What is the Difference Between Facebook Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads?

For those who are not well versed with Facebook Ads, the terms "campaigns, ad sets, and ads" can be very confusing—especially for authors or solopreneurs who don't have much experience in Facebook ads or other ad platforms. No worries if you are one of these. In this article, I'm going to help you set the record straight once and for all.

So, let's start.

Any Facebook ad has three parts: a Campaign, Ad Set and Ad.

These parts, when combined, make up what's called the campaign structure. Knowing how they work together is vital to learn and run the ads the way you want and reach the right reader.

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At the campaign level, you set the advertising objective. This is where you decide the end goal for your ads, like driving more traffic to your Amazon book page.

The ad set is where you define your targeting strategy by setting up a targeted audience, budget and schedule.

Ads are creatives like pictures or videos that tell your targeted audience what you are trying to promote.

What's a Campaign?

Campaign is the first brick of your ad structure, the foundation of your ad.

You'll always start with the Campaign when you decide to create an ad. This is where you tell Facebook the objective of your ad. When Facebook says objective, they are trying to understand what you want your ad to accomplish.

An advertising objective could be to promote your page or to bring in traffic to your website. For example, if you want to bring in traffic to your website, Facebook will optimize your ad to get more visitors to your website.

By telling Facebook what you are trying to accomplish, you see the different options for your ads and reporting measures essential to understand if the right audience sees your ads.

What's an Ad Set?

An ad set indicates your ad how to run. At the ad-set level, you SET your audience, SET your budget, and SET where the ad sends your readers using Facebook's targeting options. You can define your audience by location, age, gender, and so on. You'll also set a schedule for your ad and choose your placements. This is where you can also specify a budget. I'm saying that you CAN determine a budget at the ad set level becuase if you are using a CBO strategy, you will have to create your budget at the campaign level.

In other words, while the Campaign is your "why," the Ad Sets are the "who, where, and how much $$$."

A campaign can have multiple ad sets, each with different targeting, scheduling, and budgeting options chosen. Ad Set also helps you to control your budget. You can create multiple ad sets and put different amounts of budget towards each ad set.

What's an Ad?

Your ad is what your customers or audience will see. Ads are the fun part; at least for me, they tickle my creative brain. This is where you'll choose your ads creative, which may include things like images, videos, text, and a call-to-action button.

Keep in mind that you can have multiple ads within a single ad set.

Let's put campaigns, ad sets, and ads into perspective

Separating Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads gives you more control. Control over different components of the ad (images, copy, audience, goal, budget, etc.) and control over the analysis (general reporting, custom reporting, pixels, etc.).

If Facebook only allowed you to create one audience, one ad, with one objective—things would have been easier to understand and manage—but your budget would go poof. It would also make testing an impossible task, and it would take loads of guesswork and luck to find and target your ideal audience.

To maximize your return on investment, separating the three is absolutely essential.