You open Meta Ads Manager, click “Create” and stare at a screen full of options. Objectives. Advantage+. Budgets. Bid strategies. Placements.

One wrong choice and your budget disappears with nothing to show for it.

Here is the thing. Ads Manager has changed a lot. Meta’s AI now does much of the heavy lifting, and Meta says advertisers using Advantage+ generate an average of $4.52 in revenue for every dollar spent, 22% more than business-as-usual campaigns.

But the AI only works if you set things up correctly. In this guide, I will walk you through the current Ads Manager step by step, using the same approach I use for client accounts.

Key takeaways

  • Business Manager is now a business portfolio inside Meta Business Suite.
  • Ads Manager has six campaign objectives: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App promotion and Sales.
  • Every campaign has three levels: campaign, ad set and ad.
  • Advantage+ automates audience, placements, budget and creative. Meta reports $4.52 in revenue per dollar spent on average.
  • Install the Meta Pixel and Conversions API before you spend a single euro.

Understanding the Meta ads ecosystem

One Ads Manager campaign can run across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the Meta Audience Network.

Ads Manager is where you build, run and analyse those campaigns. Meta Business Suite is where you manage your Pages, Instagram accounts, people and permissions.

Meta’s delivery system decides who sees each ad based on your bid, the estimated chance a person will take action, and ad quality. Better signals and better creative mean better delivery.

Step 1: Set up your business portfolio and tracking

If you have heard of “Business Manager”, that is the old name. Meta now calls it a business portfolio, managed in Meta Business Suite.

  1. Create your business portfolio and add your Facebook Page and Instagram account.
  2. Create an ad account and double-check the time zone and currency. You cannot easily change them later.
  3. Add a payment method. Options vary by country.
  4. Assign people the right access. Give full control only to those who need it.
  5. Install the Meta Pixel and Conversions API. The Pixel tracks browser events. The Conversions API sends events from your server or CRM, which makes your data more reliable.

Skip step 5 and the AI is optimising blind. If you want to go further, upload customer lists too. I explain why in my guide to first-party data.

Step 2: Pick the right campaign objective

Meta simplified its objectives from more than ten down to six outcome-based options:

My rule: choose the objective closest to the result you actually want. If you want sales, do not pick Traffic because clicks look cheaper. Meta will find you people who click, not people who buy.

Step 3: Build the campaign, ad set and ad

Every Meta campaign has three levels. Get the structure right and everything else becomes easier.

Infographic: Meta Ads Manager campaign structure, from business portfolio setup to campaign, ad set and ad
How a Meta Ads Manager campaign is structured, from setup to ad.

Campaign level

Set your objective and decide on budget. With Advantage+ campaign budget (previously called campaign budget optimisation), Meta shares one budget across your ad sets and moves money to what performs.

For Sales, App promotion and Leads, Meta now offers Advantage+ campaigns that switch on its AI for audience, placements and budget together. Meta reports that its streamlined Advantage+ sales setup delivers 9% lower cost per action on average.

Ad set level

Choose your conversion location, performance goal, audience, placements and schedule. For most advertisers, I recommend Advantage+ placements so Meta can find the cheapest results across all its apps.

Ad level

Add your creative, primary text, headline and call to action. Formats include single image, video, carousel and collection. Upload several variations and let Advantage+ creative enhancements adapt them for each placement.

Step 4: Target the right audience

Targeting has changed more than anything else in Ads Manager. Narrow interest stacks used to be the secret weapon. Today, Meta’s AI usually finds buyers better than manual targeting, as long as it has good conversion data.

Here is how I layer audiences now:

Infographic: audience layers in Meta Ads Manager, from hard limits to Advantage+ audience, custom audiences and exclusions
The audience layers I use in Meta Ads Manager today.
  1. Set the hard limits: location, minimum age and language. These are controls the AI must respect.
  2. Turn on Advantage+ audience: let Meta’s AI find the people most likely to convert.
  3. Add audience suggestions: give the AI a head start with your custom audiences, interests or age ranges.
  4. Use custom audiences: website visitors, customer lists and people who engaged with your Page or videos. Here is how custom audiences work in practice.
  5. Exclude the wrong people: recent buyers or existing customers, when you want new customers only.

Step 5: Set budget and bid strategy

Then pick a bid strategy:

Step 6: Analyse, test and improve

Customise your Ads Manager columns to show what matters: results, cost per result, CTR, CPM, frequency and ROAS. Save that view so you review the same numbers every week.

Check your Opportunity Score too. It rates your setup from 0 to 100 and suggests fixes. In early tests, advertisers who adopted its recommendations saw a 5% median decrease in cost per result, according to Meta.

Finally, use A/B tests. Test one variable at a time, such as creative, hook or offer. Scale the winner, then test again.

5 common mistakes to avoid

  1. Choosing the wrong objective because it looks cheaper.
  2. Skipping the Conversions API and feeding the AI incomplete data.
  3. Splitting budget across too many tiny ad sets, so none exits the learning phase.
  4. Running one creative until it burns out. Watch frequency.
  5. Editing every day. Constant changes reset learning. Review weekly and make deliberate changes.

Want to see where this is heading? Read my take on AI agents in campaign management.

Frequently asked questions

Is Facebook Business Manager still available?

Business Manager is now called a business portfolio and is managed in Meta Business Suite. Your ad accounts, Pages and people are all managed there.

What are the six Meta campaign objectives?

Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App promotion and Sales. Choose the one closest to the business result you want.

Should I use Advantage+ audience or manual targeting?

For most advertisers with solid conversion tracking, Advantage+ audience is the best starting point. Keep hard limits such as location and use exclusions where needed.

Which bid strategy should beginners use?

Start with Highest volume. Once you understand your typical cost per result, test Cost per result goal or ROAS goal.

Conclusion

Meta Ads Manager is simpler than it looks once you understand the structure: the right objective, clean tracking, smart audience layers and steady testing.

Let the AI handle the auctions. You handle the strategy, the data and the creative.

So tell me: which of these six steps is missing from your current campaigns?

Want Meta ads that pay for themselves?

I manage Meta and Google Ads for businesses investing at least €10,000 a year in ad spend. Prefer to run your own campaigns? I also coach business owners one to one to run their own Meta ads with confidence. Get in touch and I’ll come back to you within 24 hours.

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