Understanding the structure of Facebook Ads (Facebook campaign, ad set and ad)

If you create Facebook ads, you have definitely come across campaign, ad set and ad. Knowing how they work together will help your ads run the way you want, and reach the right people. 

I'm going to give a brief and clear explanation to help you understand them. Keep reading.

Your Facebook ad needs 3 parts to run: a campaign, ad set and ad. All these parts make up what's called the campaign structure.

1. What is a Facebook CAMPAIGN?

This is where you start from. Think of the campaign as the foundation. You set the advertising objective at the campaign level. Your advertising objective defines what you want your ad to achieve.

There are 11 advertising objectives:

Brand awareness. Reach. Traffic. App installs. Engagement. Video views. Lead generation. Messages. Conversions. Catalog sales. Store visits 

For example, if you promote your Page, your ad will be optimized to get more likes on your business's Facebook Page. If you want conversions for a product, you ad will be optimised to get more buyers.

What to do here:

i. Choose an objective.

ii. Start creating your ad set.

2. What is an AD SET?

At the ad set level, you define your targeting strategy by setting up parameters like audience (location, gender, age etc), budget (how much you want to spend ), bidding (auto, manual), placement (where you want to show your ad – Facebook, Instagram, Messenger etc) and schedule (how long you want your ads to run).

A campaign can include multiple ad sets, each with different targeting, scheduling and budgeting options selected.

What to do here:

i. Build your Audience.

ii. Set your budget and schedule.

ii. Optional: set your bid.

iv. Start creating your ad.

3. What's an AD?

Finally, your ads are creative visuals, like pictures or videos, that drive the audience to what you are trying to promote. Your ad is what your audience will see. 

At the ad level, you'll choose your ads creative, which may include things like images, videos, text and a call-to-action button. 

You can have multiple ads within a single ad set.

What to do here:

1. Upload an image, multiple images or a video.

2. Fill in the details of your ad such as the text and header you want your ad to have.

Just to add:

You can have multiple campaigns to test different objectives and see which one brings best results with your audience. 

You can also have multiple adsets to test different audiences to see which one responds better to your message or offer. 

And you can test multiple ads within each adset to see which copy, headline, call to action, button or creative (image, video, carousel etc) works best for you.

And that's how Facebook advertising campaigns are structured. I hope this helped you. Thank you for reading.

You can reach me for any questions you have concerning Facebook ads. Please share your comments as well, I'm eager to hear from you.