Contents
- Three levels structure everything: the campaign carries the objective, the ad set carries the audience and budget, the ad carries the creative.
- Of the hundred-odd columns available, six are enough for daily tracking. Save them as a custom set, it's the setting that saves the most time.
- The costliest starting mistake is multiplying ad sets: the budget splits and none learns.
- The default attribution window, seven days after click and one day after view, explains most of the gaps with Google Ads and GA4.
- When a campaign underperforms, the diagnosis always follows the same order: delivery, creative, audience, destination.
Three levels, three decisions
The manager is organized in three tiers, and each answers a distinct question. A good part of beginner mistakes is looking for a setting on the wrong tier.
- The campaign carries the objective
Awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, sales. This choice determines what Meta optimizes and what the Results column counts. It can't be changed afterwards without starting over.
- The ad set carries the delivery
Audience, budget, schedule, placements, optimization event. It's the level where delivery decisions are made, and where the learning phase plays out.
- The ad carries the creative
Image or video, primary text, headline, call to action, destination. It's the level where most of the performance is won, by far.
The budget isn't in the ad, the audience isn't in the campaign, unless you enabled the budget at campaign level. This exception is the source of half the confusion when getting started.
Choosing the campaign objective
The objective determines who Meta shows your ads to. Two campaigns with different objectives don't count the same thing under the word "result", which makes comparing them directly misleading.
| Objective | What Meta optimizes | What "Results" counts | When to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Awareness | Reach and recall | Impressions and reach | Brand launch, cold audience |
| Traffic | Outbound clicks | Link clicks | Bringing volume to a piece of content |
| Engagement | Reactions and views | Engagement | Testing creatives cheaply |
| Leads | Forms completed | Leads | Contact generation, native form or site |
| Sales | Purchases measured by the pixel | Purchases | E-commerce with a reliable pixel |
The columns that matter
The default display isn't the most useful. Six columns are enough for daily tracking, and the rest clutters the reading.
| Column | What it says | The trap |
|---|---|---|
| Amount spent | The only figure straight from billing | None |
| Results | Performance by objective | Check what "result" covers |
| Cost per result | The unit cost of the objective | Not comparable across different objectives |
| Link clicks | The clicks that lead to the site | Never read "clicks (all)" instead |
| Frequency | The average number of exposures | First signal when cost rises for no reason |
| Landing page views | The real arrivals on the site | The gap with clicks measures site slowness |
Save this configuration as a custom column set. Over time, it's the setting that saves the most time, ahead even of interface shortcuts. The indicators are detailed in our entries CPM, CTR and cost per result.
The settings that matter at launch
- Budget at campaign or ad-set level
At campaign level, Meta splits between ad sets itself, which works well as soon as there's volume. At ad-set level, you keep control, useful when an audience must be protected from automatic reallocation.
- The number of ad sets
This is where a launch's success is decided. Three ad sets at 20 euros a day learn less well than one at 60. Start broad, segment when the conversion volume allows it.
- The placements
Leave them automatic at first. Restricting them cuts available inventory and pushes up CPM with no guarantee of a gain on the final cost.
- The attribution window
Seven days after click and one day after view by default. Note it somewhere: it explains most of the gaps with Google Ads and GA4, and the question comes up in every client meeting.
On starting budgets, the orders of magnitude mainly depend on the objective: the topic is detailed in our article on the cost of Facebook advertising.
Reading your results without going wrong
Three precautions avoid most bad decisions, and they all come down to the same thing: don't add up figures that don't measure the same thing.
- Don't compare two campaigns with different objectives on their cost per result: they don't count the same thing under the same word.
- Don't add Meta conversions to another platform's. The topic is covered in our article on what can't be compared between Meta Ads and Google Ads.
- Wait three to four days before concluding. Meta consolidates its conversions within its attribution window and refines its modeled estimates: the same-day figures are never final.
Diagnosing a campaign that underperforms
The order of diagnosis matters more than the tools. Working back from symptom to cause out of order wastes days.
- Delivery
Is the ad set out of the learning phase? A campaign stuck in limited learning lacks conversions to stabilize: it's almost always a budget or over-segmentation problem.
- Frequency
Beyond three to four exposures per person on a small audience, cost rises mechanically. The fix is creative or about audience size, never the bid.
- Creative
Look at the quality and engagement rankings, and the link click-through rate. A low rate with a normal CPM points to the creative, not the delivery.
- Destination
Compare link clicks and landing page views. A large gap signals a slow page or an inconsistency between the ad's promise and what the visitor finds.
What Adwise changes in this tracking
All of the above means configuring columns, cross-referencing periods and redoing the same filters every week, for every account. On an agency portfolio, this handling amounts to several unbillable hours a week.
Once the Meta account is connected to the Workspace, the question is asked directly: which ad set is stuck in learning, where frequency exceeds the threshold, which creative is dropping off over the last seven days. The answer comes in seconds on your real data, and the client report is generated from the same base, without recomposing the filters.
The Meta Ads integration is detailed on the site.
Frequently asked questions
The Adwise team connects Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, GA4 and Search Console so agencies and freelancers can run their campaigns from a single place.
