Ads Manager

Connect your Meta account

Ads Manager is available on plans that include it: Professional or Agency. You also need a Meta ad account.

Go to Settings, then Connections. The Ads Manager header links there too. The connection asks for read access, and optionally manage access. Some ad accounts need a Business Manager selected before everything unlocks.

The Overview tab shows where your connection stands with badges: not connected, needs read access, read-only ready, or ready. You also see permission rows, how many pages are connected, an ad-account picker with its currency and timezone, and a per-account snapshot.

The eight tabs

Ads Manager has eight tabs. Each one answers a different question about your ads.

Overview

Stat cards cover spend, impressions, clicks, reach, click-through rate, cost per click, cost per result, and campaign counts with the active count. The tab also shows anomaly signals, a data-quality card, sync status and history, the connection card, and account snapshots.

Campaigns

A browser with three sub-tabs: Campaigns, Ad sets, and Ads. Each shows counts, has search, and filters by status and objective. You can export to CSV and open detail panels where you rename an item or change its status.

"Create draft campaign" opens a step-by-step wizard: campaign, targeting, creative, and options. It creates a draft in your Meta account. Drafts do not spend.

Insights

A report builder. Pick a date range: last 7, 30, or 90 days, or all stored data. Pick a level: account, campaign, ad set, or ad. Sort by cost per result, conversions, spend, click-through rate, or clicks. Filter by minimum spend, minimum conversions, and a maximum cost per result. Search rows and save views you can name and reuse.

Rows drill into the Campaigns tab.

Opportunities

Optimization signals with evidence: an opportunity map, pocket winners, creative winners, and recommendation reviews. You can act on a recommendation or dismiss it. Your choices train future recommendations.

Dayparting

An hour-by-hour and weekday-by-hour performance heatmap, built from stored hourly data.

Creatives

Creative performance plus a media sync action. Pattern and benchmark panels compare your creative variants against each other.

Assets

Your Meta pages and pixels, plus your lead-capture surfaces.

Settings

The planning brain. You set your primary conversion action and work through a launch-readiness checklist: ad account selected, read access, primary conversion, budget guardrail, lead destination, campaign rules, and restricted categories.

Account defaults cover daily budget, campaign category including restricted ones like housing or financial, destination such as landing page, Meta lead form, WhatsApp, or phone call, optimization goal, timezone, and AI mode. You can also add per-campaign rules and AI guardrails.

The safety model

Ads Manager is approval-first. The AI does not launch anything on its own. It prepares recommendations and campaign plans for your review. The Approval required guardrail is on by default.

Campaigns are created as drafts. A draft cannot spend until a human activates it in Meta.

Restricted categories like housing, employment, financial, health insurance, and political are flagged in your rules, so special ad rules get applied.

A compliance review runs on AI-prepared plans. A hard-blocked plan cannot be approved without an explicit override.

Keeping data fresh

Ads Manager mirrors your Meta data locally. Use "Update data" to queue a sync. The page shows progress and history. Settings has a sync-all-accounts button, and creatives have their own media sync.

If manage access is missing, management actions show a notice instead of failing silently.