How to run Facebook and Instagram ads for the first time in 2026

You need five things before an ad can go live: a business portfolio, an ad account, a payment method, a Facebook Page (with your Instagram account linked) and a way to measure results. Everything else, including targeting, is set inside the campaign. The table shows what each piece does and where you set it up.

Meta's reach is not the bottleneck. Its apps averaged 3.60 billion daily active people in June 2026, according to Meta's Q2 2026 results. The same report shows the average price per ad up 12% year over year, which is one more reason to get tracking and structure right before you spend.

Follow these ten steps in order. Steps 1 to 5 are one-time setup, steps 6 to 10 are the campaign itself. Plan about two hours if your website already has a checkout or form.

1. Create a business portfolio at business.facebook.com with your company name and business email.
2. Add your Facebook Page and connect your Instagram professional account in Business settings.
3. Create an ad account inside the portfolio. Set time zone and currency carefully, you cannot change them later.
4. Add a payment method under Billing and payments.
5. Create a dataset (pixel) in Events Manager, install it on your site and set up the Conversions API. Many shop systems do both through an official Meta integration.
6. Open Ads Manager, click Create and choose Sales (shops) or Leads (services, B2B).
7. Keep Advantage+ campaign budget and Advantage+ audience on. Add a location, and only add age or other limits that are legal or hard business constraints.
8. Set one ad set with a daily budget based on the learning formula below and choose your conversion event, for example Purchase or Lead.
9. Upload 3 to 6 ads that differ in idea, not just in color: a testimonial, an offer, a product demo, a comparison.
10. Preview every placement, publish, and write the launch date down. Most ads are reviewed within 24 hours.

The pixel reports events from the browser, the Conversions API reports the same events from your server. Meta recommends running both side by side, which it calls a redundant setup, because browsers, ad blockers and consent choices cut off part of the pixel data.

When both send the same purchase, Meta must count it once. Per Meta's developer documentation, that works when the pixel's event ID and name match the event_id and event_name sent by the server, and both arrive within 48 hours. If your shop plugin handles this, you only need to check it.

• Open Events Manager, use Test events and place a real test order or submit your own form.
• Check that the event shows up from both the browser and the server, and that it is marked as deduplicated.
• Compare the purchase value Meta received with the value in your shop.
• Only then publish the campaign. Fixing tracking after launch means the first week of learning used wrong data.

Choose the objective that matches the money event. If people pay on your website, choose Sales and optimize for Purchase. If people send an inquiry, book a call or request a quote, choose Leads and optimize for the lead event on your site or an instant form. Traffic and Engagement look cheaper per click, but Meta then finds people who click or like, not people who buy.

For a first campaign, keep the defaults. Since Meta merged the manual and Advantage+ setups, new Sales, Leads and App campaigns start with Advantage+ switched on: campaign budget, audience and placements. Meta reports 10% lower cost per qualified lead for Leads campaigns with Advantage+ on, on its Advantage+ leads page. That is Meta's own figure without a published study period, so read it as a reason to start there, not as a promise.

• Advantage+ audience: keep on. Add your location. Interests work as suggestions, not hard limits.
• Advantage+ placements: keep on. Your ads then run on Facebook, Instagram, Reels, Stories and more, which is why you need square, 4:5 and 9:16 versions.
• Advantage+ campaign budget: keep on with one ad set. It only matters once you add more. Our CBO vs ABO guide explains when to switch.
• Advantage+ creative enhancements: check each option. Some change your text or image. Turn off anything that would break brand or legal rules.

Enough for about 50 conversions per ad set per week. Meta's help center says an ad set leaves the learning phase after about 50 optimization events within 7 days. Below that, delivery keeps shifting and costs stay unstable. So the budget follows from your target cost per purchase or lead, not from a round number.

Weekly budget per ad set ≈ 50 × target cost per result | Daily ≈ 7 × target cost per result

If you do not know your target cost per purchase yet, work it out from your margin with the ROAS calculator. For typical CPMs and cost per click by country, see how much Facebook and Instagram ads cost.

A good first ad makes one clear promise in the first second, shows the product or result, and matches the page it links to. Creative now does most of the targeting on Meta: with broad audiences, the ad itself decides who stops scrolling. Give the system different ideas to work with, not ten versions of the same photo.

• Formats: at least one 4:5 image or video for Feed and one 9:16 version for Stories and Reels.
• Text: primary text of 50 to 150 characters and a headline of about 27, as Meta's Ads Guide recommends.
• Proof: a real customer quote, a number or a before and after beats adjectives.
• Offer: say what the person gets and what it costs, or why now.
• Landing page: the same headline and the same offer as the ad.

In the first two weeks your job is to watch, not to steer. Meta treats changes to targeting, creative or the optimization event as significant edits that can restart learning. Use this checklist and write down every change you make.

• Boosting posts and calling it advertising. Likes are cheap and rarely turn into customers.
• Too many ad sets. Five ad sets at €20 a day each collect less learning than one at €100.
• Changing too early. Edits in the first 7 days restart learning and make the data useless.
• Choosing Traffic because the cost per click looks low, then wondering why nobody buys.
• Launching without testing the pixel and Conversions API.
• Narrow interest targeting on a small budget. It raises CPM and gives Meta less room to find buyers.
• Trusting Meta's reported sales blindly. Compare them with your shop or CRM every week.

You can do all of this yourself with the steps above. If you would rather not, there are three routes: hire an agency, work with a freelancer, or use software that watches the account for you.

One option from us, for businesses that have never run ads: Kickstart, €99 one-time, 30 days, no subscription, Meta only. We build your first campaign with you, including tracking and structure, so you understand what you launched. It is meant for a clean start, not as an ongoing service.

Once ads run, Marketing AIgency's AI agents review your Meta account, look into the numbers before they propose anything and put each proposal with its reasoning into an approval queue. Nothing happens until you approve it, and new accounts start in shadow mode. Guards check budgets and ads every 30 to 60 minutes depending on the plan, around the clock. Plans are fixed monthly prices with no share of ad spend, see plans and pricing.