How to Make an Instagram Ad

Running ads on Instagram doesn't have to be a complicated puzzle reserved for marketing gurus. It's a powerful way to get your brand, products, or services in front of the exact people who need to see them. This guide will walk you through the entire process step-by-step, from planning your campaign to designing the ad and hitting publish, using the tool that gives you the most control: Facebook Ads Manager.

First Things First: Planning Your Instagram Ad Campaign

Jumping straight into Ads Manager without a strategy is a recipe for wasted money. Great ads come from a clear plan. Before you spend a dime, you need to define a few key elements. Your ad's success depends on it.

1. Define Your Goal: What Do You Want to Achieve?

The first question to answer is: "What do I want people to do?" Don't just say "more sales." Get specific. Your goal will guide every decision you make and will be your metric for success. Some common goals include:

• Brand Awareness: Getting your brand name out there. This is ideal for reaching new audiences who may not have heard of you.
• Traffic: Driving people to visit your website, landing page, or app. Perfect for promoting content or a specific product page.
• Engagement: Getting more people to like, comment, or share your posts and Reels. This helps build community and social proof.
• Lead Generation: Collecting contact information from potential customers (emails, phone numbers). This is great for service-based businesses or high-ticket items.
• Sales: Driving direct purchases of your products. This is essential for e-commerce brands.

Your goal determines every other choice you'll make, from the ad format to the call-to-action button, so get clear on it first.

2. Lock Down Your Audience: Who Are You Talking To?

The beauty of Instagram ads is their incredible targeting. You can reach just about any group you can think of, but only if you know who you're looking for. Instead of targeting "women ages 25-40," get more specific.

Think about a specific person. What are they interested in? For a brand that sells sustainable yoga mats, your target audience isn’t just "people who do yoga." It might be:

"Eco-conscious women, ages 28-45, who live in major cities, follow influencers like @YogaWithAdriene and brands like Patagonia, have shown interest in meditation and veganism, and have recently purchased items online."

That level of detail is exactly what Ads Manager allows you to target.

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

You don't need a massive budget to see results. You can start with as little as $5 a day. You have two main options for budgeting:

• Daily Budget: The average amount you'll spend each day. Your spending might fluctuate slightly, but it will average out over time. It's great when running an ongoing ad.
• Lifetime Budget: The total amount you'll spend over the entire campaign. Meta will spread this out for you over the scheduled runtime. This is ideal for campaigns with a fixed start and end date, like a holiday sale.

Start small, see what works, and scale up your spending on the ads that perform best.

Boosting a Post vs. The Ads Manager: Which Is Right for You?

You've probably seen the big blue "Boost Post" button beckoning you under your Instagram posts. While it's connected to Meta Ads Manager, it's a very different tool. Understanding the difference is crucial.

The "Boost Post" Button: This is advertising on easy mode. It's designed to be simple and quick. It's a fast way to get your content in front of more people, whether they follow you or not. However, it's very limited. You can't fine-tune your targeting, choose specific ad placements, or select a campaign objective beyond getting more engagement, visits, or messages.

Meta Ads Manager: This is the professional-grade control center. It gives you complete command over every aspect of your campaign. You get access to every targeting option, ad creative format, placement, and campaign goal Meta has to offer. You also get detailed analytics to see exactly what’s working and what isn’t. It has a steeper learning curve, but the power you get in return is worth it.

Our recommendation? While boosting can be useful for a quick push on content that's already doing well, always choose Meta Ads Manager for serious business goals. The level of control is unbeatable and essential for a good return on your investment.

How to Make an Instagram Ad: A Step-by-Step Guide in Ads Manager

Alright, you've got your plan. Now it's time to build your ad. We’ll break this down by the three levels of building an ad: Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad.

Step 1: The Campaign Level (Your Objective)

The campaign is the container for everything else. Here, you simply tell Meta what your main goal is.

1. Navigate to the Meta Ads Manager. Your Instagram account needs to be linked to a Facebook Page and a Business Account to get here.
2. Click the green + Create button in the top left corner.
3. You’ll be asked to Choose a Campaign Objective. Remember that goal you defined earlier? This is where it comes into play. If you want people to buy from your website, choose Sales. If you want to collect email addresses, choose Leads. For this example, let's say we're an online bookshop trying to get people to our website, so we’ll select Traffic.
4. Give your campaign a clear, logical name. For example, “Bookshop Traffic - May Sci-Fi Promotion”. Don’t worry about the other settings on this page for now. Just click Next.

Step 2: The Ad Set Level (Audience, Placements, Budget)

Here you define who you’re advertising to, where they’ll see your ad, and how much you'll spend.

Audience Targeting

This is where the magic happens. Within the "Audience" section, you'll define exactly who sees your ad:

• Location, Age, Gender, Language: This is the basic demographic information. You can get very specific, targeting people in certain cities or even excluding locations.
• Detailed Targeting: The most powerful targeting tool for new advertisers. Here you can add demographics, interests, and behaviors. For our bookshop example, we might add:
  • Interests: Science Fiction books, Neil Gaiman, Barnes &, Noble, Kindle.
  • Behaviors: Engaged Shoppers (people who have clicked on shopping posts recently).
• Custom Audiences (Advanced): These are "warm" audiences built from people who already know you - like people who have visited your website, subscribed to your email list, or engaged with your Instagram profile. They are incredibly powerful, but you can stick to Detailed Targeting for your first ad.

Placements

This is where you choose where your ad will appear. Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and its Audience Network. By default, it will suggest automatic placements.

To ensure your ad only runs on Instagram:

1. Select Manual placements.
2. Uncheck all platforms except Instagram.
3. Within Instagram, you can further refine placements if you wish (e.g., deselecting in-stream videos or the Explore page), but leaving them all checked is fine to start.

For your first ad, sticking with Advantage+ placements (recommended) is a solid choice. Meta’s algorithm is quite good at finding the best places to show your ad to get results.

Budget &, Schedule

This is where you'll enter the budget you decided on earlier. You can also set a start and end date if your campaign is for a specific time-limited promotion.

Step 3: The Ad Level (The Creative)

Finally, the fun part: designing what your audience will actually see. This is the image, video, and text of your ad.

Format

First, choose your ad format:

• Single image or video: This is a classic. Use a high-quality photo, graphic, or short video. It’s simple, effective, and feels native to the user's feed.
• Carousel: A swipeable series of up to 10 images or videos. Great for showcasing a range of products, telling a story, or showing multiple features of a single product.
• Collection: An instant, mobile-first shoppable experience. These ads feature a main video or image with a gallery of products below. When a user taps, it opens into a full-screen storefront right within Instagram. This is an e-commerce powerhouse.

Media &, Copy

Next, you’ll upload your creative assets and write your copy on the ad.

1. Add Media: Upload your images or videos. Remember: use eye-catching visuals that stop the scroll. Vertical video (9:16) for Reels and Stories always performs best. Keep it simple, clear, and make sure your product or brand is visible in the first few seconds.
2. Primary Text: This is your caption. Hook the reader in the first line. Address their pain points or spark their curiosity by asking a question.
3. Headline: While not always visible in all placements, this is an important field. Use a short, punchy benefit like “Free Shipping Available” or “New Styles Added.”
4. Call to Action (CTA): Meta provides pre-made CTA buttons like "Shop Now," "Learn More," "Sign Up," or "Watch More." Choose the one that most closely matches the action you want the user to take. Be sure it aligns with your campaign goal.

While you build it, the Ad Preview window on the right will update in real-time, showing you exactly how your ad will look in different placements (Feed, Stories, Reels, etc.).

Once you're happy with everything, click the green Publish button. Congratulations! Your ad is now submitting for review.

What Next? Monitoring Your Ad's Performance

Hitting publish isn't the finish line. Once your ad is approved and running, you need to monitor its performance in Ads Manager. This is how you'll know if it's working.

Don’t make changes too quickly, give your campaign a few days to gather data before making adjustments.

Focus on these key metrics:

• Cost per Result: How much are you paying for each action that matters? For a Traffic campaign, this would be your Cost per Link Click. A lower cost is better.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who see your ad and click on it. A higher CTR often means your creative and headline are resonating well with your chosen audience. If your CTR is low, consider testing a new image or copy.

Test, learn, and adjust. That's the key to making your advertising budget work hard for you.

Final Thoughts

Creating an Instagram ad can seem complex at first, but it's a learnable skill that gives you incredible control over who you reach. By creating a solid plan, targeting the right audience, and crafting compelling ad creative, you can turn Instagram into a powerful growth engine for your business.

Running successful ad campaigns is a lot easier when you already have a solid organic strategy dialed in. We built Postbase to make mastering your day-to-day social media simple. By helping you visually plan your calendar, reliably schedule content (especially video), and manage all your conversations in one place, you get a much clearer picture of what resonates with your audience - knowledge you can put right back into your next ad campaign to make it even more successful.