Meta's ad sets are smaller groups of ads within a larger ad campaign. All ads in an ad set will use the same budget and schedule, will target the same audiences, and can be delivered to the same placements across Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta Platforms.
Understanding and mastering how to build strategic ad sets can help you get your content in front of very specific and often motivated segments of your audience. Follow the steps below to create your own ad sets in Advertise for your Facebook and Instagram ads.
Creating ad sets
You can create ad sets by clicking the action (...) button while viewing your campaigns, or by clicking the Create New Ad Set button from the top right of the Ad Sets section in Advertise. While creating a new ad set, you can choose to add it to an existing campaign, or to create a new campaign.
Below, we've listed all the available options for customizing the ad set to your advertising goals.
Note: Please bear in mind that not all options are available for all types of campaign objectives.
Create ad set
If you chose WhatsApp for the Traffic option (available for the Conversions and Traffic campaign Objectives), you can choose a Facebook Page that is connected to a WhatsApp number. Ads created from the ad set let users open a conversation with your customers through WhatsApp.
Schedule and budget
Pricing
Depending on your chosen campaign objective, there are various options available in the Pricing section.
Targeting
Tip: Create a separate ad set for each audience (e.g. Males 18–24, Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, etc.). Setting a different audience for each ad set minimizes your ad sets from competing against each other.
Placements
Define the places where your ads to be visible. You can choose between Automatic placements and Manual placements. With Automatic placements, Facebook automatically chooses the best performing placements depending on your budget. With Manual placements you are the one in charge of where your ads to appear.
Managing ad sets
The table below the Statistics graph lists all of your ad sets. Use the Actions button to the right of an ad set you are working with in order to:
Warning: If you plan to keep an ad campaign active for the long term, you should recreate the ad campaign every two years minimum to avoid technical issues in our platform. We recommend recreating ad campaigns every year for a seamless experience.
Viewing ad set statistics
The Statistics section will give you an overview of the performance of your ad sets. You can apply various filters, search for labels, and change the date range in order to customize your view.