Facebook Ads Manager Guide: Step by Step for Store Owners

Facebook Ads Manager (officially Meta Ads Manager) is Meta’s free tool for creating, running and measuring Facebook and Instagram ads in one place. To use it you need a business portfolio with an ad account, a payment method and a clear objective; then you build the campaign in three layers (campaign, ad set, ad) and publish. This Facebook Ads Manager guide covers every step the way we apply it to Shopify stores in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and Jordan, through to reading results against real store orders.

Figure: the setup order for a store, from the business portfolio to checking results against store orders.

Note: Meta renames menus often. Labels below match Ads Manager and the Meta Business Help Center in October 2026.

What Facebook Ads Manager is and how to open it on web and mobile

Meta Ads Manager is the control panel for all Meta advertising. One ad can run across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, the Audience Network (Meta’s network of third-party apps and sites) and Threads, depending on the objective and placements.

On a computer (recommended):

1. Log in with your personal Facebook profile (customers never see it).
2. Go to adsmanager.facebook.com, or open Meta Business Suite at business.facebook.com and choose Ads Manager from the side menu.
3. Check that the right ad account is selected at the top, especially if you run more than one store.

On mobile: the Meta Ads Manager app on the App Store and Google Play lets you create and edit campaigns, monitor performance and receive notifications. You can also reach it from the Facebook app menu by tapping Ads Manager. The app cannot save ad drafts, so we use it for monitoring and quick pauses, and the desktop for building and analysis.

The Boost button is a shortcut with fewer options; build store campaigns in Ads Manager.

Before your first campaign: business portfolio, ad account and payment

1. Create a business portfolio (formerly Business Manager)

The business portfolio holds your store’s assets: Page, Instagram account, ad account and Pixel. Per Meta’s Help Center:

1. Go to business.facebook.com and log in.
2. Open the dropdown menu below Home at the top left and click Create a business portfolio.
3. Enter the business name customers know (no special characters), your name and business email, then confirm the email.

One person can create up to two business portfolios, and each asset (a Page, an ad account) can belong to only one portfolio.

2. Add your Facebook Page and Instagram account

Add the Page and your Instagram professional account in the portfolio settings. There is no separate Instagram ads manager: you select the Instagram account under Identity when you create the ad.

3. Create the ad account

Go to Settings, then Accounts, then Ad accounts, click + Add and choose Create a new ad account. Set:

• Account name: store and market, for example “Store name - KSA”.
• Time zone: the same as your Shopify store, so days match in reports.
• Currency: the currency you will compare sales in; every report and invoice is built on it, so choose carefully.

Per the Help Center, an ad account created inside a portfolio stays there permanently, and a new portfolio starts with one ad account until a campaign delivers and a payment is made. Our advice: own the portfolio and ad account yourself and give your agency partner access, so your data and history stay yours.

4. Add a payment method

In Billing & payments, open Payment settings or Payment methods and click Add payment method; no ad can be published without one. With a card or PayPal the account uses automatic payments: you are charged when spend reaches your payment threshold and on your monthly bill date. Manual methods work as prepaid available funds. Available methods depend on the account’s country and currency; use a card that accepts recurring international charges so a declined payment does not stop your ads.

The Ads Manager structure and choosing the Sales objective

Everything in Meta Ads Manager runs in three layers:

Layer	What you set here	Store example
Campaign	Objective, sometimes the budget	Sales campaign for Saudi Arabia
Ad set	Conversion location and event, audience, budget and schedule, placements	Website purchases, Saudi Arabia, broad audience, daily budget
Ad	Identity (Page and Instagram), format, images or video, copy, link	UGC product video linking to the product page

Figure: the campaign sets the objective, the ad set sets the conversion event, audience, budget and placements, and the ad holds the creative.

The six objectives and when a store uses each

Ads Manager now shows six objectives, after Meta consolidated the older list:

Objective	What Meta looks for	Right for your store?
Awareness	The most people likely to remember the ad	Brand launches, not direct sales
Traffic	Link clicks or landing page views	Rarely; cheap visitors, not buyers
Engagement	Interactions, messages, video views	Building video audiences or conversations
Leads	Forms, messages, calls	Services, rarely stores
App promotion	App installs or in-app events	Stores with their own app
Sales	People likely to purchase	The core objective for an online store

Sales replaced the old Conversions and Catalog sales objectives. Choose Website as the conversion location and Purchase as the event. When you choose Sales, Ads Manager shows the Advantage+ setup, which applies Meta’s AI to audience, placements and budget together; this is what Meta calls Advantage+ sales campaigns (formerly Advantage+ Shopping). Manual options remain available. When this campaign fits and how to protect a winning one is covered in our Advantage+ Shopping campaigns guide.

Connecting the Meta Pixel and Conversions API to Shopify

The algorithm learns from the people who bought, so if purchase events do not arrive, it learns from an incomplete sample. The right setup:

1. Meta Pixel sends events from the shopper’s browser: view content, add to cart, initiate checkout, purchase.
2. Conversions API (CAPI) sends the same events from the store’s server, recovering what browser blocking and iOS privacy settings lose.
3. Deduplication so no order is counted twice.

On Shopify the easiest route is the official Facebook & Instagram sales channel, which connects the Pixel, CAPI and catalog together. Then confirm in Events Manager that Purchase arrives with value and currency. Full steps and event match quality are in Meta Pixel and Conversions API setup on Shopify.

Audience, budget and schedule in the ad set

Audience: Advantage+ audience first

In the ad set, Advantage+ audience is on by default. Meta’s Help Center separates two kinds of settings:

• Audience controls (hard limits): locations, minimum age, languages and excluded custom audiences. Delivery never goes outside them.
• Audience suggestions: age, gender, detailed targeting and custom audiences. Meta starts from them but may go beyond them when it finds likely buyers elsewhere.

What still matters for a store:

• Custom audiences: site visitors, cart adders, Instagram engagers and your customer list, used as suggestions or exclusions (for example, excluding recent buyers).
• Lookalike audiences: people similar to your best customers. They need a source of at least 100 people; Meta recommends 1,000 to 5,000, and the location comes from the ad set. With Advantage+ audience you cannot exclude lookalike audiences.

In our experience with Gulf stores, broad targeting with strong creative usually beats narrow interests.

Budget and schedule

• Daily or lifetime budget: daily for always-on campaigns, lifetime for a dated offer such as White Friday.
• Advantage+ campaign budget: Meta shifts budget to the best ad sets automatically.
• Schedule: a start date, optional end date and optional ad set spending limits.

More important than the number is the learning phase. Per Meta, an ad set becomes Learning limited when it is unlikely to get about 50 optimisation events in the week after its last significant edit. Significant edits include changing targeting, creative or the optimisation event, adding an ad, pausing for 7 days or more, changing bid strategy, and large budget changes. So: fewer campaigns, fewer edits, gradual budget increases.

To calculate the budget itself from your product margin, read how much to spend on ads for an online store, and for what drives costs across Gulf markets see Instagram and Facebook ads cost in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

Creating the ad and choosing placements, including Instagram

Steps to create the ad

1. Identity: choose your Facebook Page and Instagram account. Without a connected Instagram account, the ad shows under the Page name.
2. Ad setup: create a new ad or use an existing post that already has strong engagement.
3. Format: single image or video, carousel, or a catalog ad that shows products automatically. The Sales objective with Website as the conversion location supports every format: image, video, carousel, collection and instant experience.
4. Content: primary text, headline, call-to-action button (such as Shop now) and the product page link with UTM parameters so GA4 can track it.
5. Preview: check every placement before publishing, especially Stories and Reels, where the vertical frame crops the edges of square or horizontal images.
6. Publish: the ad goes through review before delivery starts.

Placements

Advantage+ placements is on by default and spreads the ad across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, the Audience Network and Threads, wherever results are most cost-effective. We keep it on in most accounts, with vertical and square versions of each creative.

For an Instagram-only setup, choose manual placements and limit delivery to Instagram (Feed, Stories, Reels, Explore). That narrows where the algorithm can find buyers, so do it only for a clear reason.

Reading results: which columns to add and how to check them against store orders

The default Performance columns are not enough for a store. Open Columns, choose Customize columns, add the columns below and save them as a column preset. A ready-made Sales preset also exists.

Column	What it means	How we read it
Amount spent	Money spent	Compare with the planned budget
Purchases	Purchases attributed to ads	Compare with Shopify orders for the same period
Cost per purchase	Spend ÷ purchases	Compare with the maximum CPA from your margin
Purchases conversion value	Attributed sales value	The basis for ROAS
Purchase ROAS	Purchase value ÷ amount spent	A directional signal inside Meta, not the final verdict
CPM	Cost per 1,000 impressions	Moves with season, market and competition
Link click-through rate (CTR)	Share of people who clicked the link	Measures creative pull
Frequency	Average times a person saw the ad	Rising frequency with falling results signals creative fatigue
Adds to cart / Checkouts initiated	Cart and checkout starts	Shows whether the problem is the ad or the store

Why we never trust platform ROAS on its own

Meta defines Purchase ROAS as purchase conversion value divided by amount spent, and may use statistical modelling for events it could not observe. Purchases are credited within an attribution window covering clicks and views (compare 1-day click, 7-day click, 1-day view and 28-day click with Compare attribution settings), Meta does not see cancelled or returned orders, and Google claims some of the same orders.

So we apply three rules in every account we manage:

1. Compare Meta purchases with Shopify orders for the same period. A stable gap is normal; a sudden gap is a tracking problem.
2. Judge by MER: total store sales ÷ total ad spend across all platforms. That is the number that reflects profit.
3. Never judge the last 24 hours: review 3, 7 and 14 days, allowing for attribution lag and the learning phase.

Common Facebook Ads Manager mistakes and how to fix them

Mistake	Why it hurts	Fix
Boosting posts instead of using Ads Manager	Fewer objective, audience and optimisation options	Build a Sales campaign in Ads Manager
Using Traffic or Engagement to sell	Meta finds clickers and engagers, not buyers	Sales objective with the Purchase event
Launching before CAPI is connected	Missing purchase events and slower learning	Connect Pixel and CAPI and test before spending
Splitting a small budget across many ad sets	Every ad set stuck in Learning limited	One focused campaign, then expand
Editing the campaign every day	Each significant edit restarts learning	Edit to a plan and review on 7 days
One horizontal creative for every placement	Cropped in Reels and Stories	Supply vertical and square versions
Ad account owned by the agency	You lose data and history when you switch	Account in your portfolio, agency as partner
Judging by platform ROAS alone	Overlapping numbers that never match the bank	Compare with store orders and judge by MER

From our experience

As a Shopify Partner, we start every account with these foundations. For Xmart, an electronics store, we built a full structure inside Ads Manager: dynamic catalog, Advantage+ Shopping and retargeting. Meta ROAS reached 11x in Q2 2025, and in September 2026 the blended MER exceeded 10x with hundreds of orders a month from Meta and Google together (Xmart case study). For Brandat Jordan, a home appliance store, catalog and retargeting campaigns were split by product category, and Meta ROAS stayed between 7x and 20x for eight consecutive months, February to September 2026.

The next step is the full account structure, covered in Meta ads for Shopify stores in the Gulf. If your Saudi audience spends a lot of time on Snapchat, read our Snapchat ads guide for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and for the wider picture of every channel see what digital marketing means for an online store.

Conclusion

Facebook Ads Manager runs both Facebook and Instagram ads, and success starts before the campaign: a portfolio and ad account you own, a reliable payment method, and Pixel plus Conversions API sending every purchase. Then a Sales campaign with a broad audience and a margin-based budget, creative for every placement, patience through learning, and results checked against store orders and MER. If you want us to review your current account or build it with you from the start, see our paid ads management service or message us on WhatsApp for a free audit of your store and ads.