The Pros and Cons of Using Meta Ads Manager

Meta’s platforms collectively reach billions of users worldwide. In the U.S. alone, Facebook has over 253 million users as of 2025, with the largest age group being 25–34, accounting for over 24% of the user base. This vast and demographically diverse audience gives advertisers the opportunity to scale brand visibility and reach across virtually every consumer segment.

Meta offers powerful targeting tools that let advertisers segment audiences by demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. Additionally, marketers can upload known customer data—like email lists—to create Custom Audiences, and expand reach through Lookalike Audiences, which help find new users similar to existing fans. This dual capability allows for both precision and scalability in campaign planning.

Meta Ads Manager supports a wide variety of creative formats—image, video, carousel, slideshow, and collection ads—making it easy to design campaigns that fit different content strategies. It also offers a full spectrum of campaign objectives, including awareness, consideration, and conversion. This flexibility helps brands align creative with business goals and optimize performance at every stage of the funnel.

Learn more about Meta’s Ad Formats and Objectives.

The platform can be intimidating for new users. With dozens of campaign settings, evolving tools, and intricate performance metrics, navigating Meta Ads Manager requires a steep learning curve. Marketers without formal training or a dedicated team may find it challenging to fully utilize its capabilities, risking misconfigured campaigns or inefficient spending.

Meta’s shift toward automation—especially with tools like Advantage+—has streamlined campaign management, but at the cost of clarity. Advertisers often don’t know why ads are shown to certain users or where placements occur. This lack of visibility also makes it difficult to make manual performance adjustments or understand what’s driving results, which can hinder optimization efforts.

While Meta Ads Manager still offers extensive audience options, recent updates have narrowed the level of control advertisers have. As of early 2024, Meta began phasing out detailed targeting exclusions, which allowed advertisers to remove specific demographics, interests, or behaviors from their targeting. The feature was fully disabled for new campaigns by mid-2024, with legacy campaigns allowed until January 31, 2025.



Meta says this change improves performance, but it reduces the ability to reach highly niche audiences. Advertisers now often must rely on broader audience categories or lookalike models—reaching users similar to their target, but not always perfectly aligned with their intent.