Meta ads through chat: Facebook and Instagram reference

This page covers your own Meta ad account: launching and managing ads on Facebook and Instagram. Researching other brands' Meta ads is covered in the overview and the cloning guide.

Before you start

You need three things on the Meta side:

• A connected ad account. Say Connect my Meta ad account in the chat, or open Settings, then Connected accounts, in the dashboard. You sign in on Meta's own screen. Connecting is free on every plan.
• A Facebook Page. Every Meta ad runs from a Page. If you have one Page enabled, it is used automatically. With several, name the one you want ("run it from the Riverside Chiropractic page"). If Meta cannot find your Page, give the numeric Page id from Business Settings, then Pages.
• A payment method on the ad account, set in Meta Business Manager.

For a sales campaign you also need a Meta pixel installed on your site. The chat attaches your account's pixel automatically and tells you if there is none.

Your creatives come from the Creative Library in the dashboard (Creatives in the sidebar). Upload your own images and videos there, or use the images and videos AdWhispr generated for you. When you launch, you refer to a creative by its name. A direct link to an image or video you own also works. Competitor creatives are never launched.

Launch image, carousel and video ads

One request builds a complete, paused ad: campaign, ad set, creative and ad. The format follows from how many creatives you name:

What you can set on any launch:

• Primary text (the message above the creative), a headline, and for carousels a headline, description and link per card. Links fall back to the ad-level link, which falls back to your saved website.
• The button. Learn More is the default. Shop Now, Sign Up, Get Offer and Book Now are safe everywhere. Call Now makes a click-to-call ad and needs your phone number in full international format, for example +1 512 555 0134. WhatsApp makes a click-to-WhatsApp ad from a wa.me link; the Page must already be linked to a WhatsApp Business account.
• The objective: traffic (default), sales, awareness or engagement. Lead-form ads are not launched from chat yet. See choosing objectives.
• Targeting, covered below. Anything you do not mention uses a default and the preview says so.

A video is uploaded into your ad account on confirmation and Meta takes about thirty seconds to process it. If processing runs long, the campaign and ad set are still created and the chat tells you how to finish.

Ads made from an image clone of a competitor ad launch the same way, with one rule: the copy and the link are yours. The chat writes fresh primary text for your product and points the ad at your own page. The competitor's words and URL are never used.

Creative tests

A creative test is several creatives competing for one budget. Name a video together with one or more images, or several videos, and each becomes its own ad inside one shared ad set. Meta shifts that ad set's budget toward whichever ad performs, so the winner earns more of the spend without you touching anything.

Two to ten creatives per test. Read the results per ad with a performance read after a few days; the full walkthrough is in running a creative test.

Edit an existing ad's copy

You can change the primary text, headline or link of an ad that is already running or paused, without launching anything new. Give the ad's id (from the campaign list in the chat or the Ad Campaigns page in the dashboard) and the new copy.

You see before and after, you confirm, and the ad is updated in place. The campaign, ad set, budget and targeting stay as they were. The edited ad re-enters Meta review, so expect a short pause in delivery. If the id does not exist in this account, Meta answers "Unsupported get request"; copy the exact id from the campaign list and try again.

Targeting

Targeting is opt-in. Say what you want and only that is applied; the rest stays on defaults, and the preview marks each default so you can adjust before confirming. The chat looks up real interest and location ids on Meta first and shows you the matches, so nothing is guessed.

Location

• Countries. "United States and Canada". The default is the United States.
• Cities and regions. "Austin and San Antonio" or "the state of Texas". Meta does not allow a country combined with a place inside it, so a launch uses one level: whole countries, or specific cities and regions.
• A radius around an address. "Everyone within 10 km of 123 Main Street, Austin, Texas." The circle can be 1 to 80 km (default 15) and replaces all other location targeting. Meta places the address itself; if it cannot, give a fuller street address or target the city instead. Full guide: radius targeting for local businesses.

People

• Age from 18 to 65, where 65 means 65 and over. "Ages 25 to 45".
• Gender: all (default), women, or men.
• Interests. "People interested in yoga." The chat searches Meta's interest list, shows you the matches with audience sizes, and applies the ones you confirm.
• Devices. Mobile only, desktop only, or iPhone and iPad users only (which implies mobile delivery). The chat never asks about devices; mention it only if you want it.

Retargeting and custom audiences

Retargeting means showing ads to people who already know you: visitors to your website, or people who look like your best customers. You build the audience once, then target it in a launch.

Website visitors. Built from your Meta pixel's traffic. Choose a lookback window from 1 to 180 days (default 30) and, optionally, leave out anyone who made a purchase in the last 180 days so you stop paying to reach existing buyers.

Lookalikes. Meta finds new people who behave like an existing audience. Name the seed audience and a similarity from 1% (closest match) to 10% (broadest), plus the country.

Audience creation is a single step (it costs nothing). The first time an ad account creates a Custom Audience, Meta requires you to accept its Custom Audience terms once; the chat gives you the link. Then launch to the audience: "launch Bedding UGC to that audience at 20 a day". Your account's existing Custom Audiences can be targeted too; ask the chat to list them. Full walkthrough: retargeting website visitors.

Campaign budget vs ad set budget

Meta lets a budget live in one of two places. A campaign budget (Meta calls this Advantage campaign budget, often shortened to CBO) is one pot the campaign shares across all its ad sets, with Meta deciding how to split it. An ad set budget (often called ABO) gives each ad set its own amount.

Launches from AdWhispr put the budget on the ad set. The campaign carries no budget of its own. That keeps each ad set's spend predictable and is what makes creative tests work: several ads share one ad set's budget, and Meta moves that budget between the ads, not between ad sets.

Budgets are daily amounts in your ad account's own billing currency; if the account bills in euros, "30 a day" means 30 euros. Meta enforces a minimum daily budget per ad set and states the amount in the account's currency when a budget is below it. Meta does not allow switching an existing campaign between daily and lifetime budgets.

Special ad categories

Meta requires ads about housing, employment or credit to declare a special ad category, and rejects them if they do not. AdWhispr detects these from what the launch already carries: the copy, the headlines, the campaign name and the destination link. Unambiguous phrases only: "real estate", "homes for sale", "mortgage", "we are hiring", "job openings", "join our team", "credit card", "personal loan", "refinancing", and their Spanish, Portuguese, French and Arabic equivalents.

When a category is detected, the preview says so, names the phrase that triggered it, and states the country the declaration applies to. What changes on a declared ad, all required by Meta:

• Age and gender targeting are removed. Meta forces ages 18 to 65 and all genders on these ads. The preview tells you they were dropped.
• The audience must sit inside the declared country. Target that country or a place inside it.
• A radius must be at least 15 miles (about 25 km). Ask for 25 km or more.

If your ad is not really about housing, jobs or credit, reword the copy so it does not read like one and launch again. Declaring a category that was not needed narrows the audience but the ad still runs; missing one that was needed means the ad never runs, so detection leans toward declaring.

Pause, resume and budgets

• Pause stops spend immediately. It is a single step with no confirmation.
• Resume takes a campaign live and starts real spend. The chat warns you and waits for your confirmation. Resuming wakes the whole chain: campaign, ad set and ads.
• Change the daily budget. Two steps: a preview, then confirm. The change lands wherever the budget lives. For campaigns launched from AdWhispr that is the ad set; for campaigns built elsewhere with a campaign-level budget, the campaign.

Use the campaign's id when you refer to it. If you pass an ad set or ad id instead, Meta answers "nonexisting field (adsets)" and the chat tells you to use the campaign id from the campaign list.

Meta rate-limits an ad account that receives too many changes too quickly. If you see "Too many API calls", wait about five minutes without retrying, then run the change once.

Performance reads

Ask how your ads are doing and the chat reads the last 30 days from your account: spend, impressions, clicks and conversions per campaign. With a Meta pixel it also reports purchases, add-to-carts, leads, cost per purchase and return on ad spend. Give a date range if you want one ("from 2026-08-24 to 2026-09-07").

"Is my ad running?" is answered from the real state of the account, not from the launch confirmation: every campaign, ad set and ad with the status Meta reports, including in review, rejected with Meta's reason, waiting on billing, paused or unfinished. A brand-new ad sits in review for a while, so a successful launch does not mean it is delivering yet.

The same numbers live on the Ad Campaigns page in the dashboard, across every connected account. The full workflow for finding waste is in reading performance and cutting wasted spend.

Regional rules Meta enforces

• European Union. EU ad accounts must declare who an ad promotes (a Digital Services Act rule). AdWhispr fills the declaration from your Facebook Page automatically. If it still fails, set the advertiser name once in Ads Manager under Account Settings.
• Singapore. Any ad that reaches Singapore needs a Singapore ad declaration, which AdWhispr adds automatically, and the ad account needs a verified advertiser, which only you can complete in Meta. See Singapore verification.
• Instagram. If Meta has restricted the Instagram account the ad runs through, ads stay blocked until you appeal in the Instagram app.

Frequently asked questions

Will my ad start spending as soon as it is created?

No. Every campaign, ad set and ad is created paused. It starts delivering only after you resume it, and the chat asks you to confirm before it does.

Can I launch a competitor's ad as it is?

No. Competitor creatives are never launched. You can clone a competitor's image ad into a new image with your own product and brand, and the launch uses copy and a link written for your business.

Where does the budget sit, the campaign or the ad set?

On the ad set. Launches from AdWhispr leave the campaign without a budget, so each ad set keeps its own daily amount and creative tests split one ad set's budget between the competing ads.

Why does the preview say "United States (default)"?

Because you did not name a location. Defaults are applied to anything you do not mention and are marked in the preview so you can change them before confirming.

Why did my age targeting disappear?

Your ad was detected as a housing, employment or credit ad. Meta does not allow age or gender targeting on those, so it was removed and the preview says so. If the ad is not really about one of those, reword the copy and launch again.

What if a launch fails?

The chat shows Meta's real message plus one sentence on what to do. The common ones each have a page under troubleshooting.