Facebook Ads Guidelines: Best Practices and Insider Tips

While Facebook has made it easy for any business to run ad campaigns, the amount of detail to work through can be overwhelming for some. For Facebook advertising to work, you need to consider several factors, including the ad format, ad placement, and target audience. You should also align these elements with your goals and budget.

Still, as one of the cheapest options available, the platform is hard to ignore. For most industries, the average Facebook advertising cost per click (CPC) ranges from €0.50 to €2. This price range is within most marketing budgets. But you could also easily derail your advertising budget if you don't take into account the other factors mentioned above.

To avoid rookie mistakes, you can work with a Facebook advertising agency to help you get high-quality returns and results. The right partner knows how to allocate campaign resources, optimize your advertising assets, and position your ads strategically. In addition to partnering with the right agency, it pays to know the standards and best practices that experts follow to achieve profitable results.

Facebook Guidelines for Ads

The first part of this guide focuses on the design and technical aspects of Facebook advertising. We'll show you the available ad formats and their specific dimensions.

While you and your Facebook ad agency can choose the type of ad you'll use, looking at the right resolution, dimensions, and so on can ensure your visual assets display correctly across the platform.

Image

A simple format for Facebook advertising, display ads combine an image and text to capture the attention of your target market.

Whether it's an image of your property or a stock photo, make sure it adheres to these recommendations*:

Video

Your goal, ultimately, is to drive users to your website and inspire conversion. No other format is more effective in helping you achieve this than video ads. These visual assets are an attractive way to present your product, service or brand. They help you convey a message that compels viewers to take action.

For maximum impact, your Facebook ads team or agency should apply these standards to your videos*:

Carousel

The carousel format allows you to add up to 10 images or videos to your ad. That's enough space for you to display different offers, highlight product or service details, or progressively tell your brand story. You can also put a link on each carousel card.

Here's how optimize Facebook ads in this format *:

Slides

Ideal for showing steps or sequences, slideshow ads combine moving images, sound and text, but with light requirements. They are easier to make and load faster than videos, and are aimed at audiences with slower connections and/or older devices.

Collection

A collection ad includes a cover image or video, followed by several product images. When users tap your ad, they are taken to a full-screen landing page called Instant Experience. This user flow provides a visual and immersive way for potential customers to discover, browse and purchase your product.

When choosing this format, keep the following in mind:

Tales

Stories are ephemeral images or videos that appear on different Facebook properties: Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. While organic Stories disappear after 24 hours, Stories ads do not.

With Stories ads, you can take advantage of image, video, or carousel ads in all their full-screen glory. This immersive format is best for increasing brand awareness and connecting with customers where they hang out.

Mensajero

Capture the attention of your target audience through a Facebook ad that clicks on Messenger. You can automate this process by choosing the goal MESSAGES in Ads Manager; Learn more about this Facebook Ads tool in the next section.

Playable

Force users to install your game or app by allowing them to try it out through a playable ad. You can use an intro video and convince the audience to tap or click. This action should take them to a full-screen video demo of the product. A call to action (CTA) button should also be displayed, directing them to the page DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL when touched or clicked.

* For ads placed in Facebook feeds

How to use Facebook Ads

Believe, manage and track your ads with Facebook Ads Manager. This all-in-one tool works on both desktop and mobile devices. The app version is available for Android and iOS users, allowing quick access for business owners, Facebook ad agency account managers, and marketers on the go.

Before using this Facebook ads tool, you need to establish your marketing goals and target audience. Doing so informs and guides your campaign in the right direction.

Once you've covered your bases, it's time to explore everything the Facebook ad manager has reserved for your brand. Go to the website or application, choose the tab CAMPAIGNS and click CREA (=make) . Then you will have to:

1. Define your goal

The “goal” in this case is what you want to achieve with your ad and should be aligned with your business or marketing objective. Are you advertising on Facebook to send traffic referrals to your site, increase your app downloads or improve your sales? Whatever it is, you can mark the goal that matches your intention.

Your options are grouped into the objectives of Awareness, Consideration and Conversion.

Consciousness

• Brand awareness
• Scope

Consideration

• Traffic
• Soil-structure
• App installations
• Video views
• Lead generation

Conversion

• conversions
• Catalog sales
• Store visits

Facebook Ads Manager will use your chosen objective as the campaign name, but you can always customize this part however you want.

2. Set your budget

Your campaign budget depends on your goal, the duration of the campaign, and other factors. A Facebook advertising agency can help you manage your monthly budget wisely. You can rely on a dedicated strategist to learn how to optimize your Facebook ads budget and determine a ballpark amount for your campaign.

With or without a team of experts to assist you, you should know the two types of budgets you can set in Ads Manager:

• Daily budget – Your average ad spend each day, which Facebook will consume regardless of ad performance/results.
• Lifetime budget : The audiovisual complete of your campaign, adjusted by Facebook according to ad performance/results.

3. Select your audience

In addition to the reasonable cost of Facebook advertising, you can also take advantage sophisticated targeting features of this social network . Targeting means that you can choose the audience you want to reach based on certain parameters.

While it seems like Facebook can serve your target audience on a plate, the reality is that you will have to identify your potential customers and enter information about them.

You can tell Facebook Ads Manager who to target by choosing from these options:

• Main audiences : defined by demographic factors such as age, gender, location, education and position, interests, behavior and connections.
• Custom audiences – People who have already shown interest in you through purchases and visits to sites or apps.
• Similar audiences : based on a source audience with whom they share traits and interests

4. Determine where your ad will appear

The next step is to select where your ads will appear. Automatic placement is a beginner option as it uses Facebook's delivery system to determine the best places for ad performance.

Meanwhile, if you have more sophisticated strategies in place, you can delve deeper into manual placement. You can customize your locations according to:

• Devices : Desktop or mobile (you can also choose between Android and iOS)
• Platforms : Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network
• Locations :

○ Feeds (Facebook News Feed, Instagram, Facebook Marketplace, etc.)
○ Stories and reels
○ In-stream (Facebook in-stream videos, IGTV)
○ Search Results
○ Messenger Sponsored Messages
○ In-article and apps and sites (Audience Network native, banner and interstitial, Audience Network rewarded videos, Audience Network in-stream videos)

5. Choose an ad format

Before formatting your ad, you can block content and publishers that may impact your brand, such as sensitive content, by editing the items in Brand Safety. Once you get that out of the way, it's time to tell your story using any of the ad formats presented in the previous section.

6. Submit your order

Once you submit an ad, it will go through Facebook's ad auction. This is a system that determines which ad to serve to a particular user. Several ads go through this auction and the winner is the ad that meets the following criteria:

• Offer
• Estimated Action Rates
• Ad quality

Note: Please adhere to Facebook's advertising policies to ensure quality advertising performance.

Check out our Facebook advertising tips to learn more about tracking campaign performance, the next important step after setting up your ads.

Top Facebook Ad Campaign Tips to Boost ROI

Even with the low cost of Facebook advertising , you'll still want to get the best bang for your buck. We've compiled some of the best Facebook advertising tips to help you generate effective campaigns and profitable results:

Use Facebook pixel

The Facebook pixel is a snippet of code that can be added to your website manually or activated by connecting the platforms you already use, such as Shopify or WordPress (called partner integrations). This Facebook ads tool tracks conversions on your website (web events), allowing you to optimize your Custom Audiences and retarget them with ads.

Important note : Apple released changes in iOS 14 that may impact how you deliver campaigns to users on iOS 14.5 and later. Under its AppTrackingTransparency framework, the company now requires apps on the App Store to gain permission to track users.

In relation to this, you or a professional Facebook advertising agency should do some facebook pixel updates to continue measuring web events efficiently.

Track growth metrics

Take a deeper look at your Facebook advertising metrics and consider their value across your entire sales funnel. For example, you may have high click-through rates (CTR). But do they target leads or additional sales on your site? Or let's say you prioritize video views and engagement metrics like likes, comments, and shares. If content resonance is high, is it happening at the top, middle, or bottom of your funnel, and is this outcome aligned with your goals?

As you can see, Facebook advertising gets complicated once you have the numbers. Sometimes fine-tuning campaigns to maximize performance is best left in the expert hands of a Facebook advertising agency.

Perform A / B testing

A/B testing or split testing uses two versions of a visual or creative asset to identify which one resonates most with your audience. This way, you can direct your ad spend toward top performance. Not sure how to perform this step? A Facebook ad agency or expert social media team can guide you through setting up a split test within Facebook Ads Manager.

Follow-up, follow-up, refinement

Your campaign strategy and execution are closely related to Facebook's guidelines for ads. But your campaign lifecycle has just begun. You need to track and monitor your performance, checking for areas to improve and opportunities to discover.

In this regard, you may need to enlist the help of experts. You can't go wrong with a company that has demonstrated a deep understanding of how to use Facebook Ads, has shown a deep understanding of Facebook's advertising policies, and has delivered results based on clients' business and marketing objectives.

Beyond Facebook Ad Campaign Tips

In this blog, we discuss Facebook ads guidelines and best practices. We have also covered the elements of Facebook Ads Manager. You can also read about Facebook's advertising policies if you want to make sure your ad is approved.

But what if you want to start running and make as few mistakes as possible?

If you're just starting out but need to get a head start on Facebook advertising, find a qualified Facebook advertising agency that you can have complete confidence in. With a trusted partner, you can expand brand awareness and get the right people to notice you. , eventually earning their business. Exponential growth is possible no matter how niche your market is.

If you want to enjoy similar results and achieve a competitive advantage, send a message or chat with our consultants today.