Facebook Ads Manager allows you to run ads on Facebook and Instagram, but when it comes to optimizing those ads in-house, you have to make detailed adjustments to the settings and measure performance—a process that many managers likely find challenging.
In this article, we’ll introduce methods for optimizing Facebook and Instagram ads, delivery techniques, and approaches to creative production.
If you’re struggling with social media ads, we hope you’ll find this guide helpful.
A review of Facebook ads
Meta allows you to run banner and video ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.
Compared to other social media platforms, Facebook has a slightly older user base, with many users in their 30s and 40s.
Instagram’s main user base is in their 20s to 40s, and it attracts a younger demographic than Facebook.
To run ads on Facebook or Instagram, you need to use the “Promote Post” feature on each platform or create ads through “Facebook Ads Manager.”
If you simply want to spread your post or notify a large audience about it, we recommend “Promote Post.” One of its benefits is that it looks less like an ad and more like organic content.
On the other hand, “Facebook Ads Manager” allows you to set detailed targeting parameters, enabling you to deliver ads to specific segments.
Another benefit of running ads through “Facebook Ads Manager” is the ability to deliver multiple creative assets to both Facebook and Instagram in the most effective way.
How to use Facebook Ads Manager
As explained in the previous section, when running ads on Facebook and Instagram, you can use either the “Promote Post” feature or the “Facebook Ads Manager.”
In this section, we’ll explain how to optimize your ads using the “Facebook Ads Manager.”
Installing Facebook Pixel
The Facebook Pixel is an analytics code provided by Facebook that is used to analyze user behavior from ads and for retargeting.
Since it offers various features to improve the performance of Facebook ads, be sure to install it to ensure continuous improvement.
Data collection period
Meta’s ad delivery system uses machine learning to optimize ads as they are served.
The more opportunities there are to display an ad, the more the delivery system can optimize its performance.
In other words, the more opportunities there are to display an ad, the more its performance can be optimized.
The initial phase of ad delivery is the system’s “data collection period.” During this time, the system tunes its performance by serving various creatives to a broad audience, which can result in unstable performance.
The data collection period typically lasts 7 days, and a good benchmark is “approximately 50 conversions set as the optimization threshold.”
The higher your daily ad spend, the faster the data collection period ends; however, depending on the company or project, you may not have a generous ad budget available.
Some people who run ads but see no results may be looking only at the results from the “data collection period” and immediately pausing their ads or making changes to their ad settings.
Making major changes to an existing ad set will restart the data collection period.
While we understand the desire to cycle through the PDCA process as quickly as possible, it’s important not to edit your ads too frequently in order to minimize the data collection period.
Additionally, since the target of 50 conversions applies to each “ad set,” having fewer ad sets will lead to faster optimization.
If you’re running multiple ad sets, we recommend turning on “Optimize campaign budget.”
Don’t narrow your audience too much
To minimize the duration of the aforementioned data collection period, you need to deliver ads efficiently.
For long-term ad campaigns, we recommend setting a broad target audience at the start to allow Meta’s ad delivery system to optimize the campaign. Once you’ve secured a sufficient volume of impressions, you can then gradually remove underperforming audiences.
While this isn’t necessary if you’ve already secured a sufficient audience, enabling “Expand Audience” can be effective if you anticipate insufficient reach when targeting niche segments.
Meta will automatically identify users with similar behaviors and interests to your target audience and expand your audience segment accordingly.
Budget per ad campaign
You can run ads with a daily budget as low as 100 yen, but if the budget is too small, you won’t be able to optimize the campaign, which may lead to poor performance.
Your daily budget should be at least 10 times your cost per conversion (CPC). For example, if you set your conversion goal to a click (redirect to the landing page), and the average CPC for Facebook ads is around 100 yen, setting your daily budget to 1,000 yen or more will likely secure 50 conversions over a 7-day period.
If you set the conversion goal to a deeper level, you’ll need to increase your daily budget even further.
For example, if your goal is inquiries or member registrations from the landing page, and assuming 1% of visitors to the landing page convert, the cost per conversion would be 1,000 yen for 10 clicks. Since the daily budget should be 10 times that amount, 10,000 yen is the optimal amount needed for optimization.
If you want to test the campaign with a small budget, you can also choose to monitor performance using intermediate conversion goals (such as ad clicks).
Additionally, we recommend setting a “daily budget” rather than a “total budget.”
This is because with a “total budget,” underperforming ad sets may stop running, leaving you unsure when the remaining budget will be spent.
About creatives
Use automatic placement for creatives
When setting up an ad campaign, you’ll likely configure multiple ad creatives. To ensure your ads perform at their best, use the automatic placement feature to allow Meta’s ad delivery system to learn which creatives deliver the highest performance.
It will optimize which creatives to display across Facebook, Instagram, the Audience Network, and Messenger to achieve the best performance.
Don’t overload images with text
Facebook Ads used to have a policy known as the “20% rule,” which prohibited the delivery of ads where text covered more than 20% of the image.
The 20% rule has since been abolished, and there are no longer any restrictions on text volume.
However, Facebook’s official page states that “keeping text within an image to less than 20% leads to better performance,” so we recommend keeping text volume within 20%.
When crafting your ad copy, choose keywords with as few characters as possible, use a smaller font size, and place the text in the ad copy rather than within the image.
Avoiding overly promotional-looking creatives and making them appear more organic is another factor that increases click-through rates.
Guide the viewer’s gaze using the Z-pattern
When viewing images, there is a rule that people’s eyes tend to move in a “Z” pattern, starting from the top left and moving to the bottom right.
Placing important information or eye-catching headlines in the top-left corner increases the likelihood that users will pause their gaze there and click on the ad.
In addition to the “Z-pattern,” there is also the “F-pattern,” a visual guidance principle widely used on websites, and the “N-pattern,” which applies to vertically written Japanese text.
The tagline is the most important element
The most important element of ad creative is the tagline.
Your click-through rate depends on how well you can craft a tagline that captures users’ interest.
You can spark psychological interest by incorporating claims such as “One of the largest in Japan” or “Used by 1 in 3 Japanese people” (performance-based claims), “Summer limited edition,” “For a limited time only,” or “Exclusive price for Yokohama residents” (exclusivity-based claims), and “Currently trending among high school girls” or “Used by many business owners” (trend-based claims).
However, care must be taken to ensure compliance with the Act Against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations and to avoid exaggerated advertising.
Appeals that address users’ concerns, such as “For those concerned about acne” or “For those who want to lose weight,” also tend to yield high click-through rates. However, these can often come across as offensive to users, so caution is necessary.
Ensure consistency between images and landing pages
Even if users click on an ad, if the ad creative and the landing page look too different, the bounce rate will increase.
Users might think they’ve opened the wrong page, or feel that it’s not what they expected.
Make sure to align the overall color scheme, style, and taglines of the ad image and the landing page so that users are naturally guided toward conversion.
It seems that many advertising managers are diligently improving their ad creatives but aren’t paying enough attention to their landing pages, so please take a moment to review your landing pages as well.
Summary of Facebook (Meta) ads
In this article, we’ve covered methods for optimizing Facebook and Instagram ads, delivery techniques, and approaches to creative production.
To ensure continuous improvement, be sure to install the Facebook Pixel.
The data collection period is 7 days, and a good benchmark is “approximately 50 conversions set as optimization targets.”
A good rule of thumb for your daily ad budget is 10 times your cost per conversion (CPC). If you want to target deeper conversion points, you’ll need to increase your daily budget accordingly.
Although the “20% rule” for creative images has been abolished, you should still keep text volume to 20% or less to maximize performance.
Additionally, strive to maintain a consistent look and feel not only in your creative images but also on the landing page to prevent users from leaving.
Video planning and production capabilities from a marketing perspective: “Not just making videos”
Marketing Perspective in Japan: Beyond Just Creation
NOKID provides creative planning and production for PR using characters, events, and video content. Effective videos balance business and creative perspectives, e.g., short clips optimized for TikTok, designed to capture attention in the first 2–3 seconds.
For first-time animation or PR-focused content, feel free to consult with us.
