Campaign Structure and Campaign Objectives
Every Meta campaign uses the same three-level structure. Once you know what gets decided at each level, Ads Manager is far easier to use and most of the settings you'll meet later make sense.
On This Page
The Three Levels
The campaign level sets the objective and, if you want one, a campaign budget. The ad set level sets the audience, placements, schedule, budget (when you haven't set one at the campaign level), optimization goal and bid strategy. The ad level holds the creative: images, video, copy, links and calls to action. One campaign can hold several ad sets, and each ad set can hold several ads.
How an account is structured
One campaign usually holds two or three ad sets, and each of those holds several ads.
Objectives
Meta simplified its objectives in 2022 to six outcome-based choices: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App promotion and Sales. Older objectives such as Conversions, Catalog sales and Messages got folded into these. The objective you pick decides which optimization goals and conversion locations you'll see in the ad set.
Advantage+ Campaign Types
Advantage+ shopping campaigns, Advantage+ app campaigns and Advantage+ leads campaigns automate much of the setup, including audience and placement decisions, in exchange for fewer manual controls. They're built for advertisers with strong conversion data and a steady supply of creative.
Budgets
Budgets can be daily or lifetime. Advantage campaign budget, formerly campaign budget optimization, sets one budget at the campaign level and spreads it across ad sets automatically. Ad set budgets give you manual control over how much each audience gets.
Bid Strategies
Highest volume spends your budget to get as many results as it can. Cost per result goal aims for an average cost you set. Bid cap limits what Meta bids in any single auction. ROAS goal, available for purchase campaigns with value data, targets a return on ad spend. Most new accounts start with highest volume and add cost controls once results settle down.
Scheduling
Campaigns can run continuously or between a start and end date. Lifetime budgets also let you schedule ads by day and hour.
Putting This to Work
Ask to see how your campaigns are organized. A clean structure, with one objective per campaign and a few focused ad sets, is usually a sign the account is being managed carefully.
In Practice
A medspa runs one Sales campaign with two ad sets, one for retargeting website visitors and one for new audiences, each with four ads. The structure is simple enough to read at a glance and makes it obvious where the budget is going.
Big edits to audiences, budgets or creative can restart the learning phase. The optimization guides cover how to avoid resets you don't need.
Key Terms
- Objective
- The business outcome a campaign is built to achieve.
- Ad set
- The level that controls audience, placements, budget and optimization.
- Advantage campaign budget
- Automatic budget distribution across ad sets, formerly campaign budget optimization.
- Cost per result goal
- A bid strategy that targets an average cost per result.
Key Facts
- The 2022 objective change, sometimes called ODAX, reduced eleven objectives to six.
- You can't change an objective after launch. That takes a new campaign.
Sources
- Ads Guide, Meta for Business www.facebook.com
- Meta Business Help Center www.facebook.com
- Meta Blueprint courses www.facebook.com
- Meta for Business, news and announcements www.facebook.com
- Advantage+ shopping campaigns about.fb.com
Have Our Team Handle This
Our team runs this every day. Request a free proposal and we will plan it for your business, or see the Meta Ads service.