Which settings should I use when I set up a Facebook ad campaign?

Most Facebook Ads Manager settings can stay on their defaults. We recommend this setup:

1. Campaign level: choose the Leads or Sales objective. Keep campaign budget optimization (the default) unless you need ad set budgets for something advanced. Enter a daily budget you are comfortable losing, and name the campaign with a naming convention, such as the campaign name plus the month and day.
2. Ad set level: select your Facebook business page and leave the performance goal on Maximize number of conversions.
3. Schedule: set the start time shortly after midnight, such as 12:05 AM, and at least a few hours in the future. If Facebook starts a $100 daily budget at 11 PM, it rushes to spend it before the day ends and gets poor results.
4. Location: keep it broad, such as the whole United States, unless you are a local agency or your client only serves a radius. The bigger the audience, the lower the cost per lead. If you target other countries, use a separate ad set or campaign per country (the United States and Canada together is fine). Do not add custom audiences, because Facebook already uses what it knows.
5. Placements: uncheck Audience Network, which is mostly junk traffic, and answer no when Facebook asks whether it may spend on excluded placements. Many people also uncheck Messenger and keep only Facebook and Instagram.
6. Ad level: upload up to 10 images in one ad and fill the three text spots with several AI-written variations of each so Facebook can split test. Create at least 10 different ads at launch. Use a Votel click tracking link as the ad's destination instead of your website address.
7. Publish. Ads can take some hours to be approved. Make sure the campaign, the ad set and the ads are all switched on. The campaign waits until the scheduled start time.

Then leave it alone for seven days before you judge it on cost per result.