ABO, CBO or Advantage+ Shopping: how should the account be structured now?
By Dan BartleyUpdated 3 minute read
The short answer
For most e-commerce accounts: one main sales campaign with Advantage+ switched on, carrying most of the budget, and ad set budgets (ABO) only where you need to force spend, such as creative tests or a launch. Meta has folded Advantage+ shopping campaigns into a single sales campaign setup, and CBO is now called Advantage+ campaign budget.
What happened to ASC and CBO?
ASC was folded into ordinary sales campaigns, and CBO was renamed Advantage+ campaign budget. From mid-2025, Meta began replacing the choice between Advantage+ shopping and manual campaigns with a single sales campaign flow, and a campaign counts as Advantage+ when it uses Advantage+ campaign budget, Advantage+ audience in at least one ad set and Advantage+ placements in all of them.
Meta also stopped tools creating the old shopping campaign type through its Marketing API from version 25.0, released in early 2026. The old ASC versus manual debate now plays out inside one campaign type, as a question of which settings to switch on.
| Old name | Now | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| CBO (campaign budget optimisation) | Advantage+ campaign budget | Meta moves budget between ad sets |
| ABO (ad set budgets) | Ad set budgets | You fix the spend for each ad set, and the campaign is not Advantage+ on |
| ASC (Advantage+ shopping campaign) | A sales campaign with Advantage+ on | Automated audience, placements and budget, with the full range of ad features |
What structure should most e-commerce accounts run?
A main sales campaign with Advantage+ on, a broad audience and several genuinely different ads in each ad set, carrying most of the spend. Consolidating gives each ad set enough results to learn, which Meta puts at about 50 results in the week after a significant edit (Meta Business Help Centre).
- Campaign: sales objective, Advantage+ campaign budget
- Ad sets: one, or a few where the audience or goal genuinely differs
- Ads: a deep bench of distinct concepts and formats in each ad set
- New and returning customers handled separately only if new-customer growth is the goal
When is ABO still the right call?
When you need to guarantee spend: testing new creative so each concept gets a fair share, launching a product, or holding a fixed budget for a region or offer. Advantage+ campaign budget pours money into early winners, which is efficient for scaling and unhelpful for a fair test.
Keep ABO campaigns small and purposeful. Several ABO campaigns running side by side split the account's results across too many ad sets, the problem consolidation exists to solve.
For a launch, an ad set with its own budget for the first couple of weeks makes sure the new product is seen. Once it has sales, fold it into the main campaign so it competes on results.
Where should creative testing live in the account?
Either in a small ABO test campaign that feeds winners into the main campaign, or inside the main campaign using Meta's built-in creative test. Both work; what matters is that winners reach the main campaign quickly and losers are switched off.
When you move a winner, reuse its existing post so likes and comments carry over, and judge tests on cost per purchase rather than click-through rate alone. A steady supply of new concepts matters more than which testing method you choose.
Should ad sets still be split by audience?
Rarely. Splitting by interest or lookalike divides the results Meta learns from, and Advantage+ audience already treats your audience inputs as suggestions. Split only when the offer, creative or goal is different, such as new versus returning customers.
If you need reporting by age, gender or region, use breakdowns in Ads Manager rather than separate ad sets. You keep the detail without dividing the learning.
Other questions people ask about this
Is Advantage+ worse for a new account with little data?
It can be slower to start, because it has less purchase history to learn from. Clean tracking and enough budget for steady purchases matter more than the structure you pick.
Should retargeting have its own campaign?
Usually not now. A broad sales campaign already reaches people who visited your store, and a separate retargeting campaign can end up paying for sales that would have happened anyway, so test it against a holdout before funding it.
Can we run Advantage+ and manual sales campaigns side by side?
Yes, they are now the same campaign type with different settings. Give each a separate job, such as scaling and testing, so they are not bidding for the same people with the same ads.
How many campaigns should a small store run?
Often one sales campaign is enough, with a small test campaign added once you are producing new ads every month. More campaigns only help when they do genuinely different jobs.
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