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Meta Business Help Centre
How to choose the right ad objective in Meta Ads Manager
Before you choose which ad to create with Meta Ads Manager, first consider what your business goals are. Your ad objective is the outcome that you and your business would find the most valuable. It's important to know what you want to achieve before choosing an objective.
As your business grows, your campaign goals may change. First, you may want to focus on building awareness and acquiring new customers. Later, you may want to encourage people to make a purchase or sign up for an event. Consider what are the most crucial actions that your potential customers can take in order for you to achieve your current goals.
Ad objective choices in Ads Manager
Review how these six simplified objectives can help you reach a specific business goal. You can use the table below to better understand the simplified objectives and how they map to the original objectives that you may have used in the past.
| Simplified ad objective | Your business goal is to: | Original ad objective |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness | Bring awareness to your business. This objective will help you reach the largest number of people who are most likely to remember your ad. If your business is brand new or has recently changed names, awareness may help potential customers become more familiar with your business. | Brand awareness Reach Video views Store traffic |
| Traffic | Increase traffic to an online destination of your choice. Send people to a destination, such as your Facebook Page or shops on Instagram, website or app. If you're having a flash sale in your shop or want to send potential customers to a web page that describes your services, this may help drive traffic to those destinations. | Traffic |
| Engagement | Find the people most likely to engage with your business online, send a message or take desired actions on your ad or Page. If you want people who are interested in your products or services to start a conversation via Messenger, this objective can reach potential customers that are more likely to do so. | Engagement Video views Messages Conversions |
| Leads | Collect leads for your business or brand via messages, phone calls or sign-ups. If you want potential customers to sign up for a monthly newsletter, leads can help you reach people who want to share their information and learn more about your business. | Lead generation Messages Conversions |
| App promotion | Get people on mobile devices to install or take a specific action within your app. If you want potential customers to make a purchase through your app or try a new feature, you can create an app promotion campaign. | App installs |
| Sales | Find people likely to purchase your goods or services. If you want to reach people who are most likely to make a purchase, such as through an e-commerce site, you can use the Sales objective. You can also optimise for other actions, such as adding an item to basket. | Conversions Catalogue sales |
Recreating a previous campaign using our simplified objectives in Ads Manager
If the original objectives that you used in the past no longer exist, such as Conversions and Messaging, you can use these simplified objectives to replicate a similar version of a previous campaign. The table below outlines which simplified objective and additional settings, if applicable, you should use to achieve a similar result.
| Original ad objective | Simplified ad objective | Additional settings |
|---|---|---|
| Brand awareness | Awareness | Performance goal: Ad recall lift |
| Reach | Awareness | Performance goal: Reach or impressions |
| Traffic | Traffic | No changes to this objective. |
| Engagement | Engagement | Choose a conversion location or engagement type based on your goal. |
| App installs | App promotion | No changes to this objective. |
| Video views | Awareness | Performance goal: ThruPlay or 2-second continuous video views |
| Engagement | Conversion location: On your ad Engagement type: Video views | |
| Lead generation | Leads | Choose a conversion location based on your goal. |
| Messages | Traffic | Conversion location: Messenger or WhatsApp |
| Engagement | Conversion location: Messaging apps | |
| Leads | Conversion location: Messenger | |
| Sales | Conversion location: Messenger or WhatsApp | |
| Conversions | Engagement | Conversion location: Website or app |
| Leads | Conversion location: Website or app | |
| Sales | Conversion location: Website, app, Messenger or WhatsApp | |
| Catalogue sales | Sales | Select manual campaign setup and choose your catalogue in the Campaign details section.  |
| Store traffic | Awareness | Turn on Store locations features. |
