What settings should I use when I create a Facebook ad campaign in Ads Manager?

Build the campaign in Ads Manager at adsmanager.facebook.com, not with the Boost post button. A campaign holds one or more ad sets, and each ad set holds one or more ads. Start with one campaign, one ad set and about 10 ads. Most settings can stay on their defaults. The ones that matter:

Campaign level

1. Name: use a naming convention with the launch date (for example the month and year, or 0828) plus a friendly name you will remember.
2. Buying type: leave it on Auction. Objective: Sales or Leads.
3. Budget: choose campaign budget (CBO) and enter a daily budget. Facebook splits the spend between ad sets and puts roughly 90 percent into the best one. Use ad set budget (ABO) only if you run several ad sets, for example HVAC, plumbers and insurance, and want each tested at the same budget.
4. Bid strategy: keep Highest volume, the default. Leave budget scheduling and special ad categories alone unless you are in one, such as housing or elections.

Ad set level

5. Conversion location: your website, or an instant form (see the lead form versus website answer). Under Datasets pick your Facebook pixel or the dataset from your Conversions API integration.
6. Performance goal: keep Maximize number of conversions (or leads). Switch to maximize conversion value only once you have several offers at different prices.
7. Start date: set it just after midnight, for example 12:05 AM, and at least four to six hours in the future. Launching late in the day makes Facebook rush to spend the day's budget, which gives poor results, and the delay lets all your ads be approved so they start together with an equal chance. If you build the ad at 11 PM, start it at midnight the next night.
8. Facebook's recommendations: ignore them. Most are junk, such as adding AI generated music.
9. Audience: leave it broad, for example the whole US, or the US and Canada. Only set a location radius for a local business. Do not limit age, gender or states, and skip suggested audiences.
10. Placements: open Show more settings and edit the platforms. Use Facebook and Instagram only. Turn off Audience Network, which is junk traffic with poor results and click fraud that otherwise takes about 5 to 10 percent of your budget. Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads can be turned off too. Right after you exclude Audience Network, uncheck the box that lets Meta spend on places you excluded, and ignore the option to include all recommended placements, otherwise Meta can still spend there.

Ad level

11. Select your business Facebook page and Instagram profile (create them first, ideally matching your brand name).
12. Upload at least 10 image ads and five variations of each text field (see the ad creative answer). Turn off multi-advertiser ads so your ad is not shown small beside another advertiser's ad.
13. Destination: put a Votel click tracking link in the website URL field rather than your site link, set a display link so people see your domain, and turn off personalized destinations so clicks go only to your link.
14. Publish. The ads show as scheduled while Facebook reviews them and change to published when they are live.

Facebook changes the Ads Manager screens often, so if something looks different, look for the same setting under another name or place.