Published May 2026
Facebook and Instagram ads reach over 3 billion people monthly and remain one of the highest ROI advertising channels for businesses of all sizes. But the platform has become significantly more complex over the past few years — new campaign structures, AI-driven automation, and constant policy changes mean that guides written even 12 months ago are already outdated. This is the complete, current guide to running Facebook ads from scratch in 2026.
What You Need Before You Start?
Before creating a single ad, you need the right account structure in place. Skipping this step is the most common reason new advertisers run into problems later.
Facebook Business Page:
Your ads run from a Facebook Business Page — not a personal profile. If you do not have one, go to facebook.com/pages/create and set one up. Add your business name, category, profile photo, cover image, and contact details before running ads. People visit your Page after seeing your ads and a sparse or incomplete Page undermines credibility.
Meta Business Manager:
Go to business.facebook.com and create a Business Manager account. This is the master account that houses everything — your Pages, Ad Accounts, Pixels, and team members. Running ads without Business Manager means losing access to your data if you ever need to give someone else access or change your personal Facebook account.
Ad Account:
Inside Business Manager, create an Ad Account and add a payment method. Use a business card or a card dedicated to advertising — do not mix personal and business spend.
Meta Pixel
The Pixel is a small piece of code you install on your website that tracks what visitors do after clicking your ad. Without it you cannot measure conversions, optimise for results, or build retargeting audiences. Install it before spending a single dollar. In Business Manager go to Events Manager → Add New Data Source → Meta Pixel → follow the installation instructions for your website platform.
Instagram Account connected:
If you want your ads to appear on Instagram as well as Facebook (which you almost always do), connect your Instagram account in Business Manager under Accounts → Instagram Accounts.
Step 1: Open Meta Ads Manager
Go to business.facebook.com/adsmanager or navigate to Ads Manager from your Business Manager dashboard. This is where all campaigns are built, managed, and monitored.
Click the green + Create button to start a new campaign.
Step 2: Choose Your Campaign Objective
The campaign objective is the most important decision you make. It tells Meta what result you want and the algorithm uses this to decide who to show your ads to.
Awareness shows your ad to as many people as possible in your target audience. Use for: brand building, launching in a new market, reaching people who do not know you yet. Not suitable for generating leads or sales directly.
Traffic sends people to a URL. Use for: driving visitors to a blog post, landing page, or product page. The algorithm optimises for clicks, not conversions. Common mistake: using Traffic when you actually want leads or sales.
Engagement gets more likes, comments, shares, and followers. Use for: growing social proof, boosting content visibility, growing your Page followers. Not for direct response.
Leads collects contact information through Facebook’s native lead forms without sending people to your website. Use for: generating enquiries for services, collecting email subscribers, booking consultations. One of the most efficient objectives for service businesses.
App Promotion drives app installs. Use for: mobile app businesses only.
Sales optimises for purchases or conversions on your website. Requires the Pixel to be properly installed and tracking purchase events. Use for: ecommerce, online bookings, or any action that happens on your website. The highest-intent objective but requires at least 50 conversion events per week to work effectively.
Which objective should you choose?
For most beginners the best starting objective is Leads if you are a service business, or Sales if you are an ecommerce business with the Pixel properly tracking purchases. Traffic is rarely the right choice for business goals — it drives clicks but not necessarily people who take action.
Step 3: Name Your Campaign and Configure Campaign Settings
Give your campaign a clear name that describes what it is — for example “May 2026 — Leads — Personal Injury — London.” Clear naming becomes essential when you have multiple campaigns running simultaneously.
Advantage Campaign Budget (ACB). Meta will offer to turn on Advantage Campaign Budget which automatically distributes your budget across ad sets. Leave this off when starting out — it reduces your control and makes it harder to identify which specific audience is working. Turn it on later once you have data.
Special Ad Categories. If your business relates to credit, employment, housing, or social issues, you must select the relevant Special Ad Category here. This applies to lawyers, recruiters, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, and similar businesses. Selecting the wrong category (or failing to select one when required) can get your ads rejected or your account flagged.
Step 4: Create Your Ad Set — Audience and Placements
The Ad Set is where you define who sees your ad and where. Click into the Ad Set level after naming your campaign.
Budget. Set your daily budget at the Ad Set level. Start with a minimum of $10 to $20 per day — lower budgets do not give Meta’s algorithm enough data to optimise effectively. You can always increase it later.
Schedule. Run ads continuously unless you have a specific reason to run on certain days. Restricting days reduces your data collection speed.
Audience targeting:
Location set the geographic area where your ads will show. For local businesses, use a radius around your location. For online businesses or national campaigns, select countries or regions. Be specific — you pay for every impression and wasted reach on people who cannot buy from you is wasted spend.
Age set the age range most likely to be your customer. Do not default to 18-65 without thinking about it — narrowing to your realistic customer age range improves efficiency.
Gender only restrict by gender if your product or service is genuinely gender-specific.
Detailed Targeting interests, behaviours, and demographics. Type relevant interests into the search bar and add ones that match your ideal customer. For most campaigns, 2 to 5 well-chosen interests work better than 20 loosely related ones.
Advantage+ Audience. Meta now pushes Advantage+ Audience which lets the algorithm choose your targeting automatically. This can work well for established accounts with lots of data but for new accounts starting fresh, manually defining your audience gives you more control and clearer learning.
Placements:
Meta defaults to Advantage+ Placements which shows your ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network automatically. For beginners this is fine — leave it on. As you get more data you can review which placements perform best and manually remove low-performing ones.
Step 5: Create Your Ad
Click into the Ad level. This is where you choose your format and upload your creative.
Choose your ad format:
Single Image one static image. Simple, fast to create, works well for offers and direct response.
Single Video one video. Highest performing format for most businesses when done well. Ideal length is 15 to 60 seconds for most objectives.
Carousel multiple images or videos the user can swipe through. Great for showing multiple products, multiple features, or telling a story across slides.
Collection a cover image or video with product thumbnails below. Best for ecommerce with a product catalogue.
Identity. Select your Facebook Page and connected Instagram account. Your ad will run from these identities.
Ad creative:
Upload your image or video. Facebook’s recommended image size is 1080x1080px for square or 1080x1350px for portrait. Videos should be in MP4 or MOV format.
Primary text the main body of copy above the image. Keep your first line compelling — it is what people read before deciding whether to stop scrolling. State your most important benefit or ask a question that resonates with your target audience. 125 characters show before the “See more” cut-off on mobile.
Headline the bold text below the image. 27 characters show on most placements before being cut off. Make it specific and benefit-focused.
Description additional text that appears below the headline on some placements. Use it to add a secondary benefit or reassurance.
Call to action button choose the CTA that matches your objective. “Learn More” for awareness and traffic. “Get Quote” or “Contact Us” for leads. “Shop Now” for ecommerce. “Book Now” for appointments.
Destination URL the webpage people land on after clicking your ad. This should be a dedicated landing page that directly matches the message in your ad — not your homepage.
Step 6: Review and Publish
Before clicking Publish, check:
- Campaign objective matches your goal
- Daily budget is set correctly
- Geographic targeting covers your intended area
- Audience size shown in the right panel is between 100,000 and 1,000,000 for most campaigns (too small means limited delivery, too large means insufficient targeting)
- Creative looks correct in the ad preview — check both mobile and desktop previews
- Destination URL loads correctly and matches the ad message
- Pixel is firing correctly (check Events Manager)
Click Publish. Meta reviews new ads before they start running — this typically takes a few minutes to a few hours. You will receive a notification when your ad is approved and active.
Step 7: Monitor and Optimise
Publishing your ads is the beginning, not the end. Most of the work in Facebook advertising happens after the ads are live.
Check Ads Manager daily for the first week. Look at: delivery status (are ads running or in learning phase?), impressions and reach (are ads being shown?), cost per result (are you getting leads or conversions at an acceptable cost?).
The learning phase. When a new ad set launches, Meta enters a learning phase where it is figuring out who to show your ads to. During this phase, performance is often unstable. The learning phase ends after your ad set achieves 50 optimisation events (leads, purchases, or whatever your objective is). Do not make significant changes during the learning phase — it resets the learning and extends the unstable period.
What to look at after the learning phase?
Cost per result is your cost per lead or purchase within an acceptable range for your business? If not, test new creative or audiences.
Frequency if the same people are seeing your ad more than 3 times on average, your audience is too small or you have been running too long. Refresh creative or expand your audience.
Click-through rate (CTR) if your CTR is below 1%, your creative or copy is not compelling enough to make people stop scrolling. Test new creative.
Landing page conversion rate if your CTR is good but your cost per lead is high, the problem is your landing page, not your ad. Improve the page or try using Facebook’s native lead forms instead.
Weekly optimisation routine:
Review performance every week. Pause ad sets where cost per result is consistently above your target. Increase budget by 20% on ad sets performing below your target cost. Every 3 to 4 weeks, introduce new creative variations to prevent audience fatigue.
Common Beginner Mistakes to Avoid:
Using Traffic as the objective when you want leads or sales. Traffic drives clicks, not conversions. Always use Leads or Sales objectives for direct response goals.
Setting the budget too low. Under $10 per day per ad set does not give Meta enough data to optimise. You will end up with inconsistent delivery and unreliable results.
Making changes too frequently. Every significant change to an active ad set resets the learning phase. Make changes deliberately and give each version at least 7 days of data before evaluating.
Not installing the Pixel before running ads. Without the Pixel you cannot track conversions, build retargeting audiences, or use Sales objective effectively. Always install the Pixel first.
Sending ad traffic to the homepage. A visitor who clicks a specific ad about a specific offer and lands on a generic homepage has to do extra work to find what they were promised. Always match the ad message to a specific landing page.
Judging performance too early. New campaigns need time to exit the learning phase and gather data. Do not make decisions based on less than 7 days of data or fewer than 1,000 impressions.
If you want professional help setting up and managing your Facebook ad campaigns, take a look at what we do at Mbial Business.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):
How much does it cost to run Facebook ads?
You can run Facebook ads with as little as $1 per day but $10 to $20 per day per ad set is the realistic minimum to get meaningful data. Most small businesses spend $300 to $1,500 per month on Facebook ad budgets. This is separate from any management fees if you hire someone to run the ads for you.
How long does it take to see results from Facebook ads?
Most campaigns start delivering within a few hours of being approved. However, meaningful results — enough data to evaluate performance — typically take 7 to 14 days. The learning phase requires around 50 optimisation events before the algorithm stabilises, which can take 1 to 4 weeks depending on your budget and conversion rate.
Do I need a website to run Facebook ads?
No. You can run Lead Generation ads that collect contact information through Facebook’s native forms without sending anyone to a website. However, having a website with a proper landing page generally produces higher quality leads and gives you more control over the conversion process.
What is the Facebook Pixel and do I need it?
The Meta Pixel is a piece of code you install on your website that tracks visitor actions — page views, form submissions, purchases. You need it to use the Sales campaign objective, build retargeting audiences from website visitors, and measure which ads are generating actual conversions. Install it before you start running ads.
Why are my Facebook ads not spending?
Common reasons include: your audience is too narrow and there are not enough people to show the ad to, your bid is too low to compete in the auction, your ad is still in review, your ad was rejected for a policy violation, or there is a payment issue on your account. Check your ad status in Ads Manager and your account quality at business.facebook.com/accountquality.
How do I know if my Facebook ads are working?
Define your target cost per result before you start. If you want leads at under $30 each, judge performance against that benchmark — not impressions or clicks. Track cost per lead or cost per purchase in Ads Manager. Connect your ad data to actual business outcomes — how many of those leads became customers?
Can I run Facebook ads without a Facebook Page?
No. All Facebook and Instagram ads must be associated with a Facebook Business Page. You cannot run ads from a personal profile.
