The National Association of Realtors said in September that it won Meta’s 2026 Agency Award for Best Use of Automation after a real estate advertising test delivered first-time homebuyer traffic at a significantly lower cost. Compared with NAR’s standard audience-targeting approach, Meta Advantage+ Audience cut cost per landing page view by 29% and reduced overall campaign spending by 25%, according to NAR’s award announcement.
For agents and brokerages buying Facebook and Instagram ads, the unanswered question sits farther down the funnel: NAR showed that Advantage+ produced cheaper traffic, but it did not disclose whether those visitors became cheaper leads or clients.
NAR’s Advantage+ test cut traffic costs 29%
NAR worked with Havas and Meta to test Advantage+ Audience within its More Than Opening Doors consumer campaign, launched in February to reach prospective homebuyers and promote the role Realtors play throughout a transaction.
For the automated arm of the campaign, Meta used engagement and conversion data alongside other audience signals to expand beyond the buyer segments NAR had selected manually.
The Advantage+ test generated 432,000 landing page views. Cost per landing page view came in 29% lower than NAR’s standard targeting approach, while total campaign spending fell 25%.
NAR also reported a 9-percentage-point increase in consumers who said they intended to use an agent who is a Realtor. The survey metric reflects stated intent, not leads, signed clients, or closed transactions.
What the 29% drop does — and doesn’t — mean
Landing page traffic became cheaper, but NAR’s public results did not disclose cost per qualified lead, booked appointment, signed buyer agreement, or acquired client.
Cheap traffic does not necessarily produce cheap business if visitors never become qualified leads or clients. The test also involved a national trade group working with Havas and Meta. NAR did not disclose enough about budget, duration, or account scale to show whether an individual agent could expect comparable results.
Housing advertisers also operate with fewer targeting choices than advertisers in many other industries. Meta restricts housing-ad targeting based on characteristics including age, gender, and ZIP code in the US, alongside other safeguards intended to reduce discriminatory ad delivery.
Those controls also intersect with the fair housing risks around digital real estate marketing, where automated delivery can influence who receives housing information even when an advertiser does not select protected traits directly.
Cheaper traffic still has to convert
NAR’s result can be compared against an agent’s own Meta campaign performance, but it does not establish that another account will reproduce the same 29% reduction.
An agent evaluating Advantage+ would need to follow the campaign past the landing page visit. Cost per qualified lead, appointment, signed client, and closing reveal whether cheaper traffic is translating into cheaper business.
As Meta automates more of the audience selection, the parts agents still control — ad creative, the offer, landing page, conversion tracking, and follow-up — carry more weight. Lower traffic costs only help when the people arriving actually convert.
NAR showed that Advantage+ could deliver first-time-buyer traffic more cheaply than its standard targeting approach. Until lead and client costs are disclosed, the 29% reduction is promising evidence for automated targeting, not proof of cheaper customer acquisition.