Meta now treats your ad targeting as a suggestion. What that means for HVAC ads
Meta's Advantage+ audience lets the system reach past the targeting you set. What that changes for furnace, heat pump and maintenance plan ads, and how to adjust.
If you set up a Facebook ad for furnace tune-ups targeting homeowners aged 35 and up within 15 miles, you probably assume that is who sees it. Increasingly, it is not. Meta's newer campaign setup treats much of your targeting as a suggestion, and lets its system show the ad to people outside it if it thinks they will respond.
For an HVAC company heading into heating season, that changes what makes an ad work. Here is what has changed and what to do about it.
What changed
Meta has been moving advertisers toward automated targeting for several years. The main piece is called Advantage+ audience. When it is on, which is now the default in many new campaigns, your age, interest and detailed targeting choices are treated as audience suggestions rather than hard limits. Meta starts with your suggestions, then expands to anyone it predicts is likely to act on the ad.
Meta has also cut back the detailed targeting options available, especially interests tied to sensitive topics, and removed some exclusion options. Meta's own Business Help Center has a page on Advantage+ audience that explains which settings are suggestions and which are firm.
A few settings still behave as hard limits, mainly location and minimum age. Your service area still controls where ads run. But the old approach of stacking interests like "home improvement" and "homeowners" to narrow the crowd now matters much less.
What it means for an HVAC company
Your creative is now your targeting. If Meta decides who sees the ad based on who responds, then the ad itself tells the system who to look for. An ad that says "Furnace tune-up, $89, book before the first cold night" will tend to find people thinking about their furnace. A vague ad about "comfort solutions" will find people who like vague ads, and you pay for their clicks.
Renters will see your ads. Without strict homeowner targeting, some impressions will go to renters who cannot book a furnace replacement. Write the ad so it filters them out: "Homeowners in Concord" in the first line, and an offer that only makes sense to an owner, like a maintenance plan or a replacement estimate.
Your service area setting is the one to get right. Since location is still a firm limit, check it. Use a radius or a list of ZIP codes that matches where your trucks actually go. A common mistake is leaving the location set to "people living in or recently in this location," which can include travelers. Set it to people living there.
Lead quality depends on the form. When the system optimizes for leads, it looks for people who fill out forms. Some of them fill out every form. Add one or two qualifying questions to instant forms, such as "Do you own this home?" and "What do you need help with?" A slightly harder form usually means fewer, better leads. The Facebook and Instagram ads guide covers form setup in detail.
How to adjust your heating season campaigns
- Write one ad per job. A furnace tune-up ad, a no-heat repair ad, a heat pump replacement ad and a maintenance plan ad. Each has its own image, offer and plain-language headline. Let each find its own audience.
- Use real photos. A technician in your uniform next to a furnace in a real basement does better than stock images. It also tells the system you are a local service company.
- Lead with the offer and the area. First line: who it is for and where. Second line: the offer. Third line: how to book.
- Keep the targeting simple. Location, age 25 and up, and let Advantage+ do the rest. Test it against a version with your old interest targeting for two weeks if you want proof either way.
- Judge on booked jobs. Cost per lead will look different under the new setup. Track how many leads become booked calls and what each booked job costs.
Remember who Meta is for
Meta is good at reaching homeowners who are not searching yet: someone with a 15-year-old furnace who has been meaning to get it checked. It is weak for emergency calls. Someone with no heat at 10 p.m. searches Google, and that is where most no-heat calls come from. The Google Ads guide covers that side.
That split also matters for your profile. The median HVAC company in our benchmark report has 30 reviews, and 10.2% have 500 or more. When a Meta ad makes a homeowner curious, the first thing many do is look you up on Google. Your reviews and profile finish the job the ad started.
A quick check this week
Open Ads Manager and look at each active campaign. Note whether Advantage+ audience is on, what location setting is used and whether your lead form asks anything beyond name and phone. If location includes travelers or the form has no questions, fix those two first. Then look at the ad copy and ask whether a stranger could tell, from the first line, that it is for homeowners in your town who need heat.
If you want your heating season Meta campaigns rebuilt and managed, any service is available as a free 14-day trial, no card. Text or call (385) 364-3875.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, HVAC companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor