Meta Ads: Facebook and Instagram campaigns run with written rules

Search ads and Meta ads do different jobs

On Google, people tell you what they want by typing it. On Facebook and Instagram, nobody is searching: the ad interrupts a feed, so it must earn attention in the first seconds and make the offer obvious. That is why Meta work is as much about creatives and offers as about settings, and why we often pair it with Google Ads rather than choose one.

How we run a campaign

1. Goal and measure. We agree what counts (purchase, lead, booking) and check that it is recorded by the pixel and the Conversions API before spending.
2. Rule first. We write the stop/scale rule, for example "three sales or more under the target cost by day 14: increase; zero or one: stop".
3. Build paused. Campaign, ad sets and ads are created paused, with a daily cap. You review the ads in their real placements.
4. Launch on your OK. Nothing runs before your explicit yes.
5. Review. Meta reviews every ad before it runs; we fix any rejection and resubmit.
6. Test and read. We run planned A/B tests, then read results at day 14 against the rule and apply it.

Meta's rules we work within

Meta reviews ads against its Advertising Standards before they run, mostly with automated systems, and looks at images, video, text, targeting, the destination and special categories. Meta says most ads are reviewed within 24 hours and that ads can be reviewed again after they are live. We plan launch dates with that delay in mind.

Some ads must be declared in a Special Ad Category: housing, employment, financial products and services, and social issues, elections or politics. For housing, employment and financial products, Meta limits audience options for advertisers in or reaching the US, Canada and certain European countries — age, gender, postcode, exclusions and lookalike audiences among them. Meta adds that advertisers cannot create ads about social issues, elections or politics in the EU. If your business is concerned (estate agents, recruiters, brokers, lenders), we declare the category and design the campaign within those limits rather than risk rejection.

Testing properly

Meta's A/B testing compares two versions of a strategy by changing one variable — image, text, audience or placement — and shows each version to a separate part of the audience so that nobody sees both. Meta explicitly advises against testing informally by turning ad sets on and off by hand, which it says can lead to unreliable results and overlapping audiences, and recommends the same budget for both versions. We follow that: one hypothesis, one variable, equal budgets, Meta's testing tool.

Pixel plus Conversions API

The Meta pixel records events in the visitor's browser; the Conversions API sends events from your server. Meta notes that server data is less affected by browser loading errors, connectivity issues and ad blockers. When both send the same purchase, Meta deduplicates them if the pixel's event ID matches the server's event_id and the event names match, within 48 hours of the first event. We set up both with matching IDs so each sale counts once. Details in our Conversions API guide.

What stays yours, and what we need

• Your Business Manager, ad account, pixel and data stay in your name; we work with partner access
• Ad spend is paid by you directly to Meta
• We need your Facebook Page and Instagram account access, your offer and its true conditions, and your target cost per sale or lead
• We ask for a yes before each launch and a few minutes at day 14