When AI Replaces Targeting: What Meta’s 2026 Update Means for Theater Marketing

Year after year, more advertising platforms push marketers to rely on their AI tools. Meta, which remains one of the most important digital channels for the live entertainment world, has been especially aggressive in this shift. The centerpiece of its automation push is Advantage+, a suite of AI-driven tools that promise to simplify campaign management, optimize budgets in real time, and find new customers more efficiently than any human strategist ever could. 

On paper, Advantage+ is positioned as the future: fewer manual inputs, fewer audience decisions, and more reliance on Meta’s machine learning to “figure it out” for you. The company frames it as democratizing advertising, giving even the smallest businesses the same powerful optimization engine that global brands use. The sales pitch is clear: less tinkering, better results, and more time back for marketers. 

But in practice, especially for live entertainment, the results haven’t matched the promise. Advantage+ works best for large-scale advertisers with months-long campaigns and deep budgets to let the system “learn” and refine its targeting over time. Limited-run live productions don’t have that luxury. Their campaigns are often tied to short runs, fast learnings, and extremely limited budgets. Every dollar has to deliver immediate efficiency. Asking a show with just six weeks to sell tickets to spend thousands while the algorithm “tests and learns” is simply not feasible. 

And yet, Meta is doubling down: consolidating detailed interest options, phasing out granular targeting, and pushing advertisers toward Advantage+ as the default. Institutions that have built trust and a relationship with their audiences will still have a reliable base from which to expand through tools like retargeting and lookalike audiences. But what about brand-new productions that need to start from scratch? That’s where the changes become particularly challenging. 

The Disappearing Interests 

For years, Meta offered interest-based targeting that SpotCo could use as a foundation for campaigns: Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off Broadway, along with institutional names like Roundabout Theatre Company, Lincoln Center Theater, The Public Theater, and Atlantic Theater Company. Cultural markers such as the Tony Awards were also available, as well as legendary musicals like Book of Mormon, Mamma Mia!, and Phantom of the Opera. 

Meta’s targeting also extended to popular websites where theatergoers actively search for ticket discounts — BroadwayWorld.com, TheaterMania, and Broadway.com. These interest categories could be paired with promotional creatives inside Meta’s ecosystem, allowing campaigns to reach exactly the kind of audiences most likely to be hunting for deals. That level of precision is now disappearing with Meta’s new restrictions. 

Soon, all of these options will be gone. 

Particularly frustrating is the loss of segmentation by Broadway star fan bases. For years, targeting fans of such big names as Jonathan Groff, Lea Michele, or Idina Menzel has been one of the most effective ways to spark awareness for a production. But as of January 15, even those categories will disappear. 

This level of targeting began to phase out on June 23, 2025. According to Meta’s official announcement: 

“Beginning June 23, 2025 we will be consolidating some of our detailed targeting interest options by combining relevant interests into new groupings…. We do not anticipate that these changes will impact your campaign performance if you’re using Advantage+ detailed targeting.” 

In other words, Meta is sending a clear signal that Advantage+ is the future. But already, the most granular option left within Broadway is simply “Broadway theater.” This means there is no way to segment between shows as different as The Great Gatsby and Little Shop of Horrors. For live productions, where audience fit is everything, this loss of precision is a major blow. 

What Smaller Productions Can Do 

For smaller, non-institutional productions, the safest and smartest path forward is early investment in audience data. Without granular interest targeting, having access to relevant lists and insights before you even go on sale can make or break your campaign. 

The solution is researching similar shows and leveraging their ticketing lists as seed data. Here’s why it matters: 

-Awareness and Prospecting from Day One: With a lookalike model built on a reliable ticketing list, you immediately have a high-quality audience closer to your real buyers than any broad Advantage+ pool. 

-A Ready-Made Retargeting Pool: That same data gives you a strong retargeting base for the critical first two weeks of sales, before your campaigns have generated enough website visitors or social engagers. 

-Momentum for Growth: As your campaign runs, you will naturally build your own retargeting audiences from site traffic, engagers, and eventually ticket buyers. Having that early seed ensures you don’t waste your limited budget in the most vulnerable early days. 

Another partial workaround is using industry-specific vendors like BroadwayWorld.com, whose first-party data and dark-post capabilities on Meta can still help productions reach relevant theatergoing audiences even as granular targeting options disappear. 

For short run shows, those first few weeks are everything. Every dollar matters. Without careful preparation, campaigns can burn through budgets before they gain traction. By collecting data early and putting it to work, Off Broadway productions can still carve out efficiency in Meta’s increasingly AI driven ecosystem. 

The Bigger Picture 

Meta’s Advantage+ makes it clear where digital advertising is going: fewer manual levers, broader automated targeting, and greater reliance on machine learning. That model may serve industries with long sales cycles and deep pockets, but live entertainment does not operate that way. Our industry thrives on urgency. A single weekend of strong or weak sales can change the course of a production. 

That is why granular targeting mattered. It allowed marketers to reach the right people quickly, to distinguish between a family musical and an experimental play, and to stretch limited budgets as far as possible. By sweeping those options into automation, Meta is removing a tool that smaller productions have long depended on. 

That does not mean Advantage+ should be dismissed outright. Automation can help scale a campaign. But for Broadway marketers, it cannot be the entire strategy. Building strong audience foundations, collecting reliable data, and maintaining control over who we reach will remain essential. Every show is unique, and its marketing has to reflect that. 

Live entertainment professionals believe that one day Meta will have AI capable of finding the right audience without weeks of “learning” and wasted spend. Until that day, we will continue to do what we do best: finding creative ways to guide the Meta machine toward the right customers for our clients.