Chapter 3: Ads Structure
On the ads page, we have the option to name our ads once again. Come up with a naming convention that conveys the type of ad this one is going to be, since you’re likely going to end up with A LOT of ads. On the right side, if “Ad Preview” isn’t enabled, go ahead and turn on that checkbox. This will allow us to see an example of what our ad is going to look like as we ad images/videos/captions etc.
The next option is for Partnership ads. These can be great if you’re doing influencer collaborations, allowing you to run ads with the added benefit of the influencer account that you’ve partnered with. You have to have an existing brand partnership set up in order to do these, so no use worrying about it until you run some influencer collaborations.
Next up is identity. I’ve mentioned most ads will show as social media posts in a user’s feed. Well those posts need to look like they’re coming from an account! So here you can select your Facebook Page and Instagram account for your business, so your ads link back to your actual social media pages. If you have a Threads profile, you can put it here.
Now we get to get into the Ad Setup. The first option should default to “Create Ad”, which is what we’re going to want to do basically 100% of the time. We do have the option to use an existing social media post as our ad, but there’s never really a good reason to do that. If we want to boost that post, we can just promote it directly (more on this later). For conversion ads, we want to start from scratch.
If your website has a bunch of different products, you can create a catalog and run Advantage+ catalog ads. We’ll go into this some more later, but for now let’s focus on “Manual upload” under “Creative source”. Next we have the option to choose our format. I recommend choosing “Flexible”, which will give you the opportunity to put in up to 10 different pictures or videos, and up to 5 different captions and headlines, and let the Meta AI decide which combination to show each individual user. I’ve had great success with this in the past, and it’s worth giving the Meta AI as much ammo as possible when it comes to dishing out your ads. The other option is to pick “Single image or video”, which is exactly what it sounds like. Only use this if you want to split test between different creatives (i.e. two different ads, each running one image to see which works best) or if you know you have a specific creative that outperforms everything else. If we pick flexible, we can see the options to upload media, primary text, headlines, and descriptions. Take advantage of the ad preview to the right hand side to see how different caption lengths look, and how different headlines or descriptions show up in different placements.
The last thing that we care about is the destination, or where your ad is going to take somebody when they click it. This can be the homepage for your website, or the product page for a specific product you’re advertising, or a dedicated landing page + conversion funnel. It’s completely up to you. One of the nice things is being able to click “Build a URL parameter”, which will allow you to create UTM codes for your link. This allows a third party tracking software like Google Analytics to see things like if your site users came from facebook, or even which campaign or ad set the user clicked on. After pasting in your destination link, you can change the call to action button to basically whatever you want. If you’re selling a product, selecting “Shop Now” is a good option, but it’s up to you.
Finally, make sure that your pixel is set up in the “Tracking” portion at the bottom, and you’re good to go.