Build Your Campaign (Meta Ads Manager)

📋 What you'll need: Your five finished ads (exported and saved), your ad copy ready in your Creative Plan (Spreadsheet 3), your Meta Pixel installed, and access to Meta Ads Manager
⏱ Time: 30–45 minutes for your first campaign — quicker every time after, once you know where everything is
✅ Output: A live Meta campaign with your five ads running, tracking in place, and a clear budget — gathering real data
You have your five ads made and your copy ready in your Creative Plan (Spreadsheet 3). This is the last step: setting up the campaign that puts them in front of people. Meta Ads Manager can look intimidating the first time, but you only need to touch a handful of settings. This page walks you through each one in order.

Before You Start

Have everything ready before you open Ads Manager, so you are not stopping halfway through to fix something. Meta Ads Manager lives at adsmanager.facebook.com — log in with the account connected to your business page, and keep your Creative Plan (Spreadsheet 3) open in another tab, because you will paste your copy from it as you build.

Your pre-launch checklist

Run through this list before you open Ads Manager. Having it all ready is the difference between a smooth 30 minutes and a frustrating hour.
Five finished ads — exported, saved, and named to match your Creative Plan (e.g. "founder-led-v1")
Ad copy for each ad — primary text, headline, and CTA — ready to paste from Spreadsheet 3
Meta Pixel installed and working on your website — the tracking code that tells Meta when someone becomes a lead or makes a purchase (set up in Step 0 of this module)
Destination page ready — the opt-in or landing page for a service, or the product page for ecommerce
A budget you're comfortable running for a few weeks — see Step 4 below before you settle on the number
⚠️ The Pixel is not optional.
Without it installed and working, Meta is flying blind — it cannot tell which ads produce results, so it cannot optimise, and you cannot tell what is working. If you get one technical thing right before launching, make it this. Setup is covered in SOP 1 and the Account Setup Guide.

Build the Campaign, Step by Step

This is where you put your five ads live. Meta Ads Manager has three levels that stack together: the campaign (your overall goal), the ad set (who sees the ads, where, and your budget), and the ads themselves (your five creatives). You will set each one in turn — most settings you can leave exactly as Meta suggests. Work through the steps below in order, with your Creative Plan (Spreadsheet 3) open in another tab so your copy is ready to paste.
Step 1 — Create the campaign and choose your objective
  1. Go to adsmanager.facebook.com and, in the left-hand menu, click Campaigns.
  2. Click the green + Create button.
  3. A window pops up asking you to choose an objective. This is the most important choice on the whole page — it tells Meta what to optimise for, and it cannot be changed later without starting a new campaign.Choose based on your business:
    1. Service business → choose Leads. You are collecting enquiries, bookings, or sign-ups.
    2. Ecommerce business → choose Sales. You are driving purchases.
  4. Click Continue.
Meta now builds the three levels for you automatically — you will see your Campaign, an Ad set, and an Ad already created and waiting to be filled in. You do not need to add these yourself; you just work down through them.
One thing you will notice: as soon as you choose Sales or Leads, Meta switches on Advantage+ by default (you may see a green "Advantage+" label). That is what you want — it means Meta's AI will handle the heavy lifting. You will confirm a few settings as you go, but leaving Advantage+ on is the recommended path for a small budget, because it lets your creative do the work of finding the right people.
⚠️ Only Leads or Sales. You will see other objectives — Awareness, Traffic, Engagement. Skip them. They get you cheap clicks and views that look good but rarely turn into revenue. For a business trying to get leads or sales, only Leads or Sales belong here. And remember: the objective locks when you create the campaign, so choose the right one now.
Step 2 — Set up the campaign level
You are now on the campaign screen — the top level. There is not much to do here. Working down the screen:
  1. Name your campaign. A clear name tells you at a glance what the campaign is, what it promotes, and when it started, which matters as soon as you are running more than one. Use this pattern:
    2. Objective — Product/Offer — Audience — Month Year
    For example:
    • Sales — Vitamin C Serum — Cold — Jul 2026
    • Leads — Free Clarity Call — Cold — Jul 2026
    "Cold" means you are targeting new people who do not know you yet — which is what your first campaign does. Later, when you run campaigns to past visitors or your email list, you would mark those "Warm" or "Retargeting" so you can tell them apart instantly.
  2. Special ad category. If your ads relate to credit, employment, housing, or social or political issues, you must declare it here — Meta requires it and restricts targeting for these. Most product and service businesses do not fall into these categories, so you can leave this off. If you are a financial advisor, check Meta's current rules, as some financial services fall under the credit category.
  3. Budget strategy. Meta gives you two ways to hold the budget: Campaign budget (recommended, and on by default) or Ad set budget. Leave it on Campaign budget. This lets Meta spread one budget across your five ads automatically, moving more toward the ones that work — so you are not trying to guess how much each ad deserves.
  4. Set your budget. Because the budget sits at the campaign level, you enter the amount here. You will see two choices:
    • Daily budget (recommended) — the most Meta will spend on an average day. Best for testing, and what you should use.
    • Lifetime budget — a total across a set start and end date. Leave this for later; daily is simpler and better for a first campaign.
    Enter your daily budget — the figure from the main Paid Traffic page, around $10 a day to start.
  5. A/B test. If you see an option to turn on A/B testing, leave it off. You are already testing five different ads against each other inside this one campaign, which is plenty to learn from.
Then click Next to move to the ad set level.
💡 Your naming system — use it at all three levels. Good names read left to right, broad to specific, so your reports are easy to scan later:
  • Campaign: Objective — Product/Offer — Audience — Month Year
    e.g. Sales — Vitamin C Serum — Cold — Jul 2026
  • Ad set: Audience — Location — Placement
    e.g. Advantage+ Audience — Ireland — Auto placements
  • Ad: Format — Angle — Version
    e.g. Founder-led — 2pm-crash — v1
Match your ad names to your Creative Plan (Spreadsheet 3) so every ad in Ads Manager lines up with its row in your tracker. When you read your results later, you will know exactly which ad each number belongs to.
Step 3 — Set up the ad set
The ad set is where you tell Meta who should see your ads and how the result is tracked. It is the longest screen, but most of it stays on the Advantage+ defaults. Working down:
  1. Name your ad set. Use your naming system:
    Audience — Location — Placement
    For example: Advantage+ Audience — Ireland — Auto placements
  2. Conversion location. This is where you want the action to happen. Choose Website — you are sending people to your own opt-in page (service) or product page (ecommerce). Do not choose Instant Forms or Messenger for your first campaign; sending people to your own page produces higher-intent leads and buyers.
  3. Performance goal. This is what Meta optimises for — the single most important choice in this section after the dataset. You will see:
    4. Conversion goals (choose one of these):
    • Maximise number of conversions — get as many results (leads or sales) as your budget allows. This is the one to choose for your first campaign. It tells Meta to find people who will take your action, not just click.
    • Maximise value of conversions — optimises for higher-value purchases rather than the count. This is for stores with a range of price points and enough sales history, and is often greyed out until you have that data. Skip it for now; if it is greyed out, that is expected.
    Other goals (do not use these):
    • Maximise landing page views, link clicks, daily unique reach, or impressions. These get you cheap clicks, views, and reach that look good on the surface but rarely turn into leads or sales. They are the same trap as the wrong campaign objective — avoid them.
    Choose Maximise number of conversions and move on.
  4. Dataset. A dataset is simply the container for the tracking data coming from your website — it is the new name for what used to be called the Pixel. Select the dataset connected to your website here. You already set this up in SOP 1 and the Account Setup Guide, so it should appear in the list. If you cannot find it, it may not be linked to this ad account yet — you fix that in Meta Business Manager by sharing the dataset with the account.
  5. Conversion event. This is the specific action you want to count and optimise for:
    • Service → your lead event, such as Lead or Complete Registration, matching what happens on your opt-in page.
    • Ecommerce → Purchase. If your store is new and gets very few sales, choose Add to Cart for now so Meta has more data to learn from, then switch to Purchase once sales are steady.
      If the event you need has not been set up yet, Meta gives you the option to set it up here — but ideally this was done during your account setup.
  6. Attribution setting. Meta offers two: Standard and Incremental. Choose Standard. It is the default, and it is the right choice for a small budget. Incremental is a more advanced setting built for big-budget advertisers with lots of sales coming in — on a small budget it reports fewer conversions and makes it harder to get out of the early "learning" period. Leave this on Standard and move on.
  7. Audience — the important one. Meta shows you a choice: stay in the current Advantage+ Audience setup, or add controls that limit your reach. Stay in the current setup. With Advantage+ Audience, your creative does the targeting — Meta reads your five ads and finds the people most likely to respond. You only set the hard limits:
    • Location — the country, region, or city you serve
    • Age — only if your product or service genuinely has an age floor (e.g. 18+); otherwise leave it wide
    • Language — only if you advertise in a specific language
    • Do not add interests, and do not build lookalike audiences for your first campaign. Meta will literally tell you these "limit your reach" — on a small budget that is exactly what you want to avoid. Let the creative find the audience.
  8. Placements. Leave these on Advantage+ Placements (automatic). Meta shows each ad wherever it performs best — feed, Stories, Reels — and because you built your creative vertical or square with captions, it works everywhere. Choosing placements by hand rarely helps on a small budget.
  9. Schedule. Because you set your budget at the campaign level in Step 2, there is no budget to enter here — just a start date. Leave it as today, or set a future date if you want it to begin later. You do not need an end date for an always-on test.
Then click Next to move to the ad level, where you add your five ads.
⚠️ "Limiting your reach" is your cue to stop. When you start adding interests, lookalikes, or narrow age ranges, Meta warns you that you are limiting your reach. On a small budget with strong, varied creative, that is exactly what you don't want. Set your location, keep it broad, and let your ads find the audience — in 2026, your creative is the targeting, not a list of interests.
Step 4 — Build your five ads
You are now at the ad level — the third and final level, after the campaign and the ad set. This is where you add your five finished ads, one at a time, working from your Creative Plan (Spreadsheet 3) where each ad's creative and copy already live in its own row.
For your first ad:
  1. Name the ad. Use your naming system so it matches your tracker exactly:
    Format — Angle — Version (e.g. Founder-led — 2pm-crash — v1)
    Naming it the same as its row in Spreadsheet 3 means that when you read your results later, every number lines up with the right ad.
  2. Choose your Page. Select the Facebook Page the ad runs from, and your Instagram account if it is connected. If you have no Instagram, Meta can run the ad using your Facebook Page across both.
  3. Choose the format and upload your creative. Select single image or video (not carousel, unless this specific ad is a carousel). Then choose Manual upload — not Advantage+ Creative, which would let Meta alter your ad. You want it running exactly as you made it.

    4. Uploading the right sizes

    This part matters more than most realise. Your ad can appear in the feed (a taller shape) and in Stories and Reels (a full-screen shape). If you upload only one size, Meta stretches or crops it to fit the others — which usually looks bad and performs worse. In 2026 Meta also treats each size as a separate creative and gives each one its own chance to be shown, so uploading the right sizes genuinely helps your reach.
    What to upload for each ad:
    • One feed version — 4:5 vertical (1080 x 1350), or 1:1 square (1080 x 1080) if that is what you have
    • One Stories/Reels version — 9:16 full-screen vertical (1080 x 1920)
    How to do it: after you upload your main file, look for the option to customise or edit media by placement (Meta groups placements into "Feed," "Stories and Reels," and so on). Assign your 4:5 or 1:1 file to the Feed group, and your 9:16 file to the Stories and Reels group. You produced these sizes when you made your ads, so you are just putting each one where it belongs.
    If you genuinely only have one size: upload it and let Meta fit it everywhere — it will still run, just not as cleanly. But uploading both sizes is one of the easiest ways to get more from the same ad.
  4. Paste your copy from Spreadsheet 3:
    • Primary text → the primary text you chose for this ad
    • Headline → your headline
    • Description → only if you wrote one (optional)
  5. Set the destination URL. Enter the page this ad sends people to — your opt-in or landing page (service) or product page (ecommerce). It should match the conversion location from your ad set.
  6. Choose the call-to-action button. Pick the one that matches your offer — "Book Now," "Sign Up," "Shop Now," "Learn More."
  7. Tracking — add URL parameters (recommended). Scroll to the Tracking section near the bottom of the ad. Here you will find "URL parameters." Adding these tags a small label onto your link so your own analytics tools (like Google Analytics) can see that a visitor came from this specific Meta ad. Meta's own tracking works without it, but parameters mean that if a tool ever misses the source, you still know where the traffic came from. Use Meta's "Build a URL parameter" tool, or paste this ready-made set:
    utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign={{campaign.name}}&utm_content={{ad.name}}
    The {{campaign.name}} and {{ad.name}} parts fill in automatically from your campaign and ad names — another reason your naming system matters.
  8. Check the preview. Meta shows how the ad looks across placements. Glance through feed, Stories, and Reels to confirm nothing important is cut off and your captions are readable.
To add your next ad: Go to the left-hand column where your ad is listed, click the action menu (the three dots ⋯) next to it, and choose Quick duplicate. This creates a copy of the ad. Then open the duplicate and:
  1. Rename it to match the next ad in your Creative Plan (e.g. Static-callout — no-hangover — v1)
  2. Replace the creative with the next ad's files
  3. Replace the primary text, headline, and CTA with that ad's copy from Spreadsheet 3
Repeat until all five ads sit inside your one ad set.
✅ All five ads in, one ad set.
Before moving on, check you have all five built inside the same ad set — each one duplicated and then renamed, with its own creative (feed and Stories/Reels sizes), its primary text and headline from Spreadsheet 3, its destination URL, its CTA button, and URL parameters added in the Tracking section.
Step 5 — Review and publish
Everything is built — now you put it live. Before you publish, do a quick final check:
Five ads, one ad set, one campaign. Confirm all five ads sit inside the same ad set, each with its creative, copy, destination, and CTA.
Objective is Leads or Sales — not Awareness, Traffic, or Engagement.
Budget is set at the campaign level, at the amount you intended (around $10/day to start).
Audience is Advantage+. Location set, no interests or lookalikes added.
Dataset and conversion event are selected in the ad set.
Each ad's preview looks right across feed, Stories, and Reels — nothing cut off, captions readable.
When that all checks out, click the green Publish button in the bottom right.
Meta will now review your ads before they go live. This usually takes anywhere from a few minutes to 24 hours — Meta checks each ad against its advertising rules. Once approved, your ads start delivering automatically. You do not need to do anything else; you will see the status change from "In review" to "Active" in Ads Manager.
🎉 Your campaign is live!
That is a real milestone — you have gone from buyer research to a complete set of ads running in front of real people, built entirely by you. Most founders never get here. Whatever happens next, you now own a marketing asset most small businesses pay agencies thousands to build.
Now comes another important part: reading what the numbers tell you, and knowing what to keep, cut, and scale. That is the next and final page.
Reading Your Results