Meta ads for brands: how advertising on Facebook and Instagram works.

01What are Meta ads, and where do they appear?

What

paid ads in Meta’s apps

Where

Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, Audience Network

Booked in

Ads Manager

Meta ads run between regular content in Meta’s apps, for example in the Facebook feed, in Instagram Reels or in Messenger [11]. Many people still say Facebook ads; it is the same advertising system. You book everything in Ads Manager. Meta lists Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger and the Audience Network, meaning partner apps and websites, as platforms. If you do not set placements, Meta uses all standard placements and may add new ones as they become available [12].

Two studies show how many people you can reach there. In Germany, 40% of German-speaking people aged 14 and over use Instagram at least once a week and 28% use Facebook (ARD/ZDF-Medienstudie 2026, 2,462 respondents) [13]. In Switzerland, 78% of internet users aged 14 and over use private social media such as Instagram, Facebook or TikTok, and 68% of social media users are on them daily (World Internet Project Switzerland 2025 by the University of Zurich, 1,078 respondents) [14]. The Swiss study gives no figure for Instagram or Facebook alone. Before you start, check the estimated audience size for your region, age group and language in Ads Manager.

If you run video ads, you will probably ask whether TikTok belongs next to Instagram. According to the same study, 18% of people in Germany use TikTok at least weekly [13]. In our view, Meta is therefore the broader starting point for a first ad budget for most brands. How advertising works on TikTok and when it pays off is covered in our guide on advertising on TikTok compared with Meta.

02What do you need to start, and is boosting a post enough?

Account

ad account in Ads Manager

Profile

Facebook Page or Instagram business profile

Quick route

boost a post directly in Instagram

According to Meta, you first set up an Ads Manager account and connect it to your Facebook Page or your Instagram business profile. Ads Manager then takes you through objective, audience, placements, budget and schedule, format, publishing and reviewing results [11]. If you want to measure purchases on your website, you add the Meta Pixel. For the Conversions API you also need the Pixel ID and Meta Business Suite [15].

There is a faster route. In Instagram you can boost an existing post, reel or story. You pick a destination, meaning your profile, your website or direct messages, then audience, budget and duration. Meta recommends at least seven days and advises against pausing too early so the learning phase is not cut short. The ad then appears in the feed, in Stories and in Explore [16].

Boosting is enough to give a good post more reach. In Ads Manager, on the other hand, you choose the objective, optimization, placements and several ads per ad set yourself. For a store that wants to measure purchases and compare variants, we think Ads Manager is the right place.

03How is a Meta campaign structured? Campaign, ad set, ad and objective

Campaign

exactly one objective

Ad set

budget, schedule, bid, audience

Ad

image or video with text and link

Every Meta ad has three levels [1]:

• Campaign: the top level with one objective. All ads in it must match that objective.
• Ad set: budget, schedule, bid, audience and placements. Meta suggests one ad set per audience. That way you control how much you spend on each audience and get metrics for each one.
• Ad: the creative, meaning image or video, text and link. Several ads per ad set help Meta find the combination that works.

There are six objectives to choose from [2]:

Meta then looks for people who are more likely to take the action that matches your objective [2]. For a store that usually means Sales, with the purchase as the event. If you optimize for cheap clicks instead, you get cheap clicks, but not necessarily purchases. If your ads are about housing, jobs, credit or political and social issues, you have to declare a special ad category [17].

04Audiences and Advantage+: how much you still control on Meta

Guideline

2 to 10 million people, per Meta

Your own data

Custom and Lookalike Audiences

Automation

Advantage+ for audience, placement, budget

Meta distinguishes two approaches [18]. With broad targeting you only set location, age or gender and the system finds the rest. With specific targeting you use your own audiences, called Custom Audiences: from your customer list, from website visitors via the Pixel or from people who interacted with your profile. Lookalike Audiences are people similar to such a group. Since 2 September 2025, Meta blocks Custom and Lookalike Audiences that point to health conditions or financial status [18].

According to Meta, delivery usually works well with two to ten million people in the audience. Meta only recommends interests as a filter from two million people upwards [19]. For a single region or language in Switzerland, your audience may be smaller. In that case, go easy on extra filters.

Advantage+ is Meta’s name for its AI automation [7]. If you switch on Advantage+ audience, Advantage+ campaign budget and Advantage+ placements in a Sales campaign, it becomes an Advantage+ sales campaign, formerly called an Advantage+ shopping campaign [6][7]. Meta then distributes the budget itself.

In Europe, users have a say as well. In the EU, the EEA and Switzerland, people can subscribe to use Facebook and Instagram without ads. In November 2024, Meta also announced less personalized ads there. They use only context and a few data points such as age, location, gender and ad engagement. Meta says it has used data from other websites and apps for personalization there only with active opt-in since 2018 [20]. For the EU, the European Commission says Meta committed to a new choice from January 2026: share all data for fully personalized ads, or less data for less personalized ads. The Commission calls this the first such choice on Meta’s social networks [21]. This source does not show whether Meta has introduced it.

05Which formats and specs apply to Meta ads? Image, video, Reels and carousel

Reels

9:16, 1,440 × 2,560 pixels

Feed video

4:5, 1,440 × 1,800 pixels

Meta suggests

videos under 15 seconds

Meta offers photo, video, Stories, carousel, slideshow and collection, among other formats. A carousel shows up to ten images or videos in one ad, each with its own link. Collection ads show several products that people can browse directly [22].

For Reels, keep 14% at the top, 35% at the bottom and 6% on each side free of text and logos, otherwise the profile icon and the button cover important parts. Avoid licensed music in Reels ads [23]. The fact that a video may run for 15 minutes does not mean it should. Meta itself recommends vertical videos of no more than 15 seconds that spark interest within the first 3 seconds [11].

If you optimize for video views, you will come across the term ThruPlay. It means a video played to the end or for at least 15 seconds [25]. You can find real examples in Meta’s public Ad Library. According to Meta, ads that target people in the EU stay visible there for a year [26].

06What makes good creatives for Meta? Hooks, variants, creators and AI

Opening

interest within the first 3 seconds

Test on Meta

2 to 7 variants

AI

Meta’s “AI info” label

Meta’s engineers describe how the system first narrows tens of millions of possible ads down to a few thousand. With AI tools, Meta expects the number of creatives to grow significantly, and more variety among ads can improve results [27]. For us this means: if Meta picks audience and placement, you steer through the creative. Ten copies of one idea do not help.

The opening. A hook is the first image, the first sentence and the first on-screen text of a video. Meta recommends sparking interest within the first 3 seconds [11]. How to build them with image, text and sound is explained in our guide on the first seconds of a video ad.

The variants. Meta offers its own creative test with 2 to 7 variants, one ad per test cell, and splits the audience so the groups do not overlap [28]. How many variants you need per round is covered in our guide on the number of variants per test round.

Creators. You can run creator videos as partnership ads. Your account and the creator’s account then both appear in the ad header, and the creator needs a professional Instagram account [29]. How brands work with such videos is explained in our overview of videos by customers and creators.

AI. Meta shows an “AI info” label on ads created or significantly edited with its own AI tools and says it will also detect ads made with third-party AI tools [30]. In the EU, deepfakes have had to be disclosed clearly at the latest on first exposure since 2 August 2026 [31]. What this means for your ads is covered in our guide on AI videos in ads and how to label them.

07How much do Meta ads cost? Auction, budget and learning phase

Price

auction, no price list

Duration

at least 7 days, per Meta

Learning phase

restarts after major edits

There is no fixed price. Every possible impression is an auction, and unlike classic auctions, the size of the bid alone does not decide. Meta weighs objective, audience, budget, duration and creative, plus the quality of the ad and how likely people are to respond [32]. Meta contradicts itself on the minimum budget. On its business site, Meta says there is no minimum budget, only recommended daily budgets per objective [11]. The developer documentation, by contrast, lists minimums per ad set: USD 0.50 per day for automatic bidding billed per impression, twice that for ad accounts in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Meta says these amounts are only illustrative and can change [25]. Check the amount in your own account.

You set the budget per day or for the whole run. With a daily budget, Meta may spend up to 75% more on individual days, but no more than seven times the daily budget in a week. Meta recommends planning at least seven days so the system can learn [3]. For the bid strategy, you choose between as many results as possible for your budget, a cap on the average cost per result, a bid cap or a minimum return on ad spend (ROAS) [17].

Learning phase. At the start, an ad set is still learning and delivery can fluctuate [25]. Significant edits send it back into the learning phase. If it does not get enough results, Meta shows that it cannot exit the learning phase [4]. Meta therefore advises against major edits and recommends keeping overlap between your own ad sets low [5]. In the sources we opened, Meta gives no fixed number of results that ends the learning phase. For small budgets this means one ad set with enough money is better than three that all get too little.

08Meta Pixel and Conversions API: how Meta learns about your sales

Pixel

script in the browser

Conversions API

data from your server

Rule

merge duplicate events

The Meta Pixel is a small script on your website. It reports events such as a purchase to Meta. These show up in Ads Manager and are used for measurement, for your own audiences and for catalog ads. Among other things, the Pixel can collect the IP address, browser information, the page visited, button clicks and a Meta cookie [33].

The Conversions API sends events directly from your server, your store platform or your CRM to Meta. If you already have a Pixel, Meta says you can set it up in Events Manager without code [34]. Meta recommends using both and sending the same events through both channels. That way the Conversions API catches events the Pixel misses because of connection or page load errors [5].

To avoid double counting, each event needs the same name and the same event ID on both channels. Meta merges pairs that arrive within 48 hours [35]. You can check whether this works with the Test Events tool in Events Manager [5]. If you use a ready-made integration from your store system, check which events it sends through which channel.

The events along the path to purchase also show whether the ad or the page behind it is the weak point. Many clicks and few purchases are a reason to check the page first. It has to pick up the promise of the ad and load quickly. How to build a page that turns clicks into purchases is covered in our guide on the page behind the ad.

09Consent for the Meta Pixel and Conversions API in Switzerland and Germany

Switzerland

Art. 45c TCA (FMG), FDPIC guidelines

Germany

Section 25 TDDDG

Technical

load the Pixel only after consent

Two legal systems apply here, as of November 2026. This is not legal advice; if in doubt, have a specialist check it.

Switzerland. Under Art. 45c of the Swiss Telecommunications Act (TCA, in German FMG), you may process data on other people’s devices if you inform them about the processing and its purpose and point out that they can refuse it [9]. For ad tracking with “normal” profiling, the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) requires at least that visitors immediately see, on the first and every later visit, how to object with a few clicks. If embedded third parties collect data across many websites, this can become high-risk profiling that requires explicit consent. As long as you cannot rule this out, the FDPIC says you should assume a potentially high risk. If you rely on consent, the FDPIC recommends loading tracking pixels only after information and consent [10].

Germany. Under Section 25 of the German TDDDG, you may only store or read information on a device with consent, unless it is strictly necessary for a service the user explicitly requested [8]. In our reading, an advertising pixel is not strictly necessary, so it should only load after consent.

Implementation. With the command fbq('consent', 'revoke') before initialization, the Pixel holds data back; with fbq('consent', 'grant') after consent, it sends. According to Meta, each business remains responsible for GDPR compliance [36]. The Conversions API sends from your server, but often with values from cookies that the Meta Pixel sets in the browser (fbp and fbc) and with data such as email or IP address [5]. We recommend tying server events to the same consent as the Pixel. How to collect consent properly in both countries is covered in our guide on consent on your website.

10Reading Meta results correctly, and when to get help

Attribution window

1 or 7 days after click, 1 day after view

Comparison

store trends, not single values

With us

Manu and Lara

Meta credits a purchase to an ad if it happens within a time window after a click or a view. For optimization, the options are 1 or 7 days after a click and 1 day after a view [17]. Your store, by contrast, counts every order regardless of source. Events that Meta cannot match to an account do not count for attribution [5], and purchases by people who refuse tracking are missing. So compare trends over weeks: do store orders rise when you spend more?

From our work. For Kjavik, a barefoot shoe brand from Germany, we have been editing video ads for Meta since 2025. Before, about two ads went out per month; today it is up to 30 in strong months, with up to seven hooks per ad. In paid ads and creative strategy, Manu and Lara plan creatives and the test plan and review results every week. It is often simpler if you run the ads in your own account and we deliver the creatives and strategy.

Honest limits. You can set up the account, the Pixel and a first Sales campaign yourself. Help pays off with the Conversions API, with consent and when you need new variants every week. We deliberately give no average prices per click or impression, because Meta lists none in the sources we opened and they depend heavily on audience, period and creative. The usage figures for Germany and Switzerland come from different studies and are not directly comparable: the German figure covers the German-speaking population, the Swiss figure internet users. Meta changes names and menus, most recently for Advantage+ campaigns [6]; what you read here reflects November 2026.