Facebook Ad Placements: Why You Should Use Automatic Placements

What are Facebook ad placements?

On the Facebook ad platform, placements refer to the specific locations where your ads appear. Facebook offers two options: automatic placement and manual placement. In simple terms, placements determine where your ads appear.

When you create a new campaign in Ads Manager, you choose placement settings at the ad group level. The default option is automatic, which is the official Facebook recommended setting. While we don’t always agree with all of Facebook’s recommendations, we fully support automatic on this issue. After reading this article, you may change your mind, too.

Limitations of manual targeting

When you choose manual targeting, you first need to select the device type—mobile, desktop, or both. If you only choose one device, many potential placements will not be available.

For example, if you choose desktop only, Audience Network, Messenger, and Instagram will be excluded. To maximize your ad performance, it is recommended to always select the option that covers all devices, that is, “all devices.”

Your ads can be displayed on the following platforms:
Facebook
Instagram
Audience
Network
Messenge

Before you start selecting placements, you can hover over each placement to see how your ads will look on different platforms and where they appear.

You’ll notice that these ads are targeting the Jasper brand’s market, which Facebook uses as an example. You can also skip this step and go directly to the ad level to view your own ads. Our recommendation is to always create your ad first and then see how it will look in preview.

Manual delivery has other limitations:

1. Limits the optimization space of the algorithm

Manually selecting a small number of placements significantly limits the flexibility of Facebook’s advertising algorithm, preventing you from fully utilizing every ounce of your budget.

2. It is difficult to accurately reach the target audience

You can’t accurately tell which platform your target audience is most active on. For example, if your potential customers are more active on Instagram and you only choose Facebook, you may miss a lot of business opportunities.

3. Cost inefficiency

Manual placement may be concentrated in some higher-cost locations, quickly consuming the budget, but the conversion rate may not be ideal.

Why is automatic delivery recommended?

The advantage of automatic placement is that it allows Facebook’s delivery system to intelligently allocate ad group budgets based on the performance of each placement location, ensuring that ads are displayed where they are most likely to produce results.

If a certain location performs poorly, the algorithm will automatically adjust budget allocation and invest resources in other better-performing locations to maximize advertising effectiveness.

Example: How Algorithms Optimize Budget Allocation

Assuming your advertising budget is $36, you have the following advertising opportunities:

• Facebook: 3 opportunities, cost $4 each
• Instagram: 3 opportunities, cost $6 each
• Audience Network: 5 opportunities, 3 at a cost of $2 and 2 at a cost of $8
  When choosing automatic delivery, the Facebook algorithm will comprehensively consider all opportunities and select the most cost-effective delivery plan:
• Facebook: 3 times (total cost $12)
• Instagram: 3 times (total cost $18)
• Audience Network: 2 times (total cost $6)
  A total of 9 conversions, with an average cost per conversion of $4. If Instagram delivery is turned off, the overall number of conversions will decrease due to the lack of effective opportunities, and the average cost per transaction will rise to $4.25. This is a prime example of how automated delivery can help optimize budget efficiency.

Measured data: Automatic delivery performs better

In order to verify the effect of automatic delivery, we conducted an A/B test to compare the cost difference between manual delivery and automatic delivery:

Delivery mode
CAC (cost per customer acquisition) CPC (cost per click)
Manual delivery

$21

$1.77
Automatic delivery

$14 $0.7

The test results showed that the CAC of automatic delivery was reduced by 50%, and the CPC dropped by 153%. At the same time, in another test, it was found that even though Instagram performed better than Facebook, this advantage was only apparent in the automatic delivery mode.

How to analyze delivery performance?

In the advertising management tool, you can use the “Split Data” function in the upper right corner and select “By Placement” to view the specific performance data of each placement.

Through this data, you can determine which locations bring the highest cost performance, providing strong support for subsequent advertising strategy optimization.

Conclusion:

Facebook ad placements vary, but the real key is understanding how its algorithm works and developing a strategy that complements it. Automatic delivery not only reduces management complexity, but also significantly improves the efficiency and conversion rate of advertising.