3 Strategic Use Cases for Target CPA Bidding in Meta That Drive Real Results

The Smart Advertiser's Guide to Target CPA Success in Meta

In the black box of Meta’s targeting it can be difficult to ensure we are paying the right amount to acquire the right customers at the right moment. Target CPA bidding in Meta allows you to set a cost-per-result target, with the algorithm automatically adjusting spend to hit that goal, but knowing when and how to deploy this strategy separates successful campaigns from budget black holes.

At Revel Interactive, we've identified three strategic use cases that transform how businesses approach target CPA bidding in Meta. These proven strategies help our clients achieve measurable results while keeping acquisition costs sustainable.

The bottom line: Target CPA bidding works best when you understand the customer journey and can differentiate your bidding strategy based on where customers sit in that journey.

Strategy 1: Bid Up for High-Value New Customer Acquisition

The first strategic use case involves being willing to pay more to acquire new customers—but only when the data supports it. This approach is dependent on having data to know the average customer lifetime value and repeat purchase rate. 

Here's how it works: when you understand that a new customer will generate $3K in lifetime value, paying $75 to acquire them instead of $45 suddenly makes financial sense even if the ROAS on the first purchase isn’t ideal. Especially, when owned channels like email and SMS play their part and keep repeat purchase rates high and retention costs low. Meta's algorithm can optimize for conversion objectives while targeting specific cost thresholds, allowing you to capture high-intent prospects who might otherwise go to competitors.

Key implementation tactics:

• Set your target CPA 20-30% higher than your current average for new customer campaigns

• Use broad targeting to give the algorithm maximum data points

• Focus on conversion-optimized creative that emphasizes value propositions

• Track back to actual customer LTV to validate the strategy's effectiveness

This approach works particularly well for businesses with strong repeat purchase rates and clear customer value metrics. 

Strategy 2: Bid Down on Existing Customers to Avoid Double-Spend

The second strategic application focuses on efficiency: preventing your paid campaigns from competing with your organic retention efforts. When email marketing, SMS, or other owned channels would naturally bring customers back, paying premium advertising rates creates unnecessary overlap.

This strategy requires sophisticated audience exclusions and careful target CPA calibration. Effective audience segmentation allows you to assign individual budgets to different customer segments and track their performance separately, ensuring your ad spend targets genuinely incremental conversions.

Strategic implementation steps:

• Exclude high-LTV repeat customers from standard conversion campaigns

• Create separate, lower-bid campaigns for existing customers who haven't engaged recently

• Set target CPA 30-40% lower than new customer acquisition campaigns

• Pair with retention email sequences to test incrementality

The key insight: you're not trying to eliminate spend on existing customers entirely, but rather ensuring paid channels complement—rather than duplicate—your retention marketing efforts. In this strategy the goal is to use paid dollars to convert inexpensive repeat customers and allow owned channels to do the rest. This would be applicable when there is a strong focus on new customer acquisition within an account. 

Strategy 3: Targeted Re-engagement for First-Time Customer Loyalty

The third use case creates a strategic middle ground: bidding up specifically on first-time customers who haven't made a second purchase within your typical repurchase window. This approach recognizes that the jump from first to second purchase often determines long-term customer value.

Improved audience targeting and relevant creatives lead to higher conversion rates, and this strategy applies that principle to the crucial loyalty-building phase. Instead of treating all existing customers the same, you're investing strategically in the subset most likely to become loyal, repeat buyers.

Tactical execution framework:

• Create custom audiences of first-time single purchasers within the designated repurchase window

• Set target CPA 10-20% higher than standard retargeting campaigns

• Develop creative specifically focused on second-purchase incentives

• Use dynamic catalog ads to showcase complementary products

• Test discount offers against value-focused messaging

This approach typically shows strong results because you're intervening at a critical decision point in the customer journey. From here, owned channels can reengage these now loyal customers in the future. 

Making Target CPA Work: Implementation Best Practices

Regardless of which strategic use case you're implementing, several best practices ensure success with target CPA bidding in Meta:

Give the algorithm room to learn. Target CPA requires a learning phase of 7-10 days where performance may fluctuate, but rushing to make changes during this period resets the optimization process.

Start with realistic targets based on historical data. Setting your target CPA at your actual 30-day CPA provides a solid baseline before gradually optimizing up or down based on your strategic objectives.

Structure campaigns for clear signal clarity. Mixing different customer types, purchase intents, or funnel stages in the same campaign dilutes the algorithm's ability to optimize effectively. Keep your strategic use cases in separate campaign structures.

Monitor beyond just CPA metrics. Track customer lifetime value, retention rates, and incrementality to ensure your target CPA strategy delivers genuine business value, not just efficient conversions.

Dynamic Creative and Automation Amplifiers

Target CPA bidding pairs exceptionally well with Meta's automated creative tools. Dynamic catalog ads particularly work effectively when combined with target CPA strategies, especially for the first-time customer loyalty campaigns where you can showcase personalized product recommendations.

Consider these automation enhancements:

• Use Advantage+ campaigns for broad new customer acquisition

• Leverage dynamic catalog ads for loyalty-building campaigns

• Test creative variations systematically within each strategic use case

The Strategic Advantage

The businesses that succeed with target CPA bidding in Meta understand that it's not just about hitting cost targets—it's about aligning those targets with customer journey strategy. By implementing these three use cases thoughtfully, you create a bidding approach that supports both immediate performance and long-term customer value.

Ready to implement strategic target CPA bidding that actually drives business results? Our team at Revel Interactive specializes in developing data-driven Meta strategies that align with your customer lifetime value metrics. Let's discuss how these approaches can transform your acquisition and retention efforts.

CTAS:

Contact Revel Interactive today to optimize your Meta campaigns with strategic target CPA bidding approaches that deliver measurable business growth.

Sources:

• Impulse Analytics – Facebook Ads Strategy 2024
• LeadsBridge – Meta Ads Strategy 2025
• The EE Digital – 2025 Facebook Ads Benchmarks
• 30characters – Target CPA in Google Ads 2025
• Search Engine Land – Target CPA Bidding Guide
• AdMetrics – Scale Facebook Ads 2025

This blog was edited with the help of Claude AI.

Photo: © Christian Chan from Getty Images

Why Advertisers Should Be Running Brand Lift Studies on Meta (If They Qualify)

In today’s performance-driven paid social advertising landscape, it is easy to focus solely on familiar metrics like CTR, CPM, ROAS, and CPA. They’re immediate, accessible, and easy to report. However, if you are only measuring Meta ad performance based on what is instantaneously accessible, you’re overlooking a critical part of the picture - are your ads driving incremental brand impact? 

That is where Meta’s Brand Lift Study comes in. 

Meta Brand Lift studies are an extremely powerful way to understand how your Meta ads are influencing consumer perception of your brand beyond the immediately trackable data more commonly associated with performance marketing. 

What is a Meta Brand Lift Study? 

A Brand Lift study is a controlled experiment offered through the Meta Business platform that measures the incremental impact of your ads on brand perception categories including:

• Standard Ad Recall

• “Do you recall seeing an ad for [Page name] online or on a mobile device in the last 2 days?”

• Standard Brand Awareness

• “Have you heard of [Page name]?”

• Familiarity 

• “How familiar are you with [Page name]?”

• Favorability

• “How would you describe your overall opinion of [Page name]?”

• Recommendation 

• “Will you recommend [Page name] to a friend?”

Here is how it works: Meta splits your eligible audience into two randomized groups - those who see your ads (the test group) and those who don’t (the holdout group). Both groups are later served a short in-feed multiple choice survey with questions specific to your brand and their ads. 

More on the available Meta Brand Lift Study questions. 

The test will then calculate the difference in performance between each group by survey question, which represents the incremental brand lift of your ads by category (favorability, recall, awareness, etc)

Step by step instructions on how to properly create a Meta Brand Lift test here 

Unfortunately, there are minimum spend requirements that must be met in order to qualify for a meta brand lift study, which vary by targeted country. Find Meta Brand Lift Study requirements here

Why should your brand participate? 

Measuring brand awareness impact on Meta can be difficult in general. While we easily have access to metrics like CPM & Reach, it is difficult to understand whether or not our ads are really impacting perception of the brand. 

Upper funnel campaigns often face budget scrutiny for that very reason - because their impact is not as tangibly measurable as say a sales, lead generation, or traffic campaign. 

A brand lift study can help validate dollars spent on top of funnel initiatives, or help prove that non-ToFu initiatives are having an impact on brand perception in addition to driving clicks, ROAS, etc. 

The results are real survey answers from your target audience, essentially giving you a way to ask what they think about your brand with minimal effort on your part.

Additionally, the results of these studies can clue you into the impact of your ad creative on your audience across the key brand metrics. If the study shows minimal lift, it is a clear signal. It may be time to switch up your messaging, refresh your visuals, or reframe your narrative to improve consumer perception. 

If you're running ads on Meta, a Brand Lift Study isn't just a nice tool to have access to, it's a strategic experiment to validate impact, justify spend, and refine your approach. If you qualify, run one. You’ll walk away with real insights directly from your audience, insight into creative impact, and a more compelling reporting story that goes beyond the easily accessible, familiar metrics.  

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5 Meta Custom Metrics That Can Make Your Data Work For You

As a performance-driven agency, Revel is always looking for fresh insights to bring to our clients. When reviewing performance on a weekly basis, it can be easy to get sucked into the pattern of reporting on the same KPIs in Meta. While these key metrics deliver important information to us about the paid media side of the business, we can uncover so much more data about our ads utilizing Meta’s custom metrics feature. In this article, we’ll discuss what custom metrics are, where to find them, and provide some inspiration for custom metrics you can build yourself.

What Are Custom Metrics?

Launched in late 2019, Meta’s custom metric feature allows users to create custom formulas to calculate new metrics utilizing the data Meta already has available. Custom metrics can be great for calculating things like: conversion rate, average order value, and cost per acquisition.

Where Can I Find Custom Metrics?

Custom metrics are just a few clicks away when we’re in Ads Manager. To create a custom metric, first navigate to the “Customize columns” button under the “Columns” dropdown in Meta Ads Manager.

From there, navigate to the “Custom” tab at the top of the pop-up window, and click “Create custom metric”. Easy enough, right?

Now that we know what custom metrics are and where to find them, let’s talk about some custom metrics you can build on your own and utilize in your reporting.

5 Meta Ads Custom Metrics

Conversion Rate

While not included in Meta’s standard reporting columns, CVR provides us with essential information about our ads. It can help answer questions like:

• Does our ad offer a compelling enough value proposition?

• Does our landing page effectively deliver on what our ad promises?

• Are users having to click through too many pages on the site to find what they’re looking for after they see our ad?

For these reasons, CVR is a staple metric to include in your reporting.

Average Order Value

AOV tells us, on average, how much our customers are spending per purchase. This metric is pretty straight forward, but can provide lots of context when discussing revenue fluctuations with a client.

Hook Rate

Used for video ads, Hook Rate is a great tool to discover if user attention is effectively being captured within the first 3 seconds of your ad. Also referred to as “thumb-stop rate”, this metric helps us determine if our ads are compelling enough to stop a user’s doomscrolling.

Cart Drop-Off Rate

Cart Drop-Off Rate can help us uncover issues with our ads. Did the client make a change to their site without informing your team? Is there an issue on site we’re not aware of, such as requiring a minimum purchase value to checkout, or showing an out of stock item as available? A spike in this rate can help answer these questions.

Revenue Per Link Click

We frequently look at CPCs with clients, but have you ever discussed revenue per link click with a client? This metric adds color to our traffic: is our traffic profitable? Are there times of day where lots of traffic is being generated, but they’re converting less than average? This metric provides another tool when you’re reviewing traffic quality and revenue fluctuations.

Summary

Custom metrics have a variety of applications within Meta Ads Manager, and can equip you with the tools you need to add color to all your reporting. Once you start using custom metrics to your advantage, you unlock a world of useful data that wouldn’t be available to you otherwise. At Revel, we use custom metrics to bring unique insights to our clients. Let us start helping you learn the most from your data!

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Set-up and Utilization of Maximize Value Campaigns on Meta

Social campaigns have long been viewed as upper funnel and mid funnel tactics, but with new campaign objectives like maximize conversion value we are better able to optimize toward the end purchase than ever before.

Advertisers can now mirror tried and true tactics on search like target ROAS bidding using the max conversion value optimization event in an Advantage+ shopping or traditional sales campaign. Leveraging a tROAS on social campaigns allows us to combine the powerful catalog capabilities and visual nature of social ads with more accuracy than ever before.

When using the max conversion value campaign there are several things to consider in set-up in order to ensure the best return. When using a tROAS the campaign will curb spending unless it is confident that the tROAS can be hit.

ATTRIBUTION SETTING

While 7 day click 1 day view attribution remains best practice, when setting up a max value campaign it is important to consider if a different attribution window makes sense for optimization. For example, if you combine the max value objective with a retargeting audience, you may be looking for more immediate conversions than a prospecting campaign and therefore a 1 day click attribution setting may make sense. Regardless of the attribution setting selected you need to be aware of what that setting dictates when setting your target ROAS goal.

TARGETING

Max value works best with both broad targeting and broad creative, but can also be deployed to ensure a specific return on a particular audience segment. To use the retarget example from above, we may be looking to convert on retargeting audiences only at a known return. Oftentimes retargeting audiences have touchpoints in other channels like search or email that may convert them and therefore we want to limit the duplicative spend against these audiences unless we can guarantee a specific ROAS is met. Considering the targeting when setting your ROAS goal is key to ensuring success with this campaign type.

Creative & Product Assortment

The third major consideration when setting up a Max value campaign is around product assortment and creative. Max value campaigns really thrive when using catalog ad formats like collection and carousel ads.

When it comes to the product set you select, think about keeping it as broad as possible. After several rounds of testing, we found that layering in promotional creative into a max value campaign hurt the campaign’s ability to spend at the tROAS goal. Essentially, we were confusing the algorithm by asking it to find higher AOV purchasers but then feeding in discounted products in the creative. Additionally, even full price product ads did significantly better when the entire catalog was included vs. a subset of the catalog. You still want to include several ad variations, but leaning into all catalog ads will help this campaign type optimize best.

Other Considerations

Several other considerations for determining if max value makes sense for your brand. Max value is best deployed not only with a range of products and price points as mentioned above, but specifically for brands where AOV can be a challenge. Brands who struggle to find adequate conversion volume to exit the learning phase likely are not a fit for a Max Value campaign. Secondly, given the volatility of daily spend it is not recommended that you rely only on max value campaigns within your social strategy. Finally, these campaigns take a full two weeks to ramp up and start to hit that tROAS goal consistently.

Interested in learning more about max value campaigns? Reach out to our team to discuss if this tactic might be the right fit for your program.

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Elevating Meta Dynamic Product Ads: The Power of Supplementary Feeds

The Challenge: Making Dynamic Ads Align with Brand Standards & Aesthetics 

Meta dynamic product ads have long since proven themselves to be an effective digital marketing tool, but their default appearance is justifiably not every brand’s cup of tea. Dynamic product ads come with certain limitations that can make it challenging to tailor ads to specific brand standards. While Meta product feed customization services like Socioh exist, they aren't attainable to all businesses. Enter a practical and accessible solution: supplementary feeds.

Supplementary feeds are a powerful tool that enable brands to control the product images that appear in Meta dynamic ads instead of relying on the images automatically pulled from the product feed. If the default product images don’t meet expectations, supplementary feeds provide the flexibility to enhance and optimize visuals for a more brand-aligned ad appearance.

A Real-World Solution: Solving the Mis-matched Image Ratio Dilemma

Our client faced a specific challenge:

• Meta DPAs require a 1x1 product image ratio, but both their Shopify and GoDataFeed product feeds exclusively feature 2x3 product images, the preferred ratio for their website images.

• As a result, their default product images in DPAs were automatically resized, adding unwanted white borders to the top and bottom of the images—going against their brand’s visual aesthetics.

• They wanted to maintain their website’s product image aesthetics while ensuring a clean, brand-aligned appearance in their Meta catalog-based ads. 

TLDR: They needed 1x1 product images to pull in exclusively to Meta without existing anywhere in the feeds that power their other channels. 

The Meta Supplementary Feed Approach

The solution was straightforward:

1. Client created 1x1 ratio product images specifically for Meta ads

2. Client placed links to these images in a Google Sheet*

3. We added a column with corresponding product IDs (the ID that Meta reads and associates with the products in the feed)

4. We uploaded the new feed**

1. How to add a supplementary feed to your catalog in Commerce Manager 

Beyond Image Ratio: Creative Possibilities

Supplementary feeds open up numerous creative opportunities that will exclusively apply to the Meta feed:

• Overlay brand logo on product images

• Add text callouts (e.g., "Best Seller” or “New Arrivals”)

• Show different product angles or on-model images (as opposed to the default, oftentimes plain catalog shots)

• Feature custom backgrounds

• Visually callout discounts or active promotions 

• Feature seasonal or holiday-themed elements 

• Create custom backgrounds

Conclusion

Supplementary feeds offer a powerful, flexible way to take control of your Meta dynamic product ads. By thinking creatively and leveraging this tool, brands can create more compelling, on-brand advertising experiences that capture customer attention and drive conversions.

*To ensure proper upload, image links must link directly to the image file. Links that direct to a webpage or require a download will result in upload failure.

**Additionally, we needed to configure our data sources to prioritize images from the supplementary feed over other feed sources.

To do this in Commerce Manager:

1. Go to Data Sources

2. Select Configure Data Sources

3. Navigate to Image

4. Choose your Supplementary Feed

5. Click Save

This ensures that Meta pulls the preferred images from the supplementary feed for dynamic ads.

Photo: © cottonbro studio from Pexels

Leveraging Meta's Advantage Plus Campaign For New Customer Acquisition

New customer acquisition and increasing brand awareness is key to expanding your customer base. Meta Advantage Plus campaigns can be a great resource to achieving this goal. Meta recently updated the targeting and reporting features within the Advantage Plus campaign type that can be used as a helpful tool in both reaching new customers, and understanding how these customers are responding to your ads. Here are three ways this campaign type can help with your new customer acquisition goals:

Targeting:

Advantage Plus allows you to target new customers, existing customers, and engaged customer lists. Engaged customers is a newly added custom audience defined as “people who are aware of your business or interacted with your products or services, but have not made a purchase.” (Social Media Today). While you have the option to target all three as one, all-encompassing campaign, you also  have the option to only target new and engaged customers, and exclude the existing customer list to focus specifically on new customer acquisition. 

Reporting:

The Advantage Plus campaign type allows you to break down your reporting by audience list, and measure which sales are coming from new, existing, and engaged customers. Gaining insights into how each list is interacting with your ads, allows you to tailor your messaging and assets to meet people where they are in the sales funnel.

Messaging & Creative:

Tailoring your messaging and creative to serve relevant ads to these specific audiences is crucial for optimal performance. In a new customer acquisition effort, speaking to what sets your brand apart from competitors, and why your customers believe in your brand and product can help establish trust. Updating your assets and messaging as users become engaged, and eventually existing customers will help maintain relevancy and move users down the sales funnel.

According to Meta, Advantage Plus campaigns drive a +17% improvement in cost per acquisition on average, and a +32% increase in return on ad spend (Social Media Today). If new customer acquisition is a goal for your business, consider adding an Advantage Plus campaign to your paid social strategy. 

Source:

• Meta Adds New Insight Targeting Options for Advantage Shopping Campaigns - Social Media Today
• Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns - Facebook Business
• Facebook Business Help Center
• Meta Adds New Insight Targeting Options for Advantage Shopping Campaigns - LinkedIn

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