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GuidesAdsCreate an ad campaign

Create an ad campaign

Ad campaigns are part of the paid domain in Active Reach’s unified automation surface. The canonical creation flow lives at Automations → Create (the legacy Ads → Playbooks entrypoint still routes to the same builder). Go there to start a new ad campaign.

For multi-outlet brands, the chip-strip at the top of the page (the ?location= URL state) scopes the create flow: leaving it on All outlets authors a brand-tier campaign; selecting a specific outlet creates a per-outlet override.

Select your goal

Pick what you want the campaign to achieve:

GoalPlatformCampaign type
TrafficMeta, GoogleDrive visits to your website or app
LeadsMeta, GoogleCollect lead form submissions
Sales / ConversionsMeta, GoogleDrive purchases or signups
App installsMeta, GoogleDrive mobile app downloads
Brand awarenessMetaMaximize reach and impressions

Configure your audience

  • Use an Active Reach segment — sync a segment from your workspace as a custom audience
  • Use platform-native targeting — demographics, interests, locations (configured in Meta/Google’s targeting UI)
  • Lookalike / Similar audiences — expand from your best customers

Active Reach segments sync to Meta Custom Audiences and Google Customer Match automatically. Changes to segment membership reflect within hours.

Set your budget

  • Daily budget — how much to spend per day
  • Total budget (optional) — cap total campaign spend
  • Schedule — start date, end date, or run indefinitely
  • Bid strategy — automatic (recommended) or manual CPC/CPM

Create or select creative

Three options:

  1. AI-generated — describe what you want and the platform generates ad copy + image variants
  2. From creative profile — use an existing creative profile (see Creative profiles)
  3. Manual — write headlines, descriptions, and upload images yourself

For each creative, preview how it looks on different placements (Feed, Stories, Search, Display).

Review and launch

Review the full campaign: goal, audience, budget, schedule, creative. Submit to launch immediately or schedule for a future date.

If your workspace has approval workflows, the campaign enters the approval queue before going live.

After launch

  • Track performance in Ads → Campaigns → [campaign name]
  • Active Reach syncs delivery metrics (impressions, clicks, conversions, spend) from Meta/Google in near-real-time
  • If Actii is enabled, it monitors performance and proposes budget adjustments

What’s next

OverviewCreative profiles