Facebook ad campaign basics

Facebook campaigns have three different components that come into play when determining the campaign’s results and how much they cost:

• Campaign objective
• Optimization goal
• Billing event

Campaign objective

The objective of your ad campaign should be aligned with your business goals, such as raising awareness of your business, or increasing conversions on your website. When you create a new ad campaign in Legacy Hootsuite Ads, the campaign type you select reflects your objective. You cannot change your campaign objective once you publish the campaign.

For more information on campaign objectives, see Facebook’s help article Choose the right objective.

Optimization goal

The campaign optimization goal is the measurable result you want to achieve with your campaign, as measured by the action taken by the people who see your ads. Your budget will be allocated in the most efficient way possible to get the best performance from your ads, based on your optimization goal.

For example, if you want to optimize for link clicks, Facebook shows your ads to people who are more likely to click on a link. You can select your campaign optimization goal when you set up your budget and bidding during campaign creation.

Billing event

The billing event is the action that triggers your payment for during an active campaign. The most common billing event is impressions (that is, you pay Facebook every time they show your ad to someone) but, depending on the campaign objective and optimization, the billing event can be something else, like link clicks or app installations. You specify your campaign's billing event when you set your budget and bidding during campaign creation.

Actions like app installations are typically more expensive than impressions, because you're paying only when someone actually installs the app you're promoting, regardless of how many impressions it takes to get it. That means that Facebook is delivering impressions on your ads without necessarily being paid for them, so they require a higher bid. If you pay for impressions, on the other hand, you're paying Facebook regardless of whether they result in any app installations, so Facebook is more likely to sell top spots for a lower bid in ad auctions.

The following table lists some of the most common combinations of campaign objectives, optimization goals, and billing events.

You can view the objective, optimization goal, and billing event for every active campaign on the campaign's Summary tab in Legacy Hootsuite Ads.