Meta Ads overview
📖 4 min readUpdated 2026-04-19
Meta Ads serves Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network from one system. It's the dominant paid channel for DTC, consumer products, local services, and many B2B plays. Post-iOS 14 it's harder but not dead.
The hierarchy
- Account: your top-level ad account
- Campaign: defines the objective (traffic, conversions, etc.)
- Ad Set: audience, placement, budget, schedule
- Ad: the creative
Key objectives
- Sales: optimizing for purchases - most DTC uses this
- Leads: for form submits, appointments
- Awareness: reach-based; rarely worth it for direct response
- Traffic: sends clicks, cheaper CPMs but lower conversion
- Engagement: likes/comments - mostly for social proof building
What changed post-iOS 14
- Pixel-based attribution lost 20-40% accuracy
- Lookalike audiences work but are less precise
- Advertisers moved to broad targeting with great creative
- Aggregated Event Measurement limits conversion events (8 per domain)
- CAPI (Conversions API) is mandatory for serious advertisers
Where to start
- Set up conversion tracking (Pixel + CAPI)
- One campaign, one ad set, 3-5 creatives
- Broad targeting (US, your age range)
- $50-100/day for 7-14 days
- Optimize for purchase or lead conversion event
- Iterate creative weekly
Don't start with
- 10 campaigns at once
- Interest-based narrow targeting
- Image-only static creative
- Conversion events you haven't implemented yet