creating-campaigns-ads-audiences

Creating Campaigns, Ads, and Audiences on Meta

The full build chain, end to end. Meta's structure is strict and nested:

Campaign (objective, budget if CBO)
  -> Ad Set (audience, placement, budget if ABO, optimization goal, schedule)
    -> Ad (references a creative + an ad set)
      -> Ad Creative (media, copy, CTA, link, url_tags)
Custom / Lookalike Audiences (built at the account level, referenced by ad sets)

Golden rules (always):

• Everything is created PAUSED. Never set a campaign, ad set, or ad to ACTIVE without explicit user confirmation. Spend only starts when the user says go.
• Budgets are in cents. 5000 = $50.00.
• Build order: audiences first (ad sets reference them) -> campaign -> ad set -> creative -> ad.
• Full field-level schemas (every param, every enum) are in ../api-reference.md. This guide is the flow; the api-reference is the dictionary.

---

1. Audiences

Custom audience (from a customer list, pixel traffic, engagement) - use the script:

python create_custom_audience.py --name "CRM - Closed Won" --type CUSTOM --subtype CRM

For B2B, follow the data hierarchy in audience-strategy.md: CRM lookalikes (Tier 1) -> third-party data (Tier 2) -> broad (Tier 3). Validate audience quality before scaling creative.

Lookalike - create the source custom audience first, then create a lookalike from it (subtype=LOOKALIKE, with origin_audience_id and country/ratio). See api-reference.md for the lookalike spec.

---

2. Campaign

Use the script:

python create_campaign.py --name "Q2 Leads" --objective OUTCOME_LEADS --daily-budget 5000

• OUTCOME_LEADS for lead gen. Objectives are listed in create_campaign.py.
• Add is_adset_budget_sharing_enabled: "true" for CBO (budget on the campaign) or "false" for ABO (budget on each ad set). ABO is the default for audience testing - one ad set per audience source, same ads across all.
• Starts PAUSED. The script prints the campaign_id for the next step.