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Buying Study Guide (Updated 02.2023)
Buying Study Guide (Updated 02.2023)
Professional Exam
study guide
Campaign objectives 17
Campaign audiences 49
Advertiser controls 66
Automated rules 74
Creative strategy 78
Glossary 133
Overview
Meta Certification can help you get noticed.
Meta Certification recognizes advanced-level proficiency
with Facebook, Messenger and Instagram.
3
Meta Advertising
Standards
Meta Advertising Standards
Meta Advertising Standards are designed to make ads safe for all people. Each ad is reviewed
against these policies. Familiarize yourself with the Advertising Standards to ensure that
you're building a compliant and considerate ads experience.
Community Standards
Community Guidelines
Learn more about the Meta Advertising Standards, and get more information on prohibited
content, targeting and data use restrictions. Some additional areas to familiarize yourself with
include policies for advertising regarding credit, alcohol, weapons, pharma, financial services,
politics, social issues, housing and employment. Some rules may vary from country to country,
based on market regulation.
If your ad is rejected, you can edit your ad and resubmit it for review by following these steps:
1. Check the email address associated with your advertising account. If your ad isn’t
approved, you’ll receive an email with details that explain why.
2. Edit and create a compliant ad. Use the information provided in your rejection email.
3. Save any changes to your ad. Your ad is submitted automatically for review once you
save your changes.
Appealing decisions
If you think that your ad was mistakenly rejected, you can edit your ad or appeal the decision.
You’ll receive an email that explains why your ad wasn’t approved, so you can use that
information to guide any necessary changes. If you want to appeal the decision, request a
review. The ad review process may take up to 24 hours.
Understanding prohibited and restricted content can help you to minimize the time and
resources required to edit your ads and minimize delays in the delivery of your ads.
Outlined in the Advertising Standards are five elements that are reviewed on every ad: text,
creative, landing pages, targeting parameters and positioning.
Avoid being “Try our best product to reduce acne “We are offering a one-week free trial
vague in scars.” for our popular acne scar removal
descriptions cream!”
of offers, This is quite vague and doesn’t specify
products and the product being offered. This ad This version tells people exactly what
service. would not be approved. the advertiser is offering.
Avoid calling “Don’t worry if you’re a plus-sized “We have extended sizes for all our
out personal woman.” spring styles.”
attributes or
characteristics. This implies the advertiser knows that This version focuses on the product
the person viewing the ad is plus-sized. rather than the person viewing the ad.
Ads must not contain content that
asserts or implies personal attributes.
Avoid offensive “Damn, these are the best diamond “Check out these gorgeous rings for
language. rings ever.” your big day!”
Even common profanity can’t be used This version doesn’t include any
in ads across Meta technologies. profanity.
Symbols, numbers and letters must be
used properly, without the intention of
circumventing the ad review process.
Avoid making “I lost 10 lbs in 25 days attending the “I lost 5lbs attending this training
deceptive, false training session. You can also lose 10 session! Join us today!”
or misleading lbs by joining me today!”
claims. This version simply states a fact and
This implies that everyone will also invites people to join the training with
have the same results, and makes an no promise of weight loss.
unrealistic promise.
Campaign structure
In Ads Manager, there are three campaign structure levels: campaign, ad set and ad level. This
chart provides an overview of the specific campaign elements you can control at each level.
Campaign
Ad set
Placement Audience Optimization Budget Scheduling
and bid
strategy
Ad
Formats Creative
The campaign levels and their elements may also be available outside of the
sequence represented in the chart. However, the sequence represented is
designed to help you understand how Ads Manager is organized.
Meta Business Partners can help you meet your marketing needs throughout the campaign
creation process. Find someone to work with using the Meta Business Partner directory.
These partners can help you manage, scale and optimize your campaigns,
Campaign
including assistance with creative, audiences, budgets, scheduling,
management partners
reporting and analytics.
Creative platform These partners can help you create and curate images or video, or improve
partners your existing creative assets.
Feed platforms These partners can help you create product catalogs for use in ads,
partners Facebook Marketplace and Instagram Shop.
These partners can help you track performance across Meta technologies
Measurement partners and the rest of your marketing mix.
These partners can help you connect your customer actions, including
Conversion data
offline and web activity to Meta technologies, and help you improve
partners
performance of ad campaigns.
Community These partners can help you manage and moderate communities on Pages
management partners and in conversations.
These partners can help you build a messaging experience at scale and
Messaging partners automate customer service, lead generation and transactions over chat.
Payment methods
You can set up a payment method in Business Manager
to manage all of your billing details. Once you add a
payment method, you can connect it to an ad account
and use that account as the primary payment method
for your ads. You can either add a payment method or
have one shared with your Business Account from
another Business Account.
You can assign people a status to grant them access to your Business Manager and assets. You can
assign the following levels of access to people:
Finance analyst: This enables individuals to view financial details of the business,
including transactions, invoices, account spend and payment methods.
Additional
role Finance editor: This enables individuals to edit financial details of the business,
including business credit card information, transactions, invoices, account
spend and payment methods.
Partners
You can assign partner status to other businesses you work with in Business Manager, such as
agencies or clients. This enables you to share assets with each other. You can assign the following
levels of access to partners:
Assets
In Business Manager, assets refer to your business content. You can manage multiple assets
such as:
You might have to enter a code every time you log in if you turn on private
browsing or if you set up your browser to clear your history every time it closes.
There are six campaign objectives (formerly, there were 11 objectives) to choose from across
the three stages of the customer journey, which is also known as the marketing funnel. These
stages are awareness, consideration and conversion.
The six objectives are categorized into the stages of the customer journey.
Engagement
Leads
App promotion
CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES 18
How campaign objectives relate to business goals
The chart outlines how each objective correlates to business goals.
Reach the most You can use this Not applicable The awareness
people to increase objective if your objective gives
awareness, business is brand you the estimated ad
introduce your brand new, has undergone recall lift metric,
or improve recall. a name change or which shows an
Awareness You can use the you want more estimated number of
awareness objective potential customers people likely to
for reach, impression to get to know you. remember your ad
or ad recall. when asked within
two days of seeing it.
Find people You can use this Not applicable With the
likely to interact objective if you want engagement
with your business people who objective you can
online and take are interested in run ads across
actions, such as your products or messaging apps,
starting a services to start a ads, websites, apps
conversation conversation on and Pages. An
Engagement or commenting Messenger. engagement
on posts. conversion can
include signing up
for a newsletter,
chatting with an
agent or completing
a video.
CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES 19
Objective Business goals Example Data sources Notes
Collect leads for For example, if Not applicable After clicking your
your business. you want potential lead ad, customers
customers to sign up will see a form that’s
for a monthly already filled out
newsletter, this with information
objective can help they’ve shared with
you reach people Meta, such as their
Leads willing to share their name, phone
information with you number or email. The
to learn more about form is
your business. mobile–friendly
and designed to
minimize typing.
CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES 20
Campaign objectives and buying types
When you want to increase brand exposure across
an audience of 200,000 or more people, it’s
recommended that you use reach and frequency
buying. This works best with the awareness, traffic
or engagement objectives. If your goal is to find the
most cost-efficient way of promoting a specific direct
response, such as conversions or app promotions,
it’s recommended that you use the auction buying
method instead.
CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES 21
Targeting options for Advantage+ catalog ads
Advantage+ catalog ads have two targeting options that can help you reach your intended
audience across different stages of the buying journey.
Advantage+ catalog ads for Reach people who have expressed interest in specific products on
retargeting your website or app and encourage them to complete the action.
CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES 22
Advantage+ catalog ad verticals
There are currently products tailored to four different Advantage+ catalog ad verticals.
Use the travel vertical to reach people, such as weekend, single and
Travel
group travelers through their dynamic booking window.
Use the real estate vertical to reach people with your real estate
Real estate inventory. You can include elements, such as the number of
bedrooms and bathrooms.
CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES 23
Create a high-quality catalog.
Follow these tips to build and manage a high-quality catalog in Commerce Manager.
Keep your catalog Update your items every time prices or availability change and make
updated. sure that the information in your catalog matches your website.
Provide accurate Include important details, avoid keyword stuffing, proofread for
details. spelling and don't include any links in these fields.
Choose high- Provide high resolution images that are at least 500 x 500 pixels and
quality images. show your items accurately. Provide multiple images of each product.
Make sure your Make sure that your product links begin with http:// or https://, aren’t
product links are broken and direct customers to the correct product page.
correct.
Include product Provide the most specific Google or Facebook product category
categories. possible for each item in your catalog.
Create product sets, which are groups of items in your catalog. You
Create sets can use sets to help control the items that appear in your ads or
of items. feature collections of items in your Facebook Shop or Instagram
Shop.
Resolve any Check that your ads comply with the Advertising Standards so they
issues. can appear in your ads or shop.
Set the correct permission level for the catalog in Business Manager.
Set the correct
There are two permission levels for catalogs: manage catalog or
permissions.
create ads.
CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES 24
Campaign buying types
There are three ways to buy ads across
Meta technologies.
A buying type determines how you pay for an ads campaign. In Ads Manager, you determine
your buying type at the campaign level. Whether you’re launching a new brand or generating
awareness of an upcoming product launch, it’s important to consider which buying type best
meets the business goals of your campaign.
When you set up your ad campaigns, you can select from three buying types:
Target
Reach and
Auction rating point
frequency
(TRP)
You determine your buying type before selecting other elements in your campaign structure.
So much of your ad performance depends on you choosing the buying type that best suits
your budget, schedule or business goals.
Auction buying
Auction buying offers more choice, efficiency and flexibility, with less predictable results.
Ads can be placed across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and Audience Network. It's
recommended that campaigns placed on Facebook or Instagram use the auction buying type.
Auction buying is the default buying option in Ads Manager. Choose this buying type if you
want to:
Unlike most traditional auctions, the ad with the highest monetary bid isn’t necessarily the
winner. Instead, winning ads are determined by the value they offer to both advertisers and to
the people seeing them.
To ensure that the winning ad maximizes value for both people and advertisers, ads are ranked
by total value, and the ad with the highest value wins the auction for a given ad placement.
We explore this concept of total value in more detail in the following section.
Sequencing is the act of delivering ads in a specific order to tell a story using
Sequencing a series of ads in a campaign.
● Awareness
● Engagement
● Traffic
For example, if you want people to buy something from a website or install your app, this
auction buying type might be the best option.
Here’s an overview of the delivery systems for reach and frequency buying:
With reach and frequency buying you can use a sequencing tool to arrange
up to 50 ads, which you can show to audiences in a certain order. People in
this audience have the opportunity to see ads in the order you set.
You can also schedule your ads based on when and how you want your ads
to appear.
Scheduling allows you to control both what dates and what times your ads
are delivered.
Ad scheduling ● Use standard delivery to have Ads Manager try to deliver your ads in
a way that is evenly distributed throughout the day.
● Schedule your ads to run on specific dates under the Schedule
section in Ads Manager.
Depending on market conditions, You can lock in the CPM you pay for
prices fluctuate in the auction. You impressions. The bid is made on
Pricing
compete with your bid, which is a your behalf.
component of your total ad value.
Schedule your ads for different times Schedule your ads to run only
of day for different days of the week. during part of the day, but you can't
Dayparting vary this selection by day of the
week. There’s a minimum campaign
length of 24 hours.
Auction buying optimizes only for the Reach and frequency buying
Optimization objective, for example, awareness. optimizes dynamically between the
objective and impressions.
Audiences can be multicountry, very You can only target ads to one
small and you can exclude dynamic country at a time, no fewer than
Targeting
audiences. 200,000 people and you can't
exclude dynamic audiences.
● Measure impressions as a percentage of the population you want to target ads to.
● Buy video ads the same way and in the same currency as you buy other
Facebook and Instagram ads.
1 2 3
Ad auction Performance Advertiser
optimization controls
Ad auction
The ad auction is where ads chosen for your audience are ranked to find the ad most likely to
maximize value for both advertisers and people. In an auction, ads are ranked by their total
value and the ad with the highest total value wins the auction for the chosen individual.
You launch a The system considers The winner is chosen That particular
campaign and bids and holds an based on the total person sees the
decide on a bid. auction to determine value of the ad. The winning ad.
which advertiser gets ad with the highest
to show their ad to a total value wins the
particular person. auction.
Total value is based on advertiser bid, estimated action rates and ad quality.
For ads optimized for clicks, the estimated action rate reflects the estimated click-through
rate. For conversion-optimized ads, the estimated action rate reflects the estimated
click-through rate multiplied by the estimated click to conversion rate.
Below are how estimated action rates are used for different ad optimizations.
(Bid for click) x (estimated click-through rate) + (Bid for conversion) x (estimated click-through
(ad quality)) = Total value rate) x (estimated click-to-conversion rate) +
(ad quality) = Total value
To improve your ad quality, consider your website landing page experience and avoid the
following ad experiences.
Total value considers the relevance of an ad to the person who will see it as well as ad
quality. The quality of an ad is determined from many sources, including feedback from
people viewing or hiding the ad, assessment of clickbait, engagement bait and post-click
experience.
When an ad has a high ad quality, it means it’s relevant to the selected audience. This also
helps boost its total value in the ad auction.
The aspect of pacing where adjustments are made to your bid, and which
Bid pacing auctions are entered based on how much of the budget is remaining and time
is left for your ad set.
The aspect of pacing where how much of your budget is spent is increased
Budget pacing based on opportunities to get many optimization events with costs aligned
with your bid strategy.
This enables you to adjust your desired maximum cost per result. It also helps
Cost control
control the costs of the results you want to achieve.
This enables you to adjust the maximum amount you want to be bid in each
Bid control auction.
Both estimated daily reach and estimated daily results are available for app installs, event
responses, landing page views, link clicks, lead generation, offer claims, conversions, page
engagement, page likes, post engagement and video views. Estimates are unavailable for ad
sets using Advantage campaign budget with the bid cap and cost per result goal strategies.
Estimated daily results enable you to make more informed delivery control decisions by:
Ad relevance Optimization
Highest volume Select the highest volume bid strategy if you want to maximize
delivery and conversions you can get from your budget. This bid
strategy is best for spending your budget as efficiently as possible.
However, the cost of your ad results will fluctuate more, as changes
are made to get the highest volume. For example, if auction
competition decreases, the cost of your ads may go down and
if auction competition increases, the costs of your ads may
go up.
Highest value Select the highest value bid strategy if you want to spend the entire
budget by the end of the schedule of an ad set while maximizing the
amount of value you get from purchases. This automated bid
strategy is available for ad sets optimizing for purchase value. Value
optimization uses machine learning to predict how much ROAS a
user may generate for a business over a one- or seven-day window.
This prediction is then used to bid for your highest value customers.
By bidding more for people who are likely
to spend more, you can maximize the ROAS for your campaigns.
Cost per result goal Select the cost per result goal bid strategy if you want to maximize
cost-efficiency and need to keep cost within a specific threshold. This
bid strategy enables you to provide a benchmark cost for the results
you care about. This helps limit your cost per conversion
while maximizing the number of conversions. The cost per result
goal reflects how much you are paying on average for results. Not
all optimization goals are available for cost per result goal. Learn
more about best practices for using cost per result goal.
ROAS goal Select the ROAS goal bid strategy if you want to keep return on ad
spend around an average amount of the course of your campaign,
providing you with more command over the value a campaign brings
to your business. When you set a ROAS goal, we’ll try to deliver
against that over the campaign’s lifetime, dynamically bidding as
high as needed to maximize results. To use this bid strategy, you'll
need to optimize your ad set for purchase value.
Bid cap Select the bid-cap bid strategy if you want to set a maximum bid
across auctions and reach as many people as possible at that bid. This
bid strategy maximizes volume at specified maximum bid and can
increase competitiveness against other advertisers targeting similar
audiences. Bid controls are less flexible, which means they're more
likely to constrain delivery than cost controls because the bid cap
limits bids in every auction.
Focus on spending your full Set a cost or value you want Control how much you can bid
budget and getting the most to achieve. across ad auctions.
results or value possible.
Use the table below to learn more about the bid strategies.
Highest volume Highest value Cost per ROAS goal Bid cap
result goal
● Spend the full ● Maximize the ● Keep cost per ● Exercise more ● Use internal
budget. value of result below a control over the bidding models
conversions, certain amount, purchase value or lifetime value
● Get the most rather than regardless of generated from models.
results possible simply market ads than can be
from your increasing the conditions. achieved with ● Control how
budget. number of highest value much can be
conversions. bidding. bid in auctions.
Budget goals
● Don’t have a
specific cost ● Spend the full ● Break even on
per result goal. budget while your ad spend
focusing on and reach a
● Don’t aim for getting higher certain return.
specific goals value
to measure or purchases.
define success.
● Your cost per ● This requires an ● Spend may be ● If Ads Manager ● A bid control
result may even slower than can’t reach your that’s set too
fluctuate. distribution of when using ROAS floor, low might result
values across highest volume then delivery in
● Costs may go different bidding and may stop and a campaign
down if auction products sold budget may not your budget will under
competition by your be entirely not be spent delivering.
decreases, or business. spent. in full.
Considerations costs may go ● Bid caps don’t
up if auction ● This requires ● Costs may be ● Requires Meta control the cost
competition data higher during Pixel or per action you
increases. on purchase the learning Facebook SDK see in reporting
value to be phase, but to pass back and require
passed to Meta. delivery should purchase more frequent
stabilize after values. bid changes.
the learning
phase.
Use this chart to select the best bid strategy for you.
Highest volume Highest volume Cost per result goal ROAS goal with
Get the most with highest value Get the most highest value
results for your Get the most results for your Reach a minimum
budget. This results for your budget, and keep return for your ad
doesn’t provide budget while cost per result spend by reaching
cost control. focusing on higher below a threshold. higher purchase
value purchases. value conversions.
Bid cap
Manually cap how
much Ads Manager
bids in an auction.
Delivery controls
Auction delivery controls are available for campaigns that have a lifetime budget. With these
delivery controls you can specify how your budget is spent on your ad delivery. There are four
spend options for ad delivery.
1 2 3 4
Standard Accelerated Scheduled Sequenced
delivery delivery delivery delivery
When you schedule your ad delivery it must run for at least one hour.
Standard delivery
Standard ad delivery for auction enables you to spend your budget evenly over the course of
a day. Ads default to standard delivery, so it’s important to change this if you require another
spend option to meet your campaign goals.
Accelerated delivery
Accelerated ad delivery enables you to spend your budget as quickly as possible, which can
result in faster delivery. This means that your ad will compete in all possible auctions for the
selected audience at its maximum bid. Accelerated delivery is best used if you want outcomes
as fast as possible and you’re less concerned about cost. It’s usually not recommended that
you use accelerated delivery, as it prevents pacing your budget and bid.
Sequenced delivery
Sequenced ad delivery is only available for reach and frequency buying. This delivery option
enables you to serve your ads in a specific order or sequence. You provide a set number of
creative assets, then specify which order you want to show them to people.
For example, if you set up ad A, ad B and ad C with three different creative assets, you can
choose to have ad A shown the first time a person sees your ad, ad B shown for the second
impression and ad C shown as the last impression. This enables you to control the order in
which people see your ads.
Without With
Advantage campaign budget Advantage campaign budget
$12
$10
$10 $15
$3
$10
Use ad set spend limits Ad set spend limits are an optional setting you can choose to put on
sparingly, or not at all. your ad set for how much it can spend. The more budget that's
assigned to specific ad sets, the less flexibility there is to optimize
your campaign budget.
Be aware of maximums. Any campaign using Advantage campaign budget can have a
maximum of 200 ad sets. However, campaigns with greater than
70 ad sets will have limited editing functionality. The best practice is
to have less than 70 ad sets.
Ensure all ad sets in your If an ad set isn't delivering, it isn't encountering any opportunities for
campaign can be delivered. results and budget can’t be distributed to it. Advantage campaign
budget works best when all ad sets in a campaign could spend a full
budget, but only the best results are picked from each one. If any of
your ad sets aren't delivering, you can try increasing your bid caps or
target costs (if applicable), adjusting your targeting and creative or
switching to a more common optimization event.
Avoid pausing ad sets. If you pause a low delivery ad set, it may limit the Advantage
campaign budget ability to find opportunities in the future.
Evaluate at the campaign When you use Advantage campaign budget, the system will optimize
level. to deliver the highest number of results between the ad sets. To
properly evaluate success, you should evaluate results at the
campaign level. Evaluating on the ad set level may lead to the
breakdown effect.
Consider spend targets If you have specific spend targets for each ad set and don't want any
and flexibility. flexibility between them, don’t use Advantage campaign budget.
Consolidate campaigns Only combine ad sets that have similar goals into the same campaign.
with similar goals. Otherwise it can be misleading and result in an inconsistent split of
investment.
If you're using Advantage campaign budget, you can’t use accelerated delivery
or run ads on a schedule (as opposed to running ads all the time, as determined
by your ad scheduling choice in ad set creation).
Targeting can help you show your ads to the Your business metrics and business goals can
people most likely to engage with your business. influence how you set your budget. When
Your budget may be determined, in part, by the deciding on a campaign budget, consider what
size of your selected audience. your business goals are and adjust your budget
accordingly.
For example, if you want to reach millions of
people with your campaign, you will likely need a It’s recommended that you set a minimum
substantial budget. weekly budget that is 50X your success metrics
value. Ideally, your budget would be much higher.
However, if you want to reach more people When you achieve more outcomes, you will
within a set audience, you’re not required to experience better delivery of your ads to the
increase the audience size as you increase your audience most likely to engage with your
budget. It’s possible that you have to spend business.
more to get incremental outcomes as it becomes
more expensive to reach a higher percentage of
your overall audience.
● Create multiple versions of a plan and compare them to find the best settings for your
campaign.
● Share your plans in various formats, including email, a preview link or CSV format.
There are various charts in Campaign Planner that enable you to compare and adjust different
versions of a media plan. The charts available in your Campaign Planner are:
Frequency per person This shows you the percentage of people who are predicted to see
your ad a set number of times.
Spend per day This shows you the predicted amount that you may spend per day on
the campaign.
Placement distribution This shows you the percentage of people who are predicted to see
your ad in specific placements.
You can use the information from these charts to present a variety of campaign options for
clients and recommend a budget. For example, you can recommend a campaign budget by
viewing your audience size, and from there you can start to estimate the ad reach.
Meta Foresight
Meta Foresight tracks trends and topics that the people you’re trying to reach with your
ads care about. Resources include tools and reports to help you navigate cultural shifts and
prepare for the future. These resources can guide your marketing strategy with consumer
and advertising insights. Articles and reports can help you understand the Meta Foresight
perspective on a particular subject, and interactive reports enable you to filter through a
custom study with context.
1 2 3
Interest-based audiences
With interest-based audiences, aggregated information is taken from what people share in
their profiles and the behaviors they exhibit across Meta technologies. By identifying your
audience, you can help accurately market your campaign to the people most likely to take
action. For example, you can target your ads to mothers who are interested in sports, live in
a city and are environmentally conscious. Detailed targeting is a targeting option available
in the audience section of Ads Manager that enables you to refine the group of people your
ads are shown to. You can do this with information, such as additional demographics,
interests and behaviors.
Custom audiences
A custom audience is a targeting option that lets you find your existing audiences among
people across Meta technologies. With the custom audience option advertisers reach people
across devices based on the information they already have access to in a privacy-safe way.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 50
Generate custom audiences with your sources.
You can use these sources to generate custom audiences of people who already know
your business:
Your browser hashes all of the uploaded information locally on your computer. Then, your list
is compared to information from Meta. If there’s a matching hash, the person is added to a
custom audience stored within your ad account. Once the matching process completes, all
of the hashes are deleted, including both matching and nonmatching.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 51
The result is a custom audience of people that can potentially receive your ads. The custom
audiences is stored in your ad account, and only authorized account admins can deliver
campaigns to it. You can't see the specific individuals who are contained in the custom
audiences , you just see the approximate number of people that this audience contains.
SSL
Meta
Deleted
All matched and
Ad account
unmatched hashes Custom audience
3,678 matches
are deleted after
the process completes.
You can create a custom audience from your website for any group of visitors that you want to
reach with ads across Meta technologies. For example, you can run a campaign to reach people
who visited a product page but didn't complete a purchase to encourage them to go back to
the website to do so. Or you can create an audience of everyone who's visited your website in
the past 30 days. (This time frame is based on a rolling number of days, rather than on the
specific number of days since the custom audience creation date). You can create a custom
audience from your website events in Ads Manager.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 52
Generate custom audiences with Facebook SDK.
When you create a custom audience, you can target ads to specific groups of people who are
most likely to take action on your app. With the Facebook SDK, you can pass information to
Meta from your app and use that information to specify who you want to include in your
custom audience. For example, if you run an app engagement campaign, your ads may perform
better if you create a custom audience of the people who have already installed your app. The
ads are then shown to people who already have the app installed but don't engage with it as
much as you’d like. You can create a custom audience, from your app events, in Ads Manager.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 53
Generate engagement custom audiences.
You can also use these sources to generate engagement custom audiences :
An engagement custom audience is made up of people who have engaged with your content
across Meta technologies. Engagement refers to actions, such as spending time viewing your
videos or opening your lead form or collection ad. This could also come from people who use
a fullscreen experience, interacting with your Facebook Page or Instagram business profile and
responding to your event. Using engagement custom audiences , you can target your ads to
people who've taken these actions.
Engagement custom audiences are different from website custom audiences . While both
do take actions into account, engagement custom audiences use actions taken across Meta
technologies, whereas website custom audiences use actions taken on your website, which is
measured by the Meta Pixel.
When you create an engagement custom audience, you communicate how many days to go
back when collecting engagement. Anyone new who engages within the time period you
choose will be added to the audience. The audience is constantly being refreshed, meaning you
don't need to edit or create a new custom audience unless you want to change the time period
or the type of engagement.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 54
Lookalike audiences
Lookalike audiences identify people who share similar interests or characteristics as your
current audience. You can target ads to a lookalike audience if you want to reach new people
who are likely to be interested in your business because they're similar to your best existing
customers.
To build a lookalike audience, you must have a minimum of 100 people (from a single origin
country) in your source audience. We recommend using at least 1,000 people. You can create a
lookalike audience in Ads Manager using sources such as a custom audience, mobile app data
or fans of your Page.
Source 1% lookalike
audience Audience size ranges from 1% to 10% of the total population
across Meta technologies in the countries you choose, with 1%
being those who most closely match your source.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 55
International lookalike audiences
Another option you have is to create international lookalike audiences. International lookalike
audiences, also known as multicountry lookalike audiences, can help businesses expand into
new markets by identifying people similar to their best customers elsewhere. When you create
international lookalike audiences, it can help optimize ad spend by distributing your budget to
the countries where it will work most effectively. You can create lookalike audiences in:
● One country
● Multiple countries
● Regions
● Trade areas, such as the European Economic Area or North American Free Trade
Agreement
● Worldwide.
● A custom audience
● People who like your Facebook Page
● Meta Pixel or Facebook SDK
● Offline event set
● Product catalog
Advantage lookalike
Advantage lookalike can help improve your campaign performance, which is achieved by
delivering ads to people outside your defined lookalike audience if it’s likely to improve
performance. You can select Advantage lookalike in Ads Manager during campaign creation.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 56
Dynamic language optimization
Dynamic language optimization can support you when you advertise in multiple languages.
Instead of setting up separate campaigns for each language, you create one campaign and
provide Ads Manager with all the assets. Ads Manager then auto-optimizes your ad set budget
to deliver the right language to people who see your ads.
Sharing audiences
You can share your custom audiences and lookalike audiences with other people. The people
you share your audience with can create ad sets with that audience.
1. Go to Audiences.
2. Check the boxes next to the audiences you want to share.
3. Click the Actions dropdown menu.
4. Click Share.
5. Select or enter the ad account IDs or names of the people you want to share the
audiences with.
6. Click the Permission dropdown menu and determine if you want to provide access to
Targeting insights or Targeting only.
7. Click Share.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 57
Retargeting options
Retargeting ads enables you to reengage people who didn’t convert after their first
engagement with your website or mobile app. If you've implemented pixel or SDK to capture
events, you can use your custom audience to do this. Retargeting takes into account the
people who have previously engaged with your website or mobile app and retargets ads to
them as they engage with other websites or mobile apps.
If you've uploaded your CRM information, you can create custom audiences from offline
activity. You can use that offline event information to retarget ads to customers or exclude
customers who recently made purchases offline to find new customers.
Broad targeting
Broad targeting is when you specify location, age or gender, but don’t provide any other
audience parameters, such as interests. Broad targeting can lead you to people whom you
would otherwise be unaware of. It’s also a good approach if you're not sure who you want to
target your ads to. Learn more about the types of people recommended for you and how
people reacted to your ads with Meta Business Suite audience insights or Ads Reporting in
Ads Manager.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 58
Targeting best practices
You can use these tips to help ensure your ads are being shown to your intended audience.
Exclude strategically
While targeting ads to an audience aligned with your goals is important, choosing who to
exclude from your audience is crucial as well. If you want to grow your customer base when
using broad and interest targeting, remember to exclude:
Ensure you also exclude any audiences from ad sets that may overlap.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 59
Avoid extremely narrow targeting.
Narrow targeting is when you define an audience
with parameters, such as interests. When ad sets h
ave a very narrow audience, there may not be enough
information to find the best people to show your
ad to. Ideally, you need to be receiving at least 100
conversions per week, which a narrow audience might
not be able to provide. As you increase the amount you
want to spend on conversion optimization, you may
need to expand your audience. There need to be more
results to spend on. However, you may exhaust your
existing audiences.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 60
Some examples of special ad categories are below.
This is not a comprehensive list of examples and doesn’t constitute legal advice.
CAMPAIGN AUDIENCES 61
Optimization for
ad delivery
Optimization for ad delivery
For every campaign or ad set, you select an optimization for ad delivery. When you define your
ad delivery optimization, it helps make the most efficient use of your budget. Depending on
the conversion location you choose, you may have different optimizations available.
Below are the available optimizations for each campaign objective in Ads Manager.
These signals can include audiences, information provided from custom audiences , Meta
Pixel, Facebook SDK, offline signals, the optimization and the bid.
During the learning phase, the delivery system explores the best way to deliver an ad set.
At this time, performance is less stable and cost per action (CPA) is usually higher.
Ad sets exit the learning phase as soon as their performance stabilizes, which takes
approximately 50 optimization events.
The learning ability of an ad set can become limited as soon as the delivery system predicts
that the ad set is unlikely to exit the learning phase. Common causes for these limitations are
low bid cap, auction overlap or insufficient budget.
Once there’s enough information, your ad set can experience fewer performance fluctuations.
At this point, you can make an informed decision about your ad set. If you're satisfied with your
results, you can let it keep running or increase its budget. If you're unsatisfied, you can edit the
ad set to try to improve its performance or pause it.
The following are significant edits, which The following may or may not be significant
reset the learning phase: edits, depending on magnitude:
These constraints cause a reduction in liquidity. Low liquidity means that your ads won’t
appear to people as frequently, and it may take longer for your ad sets to exit the learning
phase and optimize their delivery.
Placement If you restrict the number of placements for your ads, there are fewer
opportunities to optimize.
Audience If you target ads to a very small audience, you restrict the ad system and limit
the optimization opportunities it can find.
Budget If your budget is too small, it may be difficult to achieve 50 conversions per
week, which is the number of conversion recommended to meaningfully
optimize your campaign.
Bid If you set a very low bid or bid cap, you're less likely to see results.
Optimization If you choose an optimization event that's very low in the conversion funnel,
such as sales, you may restrict the number of results and limit optimization
opportunities.
ADVERTISER CONTROLS 67
Adjusting placements
Placements are where people will see your ad. Your ads can be shown across Meta
technologies, including Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger.
You can adjust your placement by selecting Advantage+ placements or manual placements
during your campaign setup.
Advantage+ placements Advantage+ placements can help increase delivery and control
costs. More placements means more inventory available, which
means lower costs. Ads Manager can deliver your ads to all available
placements, finding the best results across them.
Manual placements Manual placements provide more control over what ads are
shown for specific placements. It’s not ideal to remove any of
your ad placements, as that increases your costs. If you want
more opportunities to deliver your ads, add more placements.
The more placements you opt into, the easier it is to connect to
your intended audience.
Adjusting audience
You can adjust your ad targeting strategy by narrowing or expanding your audience. You can
adjust these controls by using worldwide targeting (if your product is available outside of your
specific region), using a higher quality seed audience (for lookalike audiences) and updating the
interests you’re targeting ads for.
Narrow your ads targeting You may want to narrow your audience if you find that your ad is
delivering too broadly for your campaign goal. This might be the
case if you’re trying to reach a specific audience, for example return
customers or men over 50. However, it’s not recommended that you
narrow your audience beyond what’s important for your business, as
that limits reach opportunities.
Expand your ads targeting You may want to expand your audience if you’re experiencing
lower delivery or under delivery due to a high overlap between
your campaigns. You can also expand your audience if you have
a high percentage reach against your audience. It's important
to continue to expand your audience or engage with them in
different ways.
ADVERTISER CONTROLS 68
Adjusting budgets
For each ad set, you set a budget. Once your budget is set, your budget is spent evenly
throughout the time your ads are running, unless your ads are set for accelerated delivery.
Within the same day, the budget will be applied hourly, accordingly to the opportunities and
inventory that’s available. You can adjust your budget when:
● The campaign isn't meeting your business goals, so you no longer want to spend as
much on the campaign.
● You have additional budget to allocate to a campaign. You would increase the budget
based on your spend.
Avoid frequently changing your campaign budgets because this causes the learning phase to
restart, causing price instability.
Daily budget The average amount you want to spend on an ad set or campaign
per day. Select this option if you don’t have a set time frame, a total
budget or have a set amount that you want to spend per day.
Lifetime budget The amount you want to spend over the entire duration of your ad set
or campaign. Lifetime budgets work best for pacing a defined budget
over the lifetime of a campaign. Your budget may be increased when
lower-cost outcomes are identified, and decreased when higher cost
outcomes are discovered. This means the system will spend more
budget when lower-cost outcomes are identified. This enables
flexible pacing, optimizing your budget to an overall lifetime goal,
rather than trying to reach the same goal every day.
There’s a difference between your budget and spend. Your budget is the
amount of money you want to spend or are willing to spend for your ad to
run. Your spend is the amount you will actually pay.
ADVERTISER CONTROLS 69
Adjusting charge choices
Your charge choice is one of the advertiser controls you can adjust in your ad set creation.
Your charge choice indicates what and when you will pay for your ad and it tells us which event
types you want to fund with your budget. The choices you have depend on what objective
you've chosen.
Although it’s not generally recommended, unless there is a specific reason why you want to
be charged on a cost per link basis, you do have the option of adjusting your charge choice.
For many optimization goals, you will pay each time your ad makes an impression. Some
optimization goals also let you choose between impressions and actions, such as link clicks,
views or installs.
You may not have a charge option other than impressions if you select certain
campaign objectives or if you create a new ad account. To ensure the integrity
of new ad accounts, you must spend at least $10 USD for impressions before
you can select another charge choice.
ADVERTISER CONTROLS 70
Machine learning can enhance your campaign performance.
When you use machine learning, you can achieve what is referred to as liquidity, a state of ad
buying in which every dollar can flow to the most valuable impression for maximum efficiency.
Machine learning helps to create the highest-value experiences for both you and your
audiences. The machine learning models and algorithms predict which opportunities are
most valuable based on incoming data as ads are served, making adjustments to help ensure
campaigns meet their goals at the best possible price.
Many of the automated ad products you can enable in Ads Manager are grouped together
under the name Meta Advantage. These products include the following:
Advantage lookalike Advantage+ lookalike helps to reach a broader set of people than
those defined in your lookalike audience.
Advantage+ placements Advantage+ placements helps to maximize your budget and show
your ads to more people. Your ad set budget is allocated across
multiple placements based on where they're likely to perform best.
Advantage+ creative Advantage+ creative helps tailor your ad for the person viewing it by
automatically optimizing your ad creative.
ADVERTISER CONTROLS 71
About brand safety
Brand safety enables you to control where your ads are delivered on Facebook, Instagram and
Meta Audience Network. You can prevent your ads from appearing within or alongside content
and publishers that aren't suited to your brand.
Ads independent from Examples include feed ads and Stories ads.
publisher content
Ads appearing within Examples include in-stream video and Audience Network.
publisher content
The brand safety controls in the brand safety hub give you control over how and where your
ads appear. Not every business has the same brand safety needs or concerns.
You can use any combination of these controls if you have brand safety needs:
Placement controls When you create an ad, you can choose where you want your ad to
appear on Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger.
You can use manual placements to opt out of specific placements if
you don’t want your ads to run within those environments.
Inventory filters You can filter the available inventory of content based on what’s best
for your brand. On Facebook, filters exclude certain videos and
articles. On Audience Network, filters exclude apps.
ADVERTISER CONTROLS 72
Block lists If there are certain places where you don’t want your ads to appear,
you can upload a list of Pages, Instagram account URLs and apps and
prevent your ads from being delivered there. You can create a list in
Business Manager and select the preferred list in Ads Manager when
you create an ad set.
Publisher allow lists Publisher allow lists are lists of Audience Network, Facebook and
Instagram in-stream publishers you want your ads to appear on.
Topic exclusions for By excluding specific topics, you can choose which published
in-steam video in-stream videos you want your ads to display on. You can choose
content-level exclusions from four different topics: news, politics,
gaming and religious and spiritual content.
Content type exclusions You can use in-stream video placements and show your ads in
partner live streams or videos claimed by rights holders.
Live videos: Stop your in-stream ads from appearing in live videos.
Publishers not on our publisher list: Stop your in-stream video ads
from appearing in videos from publishers that didn't sign up for
monetization. These videos are being monetized by the rights
holders.
Content allow lists Content allow lists are sets of in-stream videos chosen by a Meta
Business Partner based on the categories or themes you want your
ads to appear alongside and your chosen level of sensitivity of
content. Meta Business Partners are third-party experts who can
help you with ads.
Delivery reports Delivery reports provide you with access to impression data at the
publisher and content levels, giving greater transparency into which
individual pieces of content your ads were embedded in so you can
properly validate the brand safety risks of placements and publishers.
ADVERTISER CONTROLS 73
Automated rules
Automated rules
When you create automated rules in Ads Manager, your campaigns, ad sets and ads are
automatically checked. You then receive updates or notifications of any changes. In addition to
these automatic checks and notifications, the necessary actions will be automatically applied.
Automated rules apply at the ad account level, so they work when anyone in your team makes
ads.
The criteria that triggers the The action your rule takes on The active campaign, ad set or
rule. the ad. ad you want the rule to affect.
● Do you increase your budget if a certain number of people click on your ad?
● Do you increase your bid if your total daily spend is below a certain amount?
Rules run continuously (usually every 30 minutes) until you turn them off. While automated
rules may reduce the time needed to manage your ads, you should still monitor the overall
performance of your ads to ensure that they meet your marketing goals.
AUTOMATED RULES 75
Creating automated rules
Follow these steps to create a rule in Ads Manager.
1. Go to Ads Manager.
2. Check the box next to the campaign, ad set or ad you'd like to apply a rule to.
3. Select the Rules dropdown menu and select Create a new rule.
4. From the pop-up window chose from:
a. Custom rule to create your own rule by choosing conditions in a form.
b. Reduce auction overlap to create a rule which prevents your ad sets
from competing against each other. Learn more about auction overlap.
c. Reduce audience fragmentation to create a rule which combines
audiences to help ad sets spend budgets more efficiently. Learn more
about audience fragmentation.
5. Click Next.
6. If you chose Custom rule, choose your Rule name and which campaigns or ad sets
you want to Apply rule to.
7. In the Action dropdown menu, select what you want your rule to do when your
campaign, ad set or ad meets the rule conditions.
8. Select Conditions that trigger your rule then click Add. To add additional conditions,
select +. You can also adjust the Time range and Schedule.
9. Confirm the type of Notification you want to receive.
10. Add Subscribers to your rule so that they can receive notifications. This is useful if
you have multiple people on your ad account.
11. Click Create.
AUTOMATED RULES 76
Conditions for automated rules
When you create a rule for your campaign, ad set or ad, you choose the criteria that triggers
your rule. These are called conditions. After you select a condition, you can enter custom
values for the condition.
For example, you may want to know when someone clicks on your ad and makes a purchase
between $5 to $10 on your website. When you create your rule, you should choose the
condition Cost per checkout initiated.
You can add more than one condition to your rule. However, your campaign, ad set or ad
must meet all conditions to trigger the rule. If you want an action to happen when multiple
conditions are met, you should create a separate rule for each condition.
You can only associate a single rule with objects on the same level. For
example, you can apply a single rule to three campaigns or to three ad sets,
Ad campaign
but you can't apply a single rule to three campaigns and three ad sets. You
structure
should create a rule for your campaigns and another rule for your ad sets
instead.
Automated rules can't run on ads about social issues, elections or politics.
Special ad
To promote election integrity, these kinds of ads must be created and
categories
edited by real people who have verified their identity.
Reach and Automated rules can't pause reach and frequency campaigns.
frequency
AUTOMATED RULES 77
Creative strategy
Creative strategy
There are several ways to help ensure effective creative for your campaigns across Meta
technologies. There are different ad formats and placements that you can use across Meta
technologies, as well as considerations to help resolve creative fatigue.
Single image
You can use a single image ad across most placements. Use text overlays on image and video
ads strategically to focus attention on an important part of your ad. Use modern, clear fonts,
don't obstruct the visuals and don't communicate too many messages at once.
Single video
When paired with the right targeting, optimization and call to action, you can prompt action
from a video. You can create video ads across Meta technologies using several ad objectives.
CREATIVE STRATEGY 79
Carousel
Carousel ads display multiple images or videos that
scroll from left to right. This format is effective for
storytelling and showcasing videos and images of your
brand, products, apps or services. Carousel ads provide
a flexible way to advertise without having to create
multiple ads.
Slideshow
You can produce an ad using static images and it
will play like a video. Slideshow ads are a lower cost
alternative to video production. You can combine
multiple images or videos, text and sound to tell a
story. Slideshow ads are shown across Facebook and
Instagram on phones, tablets and computers just like
a video. Slideshow ads use less data than videos.
You can use a slideshow version of your video ads in
markets where people have slower connections and
older devices.
Collection
Collection pairs a video or photo with four product
images. When someone clicks on this ad, it leads them
to a fullscreen, mobile-only experience showcasing
multiple products, which loads in the Facebook app.
Instant Experience
Instant Experience enables you to add a fullscreen
experience to any ad format. Instant Experience is
an interstitial landing page that loads instantly when
someone taps on an ad on Facebook or Instagram.
Instant Experiences are native, so they load faster
than an external website.
CREATIVE STRATEGY 80
Ad placements across Meta technologies
There are a variety of ad placements offered across Meta technologies, which include:
Audience
Network
Sponsored
Instant Articles Explore Interstitial
messages
Stories
Marketplace*
Search
Advantage+ placements
Choose Advantage+ placements. With Advantage+ placements, your ad is deliverable through
all placements to improve efficiencies in your ad delivery, helping you get more results for your
budget.
Advantage+ placements help you to achieve the following (see next page).
CREATIVE STRATEGY 81
Run ads in multiple placements in a single app or across all Meta
Get more results technologies to help deliver the best return on ad spend.
Manual placements
When you edit placements, you have more control over where your ad appears. If you choose
to manually select placements and don’t use Advantage+ placements, this can limit
opportunities to maximize results.
Asset customization
You can use asset customization with Advantage+ placements and manual placements. Asset
customization enables you to specify what ads are shown for specific placements, to ensure
your ad displays the way you want.
With this feature, you can provide multiple assets and the asset that is delivered to the person
is decided during delivery time. This is a solution to provide you with per-ad creative control
within the same ad set.
Without this, there is a one-to-one relation between the assets you provide during ad creation
to the assets delivered in the ad to the person.
Here are three scenarios that explore why an advertiser might want to use asset
customization.
Some objectives, formats, placements and other options aren't compatible with asset
customization. Learn more about options that aren’t compatible with asset customization.
CREATIVE STRATEGY 82
Formats and placements for campaign objectives
As previously mentioned, the campaign objective you choose should align with your overall
business goals. The campaign objective you choose also determines what placements and
ad formats you can use.
Here are the placements and ad formats available for each objective.
Placements
Audience
Objective Facebook Messenger Instagram
Network
Awareness
Traffic
Engagement
App promotion
Leads
Sales
Ad formats
Single Instant
Objective Single video Carousel Slideshow Collection
image Experience
Awareness
Traffic
Engagement
App promotion
Leads
Sales
Slideshow ads can be created when you select the single image or video format.
CREATIVE STRATEGY 83
Aspect ratios for different placements
Ensure the creative for each ad matches the viewing behavior of your audience across
placements. Placement asset customization enables you to easily and efficiently optimize
the creative format of each of your ads wherever they appear.
Use the 1:1 ratio for carousel ads, since other ratios may be cropped to 1:1.
For 4:5 ratio video ads on Feed, the video is shown with a 1:1 ratio on the
desktop version of Feed. This may cause black bars to appear on either side
of the video.
CREATIVE STRATEGY 84
Video length specifications across placements
Different placements allow different video lengths, although shorter videos are usually more
engaging on mobile. Learn more about video length specifications.
Dynamic creative
Dynamic creative finds optimized ad creative combinations by taking multiple ad
components (such as images, videos, titles, descriptions and CTAs) and automatically
generates combinations of these assets across audiences. Then creative components
that can deliver efficient results are optimized for each impression served.
Dynamic creative serves your audience the most high–performing creative combinations.
Dynamic creative is ideal for advertisers with many assets who want to learn what creative
resonates with different audiences. However, it's not a substitute for A/B tests. Dynamic
creative saves time during ad creation, helps improve ad performance and encourages
advertisers to try new creative.
CREATIVE STRATEGY 85
Creative best practices
Consider the following recommendations to help you get the most value from your creative.
Consider the focal point. Use creative images with one focal point. Images with many product
and lifestyle contexts can positively impact lower funnel attributes,
such as purchase intent. Similarly, using context type images with
one focal point can impact brand awareness positively.
Use videos. Video prompts both brand and direct response outcomes. You can
prompt action from videos, when paired with the right targeting,
optimization and call to action.
Optimize video ads for Based on how people view content on mobile, we recommend that
mobile. you:
● Create short videos (6–15 seconds).
● Capture attention quickly.
● Incorporate the brand early.
● Design for sound-off experiences.
● Add captions or subtitles.
● Build for vertical viewing.
Use a mix of assets. Combine videos, GIFs, static images and other types of assets.
Optimize creative to help Test your creative to help optimize your campaign. Optimization
improve results. can also help to avoid creative fatigue.
● Incorporate branding and key message within the first three seconds.
● Keep the ad copy short and lead with value.
● Bring the key message within the first few words.
● Include actionable headlines and calls to action.
● Customize ad copy depending on the placement.
CREATIVE STRATEGY 86
Resolve creative fatigue
Creative fatigue happens when your ad performance suffers due to overexposure.
If you suspect that your ad performance is in decline due to creative fatigue, refresh your
creative by following these steps:
Edit and adjust your current creative. Note that keeping your
1. Create
original ad active instead of pausing or turning it off may maximize
another ad.
results.
2. Expand your Increase your audience size and show your ads to new people who
audience. haven’t seen your ad yet.
CREATIVE STRATEGY 87
Campaign data sources
Data sources
Data sources are connections between your marketing data, which is typically information
about customer interactions, and Meta. By submitting marketing data from your website,
mobile app or physical store to Meta though a data source, you can help to improve your ad
performance, measurement and custom audiences. There are several campaign data sources
that are important for businesses who want to focus on performance marketing.
These data sources can help you retarget ads to people, reach new people who are similar
to your existing customers, optimize ads to reach people who are most likely to convert and
measure how effective your campaign is.
Meta Pixel
The Meta Pixel is a piece of code you place on your website to understand how people interact
with your content after seeing your ads. When you share this information with Meta, your ads
can be delivered to people more likely to take action. You can use what you learn from your
pixel to build more effective ads and audiences.
You can use the tool to ensure that the pixel is performing optimally and properly logging
actions, also referred to as events, taken on your website. Automatic events, standard events
and custom events are the three event categories available to help you monitor your website
activity.
Learn more about the specifications for Meta Pixel standard events.
With custom events, you can capture specific actions and build audiences. However, you can’t
optimize toward these events or show these numbers in reporting unless they’re mapped to a
custom conversion.
Custom conversions
You can create custom conversions for both standard and custom events. With custom
conversions, you create rules for pixel events or URLs, so you can measure more specific
customer actions. For example, you can create a rule to report on and measure all purchases
that were over $40 using pixel events and parameters.
Entice people who have Deliver your ad to people who Change the ad creative and
visited your website by offering previously added items to their message for people who
a discount on their purchase to cart with text that tells them already started the checkout
encourage them to convert. to buy the items before they process but didn’t complete the
sell out. purchase.
You can also use the custom audience from your website to create lookalike audiences. You
can use lookalike audiences to help you reach people who are similar to an audience, such as
an audience that consists of high-value customers.
When thinking about measuring pixel events and which ones to choose, select different steps
throughout the entire customer journey.
Here’s an example of pixel events you might want to log on an ecommerce website.
1 2 3
View Add to Add
content wish list to cart
5
4 6
Add
Initiate Purchase
payment
checkout
details
The Conversions API is also designed to honor privacy controls. For example, if your
customers use the off-Facebook activity tool to limit whether their off-Facebook activity
data is associated with their Facebook accounts, those choices extend to the data you sent
through the Conversions API. This marketing data helps ad personalization, optimization and
measurement across Meta technologies so that your ads are shown to people who are more
likely to find them relevant.
There are several options you can use to set up the Conversions API.
Learn how to choose the setup option that’s right for your business.
Use the Conversions API to send web, app and offline events.
Conversions API can help you to:
These events can be used for These events appear across These events obey controls for
the same types of ad similar technologies, including activities that occur off of Meta
optimization, including Meta Ads Manager and Meta technologies and using
conversion optimization and Events Manager. third-party data ads
value optimization. personalization as well as other
restrictions outlined in the
Meta Business Tools terms.
The overview tab provides a simplified summary of your offsite event data. It
Overview also shows issues and recommendations to help you improve ad performance
and measurement with your offsite events.
On the data sources tab, select the name and ID of your data source for
insights and management tools. There are five tabs you can explore for
additional information.
● Overview: View your event activity overview.
● Test events: Use test events to check that your events are set up and
Data sources
firing correctly.
● Diagnostics: Discover and troubleshoot issues related to your pixel or
the Conversions API.
● History: View pixel and the Conversions API history.
● Settings: View the details of your pixel.
Custom On the custom conversions tab , you can create, share, manage or delete your
conversions custom conversions.
Partner You can use the partner integrations tab to easily connect your partner
integrations account to Meta technologies and set up website events.
App events consist of three event categories: automatic events, standard events and custom
events.
These events are just like standard events for the pixel. Although, with the SDK you have
the option to measure app-specific actions such as events for games, ad clicks and ad
impressions.
Custom events
Facebook SDK custom events are measured actions that are defined by you to serve your
particular information collection needs. These events function the same as they do for the
pixel, except for your app instead of your website.
Deep linking
Deep linking enables you to lead people into a specified destination of your mobile app
once they click your ad, if they have your app installed. This helps make mobile app ads
more effective for meeting goals beyond installation and can provide people with a better
experience by taking them to the content that attracted their attention in the ad.
Here are some examples of how to use deep linking to prompt conversions.
A team at a clothing brand creates an ad for a pair of red shoes using deep
linking. A person who already has the clothing brand app installed taps the link.
Retail use case
Instead of having to navigate to find the shoes once they arrive at the app, this
person can immediately purchase the red shoes.
You can capture a variety of offline events back to your campaigns. Here are some examples:
Upload events.
Once you set up your events, upload offline information to the offline events tool in Business
Manager. There are four ways to connect your offline information.
2. Offline
3. Conversions API 4. Technology
1. Manual CSV upload conversions
integration partners
API integration
Upload a CSV file Integrate directly Integrate the Partner with vendors
manually with your from a customer Conversions API and and integrators. You
transactions on a system to Meta for upload your offline can have the benefits
daily basis. This real-time coverage. information from of the API, but you
requires no technical your CRM. don’t need to build it
expertise. yourself.
To troubleshoot, go to Events Manager and then to Diagnostics. Here you can identify possible
issues with your offline conversions.
To create a custom audience, go to Events Manager. Select an Offline event set and create an
audience based on the information and events.
Once you create a custom audience, you can create a lookalike audience to reach people who
are similar to customers who've already interacted with your business.
Tracking parameters
You can use parameters with events to pass additional information through the pixel or SDK.
You can specify or adjust the parameters you want for your online or app events. Set up your
event parameters to help ensure that you're collecting the information that matters most to
your business.
Here are some examples of recommended parameters for different data sources.
Recommended parameters for pixel events Recommended parameters for app events
For example, if you want to measure your return on ad spend, you can pass the value of your
event through the pixel or SDK. So if your business sells shoes, you can pass the value of the
shoes through the value parameter of the purchase pixel event.
Learn more about DFA tags and using the Meta Pixel with a third-party tracking provider to
track conversions.
For your events to be processed through Aggregated Event Measurement, set up your app
event configuration. Each app has one event configuration, and each event configuration has
up to eight conversion events. You can select eight standard events from the Facebook SDK
for iOS, App Events API or a mobile measurement partner (MMP).
Events sent through the Conversions API may also be processed in accordance
with limits set by Aggregated Event Measurement.
With people-based measurement solutions, no matter how many devices someone uses, their
activity can be measured across all devices and still be counted as one person.
You can use the following measurement tools to measure your ad performance:
Brand survey Measure the incremental effect your ads had on brand awareness,
perception or recall.
Brand Lift Measure the incremental impact your ad has on people’s perception
of your brand.
Conversion Lift Measure the incremental impact your ad has on sales outcomes.
GeoLift Use GeoLift, is an open source tool that measures lift by geography.
Marketing mix modeling Quantify the effects of marketing and non-marketing activities using
factors, such as sales or website visits.
The success metrics you recommend for a campaign depend on the business and marketing
goals for a campaign. Below are some commonly used metrics to determine campaign
success.
● Ad recall: The impact an ad had on a customer and if they remember seeing an ad during
a designated period of time.
● Clickthrough rate: The number of times a link on a web page is clicked compared to the
number of times it’s displayed.
● Cost per thousand impressions (CPM): The average cost an advertiser has paid for 1,000
impressions of their ad, or the average revenue a publisher has received for 1,000
impressions of an ad on their apps and websites.
● Reach: The number of people exposed to an ad at least once during a given period.
Off-platform reporting
Before we explore Meta Ads Reporting, let’s consider other options. There are several
third-party tools available to measure digital marketing results. It’s important to understand
how each company establishes their metrics and ways of measurement to avoid making
mistakes when you interpret your results.
For example, some third-party reports can apply different attribution windows, or
automatically apply attribution methodologies to attribute conversions. Consider that before
comparing metrics from multiple reports and partners. For results across Meta technologies,
always refer to Meta Ads Manager reporting as the official source of results.
Monitor your campaign in Ads Manager, especially to confirm that your campaign is properly
generating results, such as conversions, reach and video plays. When you monitor your results,
it can help inform current and future campaigns.
Set up the Meta Pixel or the Facebook SDK so that you can use Ads Reporting to determine:
You can choose to display metrics for all of your campaigns, ad sets or ads in a table format.
● To display columns for pre-defined reports, select from options, such as Performance,
Delivery and Engagement.
To display customized columns, click the Customize columns option and select or remove your
columns from the pop-up window.
You can segment your information with the Breakdown dropdown menu to
display information, such as the age of your audience, where they view your ads and what
devices they use.
You can use your reporting results to understand how your ads are performing mid-campaign.
If your campaign isn't meeting your business goals, adjust your advertiser controls, such as
targeting, frequency and placement to direct your campaign accordingly.
Although they're not required for measurement of some objectives, you need the Meta Pixel or
the Facebook SDK implemented to be able to measure online conversions. Implement these
data sources so you can use the information collected to see how your customers are moving
through your purchase funnel as well as across devices.
Customize the columns on View your results by time Export data as a spreadsheet or
screen to view metrics such as period, delivery type or a CSV file or display your data
performance, engagement and audience action. in one of the standard reports.
delivery. Standard reports open in Meta
Ads Reporting.
Delivery and action breakdowns, such as age, gender, region and placement
aren’t supported for offsite conversion metrics for iOS 14 and above campaigns
due to the aggregated nature of SKAdNetwork API data.
Breakdowns
You can use breakdowns to refine your report.
Example breakdown
Demographics Age, gender, age and gender, country, region, business locations
Delivery Placement, placement and device, platform, platform and device, time of day
by ad account time, time of day based on viewer time zone
Actions Canvas component, conversion device, product ID, carousel card, reactions,
video view type, video sound
You can also use breakdowns to sort your campaigns, ad sets or ads by time (detailed data by
day, week, two-week periods and months), delivery (whom your ad was delivered to) or action
(the actions your audience took as a result of your ad).
All reports have default settings that show the result of your campaign. However, your specific
business goals may require you to adjust the settings to show more relevant outcomes.
The agency expects that the additional age range will increase app installs by 10 per week.
One week into the campaign, the agency checks how many app installs were recorded as app
events and attributed to the ad.
2. Clicked Columns.
4. Selected the app installs option within the pop-up window to display the app install
metric in the table.
5. Clicked Breakdown
The agency noticed that this new age range didn’t increase app installs as expected. However,
the cost per install was significantly lower than their benchmark, so they recommend to the
client to keep the ad campaign running.
Brand Lift
Brand Lift helps you measure the impact of your advertising on attitudes toward your brand.
Brand Lift randomizes your audience into test (exposed) and control (not exposed) groups
with similar characteristics. Your ad is then shown to the test group, but isn’t shown to your
control group. Next, they receive a poll that contains questions you chose to evaluate the
impact on brand metrics. You can use Brand Lift to:
You must work with a point of contact at Meta to set up Brand Lift tests. Managed Brand Lift
tests can be single or multi-cell.
Standard ad recall Do you recall seeing an ad for [Page] online or on a mobile device in
the last two days?
● Conversion lift: Conversion lift is a metric that quantifies the number of additional
conversions that happen as a result of ads.
● Conversion Lift: Conversion Lift is a conversion optimization framework from Meta.
Conversion Lift can help you measure your return on investment by evaluating the true
business value associated with your campaign. Conversion lift studies can include single-
or multi-cell tests. These tests can help you determine the value that your ads provide your
business and compare different strategies. You can set up a conversion lift study with one or
more exposed groups. To set up a Conversion Lift test, please reach out to your point of
contact at Meta.
Single cell study A study with a single exposed group can show you
how advertising across Meta technologies may lead to additional
business outcomes. For example, if you run a conversion lift study on
your next campaign, you can determine whether or not your ads
resulted in more conversions than if you didn’t run ads.
Multi-cell study A study with multiple exposed groups can help you compare different
strategies and determine which advertising approach works best for
your audience.
After the study is complete, you can learn about metrics such as:
GeoLift
GeoLift is a measurement solution from Meta Open Source that helps advertisers calculate lift
at a geographic level. It uses aggregated data to measure the incremental impact of marketing
efforts and is resilient to changes in the marketing landscape. GeoLift is reproducible and
works in cross-media applications.
To run a GeoLift experiment, you need to install the R package. Learn more about getting
started with GeoLift.
A/B tests
To help get you the best results possible, you can
use the experiments tool to run an A/B test. A/B tests
let you compare different versions of your ads across
multiple devices, so you can see what works best
and improve future campaigns. For example, you can
choose images, text, audience, delivery optimization
or placements as your variable. Test only one variable
at a time to help you identify what’s leading to the
difference in results.
You're provided with You create the structure for a You add a new ad set or ad to
step-by-step instructions to A/B test that you can finalize turn an existing campaign into
assist you in creating an A/B later. an A/B test campaign.
test. Your ads will be ready to
run once you've completed the
workflow.
While A/B testing creates random, non overlapping groups, it does not create a corresponding
unexposed control group. Lift studies, on the other hand, create random, non-overlapping
groups and corresponding control group.
Conversions that happen outside of your conversion window may show up in your reports
depending on your attribution setting. Align your conversion windows and attribution settings
as closely as possible to understand the value your ads are bringing to your business.
Conversions that happen outside of your window will not be used to optimize how your ads are
shown. To determine which people are best to show your ads to, your ad set needs about 50
conversions per week.
You can use the information you gather from your attribution results to inform your current
and future campaigns.
Viewability partners
You can measure how many ads were viewed by your audience and for how long. When
combined with reach measurement, viewability can give you a better perspective on how
your media plan was delivered. You can measure and verify viewability metrics for Facebook
and Instagram through select viewability partners. Viewability partners are Meta Business
Partners that can verify ad viewability metrics for ads across Meta technologies, offering you
the transparency you need to trust your ad delivery information. These partnerships are part of
our continued commitment to enabling advertising measurement across Meta technologies by
independent third parties.
Use historical reporting Use historical reporting to determine how your campaign is
performing based on expectations. For example, if a campaign
resulted in 1,000 conversions a week ago but this number went
down to 100 this week, then you can use reporting to determine what
happened.
Upload your Upload your offline information if you want to capture offline
offline information conversions, such as in-store sales and phone orders. You must
capture this information to use measurement and reporting tools.
Run lift tests Use conversion lift tests or brand lift tests to understand whether a
campaign is promoting incremental conversions or brand perception
changes. Lift studies can help you to determine how much additional
business your ad spend generates.
2. A business just hired a new media agency. The team at the business wants to add
the media agency to its Business Manager. The business has been advertising on
Facebook for years. What information does the business need to provide the
agency?
b. Facebook profile ID
(continued)
a. Ad sets
b. Ad auction
c. GRP
d. TRP
4. Which of the following does the ad auction use to determine how relevant your
ad is to someone?
a. Advertiser bid
c. Cost control
d. Ad quality
(continued)
Choose 2 answers.
a. This objective enables you to select which location you want conversions to
occur.
c. This objective enables you to set up deep linking and deferred deep linking.
(continued)
b. Custom conversions
c. Custom events
d. Standard events
a. Offline conversions
b. Custom conversions
c. Attribution
(continued)
b. Facebook SDK
c. Meta Pixel
d. A CRM file
10. An advertiser wants to create a lookalike audience for people in Chile who are
part of its new loyalty program, which is hosted on its app. The program is new, so
the source audience consists of 150 people. How should the advertiser proceed?
a. The seed list is below the recommended number but it does include the
minimum number of people required to create a lookalike audience. The
advertiser should create a lookalike audience.
b. The seed list is too large. The advertiser should create a lookalike audience
using a different data source to narrow down the audience size.
c. The seed list is too small. The company should run an app install campaign
to increase the seed list first. The company needs at least 300 people in the
source list to create a lookalike audience.
d. The seed list includes the maximum number of people allowed to create a
lookalike audience. The advertiser should proceed with creating a lookalike
audience.
(continued)
(continued)
a. Standard delivery
b. Accelerated delivery
c. Dayparting
14. A client wants to advertise its upcoming product launch of three shampoos.
Each shampoo has a special natural ingredient with its own benefits.
Unfortunately, the client has an outdated and slow website, so they prefer that
people get all information from their ads. Which ad format should the client use?
a. Collection ad
b. Instant Experience
c. Single image ad
d. Offer ad
(continued)
d. Use test events to check that your events are set up correctly.
b. Figuring out how to deliver ads to the people most likely to take action
(continued)
a. A/B testing
b. Conversion Lift
c. Split testing
d. Brand Lift
18. What is the main business tool you can use to create and maintain a catalog of
items in your inventory?
a. Business Manager
b. Commerce Manager
c. Meta Foresight
(continued)
a. Content exclusions
b. Block lists
c. Inventory filters
d. Manual placements
20. A CPG advertiser wants to adapt TV creative for mobile video. Which of the
following recommendations should they follow?
Choose 2 answers.
(continued)
a. Campaign A
b. Campaign B
c. Campaign C
d. Campaign D
15 d You can see your web event data in Meta Events Page 93
Manager after you add the Meta Pixel or set up
the Conversions API. You can access insights and
management tools for your data sources from here
as well as manage your custom conversions.
17 d Brand Lift can help you measure the impact of your Page 109
advertising on people based on their reaction to
your brand.
ad format The layout of an ad that determines how the ad will look and
how many images or videos it will contain.
ad level (Meta Ads In Ads Manager, the ad level is the stage of campaign creation
Manager) where you build individual ads.
ad set A group of ads that share the same daily or lifetime budget,
schedule, bid type, bid information and targeting information.
ad set level (Meta In Ads Manager, the ad set level is the stage of campaign
Ads Manager) creation where you build groups of ads.
ads report A report created and managed in Ads Manager that indicates
the performance of a set of ads.
GLOSSARY 134
Acronym Term Definition
Advantage+ An ad type that you can use to help expand your audience
catalog ads for rather than target ads to people who’ve already visited,
broad audiences browsed or purchased items on your website.
API integration Direct integration from your customer system to Meta for
real-time coverage of your business's offline activity.
App Ads Helper A tool that provides analytics on mobile app install ad
performance. Developers can test app events and deep links
to make sure ads are running properly
app event A logged action that people take on your app that is usually
used for capturing and measuring ad performance.
attribution model The logic that determines how credit is given to touch- points
for a conversion. The attribution model logic can be based on
a rule or set of rules or a statistical model.
GLOSSARY 135
Acronym Term Definition
attribution setting The period of time during which conversions can be credited
to a particular ad.
auction An ad buying type wherein you decide that you would like to
(buying type) participate in an ad auction.
Audience Network A network of mobile app publishers who have been approved
to show ads across Meta technologies.
Audiences A default targeting option that enables you to target your ads
to people based on demographics, location, interests and
behaviors.
automatic events Applicable to the Facebook SDK and Meta Pixel data sources,
a feature that automatically accounts for events on your app
or website.
bid cap A bid strategy that lets you set a maximum bid to be used in
each auction.
bid pacing The part of pacing that adjusts your bid or which auctions to
enter based on how much budget and time you have left for
your ad set.
bid strategy In Meta Ads Manager and Ads Reporting, a setting you select
that helps determine how to spend your budget in alignment
with your campaign goals.
brand lift Also known as brand affinity, a metric that gives you insight
into people's attitudes toward your brand and brand
awareness.
broad targeting When the people whom you show your ads to is determined
for you.
GLOSSARY 136
Acronym Term Definition
Meta Business A tool that enables multiple people to access and manage
Manager Pages, ad accounts and apps using their personal Facebook
login credentials, while keeping their personal profile and
business assets separate.
buying type The method by which you buy ads across Meta technologies.
campaign level In Ads Manager, the stage of campaign creation where you
(Ads Manager) build an ad or series of ads around a single theme or set of
characteristics.
campaign objective The goal an advertiser selects that reflects what they want to
achieve with a campaign.
click A metric for the number of times an asset has been clicked.
GLOSSARY 137
Acronym Term Definition
CTR clickthrough rate The number of times something is clicked, divided by the
number of times it has been displayed.
Conversions API An API that enables developers to send website event data to
Meta directly from a server, as opposed to sending the data
via the Meta Pixel (which uses a website browser to send
data). This data is then connected to a Meta Pixel ID and can
be used for various ads purposes, from measurement to
optimization.
cost per result The cost to you each time an action is taken because of
your ad.
GLOSSARY 138
Acronym Term Definition
cost per result goal A bid strategy that enables you to provide a benchmark
cost for the results you care about. This limits your cost
per conversion while maximizing the number of conversions.
The goal amount you provide is an average amount
that’s delivered against over the campaign lifetime, while
dynamically bidding as high as needed to maximize results.
This means that the average cost per result may exceed the
set amount.
CPC cost per click The cost to you each time someone clicks your ad.
CPI cost per impression The cost to you each time someone views your ad.
CPM cost per thousand The average cost you've paid for 1,000 impressions of your ad,
impressions or the average revenue you've received for 1,000 impressions
of an ad on your apps or websites.
data source A tool, connection, piece of code or other object that collects
information, such as the Conversions API, Meta Pixel,
Facebook SDK and offline conversions. The information can
be used for measurement and analysis.
GLOSSARY 139
Acronym Term Definition
deep linking A feature that enables you to launch people from a source app
into a different target app.
deferred deep A feature, when using the app promotion objective, that
linking directs your ad to send people to the app store to install your
app. Once installed, they will be sent to the specific
destination.
dynamic creative A process where you provide multiple creative assets for ads
and it’s automatically matched to an audience.
dynamic language A feature that enables you to create multiple ad sets for each
optimization language and apply separate language targeting if you're
advertising in multiple markets or one market with various
languages.
Facebook Stories Facebook Stories and Instagram Stories enable people to post
and Instagram casual photos and videos that are stitched together into one
Stories unit of content that is available for 24 hours.
GLOSSARY 140
Acronym Term Definition
finance analyst A profile type within Business Manager that permits access
(Business to view financial details of the business, including transitions,
Manager) invoices, account spend and payment methods.
finance editor A profile type within Business Manager that permits access to
(Business edit financial details of the business, including business credit
Manager) card information, transactions, invoices, account spend and
payment methods.
Instant Articles A feature that provides rich format, interactive articles that
you can create and publish on Facebook.
Instant Experience An interstitial landing page that loads instantly when someone
taps on an ad on Facebook or Instagram. These ads are only
supported on mobile placements and devices.
in–stream videos A feature that enables you to place ads before, during or after
video content.
GLOSSARY 141
Acronym Term Definition
LTV lifetime value The measure of the total value (such as total purchases)
attributed to a group of customers using a third-party
developer app.
media mix The methods and channels you use to meet your advertising
goals.
manual placements An option in Ads Manager that lets you choose the specific
locations across Meta technologies, where you want your ads
to appear.
Meta Advertising The set of guidelines that you have to follow for your ad to be
Standards approved for publication across Meta technologies.
Meta Ads Manager An interface where you can view, make changes and access
performance reports for all your campaigns, ad sets and ads.
Meta Business A tool that enables multiple people to access and manage
Manager Pages, ad accounts and apps using their personal Facebook
login credentials, while keeping their personal profile and
business assets separate.
GLOSSARY 142
Acronym Term Definition
Meta Events Accessible from Ads Manager, a tool that you can use to set up
Manager and manage data sources to manage and optimize your ads
for specific events.
Meta Pixel Helper A troubleshooting tool that helps you to determine if your
Meta Pixel is working correctly.
multi-cell A study with multiple test groups, where group A is shown one
ad, group B is shown a different ad and group C is shown no ad
(also known as ABC testing).
offline conversions Enables you to measure how much your ads across Meta
technologies lead to offline outcomes, such as purchases in
your stores, phone orders and bookings.
offline event set A collection of data files, also known as a dataset, that
contains data about offline events for a business. An
advertiser creates an offline event set in the offline event
manager (in Meta Ads Manager) and then can import data into
that offline event set.
partner (Business Another business you will be working with in your Business
Manager) Manager, such as agencies or clients. This enables you to share
your assets with them and enables them to share assets with
you.
GLOSSARY 143
Acronym Term Definition
rule-based A tool that enables you to select the rule that determines how
attribution model conversions should be attributed to different touchpoints in
the customer's conversion path.
single-cell A study with one test group, where group A is shown the ad
but group B isn't shown the ad.
standard delivery An ad delivery option that helps you to spend your budget
evenly over the course of your campaigns.
GLOSSARY 144
Acronym Term Definition
success metrics The measurements you use to determine the success of your
campaign.
TRP target rating point An ad buying type that enables you to plan and buy video
(buying type) campaigns using Nielsen-verified target rating points (TRPs)
on Facebook and Instagram.
Test and Learn A tool in Ads Manager that helps you run tests on your ads
and learn about their results.
test group The "exposed" group of people in a study for which factors
of the test are influenced.
GLOSSARY 145