Facebook offers various options for businesses to promote their products, services, and brand on the platform. Two of the most common are Facebook ads and Facebook ad campaigns. While there is some overlap between the two, they also have distinct differences.
What are Facebook ads?
Facebook ads are individual paid promotions that appear in users’ News Feeds or along the right side of their screen. When creating a Facebook ad, you choose the specific audience you want to target, establish a budget and schedule, select a format and design, and write ad creative.
Some key things to know about Facebook ads:
- You only pay when someone clicks your ad or watches a certain portion of your video ad.
- Ads can drive traffic to your website, promote an event, boost engagement with your Page, collect leads, or raise awareness about your brand.
- You have control over your daily spend limit and can make changes to your ad or pause it at any time.
- Ads are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis with no minimum contracts or commitments.
In summary, Facebook ads are standalone units you create and manage on an individual basis. You have full control and flexibility over each ad you run.
What are Facebook ad campaigns?
Facebook ad campaigns allow you to group multiple ads together around a shared objective, audience, and schedule. Rather than managing one ad at a time, campaigns allow you to:
- Organize all your ads under a single campaign strategy.
- Analyze performance data aggregated across your ads.
- Make optimization changes across all the ads in the campaign.
- Set an overall campaign budget instead of individual ad budgets.
Some types of Facebook ad campaigns include:
- Awareness campaigns – Broadly reach new audiences to increase brand awareness.
- Consideration campaigns – Promote specific products/services to cold audiences.
- Conversion campaigns – Drive actions from warm audiences already aware of your brand.
In summary, ad campaigns allow for more coordinated, high-level management of your advertising efforts on Facebook.
Key differences
While Facebook ads and ad campaigns go hand-in-hand, there are some notable ways they differ:
| Facebook Ads | Facebook Ad Campaigns |
|---|---|
| Individual units you create one by one | Umbrella under which multiple ads are organized |
| Focused on a single goal for one target audience | Encompass multiple ads with shared overarching objective |
| Managed independently with separate budgets | Controlled under a single campaign budget |
| Performance analyzed individually | Performance aggregated at campaign level |
| Changes affect only that specific ad | Changes can affect all ads in campaign |
So in summary:
- Facebook ads = Individual promotional units
- Facebook ad campaigns = Strategic grouping of multiple ads
Can ads run without a campaign?
Yes, Facebook ads can absolutely run outside of a structured ad campaign. There is no requirement that an ad must be part of a campaign.
For example, you may want to test out different ad variations before organizing them under a broader campaign. Or you might have an ad running that doesn’t fit under your current campaign objectives. Facebook gives you the flexibility to run ads independently as needed.
Can campaigns run without ads?
No, Facebook ad campaigns cannot run without actual ads. The point of a campaign is to group multiple ads together. Without any ad units inside it, an empty campaign serves no purpose.
What’s the best practice?
The best practice is to utilize both Facebook ads and ad campaigns together as part of your overall Facebook advertising strategy. Here are some guidelines on how to use each component most effectively:
- Use ad campaigns to organize your ads based on objective, audience, and schedule. This allows for coordinated management and optimization.
- Within each campaign, create distinct ads testing different elements like creative, messaging, call-to-action, etc. This allows you to determine the highest performing combinations.
- Analyze both campaign and ad-level data to guide optimization decisions. Make tweaks at the ad or campaign-level as needed.
- Develop new campaigns focused around launching a specific product line, reaching a new audience, driving conversions for an important initiative, etc.
- Always have some ads running outside of campaigns to test new concepts before integrating them into existing or new campaigns.
In summary…
Facebook ads and ad campaigns work together, with campaigns providing overarching structure and ads serving as the tangible promotional units. The most effective Facebook advertising approach combines strategic campaigns with ongoing ad testing and optimization.
Properly executed, Facebook ads and campaigns can increase your brand awareness, website traffic, lead generation, and sales. Take the time to learn best practices around both and how they interact with each other.