Intermediate · 8h 19m · 36 lessons
Meta Ads
Interruption instead of intent — and the arithmetic that decides whether the platform can work for you at all.
What you'll learn
- ✦Explain why creative substitutes for the query on an interruption platform
- ✦Compute whether a budget can support conversion optimisation at all
- ✦Structure an account so its ad sets actually leave the learning phase
- ✦Choose between broad and detailed targeting from your pixel's maturity, not from fashion
- ✦Build lookalikes from seeds that are good rather than large
- ✦Test enough creative concepts to have a real chance of finding a winner
- ✦Decompose an ad's performance into hook, hold, click and conversion
- ✦Recover lost signal with the Conversions API, and explain why it lowers your learning threshold
- ✦Tell attributed performance from incremental performance, and size a holdout honestly
- ✦Scale by finding new curves, and identify where profit turns rather than where conversions do
Part of these career paths
- Digital Marketer path · course 6 of 6
- Performance Marketer path · course 5 of 6
Certification projects
Build 6 projects to earn your certificate
Hands-on work that proves you can apply what you learned — part of the certificate requirements.
Syllabus
Module 1 · 57m
How Meta advertising works Free
What you'll be able to do
- Can explain why creative does the job a search query does on Meta, and why that makes it the main lever
- Can design a creative that survives Meta's main placements instead of one built for a single placement
- Can pick an optimisation event that is close to money and still reachable at a given budget
- Can read the Results column correctly by checking the objective, attribution window and date range first
Module 2 · 56m
Structure and the learning phase Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can calculate how many ad sets a budget supports before the learning phase, using budget ÷ CPA ÷ 50
- Can decide between campaign budget optimisation and a guaranteed ad set budget for a given situation
- Can tell which edits restart the learning phase and schedule changes to avoid needless resets
- Can build a two-campaign, few-ad-set structure that matches a given budget
Module 3 · 56m
Targeting and audiences Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can decide between broad and detailed targeting based on how many conversions the pixel has accumulated
- Can build a lookalike audience from a seed chosen for quality rather than size
- Can calculate an audience's sustainable frequency and diagnose why frequency is rising
- Can set exclusions so prospecting and retargeting campaigns measure what they're meant to
Module 4 · 57m
Creative is the targeting Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can calculate how many creative concepts are needed for a target chance of finding a winner
- Can decompose an ad's performance into hook, hold, click and conversion to find the failing step
- Can decide when a fatiguing creative is worth swapping, with or without a proven concept library
- Can generate genuinely different concepts using the six-axis framework: angle, format, voice, opening, proof, offer
Module 5 · 56m
Measurement after the signal loss Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can explain why a browser pixel alone under-counts conversions and implement the Conversions API to recover signal
- Can compare two periods only when their attribution windows match, without narrowing a window to flatter a report
- Can decide when a modelled conversion figure is safe to use for allocation and when it isn't for revenue
- Can size a holdout test and recognise when a proposed incrementality test is too small to mean anything
Module 6 · 58m
Advantage+ and automation Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can decide when Advantage+ suits an account and set its existing-customer cap deliberately
- Can tell which automatic creative enhancements only change presentation and which change a claim to check
- Can tell a genuine reason to override automation from an opinion the system already has more evidence about
- Can choose the right comparison method (in-ad-set, the A/B test tool, or conversion lift) for a given question
Module 7 · 54m
Scaling Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can calculate the spend level where profit peaks, rather than where conversions peak
- Can scale a budget with vertical steps and horizontal moves, and explain why duplicating an ad set doesn't add volume
- Can calculate how many fresh creative concepts a target spend requires each month
- Can plan a new-market launch that budgets for a fresh learning phase and checks what does and doesn't transfer
Module 8 · 53m
The funnel, and what each part is worth Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can explain why retargeting's reported numbers overstate its incremental value, and avoid reallocating budget on that alone
- Can compare lead-generation formats on cost per sale, not cost per lead
- Can diagnose and fix the product-feed problems that most limit a catalogue campaign
- Can decide when upper-funnel awareness spend is worth testing, and state the assumptions that decision rests on
Module 9 · 52m
Diagnosis and the operating routine Locked
What you'll be able to do
- Can decompose a CPA rise into CPM, click-through rate, conversion rate and frequency to find its real cause
- Can build a review routine that matches each check to the cadence its data can support
- Can audit an inherited account in the order that measurement, structure and creative actually gate each other
- Can prioritise the handful of decisions that decide most of an account's outcome