How to Choose Facebook Ad Placements: The Ultimate 2025 Guide
When it comes to Meta Ads, many advertisers often think that ads only appear on Facebook or Instagram news feeds. However, in reality, the Facebook Audience Network system provides many other display placements that you can leverage. Depending on the brand’s characteristics and creative content, ads can be optimized to appear in most placements, or in some cases, you should exclude unsuitable placements for higher efficiency. In this article, BlackHatWorld will explore each type of ad placement in detail and guide you on how to adjust them to fit your own advertising strategy.
BHW Agency is a reliable partner in providing Facebook ad account rental services, especially for the BH and GH niches for many brands globally. We not only provide quality accounts but also offer personalized advertising strategies tailored to each business model to help you optimize efficiency.
With extensive experience, our team supports ad scaling with a large budget stably without encountering any unusual problems. At the same time, we always promptly update on changes in Facebook’s policies and distribution algorithms, thereby applying optimal cloaking techniques to help ads get approved and run effectively.
Facebook offers 2 main options for Ad Placement settings
When setting up a campaign in Meta Ads Manager, advertisers have to decide where their ads will appear. There are two popular options: advantage+ placements (automatic delivery) and manual placements (customized placements). Below, we will analyze each option in detail, including its pros, cons, and specific examples to help you make the best choice.
Advantage+ Placements (Facebook’s automatic ad delivery)
With this option, Facebook will suggest using Advantage+ Placements to maximize your budget. Facebook’s AI system will automatically deliver ads to the placements it predicts will bring the highest efficiency. However, you should note that if the creative (ad content) is limited, this option can be counterproductive.
For example, if we design ads format with only square (1:1) or horizontal (16:9) images, when Facebook delivers the ad to reels or stories, which require a vertical (9:16) format, the image may be incorrectly cropped, losing important text on the banner or brand logo.
In other words, Advantage+ Placements are most suitable when you have prepared a full set of creatives in various ratios, ready for all display placements.
Manual Placements (Customize display placement)
If you want full control, manual placements are the optimal choice. With it, we can choose exactly where the ad will appear, from NewsFeed to Stories, from Messenger to Audience Network.
A practical example: A spa brand wants to promote a new treatment service. They have an eye-catching 9:16 vertical video, so they only focus on running ads on stories and reels, where customers can easily scroll and view them quickly. In contrast, an e-commerce brand wants to leverage horizontal images for in-stream videos, so they select manual placements to ensure the images are not incorrectly cropped.
Furthermore, if you have a large enough budget, you can definitely run an a/b test to compare Advantage+ Placements and manual placements, thereby finding out which channel brings a higher conversion rate.
Some advanced options when choosing Placements
For further optimization, we recommend leveraging the following customizations:
- Choose display device: only run on mobile or desktop, depending on customer behavior.
- Connection type: only display to users on Wi-Fi, which is very useful when the ad contains heavy videos that require a stable network connection.
2 New ad placements that Facebook just updated in 2025
During your ad campaigns, you’re probably only familiar with common placements like news feed, stories, or reels. However, recently, Facebook (Meta) has quietly added two new placements: Threads Feed and Facebook notifications.
Threads Feed
When we create a campaign and select manual placements, a new option will appear: Threads Feed. Here, the ad format requirements still follow the standard 16:9 or square images or videos.
However, based on our practical testing, when selecting Automatic Placements, ads can appear on threads, but the spent budget is almost zero. This shows that Meta may still be in the testing phase and has not allocated much traffic to this placement. For advertisers, running exclusively on Threads is not currently a good idea because the cost is low, but the effectiveness is not yet clear enough.
Facebook Notifications
Another interesting point we noticed is the appearance of ads in the Facebook Notifications section. This position is displayed in the top right corner of the screen, right where users frequently check their notifications.
- The displayed image will be taken from your Fanpage logo or profile picture.
- The accompanying content is often a suggestive phrase like: “You might be interested in…”. However, it is currently unclear where this text is sourced from on the Page.
However, while tracking detailed results (breakdown), we found that the budget spent on this placement is extremely low, sometimes ranging from only $0.01 to $0.83.
How to Choose Facebook Ad Placements: The Ultimate 2025 Guide
When running ads on Facebook, choosing the right placement (ad display location) can make a huge difference in effectiveness. If you leave it as the default, the ads might be widely distributed, but sometimes not be suitable for the product or goals. In this section, we will share a detailed guide on how to set up Placements and choose the optimal location for each campaign.
Setting up the Placements section
Placement targeting is set up directly at the ad set level in Meta Ads Manager.
- When you create a new campaign, Meta will default to turning on Advantage+ Placements (automatic placements). This means the ads will be displayed in all available positions, and Facebook will automatically allocate the budget based on performance. However, we encourage you to sometimes choose Manual Placement to have better control.
For example, if you are running an online course campaign, video ads would be more suitable to appear in Reels or In-Stream Ads, while a fashion store can leverage Instagram feed and Stories to create a strong visual impact.
Options when choosing Manual Placement
When you enable manual placement, you can fine-tune specifics:
Device: Select all, mobile only, or desktop only. For example, if your target audience is Gen Z, you only need to focus on mobile.
Platform: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Audience Network.
Detailed placement types:
- News Feed: Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed, Marketplace, Explore.
- Stories & Reels: on both Facebook and Instagram.
- In-stream ads: ads inserted into videos (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll).
- Search Results: ads that appear in the search box.
- Apps & Sites (Audience Network): Native ads, Banner, Interstitial, Rewarded videos.
Illustration of each Placement.
- Feeds: Feeds are usually the “main” placement. A cosmetics brand can place an ad on the Facebook Feed to display a review post with product images.
- Stories & Reels: Suitable for short, vertical content. For example, a clothing store posts a 15-second video introducing a new outfit.
- In-stream ads: Ideal for long-form video content, such as course ads inserted into a tutorial video on Facebook.
- Search Results: For those who want to appear when customers are actively searching for products, for example, “men’s t-shirts” on Facebook.
- Apps & Sites (Audience Network): Your ads can appear in gaming apps or partner websites.
When to exclude certain placement options
Not all placements are suitable at all times. There are 2 common cases for exclusion:
- Creative is not suitable: For example, you have a beautiful 1:1 square image for the Feed, but when it goes to Stories, the text is cropped out, which reduces the brand effect. In this case, we recommend turning off Stories until you have a suitable vertical creative.
- Hiệu suất kém rõ rệt: Nếu CPA (cost per action) ở Audience Network cao gấp 3 lần so với Feed và không thể tối ưu, bạn nên loại trừ. Nhưng hãy nhớ: ít dữ liệu chưa đồng nghĩa với kém hiệu quả. Hãy để chiến dịch chạy đủ lâu để hệ thống học máy có cơ sở phân bổ.
Double your sales with In-Stream Video Ads Placements.
In-Stream Video Ads on Facebook work quite similarly to YouTube ads. Your ad will be played before (pre-roll) or in the middle of (mid-roll) a video that the user is watching. This is when the viewer is already focused, so the ad easily attracts more attention than with a quick scroll through the news feed.
For example, when you are watching a 10-minute entertainment video, an in-stream ad might appear after the first 2 minutes. As a result, the brand’s message is directly conveyed without being quickly ignored.
We often advise you to choose Manual Placements to eliminate audience network, which is less effective and focus on positions with high ROI. An important principle: The lower the reach, the higher the ROI. This means that if you only rely on the news feed, competitive costs will be high, whereas if you take advantage of less common placements like in-stream video ads, you can achieve superior profits.
Case study: A female fashion brand (plus-size clothing)
Over 12 consecutive months, we implemented an e-commerce campaign with a 5-figure monthly budget for a female fashion brand.
- Total results: 1,817 transactions from Facebook ads.
- News feed ads: 509 transactions (~30–40%), with an average ROI of 372%.
- In-stream video ads: only 24 transactions (~1–2%), but the ROI reached up to 890%, 2.5 times higher than news feed.
The takeaway is that although the number of transactions from in-stream video ads is not high, the profit value is impressive. When combined with 4–5 other placements with high ROI, you will see a significant increase in total sales, instead of just focusing on the already “overcrowded” news feed.
Strategic advice for advertisers
- Do not just rely on the news feed. Be bold and try less competitive placements to leverage “underpriced” attention, where costs are still low but effectiveness is high.
- The formula for effective advertising = creative content + correct audience targeting + smart placement.
- If you only run ads with generic messages like “we sell product X”, it will be very difficult to achieve a breakthrough in ROI. Instead, create a specific and attractive offer for a clear group of customers, for example: “30% off our summer big size collection for 48 hours only.”
Choosing ad placements on Facebook is not just a technical step, but a crucial strategic move that determines campaign effectiveness. By understanding each display placement, testing flexibly, and continuously optimizing, you can completely leverage your budget more effectively, increase conversion rates, and sustainably grow revenue in 2025.
Frequently asked questions
If you are a beginner, Advantage+ Placements will help Meta optimize automatically to save time and budget. However, for experienced advertisers, manual placements provide better control and allow you to exclude underperforming placements.
The audience network can bring in low costs, but the customer quality is sometimes not high. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, keep it. Conversely, if you are focused on conversions, you can exclude it to optimize your ROI.
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