Meta ads for beginners, PART 1 (small budgets) Over the last few months I’ve spent $20k on Meta ads. When I started, I knew nothing. I’m still a total newbie, but I’ve learned a ton! I’m going to make a few posts about what I learned so you can save time and money. I’ll try to explain things simply. -------------------------------- DISCLAIMER: this is just my personal experience with Meta ads. I watched YT videos, went to webinars, read stuff, asked AI, ran experiments and burned money. A lot of the time I wanted clear answers and got vague ones. So this is me summing up what I actually figured out on my own. -------------------------------- First, the basic terms. 1. Hierarchy You have your account → it has BMs (Business portfolios), which are basically “your company” → each BM can have ad accounts An ad account is basically your project. When you start running ads: ad account = separate project This is where the Meta algo learns (at some point). You also connect a pixel (Meta now calls it a “dataset”). It tracks what people do on your site and sends those events back to Meta. This is the data the algo learns from. 2. Ad structure > You have a campaign. This is where you pick your objective (sales, leads, etc) + geo. > Then you have ad sets. This is where you set your targeting, but now NOBODY SETS INTEREST TARGETING. With the new Meta algo your creative (your ad) = your targeting eg: if you show an old lady, Meta will figure out you’re targeting boomers eg: If you use specific slang or terms, it targets the people who talk like that And ad set is where Meta does most of its learning. It looks at the people who buy from that specific ad set and tries to find more people like them. Meta’s docs say an ad set needs about 50 events in a week to exit the learning phase. You can treat each ad set as a separate concept you’re testing. Meta figures out which concepts work better, and each one learns at its own pace. That’s where it gets expensive, because you need a steady volume of events coming in (more on this later). 3. CBO vs ABO What are these and when do you use which? This one confused me for a long time. CBO = you set the budget on the campaign and Meta splits it between ad sets ABO = you set the budget on each ad set I spend around $5 - 10k a month, so for me CBO just doesn’t make sense. I ONLY use ABO. Why? Say I create 3 ad sets, each with the same budget, like $100. By day 3-5: - one is profitable - one is breaking even - one is losing money and barely getting sales. That’s my concept test. I kill the bad ad set, then either put a bit more budget into the winner or launch a new one. Each ad set needs a lot of events to learn, and my budget is limited. So I need to control things manually and move fast. That way I also learn for myself what works and what doesn’t. In the next posts I want to cover the stuff that always confused me: > what events to send and how? what is event quality? > how much money do I need to spend? > how do I find my CPA? > how do I create ads? how does a target persona help? what columns and metrics should I watch? > how do I find the weak spot in my funnel? is it my product or my ads? Follow for more! P. S. screenshot doesn't cover renewals etc