It's time to revamp your marketing on Facebook

If you're still treating Facebook as a boosted-post afterthought, you're ignoring the platform now generating more ad revenue than Google. For the first time ever, Meta has overtaken Google in ad spend, a projected $243 billion versus $240 billion in 2026. Boosting a post might have been your entry point into digital marketing, but it was never meant to be the whole strategy. Facebook advertising now offers many ways to reach your goals, and treating it as an afterthought means leaving most of that opportunity on the table.

Know when boosting Facebook posts still works

According to SproutSocial, Facebook organic reach in 2026 averages roughly 2% to 5% for standard business pages, so the use of boosted posts should be part of your overall social strategy to increase reach and engagement. If you have a post that has already gotten some organic traction—people are already showing interest by liking or commenting—then boosting that post is still an effective way to get that content back in the newsfeeds of your fans.

Match the ads to your goals

The boosted post is great for reach and engagement, but Facebook Ads Manager offers many other objectives to meet your specific goals. Depending on the result you're after, you can build a campaign around awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion or sales. Choosing an objective is an answer to the question, "What do you want to do?" Do you want to send people to your website? Traffic is designed for that. Do you want to get your brand in front of as many people as possible? Awareness is made for that. Do you want to get people to make a purchase? Sales is what you want. Choosing the objective that matches your goal tells Meta's algorithm which users to target and what action to optimize for, giving you better results. Not sure where to start? Meta Business has a handy guide.

Let AI find your best Facebook ad format

The boosted post only lets you advertise whatever you already posted to your newsfeed. Facebook Ads Manager opens up more formats, giving you more creative freedom and more ways to stand out. Carousel ads let you feature multiple products or services in one ad and often outperform single-image ads on click-through rate. Video ads are a natural way to extend a TV spot into digital. And more and more, the format decision itself is being handled by AI.

Meta Advantage+, Meta's umbrella term for AI-automated campaigns, eliminates manual format decisions. Instead of choosing between a carousel, a video or a single image, you upload a handful of images and videos, add some text variations, set a budget and objective, and Meta's algorithm tests combinations across Facebook, Instagram, Reels, Stories, WhatsApp and Threads on its own. 

Advantage+ versus Google's Performance Max

Google has its own version of this called Performance Max. It has the same basic approach, but it runs across Google Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail and Maps instead of Meta's properties. The big difference is who each one reaches. Performance Max shows ads to people who are already searching, so it's built to capture demand that already exists. Advantage+ can put your ad in front of people before they're searching for anything at all, making it a better fit for creating demand rather than just catching it.

Unlike Ads Manager campaigns, boosted posts also don't let you optimize creative separately for mobile and desktop, so there's no guarantee your images and content display properly across every device someone might see them on.

Reach the right people with Custom and Lookalike Audiences

If you look beyond the boosted post, the targeting capabilities in Facebook Ads Manager open up quite a bit. You can still target by demographics, location and interests, much like you can from a boosted post. But you can also create Custom Audiences: the people who already have a relationship with your business and have expressed interest in your brand. With Custom Audiences, you can use customer email addresses to target content directly to them. You can reach new audiences by creating a Lookalike Audience based on people who have visited your website or engaged with your content on Facebook or Instagram. You can also choose advanced placements for your ad, like Instagram, the Facebook Audience Network and Facebook Messenger, reaching even more people with your message. And with Advantage+, much of this targeting is now AI-automated rather than manually built, allowing Meta's algorithm to optimize for the best audience.

See why having a Facebook strategy matters more now

For years, Google Search and Facebook were the safe choice in most media plans. That's changing. Google's share of the search ad market dropped below 50% in 2026, the first time that's happened in over two decades. Add in Meta passing Google in total ad revenue and Amazon climbing to the third-largest ad platform globally, and it's clear that budgets are spreading across more platforms than they used to. Clients who stay all-in on one platform are exposed to that shift instead of benefiting from it.

The same thinking also applies outside Meta and Google. Connected TV (CTV) pause ads used to require large direct-buy minimums, but now they're available programmatically at much lower spend levels, putting premium streaming inventory within reach of smaller budgets. On LinkedIn, document ads and thought-leader ads are outperforming standard sponsored content for business-to-business (B2B) audiences, a real opening for service and higher-ed clients trying to earn credibility rather than just buy reach. If you're already rethinking your Facebook strategy, these are worth testing with that same mindset.

Boosted posts are a great part of your overall social strategy and an easy entry point into Facebook advertising. But there is a world beyond the boost, one that offers more ways to meet your marketing objectives, more creative options to engage your audience and stronger targeting to reach more people with your message.

Check out our digital marketing & media page for a look at how we incorporate these strategies into digital campaigns for our clients.

Sources: 39 Facebook statistics marketers should know in 2026: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-stats-for-marketers/ (accessed July 2026)