Facebook and Instagram ads changed more in the last three years than in the ten before. Meta's algorithm now does most of the targeting on its own, and the thing that decides who sees your ad is the ad itself. That makes a Facebook ads agency a creative operation first and a media buyer second. Here is how we run Meta accounts for Australian brands, in order.
The order we build in
1. Measurement. The Pixel and the Conversions API, deduplicated with matching event IDs, and reported purchases checked against your Shopify orders. Since iOS privacy changes, a browser pixel on its own misses a meaningful share of conversions, and Meta optimises on what it can see.
2. Offer and landing page. Before creative, we check the page the ad lands on. A slow product page or a confusing offer caps every ad you will ever run, and fixing it first is cheaper than buying around it.
3. A creative bank by angle. Problem and solution, product demo, social proof, comparison, founder story. Each angle gets several versions through our UGC creator network, so the account can test angles rather than colour variations.
4. A consolidated structure. Fewer campaigns with more budget each, so the algorithm has enough data to learn. Advantage+ shopping campaigns where they fit, with existing customers capped or excluded so prospecting money is not spent re-selling to people already on your list.
5. The retention handoff. Every customer Meta brings in should land in Klaviyo flows built to earn the second order. Paid acquisition without retention means paying for the same customer twice.
How much budget Meta needs
Meta's own guidance is that an ad set needs roughly 50 optimisation events in a week to leave the learning phase. That gives you a simple check. If your cost per purchase is around $40, an ad set optimising for purchases needs something like $2,000 a week to learn properly. If that is more than you want to spend, the fix is fewer ad sets, or optimising for an earlier event like add to cart while volume builds, not ten small ad sets that never learn anything.
How to read a Meta account's numbers
In-platform ROAS is Meta's estimate of the revenue it caused, and it is generous. We report it next to three numbers that are harder to flatter: blended revenue divided by total ad spend across every channel, cost per new customer, and contribution margin after product cost, shipping and ads. A campaign can show a strong ROAS and still lose money once those are counted. We manage to the margin number.
Facebook ads for service businesses
Meta works for service businesses that sell something visual, local or considered: renovations, clinics, fitness, professional services with a clear offer. The difference is the finish line. Instant lead forms are cheap but attract low-intent enquiries unless they include a qualifying question or two. A landing page with call tracking costs more per lead and usually costs less per signed client. We set it up to measure the client, not the form fill, the same way we run lead generation on Google. For services people search for in a hurry, like an emergency plumber, Google Ads should come first.
When Meta is the wrong first channel
Low-priced products with thin margins, where the cost of acquiring a customer can exceed the profit on the first order and there is no repeat purchase to recover it. Urgent, intent-driven services. And any brand that cannot supply fresh creative, because an account running the same three ads for months is fading whether the dashboard says so yet or not.
Worth checking today: if your best-performing ad is months old and nothing new has beaten it, the account does not have a targeting problem. It has a creative supply problem.
