Promote on Instagram

Choose Promote on Instagram at the top of Marketing → Instagram ads. The wizard has seven steps with Back and Next; Next says what's missing before it moves on. Your choices are kept in this browser as you go, so you can leave and come back. Start over clears them.

The right-hand side shows a Preview of the ad, in the Feed or as a Story. It's a likeness: Meta decides the final look for each placement.

1. Goal

2. What to promote

• Products: search your catalog (type at least 2 letters of a name or SKU) and choose Add for up to 5 products. Each needs a photo, so a product without one can't be added. One product makes a single-picture ad; 2 to 5 make a carousel, each card opening its product's page.
• An Instagram post: pick one of your latest posts (stories and posts Meta won't boost aren't listed). The ad uses its picture. Under Where the button leads, you can choose one product for the button to open; with none, it opens your home page.

3. Ad text

• Ad text: the words beside the picture. Instagram shows the first 125 characters, then more, so put the most important part first. At most 2,200 characters and 30 hashtags. Required for products; for a post, leave it empty to use the post's own caption.
• Headline (optional): Instagram doesn't show it; Meta uses it in other places. For one product, its name is used when it's empty.
• Button: Shop now, Buy now, Learn more or View more. It opens the product page on your store.

4. Who sees it

• Countries (required): 1 to 25.
• Regions and cities (optional): search Meta's places in the chosen countries. Once you add any, the ad reaches only those places, not the rest of each country. A city reaches the area around it; set Around it (km) from 17 to 80.
• Let Meta find the audience (on by default): Meta's automatic audience treats the ages and gender as suggestions and finds people likely to respond. The countries, regions and cities still apply.
• Youngest age and Oldest age: 18 to 65 (65 means 65 and older). Gender: everyone, women or men.

5. Where it shows

Feed, Stories, Reels and Explore, all four by default. Explore only works together with Feed. Use all four puts them back.

6. Budget and dates

• Daily budget, in your ad account's currency: what it spends on an average day. It can't be above your store's maximum daily budget or below Meta's minimum for the ad account; a bar shows how much of the maximum it uses.
• Start: As soon as I go live, or On a date (within a year).
• End: Until I pause it, or On a date more than 24 hours after the start (Meta needs that for a daily budget).
• Dates and times are in your store's time zone (Settings → General). The page names the time zone.

Below, the page estimates the most the campaign can spend. Meta may spend up to 75% more than the daily budget on a busy day, but never more than 7 days' budget in a week, so with an end date it's the most for the whole run, and without one the most in a week.

7. Review, create and go live

Review lists everything, suggests a Campaign name (only you see it), and asks your store for:

• What it can spend: the most in all (with an end date) or the most in a week (without one), worked out by your store, with the usual spend and the most on a single day. This is the figure the go-live confirm shows.
• People reached a day: Meta's estimate, when it has one, and about how many people use those placements.
• Anything to check before you go live, such as a budget close to your maximum or a post Meta may not boost.

Create paused campaign creates the campaign, ad set and ad on Meta, paused. If the answer is lost on the way (for example your connection drops) or Meta fails half-way, choose Try again: it finishes the same campaign instead of making a second one. If something needs changing, the page names it and offers Go to that step.

Then the Go live on Instagram? box shows:

• the most it can spend (in all, or in a week) and the daily budget with its end date (or "until you pause or end it");
• your store's maximum daily budget, and how much of it the daily budget uses;
• the ad account it's billed to.

Choose Go live to send it to Meta, or Keep paused to leave it paused (you can go live later from the campaign). If the figure changed in the meantime (for example a day passed), the box shows the new figure and asks you to confirm again. If someone changed the budget in Meta Ads Manager, nothing is switched on and the page says so. Meta reviews every new ad, usually within a day, before it spends.