Facebook Ad Guidelines: Your All-Encompassing Guide to FB Ads

Do you want to reach people who have an interest in what you offer but haven’t discovered your business yet?

If so, Facebook advertising is the perfect solution for your business.

With over 65% of U.S. adults using Facebook, this platform is ideal for reaching people where they’re most likely to spend their time. Running Facebook ads enables you to put your brand in front of new people looking for your products or services.

So, how do you get started with running Facebook ads? What do you need to know?

On this page, we’ll share Facebook ad guidelines to help you get started. These guidelines include:

• Types of ads you can run and their dimensions
• How to make Facebook ads
• Quick tips on how to advertise on Facebook

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Facebook ad guidelines: Know your Facebook ad types

The first part of our guidelines for Facebook ads covers the types of Facebook ads. Before you launch a Facebook ad campaign, it’s essential to know what kinds of ads you can run.

Here’s a breakdown of the different ads you can run for your business:

Image ads

One of the most common types of ads is image ads. These ads, as the name suggests, feature an image with some text.

Image size: 1200 x 628 pixels Minimum width and height: 600 pixels

Video ads

These ads, again, as the name suggests, feature a video that users can watch in their newsfeed. These video ads can feature your product, people performing your service, or something similar.

Minimum dimensions: 600 x 315 pixels Maximum video length: 241 minutes Maximum video file size: 4GB

Carousel ads

Carousel ads contain two to ten cards that users can scroll through to get more information. They can have a mixture of photos and videos. You can set up the cards to be one image spanning across each card or individual photos or videos on each card.

	Facebook carousel ad guidelines for photos: Image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels Minimum image width/height: 600 pixels Maximum image size: 30MB per image Minimum card number: 2 Maximum card number: 10
	Facebook carousel ad guidelines for videos: Video size: 1080 x 1080 pixels Maximum file size: 4GB Maximum video length: 240 minutes Minimum width/height: 600 pixels

Slideshow ads

Slideshow ads are advertisements with multiple slides. The ad shuffles through a series of images. When users click on an image, it brings them to a landing page to find more information.

	Facebook Slideshow ad guidelines for images: Image sizes: 1280 x 720 pixels Image file types: JPG and PNG Number of images: 3-10
	Facebook Slideshow ad guidelines for videos: Video file size: Up to 4GB Recommended maximum length: 15 seconds

Collection ads

With collection ads, users are presented with one large image, accompanied by a few smaller images. When people click on these ads, it pulls up a full-size page where users can shop a bigger catalog of your products.

	Facebook Collection ad guidelines for images: Image size: 1200 x 628 pixels Minimum width/height: 600 pixels Maximum image size: 30MB
	Facebook Collection ad guidelines for videos: Video size: 1200 x 628 pixels Maximum video file size: 4GB Maximum length: 120 minutes

Messenger ads

Messenger ads are advertisements that appear in a user’s Messenger inbox. These ads appear like a message that users can open to learn more.

How to advertise on Facebook

Now that you have your Facebook ad guidelines for the different ad types, let’s move on to how you can start advertising on Facebook.

Here’s what you’ll want to do to launch your Facebook ad:

1.       Choose your ad objectives

If you want to know how to make Facebook ads, start by choosing your ad objectives. Your ad objectives are what you want to achieve with your ad campaign. These objectives help you keep your ad focused on achieving your goals.

You can choose from numerous ad objectives, including:

• Brand awareness
• Reach
• Traffic
• Engagement
• Lead generation
• Video views
• App installs
• Messages
• Conversions
• Catalog sales
• Store traffic

So, how do you determine which objective is right for your business? Simply ask yourself what you want your audience to do.

For example, if you run an ad about your new app, what do you want people to do with your ad? Your response is probably, “I want people to install my new app.” In that case, you would choose the app installs objective.

2.       Know who you’re targeting

If you want to know how to advertise on Facebook, start by figuring out who you’re targeting. You won’t have a successful ad campaign if you don’t target the right people.

So, how do you figure out your target audience?

Start by looking at your current customer base and note any commonalities among people in your audience. You’ll want to know important information like:

• Age
• Gender
• Occupation
• Income
• Buying habits
• Hobbies and interests

When you have all this information documented, you can form buyer personas. Buyer personas are fictional representations of your current customers. By developing these personas, you can identify who makes up your target audience.

3.       Name your campaigns

When you run Facebook advertising campaigns, you’re more than likely going to run more than one campaign. As you continue to run multiple campaigns, it’s easy for everything to get disorganized. To ensure you stay organized, use campaign names.

Your campaign names should be specific. Don’t title them “Campaign 1” and “Campaign 2.” That won’t help you identify your campaigns.

Instead, use specific titles that describe your ad accurately. For example, when you look at this ad from Target on Chromebooks, you might title it “Chromebook Holiday Ad.”

4.       Determine your placements

Next, in our Facebook ad guidelines, we’ll address placement. When you advertise on Facebook, you want to ensure that you’re putting your ads where your audience is most likely to engage with your ads.

Okay, but what if you don’t know where your audience is likely to engage with your ad?

That’s okay! Facebook offers automatic placement. This option allows Facebook to determine the best place to put your ads so you can get the most from your budget.

For more experienced Facebook advertisers, you can choose your placements manually.

Facebook gives you multiple placement options, including:

• Device type (Mobile, desktop)
• Platform (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger)
• Location (In-feed, in-stream, messages)

5.       Determine how much you want to spend

If you want to know how to advertise on Facebook, you first need to know how much you want to spend. You need to determine your Facebook advertising budget to ensure that you stay on budget with your ad campaigns.

First, you’ll set your maximum bid. This amount is how much you’re willing to spend each time someone clicks on your ad. You might need to do some experimenting to figure out an appropriate maximum bid for your ad campaign.

You’ll also establish a budget for your campaign. Facebook enables you to set daily and lifetime budgets.

Your daily budget is the amount you want to spend on your campaign in one day. When you set a daily budget, your ad stops running as soon as you hit that daily maximum. Users won’t see it again until the next day.

Your lifetime budget is how much you want to spend throughout your entire campaign. You can allocate your lifetime budget into smaller daily budgets to spread your campaign spend out over time. This practice ensures you don’t spend your budget immediately.

6.       Create your ad

After you’ve figured out all the nitty-gritty details, it’s time to create your ad! You can choose one of the ad formats we listed above and start crafting your ad. Here are those formats as a reminder:

• Image ads
• Video ads
• Carousel ads
• Slideshow ads
• Collection ads
• Messenger ads

When you craft your ad, make sure your visual is clear and high-quality, so you catch people’s attention and get them interested in your ad. You’ll also want to ensure that your ad text and visual match to create a seamless ad experience.

Once you craft your ad content, you’re ready to launch!

4 quick ad tips for success

For the last part of these guidelines for Facebook ads, check out these four quick tips to create successful Facebook ad campaigns:

1. Use the Facebook Pixel: Using the Facebook Pixel is an excellent way to create remarketing ads for interested leads that previously visited your site.
2. Track ad performance: Keeping track of your ads enables you to see what’s working for your campaigns and optimize anything that’s not driving results.
3. Test your ads: Your first ad copy isn’t always the best, so testing your ads can significantly help you put out the best version of your ad.
4. Use a separate landing page for your ads: Having a separate landing page for your campaigns will ensure you keep your audience focused on your ad content and drive them to convert.

Let WebFX help you follow Facebook ad guidelines

Trying to launch the perfect Facebook advertising campaign is stressful. If you don’t have experience running Facebook ads, you may feel overwhelmed trying to craft compelling ads that follow Facebook ad guidelines.

When you partner with WebFX, you don’t need to worry about Facebook ad guidelines. We have a team of over 250 social media experts that know social media ad guidelines in and out, so they can craft compelling ads for you.

As a Facebook Marketing Partner, you can trust that we’re experts at Facebook advertising.

Want to learn how to set up Facebook ads with WebFX? Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our Facebook advertising services!