How Facebook ads work
- Choose an objective: such as awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion or sales.
- Define the audience: by location, age, interests and behavior; with custom audiences built from your website visitors or customer lists; or with lookalike audiences similar to your customers. Meta’s Advantage+ options let the system find people for you.
- Set a budget and schedule: a daily or lifetime budget; Meta’s auction decides how often and where the ads appear.
- Create the ads: image, video, carousel or collection formats, with text and a call to action.
Measuring results
Install the Meta Pixel and the Conversions API to track actions on your website, such as leads and purchases. Judge campaigns by cost per result and return on ad spend, not just by clicks or likes.
Tips
- Lead with the creative: the image or video decides most of the performance.
- Test several creatives and let the budget flow to the best ones.
- Match the landing page to the ad.
- Get consent for tracking where the law requires it.