How to Launch Instagram and Facebook Ads in Meta Ads Manager

The short answer

Launching ads on Meta has two stages: setting up the infrastructure and building the campaign in Ads Manager.

1. Business portfolio: Facebook Page, Instagram account, ad account, payment method.
2. Pixel and events on your website — if the goal involves the site.
3. Campaign: objective.
4. Ad set: conversion location, audience, placements, budget and schedule.
5. Ad: creative, copy, link, button.
6. Ad review and the learning phase.

The Boost button under an Instagram post is faster but offers far fewer settings. For leads and sales, use Ads Manager.

Business portfolio

A business portfolio (formerly Business Manager) is the hub for your company's assets in Meta Business Suite.

• Add your Facebook Page and connect your Instagram professional account.
• Create an ad account. Currency and time zone are hard to change later, so choose carefully.
• Add a payment method.
• Give employees and agencies access through roles rather than a shared login. Turn on two-factor authentication — it protects against hacks and restrictions.

Pixel and events

If your ads lead to a website, Meta cannot optimize delivery without data about what people do there.

• Create a pixel (dataset) in Events Manager and install it on the site.
• Set up standard events: ViewContent, AddToCart, InitiateCheckout, Purchase, Lead, CompleteRegistration, Contact.
• Connect the Conversions API to send events from your server. It complements the pixel when browsers block scripts.
• Verify your domain in the business portfolio settings.

Example of a lead event fired after a successful form submission:

fbq('track', 'Lead', { content_name: 'contact_form' });

Campaign objective

Choose the objective by the action your business actually needs. The system optimizes exactly what you ask for: a Traffic objective brings people who click, not people who buy.

Ad set

• Conversion location: website, messaging apps, instant form, calls.
• Audience. Set location, age and interests manually, or turn on Advantage+ audience, where your inputs become suggestions. For retargeting, use custom audiences: website visitors, people who engaged with your profile, customer lists.
• Placements. Advantage+ placements spread delivery across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network. Manual placements make sense if your creatives are not ready for every format.
• Budget. A campaign-level budget lets the system shift money between ad sets; an ad set budget gives you more manual control. A daily budget suits always-on ads, a lifetime budget suits promotions with an end date.

Creatives

• Prepare formats for each placement: 1:1 or 4:5 for feeds, 9:16 for Stories and Reels.
• Keep key elements near the centre of vertical frames: the edges are covered by interface elements.
• The first seconds of a video should explain what it is about and work without sound.
• Add UTM parameters to your link so results show up in your analytics.
• Run several creative variants in one ad set and let the system find the best ones.

Ad review: common rejection reasons

• Personal attributes: "Are you overweight?" Frame the message around the product, not assumptions about the person.
• Before-and-after images and unrealistic promises in health and appearance.
• Special ad categories: credit and financial services, employment, housing, social issues and politics must be declared.
• Restricted goods: alcohol, supplements, gambling and similar products follow separate rules and may need authorization.
• Landing page mismatch: broken link, a different offer, a site that does not load.
• Third-party trademarks and altered Instagram or Facebook logos.

Learning phase

After launch an ad set goes through a learning phase. According to Meta's guidance, it needs around 50 optimization events within a week to exit. Significant edits — budget, audience, creative — restart learning, so batch your changes.