The Ultimate Guide to Advertising on Instagram and Facebook

Organic growth on Instagram and Facebook isn’t what it used to be, with organic reach falling by 18% year-on-year for Instagram alone in 2024. This makes paid acquisition on Meta platforms unavoidable in 2026 to those looking for guaranteed visibility.

While Instagram and Facebook ads for beginners can work incredibly well, the reality of running them can be much trickier. Behind every ad is a maze of accounts, settings, objectives, targeting rules, creative formats, and tracking requirements, which can be a steep learning curve for beginners.

We’ve created this guide to break down how to advertise on Instagram and Facebook, decoding why these platforms feel so overwhelming for solopreneurs working for themselves, and outlining what it takes to run effective paid social campaigns.

We’ll also explore how modern AI-powered tools can remove most of the manual setup that prevents people from getting their ads live in the first place.

Facebook Ads vs. Instagram Ads: What’s the Difference?

The benefit of using Instagram and Facebook Ads is that they’re both run through the same system: Meta Ad Manager.

This means you have the same ad account, campaigns, and targeting goals, keeping everything aligned and in one place.

Same System, Different Behavior

However, Instagram and Facebook serve different roles in how people discover and engage with content.

Instagram Ads are more visual, fast-moving, and inspiration-driven. People tend to scroll quickly, react emotionally, and engage with short-form content such as Reels or Stories.

Facebook Ads are more information-heavy and intent-driven. Users are more likely to read longer captions, click links, join groups, and engage with discussions.

Key Ad Placements Explained

When you run Meta ads, your content can appear across multiple different placements, including:

• Feeds: Standard posts that blend into organic content
• Stories: Full-screen, vertical ads with short attention windows
• Reels: Short-form videos optimized for discovery
• Explore: Ads shown while users browse content
• Facebook Feed: More traditional, text-friendly placements

Most advertisers use Meta’s automatic placements, which allow the algorithm to decide where to place their ads based on performance data.

When Each Platform Performs Best

Each platform has its own strengths and reasons that it performs better than others.

Instagram ads tend to work well for creators and personal brands, particularly those promoting visual products/services. It’s also useful for short-form video and UGC-style content, helping to drive awareness and focus engagement-driven campaigns.

Facebook ads are better for those looking to improve their lead generation, primarily those working in services or promoting consulting offers. It allows for longer explanations within its ads, which can be useful for educational content, while also helping to aid conversion-focused campaigns.

In reality, most successful campaigns use both platforms together. This allows the channels to understand where your audience responds best and fine-tune your ads accordingly.

How Meta Advertising Actually Works

Before you can get started with a successful Instagram or Facebook ad, it helps to understand how Meta’s advertising system works.

In this section, we’ll clearly break down how the Meta Ad Manager is structured so that you’re familiar with it when you get started.

The Core Structure

At a high level, Meta advertising works in subsections:

1. Business Manager

The Meta Business Manager is where Meta connects everything, from your Facebook Page and Instagram account to your ad account, domains, and those who manage them.

2. Ad Account

The ad account is where billing, spending limits, and ad performance are managed. You can have multiple ad accounts within one business manager, but most beginners will only need one.

3. Campaigns

Campaigns are structured by goal, such as awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, or sales. Your objective will tell Meta how to optimize delivery for the best results.

4. Ad Sets

Your ad sets are where targeting, budget, schedule, and placements are chosen. This includes your audiences, locations, age ranges, and optimization events.

5. Ads

The ads section is where you can upload images or videos, content, headlines, CTAs, and links to make your ad appealing and conversion-friendly.

Understanding Objectives

You should take some time to consider your main goals for your campaign. When you choose an objective, you’re telling Meta who you want to show your ad to and for what reason.

Meta objectives optimize for:

• Traffic: People who are likely to click links.
• Engagement: Likes, comments, and shares.
• Leads: Those likely to submit a form.
• Sales: Visitors who are ready to buy.

You should choose an objective that matches your real goals, so that your campaigns are optimized for performance and results.

Optimization and Delivery

Meta ads are algorithm-driven and are entered into a learning phase when first launched. This is where Meta tests an ad to understand which audiences respond best.

In this stage, it’s important to remember that performance can fluctuate early on. You shouldn’t make big decisions or changes yet, as this can reset the learning process.

Meta will struggle to optimize a campaign without enough data (or incorrect tracking), so it’s best to allow the learning phase to take place and correctly set up tracking to avoid wasted ad spend and inconsistent performance.

What You Actually Need Before Running Your First Ad

There are a few main steps you need to get right before you can spend even $1.

Getting your setup right can make all the difference when it comes to avoiding wasted spend and ensuring your campaigns are optimized from the beginning.

Before running Meta ads, you typically need:

• Meta Business Manager: This is the central account that connects everything, allowing you to manage ads, campaigns, assets, and permissions.
• Facebook Page: Every ad must be connected to a Facebook page, even if you’re mainly advertising on Instagram.
• Instagram Account: Linking an Instagram account to your business manager will allow you to use Instagram placements alongside Facebook ads.
• Domain Verification: You need to verify your domain for tracking and optimizing conversion-based campaigns, especially after privacy changes.
• Ad Account: Billing, spending limits, and campaign data are managed here.
• Payment Method: You must upload a valid payment method, which will be verified before you can set your ads live.
• Pixel / Tracking Setup: Meta’s tracking pixel must be installed on your website or landing page to enable conversion tracking.
• Conversion Events: This is where you define what success looks like (whether it’s email signups, purchases, or bookings) so that they can be tracked correctly.
• Landing Page: Somewhere clear and focused for your audience to take action.
• Lead Capture Method: Usually a form, signup page, or checkout that collects interest.

Getting these steps right can save you many a headache later on in the process and ensure you hit the ground running with your ads.

The Most Common Problems Beginners Face

There are a few problems many beginners face when setting up Instagram and Facebook ads. We’ve included these below to help you avoid these mistakes in your own campaigns:

Overwhelming Interface

Meta Ads Manager wasn’t designed for beginners. It was built for media buyers managing dozens of campaigns at scale, which can be very overwhelming for those new to advertising online.

For individuals, the sheer number of objectives, placements, bids, tracking, and reports to choose from can be too much, creating confusion before even launching an ad.

Too Many Choices Without Direction

Beginners often feel they have to answer questions that they wouldn’t understand early on in their advertising journey, such as:

• What is your primary objective?
• Are you focused on traffic, leads, or conversions?
• Do you want to optimize for clicks or results?
• Would you like to use automatic placements or manual ones?

The answers to some of these questions may become clear after testing the waters, but they can feel overwhelming early on. Stick to achieving just a couple of the above first before moving on to others.

Poor Targeting Decisions

Many beginners rely too heavily on Facebook ads targeting or stack too many audiences together.

This can lead to audience overlap, small audience sizes, and inconsistent delivery.

While finding your niche audience is important, privacy changes and reduced data signals have impacted the effectiveness of targeting methods. Focus on finding your ideal audience, and serve them the best creatives and messaging instead.

No Conversion Tracking

Some beginners fail to set up proper tracking or benchmarks for their campaign, which can result in poor results, high costs, and no understanding as to why.

Early symptoms of this issue include:

• Few or no conversions
• High CPMs (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions)
• Low CTRs (Click Through Rates)

Without accurate tracking, it’s impossible to know why a campaign is failing and how to fix it.

Weak / Misaligned Creatives

Many ads don’t perform because of a weak creative. This is often because the creative isn’t strong enough to stop people scrolling, or doesn’t clearly convey the campaign’s primary message.

Creative testing is essential, but many beginners will run a single ad and hope for the best. This can result in the format not matching the placement, or the ad feeling too much like a sponsored post.

No Funnel or Follow-Up

Even if an ad is getting clicks, it can sometimes fail because of a lack of a funnel or follow-up process.

Users should be clearly guided through a lead form or landing page, and then responded to quickly for the best results. Traffic alone doesn’t create customers – without a structured system in place, the budget can be spent aimlessly without generating results.

Targeting on Facebook & Instagram: Why It’s Harder Than It Looks

Targeting is where most beginners place lots of confidence, but can get tripped up fast.

On the surface, Meta’s wealth or targeting options can appear powerful, with interests, behaviors, locations, and demographics as options.

But in practice, targeting has become far less predictable than it once was – here’s a breakdown of targeting on Facebook and Instagram to get you started on the right track.

Three Main Audience Types

The three main types of audiences on Meta include:

• Core Audiences: Based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.
• Custom Audiences: People who have already interacted with your business, such as email subscribers, website visitors, or video viewers.
• Lookalike Audiences: A new audience that resembles your existing customers/leads.

Beginners usually start with core audiences and move on to the other audience types as their campaigns progress.

Why Interest Targeting Isn’t Reliable Anymore

In the past, advertisers could stack different interests and target super-niche audiences. Today, this approach can easily backfire, mainly because of privacy changes that have reduced the accuracy of user-level data.

This can make interest signals weaker and less consistent, resulting in unstable performance, overly narrow audiences, and increases in CPMs due to limited reach.

These days, it’s better to target a slightly broader audience and rely on creative signals and engagement data to learn how to run Facebook ads that convert best for your individual objectives. Focus on clear messaging, strong hooks, relevant offers, and proper conversion tracking. Getting these areas right will allow the system to learn faster, rather than focusing on clever targeting tricks or hacks.

Ad Creatives: The Real Success Factor

Ad creatives are now the main lever for success with Instagram and Facebook ads.

Many ads fail within the first 24-48 hours because the creative doesn’t catch attention or stop someone from scrolling past.

What people see and read is the single biggest factor in whether an ad will succeed or fail. In the sections below, we’ll explain how to design a powerful creative that will stop your audience scrolling in their tracks.

What Makes an Ad Creative Work

Strong ad creatives have three primary elements:

• A Clear Hook: This is something that grabs attention immediately. It could be a question, a bold statement, or a pain point.
• A Simple Message: One idea, one benefit, or a next step. Don’t overload your ad with information, as this will negatively affect performance.
• A Natural Format: A powerful ad should look like organic content. For example, UGC-style videos tend to perform better than overly polished creatives.

Video vs. Static Ads

You may already know how much video dominates ad placements, with Reels and Stories generating twice as many impressions on Facebook and Instagram than other ad formats.

Short, vertical videos that feel native to the platform tend to perform best; however, static images can still work if the message is clear and relevant.

If you want to tell a story and engage with your audience, go for a video. If a simple offer or lead generation is your main focus, choose a static ad.

Why Iteration Matters

No one gets their creative right on the first try, which is why testing multiple variations is the key to success.

Try out different hooks, visuals, and angles on the same offer to understand which performs best, and then hone in. Beginners often launch one ad and wait, but iteration is the process you need to test your creatives and help the system learn.

Budgeting, Bidding & Costs Explained

Budgeting, bidding, and costs can feel really intimidating to first-time advertisers. But it’s easy once you understand the structure.

Meta allows advertisers to set either daily budgets, which cap your spend per day, or lifetime budgets, which spread your spend over a set period of time. Most beginners prefer to use a daily budget, as this allows for more control and flexibility over a campaign.

Every new campaign will enter a learning phase where Meta will test your ad with different audiences to see who is most likely to respond. This is why small budgets can struggle, as Meta can’t collect enough data to optimize the campaign effectively.  

The goal isn’t necessarily to spend more, but to make sure your budget is spent smartly so that Meta’s system can learn and optimize your campaigns properly.

In terms of bidding, common metrics include:

• Cost Per Click (CPC): The cost for someone to click on your ad.
• Cost Per Lead (CPL): The cost for an email sign-up/form submission.
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): The cost for a sale or booking.

It’s important to remember that these metrics only matter in context. A low CPC means nothing if your leads don’t convert, while a higher CPL may be okay if your lead quality is strong.

It’s also key to ensure you spend some time on planning and setup before going live. Bad setup, such as poor tracking, unclear offers, or weak creative, can silently burn your budget, as your campaign doesn’t have the signals it needs to succeed.

Why Meta Ads Feel Overwhelming for Solopreneurs

Meta ads can feel overwhelming for solopreneurs because it was primarily built for agencies and experienced media buyers, rather than people running businesses alone.

Running ads requires juggling multiple tools at once, from Business Manager and Ad Manager to tracking pixels, landing pages, email platforms, and analytics dashboards. Each tool has its own technical setup and learning curves, and you’re expected to connect accounts, verify domains, and install tracking, which all feel much more technical than marketing.

What adds to this overwhelm is the lack of guidance received once an ad goes live. Ad Manager will show you performance metrics, but rarely tells you what to do if things aren’t performing. Without automation or feedback loops, everything from follow-ups to automation will require constant manual effort, which you may not have time for as a busy solopreneur.

This can create a frustrating cycle of wasted spend, unclear results, and a drop in confidence. It’s not because solopreneurs aren’t capable, but because the system demands too many choices without support.

How Nas.io Simplifies Instagram & Facebook Advertising

Nas.io approaches Instagram and Facebook advertising from a different angle.

Instead of asking solopreneurs to master Meta Ads Manager, Nas.io uses AI-assisted ad creation via its Magic Ads feature to generate campaigns without technical, copywriting, or ad expertise. Audience targeting is guided and automated, and setup is simplified by bringing landing pages, lead forms, and follow-up into one platform.

The result is a unified workflow where traffic, conversions, follow-ups, and payments are connected. This helps reduce launch time, lower learning curves and complicated setups, and reduce the risk of wasted spend. Instead of managing tools, solopreneurs can focus on refining their offer and messaging while the system handles execution.

Manual Ads vs Using an AI-Powered Platform

Running Instagram and Facebook ads manually gives the user full control, but it naturally requires managing many moving parts.

For solopreneurs, an AI system can make ads more efficient and successful. Here’s a comparison table to demonstrate the differences between managing ads manually or via an AI-powered platform:

It’s worth noting that both approaches can work. The main difference here is that AI-powered platforms remove friction, making paid social advertising more accessible to individuals without big budgets or technical knowledge.

Who Should Use Instagram & Facebook Ads?

Instagram and Facebook ads are a good choice for anyone building an independent income, primarily those who want to reach people beyond their organic growth.

Coaches and consultants can use ads to generate discovery calls and warm leads without relying on referrals alone. Course creators and digital product sellers can drive traffic to launches, waiting lists, or lead magnets, even with a small audience.

Freelancers often use paid ads to reach businesses actively looking for their services, while local service providers can target people in specific areas who are ready to buy.

Instead of waiting for word-of-mouth, solopreneurs and creators working for themselves can use Meta ads to create demand and reliable visibility. When paired with a simple funnel and follow-up system, it can become a powerful tool for building sustainable, independent revenue streams over time.

Final Thoughts: Ads Don’t Have to Be This Complicated

Instagram and Facebook ads do work, and they don’t have to be complicated. While the complexity of the system often puts people off, AI-powered platforms can change this by automating setup, guiding decisions, and making Meta ads more accessible for solopreneurs and first-time advertisers.

You don’t need to become a media buyer or master every setting to run effective ads. With the right structure and an AI platform like Nas.io, you can use paid social as a manageable, repeatable part of your business that supports growth rather than creating stress.

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