How to Do a Sponsored Ad on Instagram

November 11, 2025

Running a sponsored ad on Instagram is one of the most direct ways to reach a specific audience, drive traffic, and grow your business. This guide breaks down exactly how to do it, whether you're a complete beginner looking to boost your first post or a seasoned marketer ready to build a full-fledged campaign in Ads Manager. We'll cover every step, from setting your goals to designing an ad that gets results.

First, a Little Prep Work: What to Do Before You Spend a Dime

Jumping straight into creating an ad without a plan is like taking a road trip without a map. Before you even open the Instagram app or Ads Manager, take a few minutes to lay the groundwork. This initial prep separates the ads that get ignored from the ones that drive real results.

1. Define Your Objective: What's the Goal?

Why are you running this ad? The answer will shape every other decision you make. Don't just say "I want more followers." Get specific. Your goal might be:

Brand Awareness: To introduce your brand to people who haven't heard of you before.
Website Traffic: To send people to a specific page, like a blog post or a product page.
Engagement: To get more likes, comments, shares, and saves on a post to build community.
Lead Generation: To collect contact information (like email addresses) from potential customers.
Sales: To drive direct purchases of your products or services.

Pick one primary goal for each campaign. An ad trying to do everything at once will likely accomplish nothing.

2. Know Your Audience: Who Are You Talking To?

You can't create an ad that connects with everyone, but you can create one that connects powerfully with the right people. Think about your ideal customer. Are they men or women? What's their age range? Where do they live? What are their interests and hobbies?

Instagram's targeting options are incredibly precise. You can target people based on:

Location: As broad as a country or as specific as a city or zip code.
Demographics: Age, gender, language, and more.
Interests: Pages they've liked, accounts they follow, and ads they've clicked on (e.g., "interested in yoga" or "enjoys hiking").
Behaviors: Their purchasing habits, the device they use, or their travel history.

If you already have a following, look at your Instagram Insights to see who is engaging with your organic content. This is a goldmine of information for building your ad's target audience.

3. Set a Budget: How Much Will You Spend?

You don't need a massive budget to see results, but you do need to be intentional. In Instagram Ads, you can set either a:

Daily Budget: The average amount you'll spend per day. This is good for "always-on" campaigns where you want consistent exposure.
Lifetime Budget: The total amount you'll spend for the entire duration of the campaign. This is great for ads with a specific start and end date, like a holiday sale.

Start small if you're new to ads. You can set a budget as low as a few dollars per day. The key is to test and see what works before scaling up. For effective A/B testing, let each version of your ad run with a small budget. After a few days, turn off the ones that aren't performing and put more budget behind the winner.

Two Paths to Creating Instagram Ads: The Simple Way and The Powerful Way

There are two main ways to run a sponsored ad on Instagram. One is incredibly simple and done right from the app. The other is more complex but offers far more control and better optimization tools. Let's look at both.

The Quick and Easy Method: Promoting a Post Directly in the App

If you have an existing Instagram post that performed well organically, boosting it is a fast way to get it in front of more people. This is perfect for beginners or anyone short on time.

How to Promote an Existing Post:

Go to your profile and tap on the post you want to promote. Make sure you're using an Instagram Business or Creator account.
Tap the "Boost Post" button below the image or video.
Select Your Goal: Instagram will prompt you to choose an objective, like "More Profile Visits," "More Website Visits," or "More Messages." This aligns with the objective you defined earlier.
Define Your Audience: You can either choose "Automatic," where Instagram will target people similar to your existing followers, or you can "Create Your Own" based on locations, interests, age, and gender. Creating your own is almost always the better option for more targeted results.
Set Your Budget and Duration: Choose how much you want to spend per day and how many days you want the ad to run. Instagram will show you an estimated reach based on your selections.
Review and Create Promotion: Give everything a final look, add your payment information if you haven't already, and tap "Create Promotion." Your ad will then be submitted to Meta for review, which usually takes a few hours.

The Catch: Boosting posts is convenient, but it's limited. You don't get access to the full suite of targeting options or the powerful optimization tools available in the main Ads Manager.

The All-Powerful Method: Using Meta Ads Manager

For full control over every aspect of your campaign, Meta Ads Manager (formerly Facebook Ads Manager) is the way to go. It offers more campaign objectives, advanced audience targeting tools (like Lookalike and Custom Audiences), and much better analytics.

Here's a step-by-step breakdown of how to launch an ad through Ads Manager.

Step 1: Get Set Up in Meta Business Suite

Before you do anything, make sure your Instagram account is connected to a Facebook page and that both are set up within Meta Business Suite. This is the central hub for managing both platforms. If you haven't done this, go to business.facebook.com and follow the on-screen prompts to connect your accounts.

Step 2: Create a New Campaign

Inside the Meta Ads Manager, click the green "Create" button to start a new campaign. Meta will ask you to choose a campaign objective. The options here are more detailed than the in-app boosting choices:

Awareness: Show your ad to the maximum number of people.
Traffic: Send people to a destination like your website or app.
Engagement: Get more post engagement, reactions, comments, page likes, or event responses.
Leads: Collect leads using a form or a messenger conversation.
App Promotion: Drive downloads and engagement with your mobile app.
Sales: Find people likely to purchase your product or service right now.

Select the one that matches your goal. Don't worry about the options at the "Ad Set" and "Ad" levels yet - you'll configure those next.

Step 3: Build Your Ad Set (Audience, Placements, Budget)

The Ad Set level is where you define who you're targeting, how much you're spending, and where your ad will appear.

Audience: This is where you put your audience research to work. You can create a new audience using interest, demographic, and location targeting we discussed earlier. Better yet, you can use powerful tools like Lookalike Audiences (finding people similar to your best existing customers) or Custom Audiences (retargeting people who have visited your website or engaged with your Instagram profile).
Placements: This is where you tell Meta where to show your ad. By default, it will suggest "Advantage+ Placements," which shows your ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and more. To stick with just Instagram, choose "Manual placements" and select only "Instagram." You can then get even more granular and choose between the Feed, Stories, Reels, or Explore page. Tip: Design creative that's native to the placement. Vertical video for Reels and Stories, high-quality images for the Feed.
Budget &, Schedule: Just like with boosting, you'll set your daily or lifetime budget and choose the start and end dates for your ad to run.

Step 4: Design Your Ad Creative

This is the fun part. The ad level is where you upload your visuals and write your message. You can either select an existing Instagram post to use as your ad or create a completely new one right in Ads Manager.

Best Practices for Ad Creative:

Lead with a high-quality visual. Whether it's a static image, a carousel of photos, or a video for Reels, your visual needs to stop people from scrolling. High-resolution, eye-catching creative is non-negotiable.
Use a great hook. The first sentence of your ad copy and the first three seconds of your video are the most important. Grab their attention immediately.
Keep copy clear and direct. Tell people what your offer is and why they should care. Avoid fluff and corporate-speak. Use formatting like bullet points or short paragraphs to make it easier to read.
Have a clear Call to Action (CTA). Don't leave people guessing. Tell them exactly what to do next. Select a CTA button like "Shop Now," "Learn More," "Sign Up," or "Contact Us."

Step 5: Publish and Monitor

Once you've configured your campaign, ad set, and ad creative, hit the "Publish" button. Your ad will go into review for approval. After it's live, your job isn't done. Check in on your campaign inside Ads Manager regularly to see what's working.

Tracking Performance and Optimizing Your Ads

Pay close attention to the most important metrics, which will depend on your objective. Here's a quick guide:

For brand awareness, look at Reach (unique people who saw the ad) and Impressions (total times your ad was seen).
For traffic, focus on Link Clicks and Cost Per Click (CPC).
For sales or leads, track Conversions and Cost Per Conversion/Result.

Don't be afraid to test different versions of your ad. Try two different images with the same copy, or one image with two different headlines. This A/B testing will show you what resonates most with your audience, helping you improve your results over time and get more bang for your buck.

Final Thoughts

Running a successful sponsored ad on Instagram comes down to combining a thoughtful strategy with a willingness to test and learn. Start with a clear goal, know who you're talking to, create content that grabs attention, and then use the data from your ads to get better and better over time.

Getting your paid strategy right often starts with a solid organic foundation - knowing what content works before you put money behind it. At Postbase, we help you master your organic strategy by making planning, scheduling, and analyzing your content an effortless part of your day. By seeing which organic posts get the most love in our analytics dashboard, you gain real-world data you can use to create sponsored ads that truly connect and convert, because you already know what an audience will respond to. It simplifies your workflow so you can focus on creativity and let the results speak for themselves.

Spencer Lanoue

Spencer's spent a decade building products at companies like Buffer, UserTesting, and Bump Health. He's spent years in the weeds of social media management—scheduling posts, analyzing performance, coordinating teams. At Postbase, he's building tools to automate the busywork so you can focus on creating great content.

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