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Writer's pictureSTAK Marketing

Understanding Facebook Ad Structure

Updated: May 26, 2022

Understanding the difference between campaigns, ad sets, and ads on Facebook.


facebook ad structure


We like to tackle Facebook ads in phases. The first phase is setting up your Facebook Business and Ads Manager platforms. The second phase is actually setting up your ad campaign! But, if you thought you got past the confusing part of Facebook ads in the setup phase, don’t be fooled. Setting up your actual ad campaign can be just as confusing.


Facebook ads consist of three different sections: Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads. Today we’re defining what each of these sections is for and how they all work together.


LEVEL 1: FACEBOOK CAMPAIGNS


The campaign section is where you define the goal of your ad. Facebook will ask you to pick an objective for your ad campaign broken out into 3 categories: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.


To read about the different types of campaign objects, we took a deep dive in a previous post and you can read it HERE.


Under a campaign, you can have many ad sets and ads. But the hub to your whole ad goal is the campaign.


LEVEL 2: FACEBOOK AD SETS


Once you’ve set your campaign objectives, you can set your ad sets. At the ad set level, you create important things: your target audience and your budget.


One reason Facebook ads are fantastic is that there are many demographic options you can select in choosing your target audience including age, gender, location, interests, and language. You can also create target audiences based on your current website visitors or a lookalike audience that looks like your current website visitors.


You can create ad sets for as little as $5 a day, so Facebook ads can be a really affordable way to get your name out there. A big question we get asked is “how much should I spend?” That question is different for everyone, but remember, Facebook ads are very competitive meaning to get the most out of your objective, you need to have a decent budget to make things worth it. You also have to be able to take time with Facebook ads. So unless you’re willing to make a long-term investment, Facebook ads may not be for you.


You can create different ad sets with different target audiences and different budgets. Creating different ad sets is great for retargeting and if you’re unsure of who your target audience is (to name a few).


LEVEL 3: FACEBOOK ADS


Here’s the fun part! At the ad level, you can make your creatives. Facebook allows you to create different ads for each of your ad sets. So at the end of a full campaign, your structure can look very much like a pyramid.


Facebook allows you to create different types of ads from image and carousel ads to video and collections ads and everything in between.


It’s important when you’re creating your ad creatives that the visuals are high quality, there are limited body parts, captions are direct and enticing, and the creatives are responsive to different platform placements.


Words

Make sure responsive on different platforms and with different visuals (stories, posts, etc).


There are so many facets to putting together a successful ad campaign on Facebook. It’s important that you are doing it correctly to get the most out of your investment. That’s why hiring a professional to set up, create and run your ads is so important.


Keep STAKing,


Michelle Johnson

Owner & Founder, STAK Marketing



Michelle Johnson is the owner, founder and Chief Marketing Guru at STAK Marketing. Our passion at STAK Marketing is to create beautiful STAKs of marketing strategies that help small and mid-sized businesses grow and reach their goals. STAK Marketing's expertise ranges from SEO to branding, e-mail marketing to website design, PR to advertising and much more - making STAK Marketing a one-stop-shop for all your small business marketing needs.

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