What Is Facebook Advertising? Overview and Benefits

Key takeaways

Facebook advertising is a paid marketing system within Meta Ads Manager that allows businesses to create and place targeted ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network, reaching specific audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and custom data.

• Meta allows you to choose from different ad formats, including photo, video, carousel, slideshow, Marketplace, Messenger, and augmented reality.

• You have the option to turn off your ad campaign at any time, as well as the opportunity to increase or decrease the amount you spend.

• You can advertise on Meta, Instagram, and WhatsApp using Meta ads.

Explore how Facebook advertising by Meta works, who uses the platform, and the different ways in which it can help boost your business on social media channels. Afterward, enroll in Meta’s Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate to learn how to establish an online presence, build a following, and manage your social media accounts. You’ll also have the opportunity to learn how to evaluate and interpret the results of your advertising campaigns. 

What is advertising on Facebook?

Facebook advertising, now known as Meta advertising, allows you to reach your audience through social media campaigns. The platform prompts you to choose an objective, select an audience, set a budget, and manage your ad as you track its performance over time. French online bank BforBank, for example, achieved a 4.8-fold increase in unaided brand awareness by pairing its regular direct-response Meta campaigns with a brand-awareness campaign with sales objective [1].

How ads work

Facebook ads meet your specific business goals and reach accounts that fit the audience of your product or business. To get the most out of your ads, Meta requires you to set an objective and select an audience when you set up and purchase your ad.

For example, businesses that are inexpensive to start, including software as a service (SaaS) and e-commerce, or those interested in capturing immediate sales, may not have as much success as businesses looking for low-friction conversions and those with longer sales cycles. If you’re unsure, it’s helpful to start small to test these strategies.

Ads you can run through Facebook advertising campaigns

Meta allows you to choose from different ad formats, including photo, video, carousel, slideshow, store, Marketplace, Messenger, collection, or playable. Each works differently to meet individual business and budget goals. The format you select will determine where your ads appear and which audience sees them.

How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?

Meta allows you to choose from different ad formats, including photo, video, carousel, slideshow, store, Marketplace, Messenger, collection, or playable. The format you select will determine where your ads appear and which audience sees them.

Image ads: Image ads will display in a user’s Facebook Feed. These ads are shown to specific audiences that you select.

Video ads: Video ads will display in Feed, and you can choose an ad objective of Awareness or Maximum reach, views, impressions, or engagement. 

Polls ads: Poll ads are designed for mobile users and appear in Feed. They allow users to vote for one of two options, and you can add clickable links to each option. 

Carousels ads: Carousel ads show up in Feed, and you’ll need to include between two and ten carousel cards, and a landing page URL.

Slideshows ads: Slideshow ads include three to ten images or videos, and offer video-like storytelling. 

Instant Experience ads: Instant Experience ads open into full-screen if clicked on a mobile device, and can include images or videos. You can also include carousel cards, text blocks, and buttons.

Lead ads: Lead ads can include the option to call your business, submit an instant form, or open a messaging conversation with your business in Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp. They can also include videos and instant forms. You can generate a lead ad from either Meta Ads Maanger or Business Suite.

Dynamic ads: Dynamic ads are found within catalog ads, and promote products from your catalog to users who have encountered your ads before. You can create a few templates that will automatically generate individual ads for each of your products. 

Messenger ads: Messenger ads initiate conversations between businesses an potential customers, offering customer service to users and targeted marketing to businesses. 

Stories ads: Stories ads are full-screen and appear between stories from followed accounts in Facebook and Messenger. Successful Stories ads  should be engaging to attract attention among other fast-paced Stories.

Augmented reality ads: Augmented reality ads let users virtually try on products or view 3D versions in their space. You’ll need to develop the “try-on” or “see it in your space” effect within Spark AR Studio before publishing it in Facebook Ads. 

How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?

Ad costs differ depending on how much you want to spend. Meta offers pricing options to fit your needs and budget. You have the option to turn off your ad campaign at any time, as well as the opportunity to increase or decrease the amount you spend. Other factors that may affect the pricing of your Facebook ads include what kind of ad format you’re using, the day of the week you’re advertising, and the time the ad goes live.

Meta offers two budgeting options:

• Daily budget: This is the amount you spend on ads each day. You have the option to increase the budget for any given day based on the performance of your ads.

• Lifetime budget: Your lifetime budget is the total amount of money you allot Meta to spend on your ad campaign. While the amount spent on ads daily may change based on ad performance, your total spending will always stay within your lifetime budget.

What is the 60/40 rule in advertising?

The 60/40 marketing rule advises that 60 percent of a company’s marketing budget be spent on long-term brand-building efforts. The remaining 40 percent should focus on short-term performance-driven efforts or activation. Brand-building involves running campaigns that tell compelling stories and create emotional impact, while performance marketing focuses on measurable outcomes through strategies such as pay-per-click (PPC) ads. 

Who uses Facebook advertising?

Anyone can advertise on Facebook, even if you are a small business with a limited advertising budget. Facebook ads are useful for companies that want to promote their business and form better relationships with potential customers through different ad formats. Facebook ads are simple to use, with a step-by-step guide for users to navigate. Meta allows you to tailor ads to specific audiences, set business objectives, and track the performance of ad campaigns.

Pros and cons of using Facebook advertising (Meta ads)

Like many marketing solutions, Facebook advertising has benefits—potential reach and guidance—and disadvantages—audience limitations and cost—that come with using the platform. The following chart highlights common pros and cons.

How to advertise on Facebook

The simple way to get started advertising on Facebook is to follow the guidance offered by the platform. Meta has a step-by-step guide to launching a Facebook ad that's easy to follow [2]:

1. Choose an objective.

If you’re forming your first campaign, the Account overview page will guide you through the required steps. When you create a Meta ads campaign, you’ll be prompted to choose a campaign objective. These include sales, leads, engagement, traffic, awareness, and app promotion. Meta can help you determine the right objective for your goal. Then, you’ll name your campaign.

2. Select an audience.

An audience is the demographic the ad targets. The platform features an audience meter, which will show you if your audience is too broad, too specific, or just right. It’s recommended to build an audience size of at least two million people, then narrowing it down based on the ad's performance.

3. Pick where to run the ad.

You can run your ad on different feeds, such as the traditional Facebook feed, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, or the Meta Audience Network, which is expands coverage to third-party mobile apps like gaming apps, news apps, and utility apps. Choose where to run your ad based on where you think it will perform the best and get maximum clicks and views.

4. Set the budget.

Setting your budget involves picking the amount of money you’d like to spend on your ads, either daily or over the ad’s lifetime. You can change this number at any time, but Meta recommends keeping it consistent for at least seven days to gather accurate analytics regarding the ad’s performance.

Minimum spend starts at $1/day, but Meta recommends you start with a budget of at least $5/day. Meta may recommend a budget to you based on your business vertical, budget, bid strategy, and schedule.

5. Pick the ad format.

You can choose from image, video, story, Messenger, carousel, dynamic, lead, instant experience, slideshows, polls, and augmented reality.

6. Publish.

Preview your ad to see how it will look for your audience. Make any changes you’d like, then click the “Publish” button.

7. Ongoing: manage your ads.

Let your add run for 3-7 days while you watch the metrics. If one of your key performance indicators (KPIs) isn’t where you’d expect it to be, make a change. This might mean higher-quality photos or videos, or shorter captions and headlines. You might also run an A/B test, where half of the audience sees one version of your add, while the other half sees another. 

After you post your ad, you can track its performance through the Ads Manager. You can customize tracking to see your spend, results, revenue generated, CPR, and ROAS. After running your initial ads, you can set up a custom audience of people who have interacted with your business before to retarget and remarket these potential customers.

Troubleshooting common Meta ads problems

If you’re noticing…

1. A low click-through rate: Test a new headline or main text

2. High cost per acquisition: Check your attribution setup and audience overlap across ads

3. Ad stuck in the learning phase: Consolidate multiple ads or increase your budget

4. Declining performance over time: Refresh creative and check ad frequency

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