our answer—that was the lever we can still pull. And thank God CAPI's around, otherwise we would be in a world of hurt." – John Moran [31:43]

• On AI "Listening" to Advertisers:

  "We've been at the mercy of asking permission and begging and pleading the paid media platforms to do what we've been asking them to do because they were listening to us for a decade until recently. They said, you know what? My AI is smarter than your technical media buying." – John Moran [09:35]

• Explaining to Skeptics (Re: PMAX Comparison):

  "Yes, if you target people that I may not want you to target and you claim credit for them anyway, your metrics look good, my business hurts. That sounds exactly like Performance Max." – John Moran [18:45]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 06:58 – John Moran explains the new Meta update and why targeting/exclusions aren’t working
• 11:47 – The deduping algorithm and audience loss
• 13:14 – "Genie" analogy on asking Meta for what you want (and not always getting it)
• 14:11–15:42 – Case study: increasing new customer % using targeted CAPI imports
• 18:11 – PMAX comparison: how Advantage+ is similar/different
• 22:35 – “I put a million bucks into this model and it worked.” (showing Advantage+’s potential if used right)
• 27:39 – How Advantage+ truly overrides advertiser desires
• 32:05 – The CAPI custom event import solution explained
• 38:16–41:00 – Campaign setup demo: vanishing manual controls, “suggestions only”
• 54:47 – Forward-looking strategies: segmentation by product/event/customer
• 55:36 – Creative testing in the new world; old-school tactics return via new tools

Conclusion & Takeaways

• Advantage+ Sales marks a historic overhaul of Meta’s ad platform, shifting control to AI (and away from professional media buyers).
• Advertisers can regain power by mastering CAPI custom event imports—specifying exactly which conversions and customers campaigns optimize for.
• Granular segmentation by product, event, and customer type is now the best-practice; creative is the new “targeting.”
• Actionable next step: Embrace tighter campaign structures and invest in data infrastructure for first-click attribution. Stop relying on Meta’s “trust us” AI and use CAPI to enforce your own campaign objectives.

For Further Follow-up

• Watch the episode breakdown and screen-shares at perpetualtraffic.com/youtube for in-platform visuals
• See the April 25 episode (Ep. 691) for deeper context on initial rollout changes

This episode is essential listening for any digital marketer, agency, or brand owner aiming to stay ahead in an era where AI, rather than manual levers, drives ad platform outcomes—and where only the most precise, data-driven strategies will survive.