- Meta: a campaign, one ad set, one creative and one ad in your Meta ad account.
- Google Ads: a daily budget, one Display campaign, one ad group and one responsive display ad in your Google Ads account.
You need permission to edit campaigns to create one, and permission to send campaigns to publish it. Ad campaigns need the Pro or Enterprise plan and a connected ad account. See Connect your ad accounts.
Start a campaign
Go to Advertising → Ad campaigns and click New campaign. The editor has five steps: Objective, Budget & schedule, Audience, Creative and Review. Click Next to move on. Each step is checked before you can leave it.1
Objective
- Platform: Meta or Google Ads. A platform you haven’t connected shows “Not connected.” You can’t change the platform after the campaign has been saved.
- Campaign name: for example “Spring sale — retargeting”.
- Objective: pick one (see the table below).
2
Budget & schedule
- Budget type: Daily budget or Lifetime budget. Google Ads campaigns always use a daily budget.
- Budget: in your ad account’s currency. The platforms need about 1.00 a day at least.
- Start: leave it empty to start when you resume the campaign.
- End: optional for a daily budget, and required for a lifetime budget. The end must be after the start.
3
Audience
- Countries: at least one, up to 25.
- Age & gender: Minimum age and Maximum age (13 to 65; the default is 18 to 65), and Gender (All, Men or Women).
- Include audiences: show the ad to people in these audiences. Leave it empty for broad targeting in the chosen countries.
- Exclude audiences: keep people in these audiences from seeing the ad, such as existing customers.
4
Creative
Write the ad and check the live Preview. The fields differ by platform (see below).
5
Review
Check the summary, then click Save & publish, or Save draft to come back later.
Objectives
Creative fields
- Meta
- Google Ads
- Facebook Page (required): the Page the ad is published from.
- Primary text (required): the main text above the image.
- Headline and Description: optional.
- Destination URL (required): where the ad links to.
- Call to action: Learn more, Shop now, Sign up, Subscribe, Book now, Contact us, Download, Get offer, Get quote, Apply now or No button.
- Instant form: Leads objective only. This is the Meta lead form the ad opens. To turn its submissions into contacts, set up Lead capture.
- Image: a public image URL, or click Choose image to pick one from your File Manager. A 1.91:1 image works best in the feed. The image is uploaded to your ad account when you publish.
Publish
Save & publish saves the campaign and creates it on the platform. You can also publish a saved draft later from its page or from the campaign list, with Publish. The confirmation reads “Publish to Meta?” or “Publish to Google Ads?”.Everything is created paused. The campaign appears as Paused here and in Ads Manager or Google Ads, so you can review it on the platform first. Nothing spends until you click Resume. See Manage ad campaigns.
Things to know
- Currency. Budgets and spend use your ad account’s own currency, and each campaign is labelled with it after it is saved.
- Dates on Meta use the date and time you enter, in your browser’s time zone.
- Dates on Google Ads are whole days. The campaign starts at the beginning of the start date and stops at the end of the end date, in your Google Ads account’s time zone. The date is taken from the time you enter converted to UTC, so a late-evening time can land on the next day.
- Age on Google Ads works in Google’s fixed brackets (18–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55–64, 65+). Brackets wholly outside your range are excluded. People whose age Google doesn’t know are always included.
- Reach on Google Ads isn’t reported for Display campaigns, so it shows 0.
- Meta targeting stays as you set it. Meta’s automatic audience expansion (Advantage+ audience) is turned off, so the ad isn’t shown outside your audiences.
Enter the budget in your ad account’s currency, exactly as you’d type it in Ads Manager or Google Ads:
25 means $25 on a USD account and ¥25 on a JPY account. Currencies without decimals, such as JPY or KRW, take whole numbers.