An update and changes to ad objectives in Meta Ads Manager

The ad objectives in Meta Ads Manager have been updated to help you choose the one that is most closely aligned with your business goal. The six new objectives are: sales, leads, engagement, app promotion, traffic and awareness.

While some ad objectives have been consolidated and campaign creation steps have changed as a result, all of the same functionality is available. Starting in January 2024, you'll no longer be able to duplicate or import campaigns, ad sets and ads using the original objectives. You also won't be able to create new ad sets or ads within existing campaigns that use the original objectives. Later in 2024, the original objectives will no longer be available for new or existing campaigns.

As the 11 ad objectives are consolidated into 6, some of the original objectives are no longer stand-alone and are instead available as settings or optimisation tactics under the simplified objectives. For example, the original objective "video views" is now available as an optimisation tactic under the simplified awareness and engagement objectives. Choose the simplified objective that best matches your business goal. So, if your goal is to improve awareness with video, select the awareness objective. If your goal is to get more views, select the Engagement objective.

Below is a helpful table that shows how each previous, original objective in the left-hand column maps to a new, simplified objective in the right-hand column.

Learn more about how to choose the right ad objective in Meta Ads Manager.

Compared to the previous 11 objectives, the current set of 6 objectives affect objective names, ad set options and how we display certain campaign results.

• Current objective names: You can now choose from among six ad objectives: awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion and sales. Some of the previous objectives have been combined with the new objectives.
• New ad set options: Some of the previous objectives are now available as a feature or optimisation setting when you create your ad set. For example, the previous objective of reach is now available by choosing the Awareness objective and selecting Reach as an optimisation setting. Other previous objectives are available as a conversion location. The conversion location is the place where you want people to take action. For example, the previous objective of messages is now available by choosing the Engagement objective and selecting Messaging apps as the conversion location.
• Campaign results display: Some of the current objectives generate different reporting metrics versus previous objectives, and the two sets cannot always be compared. Depending on the objective that you use for your campaigns, you may view results in Ads Manager that appear either blank or as a dash in the results column of the Campaign tab. Results in the ad set and ad tabs will not be affected.

In January 2024, changes to Ads Manager will affect your ability to use the original objectives. To prepare for these upcoming changes, you can begin using the current six objectives for all new campaigns and proactively convert existing campaigns through duplication.