How to publish ads on Meta, step by step

What you need before you start

• A Facebook Page. Every ad runs from a Page. Add an Instagram account as well if you want the ad to appear from your Instagram profile.
• An ad account with a payment method. You set this up in Meta Business Suite. One business can have several ad accounts.
• Tracking, if you want sales or leads. Install the Meta Pixel on your site, and the Conversions API if you can. Without them Meta cannot tell which ads led to a purchase, and cannot optimise for one.
• The creative. An image or video, the primary text, a headline, and the page you are sending people to.

Publishing an ad in Meta Ads Manager

A Meta campaign has three levels. The campaign holds the objective. The ad set holds the budget, audience, placements and schedule. The ad is what people see. You fill them in from the top down.

1. 01

   Create a campaign and choose an objective

   In Ads Manager, select Create. Choose the objective that matches what you want people to do: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App promotion or Sales. Meta shows the ad to people likely to take that action, so choose Sales if you want sales, not Traffic because it looks cheaper.
2. 02

   Set the budget

   Choose a daily budget or a lifetime budget. You can set it on the campaign and let Meta share it between ad sets, or set it on each ad set yourself. Start with an amount you are comfortable spending for at least a week while Meta learns.
3. 03

   Define the audience and placements

   In the ad set, choose the location, age range and any other audience details, and pick where the conversion happens (your website, an app, a lead form, a message). Leaving placements on Meta's automatic setting lets one ad run across feeds, Stories and Reels.
4. 04

   Build the ad

   Choose the Page and Instagram account the ad runs from, then the format: a single image or video, a carousel, or a collection. Upload the media, write the primary text and headline, choose a call-to-action button, and enter the destination URL.
5. 05

   Preview every placement

   Use the preview panel to check the ad in feed, Stories and Reels. This is where you catch a headline that is cut off or an image cropped in the wrong place.
6. 06

   Publish

   Select Publish. The ad goes to review and shows as In review until Meta approves it, then as Active.

Image sizes and text lengths

Upload more than one ratio so each placement gets an image made for it. Meta recommends about 125 characters of primary text on Instagram and 50 to 150 on Facebook feed, with headlines of 27 characters on Facebook and up to 40 on Instagram. The ad sizes and specs guide has every placement, the safe zones for Stories and Reels, and file limits.

Review, rejection and the learning phase

Most ads are reviewed within 24 hours. Editing an ad after it is approved sends it back through review, so finish the creative before you publish.

Common reasons an ad is rejected

• Copy that points at a personal attribute, such as a health condition or financial situation ("Are you struggling with debt?").
• Claims Meta treats as misleading, including before-and-after promises and unrealistic results.
• A landing page that does not match the ad, does not load, or hides who the business is.
• Ads about credit, employment, housing or politics that were not declared as a special ad category.

If an ad is rejected, Ads Manager shows the policy it failed. Fix the ad and resubmit, or request another review if you think the decision was a mistake.

The learning phase

A new ad set starts in a learning phase while Meta works out who responds to it. Results are less stable and often more expensive during this time. Meta's guidance is that an ad set settles after roughly 50 of its optimisation events in a week. Large edits restart learning, so avoid changing budget, audience and creative every day.

Publish more than one ad

The creative is the part of a campaign you control most and the part that varies most in results. Put several different ads in an ad set, built around different hooks or layouts, and let Meta show you which one people respond to. Small edits to one ad teach you less than three different ideas.