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Paid Social

Meta Ads Agency.
We give the algorithm
something worth reading.

Meta stopped taking targeting instructions a while ago. It reads the ad now, then goes and finds the people it decides the ad is for. Which leaves the creative and the conversion data as the only two levers still worth pulling.

Pixel and Conversions API, together Broad targeting, seeded with your data Your Business Portfolio stays yours
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Both
Pixel And Conversions API
Browser events get intercepted. The server copy is what delivery actually learns from
Scored
Event Match Quality First
We read the score in Events Manager and fix it before a campaign has bought anything
Broad
Targeting Stays Wide
Stacked interest filters raise what you pay without improving who turns up
Fresh
Creative In Before Fatigue
New assets enter on a rotation, not after the cost per result has already doubled
Where We Start

We start one screen earlier than the ad account

The ad account is usually the last place the problem actually is.

Meta delivery is downstream of two inputs, and only two. The events you send back, and the creative you give it to read. Get those right and the campaign settings largely take care of themselves. Get them wrong and no amount of ad set surgery will rescue the account. Which is why our work as a Meta ads agency starts in Events Manager rather than in the campaign builder.

Visual2Action, on every account we open
What we open first
  • The Event Match Quality score, per event
  • Whether the browser and the server are both firing
  • How old the running creative is
  • What the campaign is optimizing toward
  • Every audience filter somebody stacked on
What we fix first

The events being sent

Almost every account we take over is sending Meta a thinner version of what happened. Purchases arriving with no value on them. Leads counted twice. We rebuild that before anything else, because everything downstream is learning from it.

What we argue about

How narrow to go

Somebody always wants one more filter on the audience. Narrow feels safer, and it is usually the reason the account is expensive. We would rather have that conversation with you than quietly leave it there.

What nobody enjoys

Killing an ad people liked

The creative that wins is rarely the one everybody backed in the meeting. So we cut on what the numbers say, on a fixed schedule, before it can turn into a debate about taste.

This work goes by a few names. Some people call it paid social management, some say Facebook and Instagram ads, and plenty still call the whole thing Facebook ads. Same job. If you are still deciding between paid social and paid search, that comparison lives on our PPC advertising services page.

What Goes Wrong

Four ways a Meta account goes quiet

None of the four announces itself in the dashboard. That is the expensive part.

Signal loss

The reported return is better than the real one

What we see

Ads Manager looks healthy. The bank account has a different opinion, and nobody can reconcile the two.

What we change

Pixel and Conversions API sent together on a shared event ID so nothing double counts, then Event Match Quality raised until the score stops being the weakest thing in the account.

Creative fatigue

The ads that launched it are still the ads running it

What we see

Frequency climbing, cost per result climbing with it, and a creative library that has not been added to since the build.

What we change

New concepts enter on a rotation rather than when someone notices a problem. Fatigue is a scheduling failure far more often than it is a creative one.

Over-targeting

The audience has been narrowed until it costs a fortune

What we see

Interests stacked on interests, exclusions layered over those, and a pool small enough that delivery stalls in an expensive auction.

What we change

Targeting opens up and the creative does the sorting instead. Advantage+ Audience gets your customer list as a seed rather than a list of hobbies somebody guessed at.

Structure sprawl

Your ad sets are bidding against each other

What we see

A dozen ad sets split by funnel stage, overlapping heavily, each one starved of the volume it needs to learn anything.

What we change

Fewer campaigns holding more budget, so conversions pool instead of scattering. Separation happens through the creative and the audience seed, not through another ad set.

Meta will spend today's budget today. Whether or not anybody aimed it.

The platform does not pause when the creative gets tired or when the tracking breaks. It keeps buying, at whatever price the auction asks. Noticing early is most of the job.

See How We Test
What We Run

What we run across Facebook and Instagram, and what we leave switched off

Six things, one account, and a reason on record every time budget moves between them.

Facebook feed, Stories and Reels

Strongest when Your buyer is already scrolling and nobody is searching for you yet.

Each format gets built for the format. A Reel opens on the hook because the first second decides whether there is a second one, and a feed image has to survive being looked at for less time than that.

Instagram ads management

Strongest when The product sells on how it looks, and the audience is there to look.

Feed, Stories, Reels and Explore, with assets assigned per placement rather than one square image stretched across all four. Partnership ads and creator footage where a brand already has people making it.

Advantage+ campaign management

Strongest when There is enough conversion volume for the system to have something to learn from.

Given clean events and a real creative supply it is usually the strongest thing in the account. Given neither, it is an efficient way to spend a budget quickly. We seed it with your customer data and keep reading what it actually served.

Catalog and dynamic retargeting

Strongest when There is a product feed and a queue of people who nearly bought.

The catalog gets checked before the campaign does, because a feed with missing values or stale availability breaks the ads quietly. Then the people who viewed, added and left see the thing they actually looked at.

Audiences built from your own data

Strongest when You have a customer list, and the good customers in it look like each other.

Customer lists uploaded properly, Lookalikes seeded from buyers rather than from everyone who ever visited, and website audiences cut by what someone actually did. This is where broad targeting gets its direction from.

Conversions API and event tracking

Strongest when Every account, and before anything is allowed to launch.

Server events and browser events sent together, deduplicated on a shared event ID, then Event Match Quality read per event until the score is worth optimizing on. Nothing goes live on top of numbers we do not trust.

What we leave switched off: prospecting with no creative supply behind it, which works for a fortnight and then quietly stops. Retargeting run alone and called growth. Awareness objectives on an account that needs sales. And if search intent is the bigger opportunity, that budget belongs in Google Ads management instead. We will say so.

The creative is the targeting now

Meta reads the ad, decides who it is for, and goes looking. Which makes a thin creative library a targeting problem, not a design one.

Visual2Action, on why the testing schedule is the strategy Schedule a 30-Minute Call
How We Test

How an ad earns more budget, or gets cut

The same four moves, running continuously, so nothing reaches fatigue before its replacement exists.

Concepts, not variations

A different color button is not a test. We build genuinely different angles: the problem, the proof, the offer, the objection. Then each one gets the formats it suits.

Into a live account, fairly

New assets go in where there is enough volume to tell them apart, not into a starved ad set built to test them. Meta needs conversions to judge anything, so we stop splitting them up.

Read the opening, then the outcome

Most assets lose people in the first second, and that shows up long before the cost per result does. We read the drop-off first, because it tells us what to fix rather than only what failed.

Scale the winner, replace the rest

Budget moves toward what is converting, in steps small enough that the account does not re-enter learning. The losers come out and the next batch is already built.

On every asset What we actually read before anything gets scaled
  • Hook rate
  • Hold rate
  • Cost per result
  • Frequency
  • Outbound click rate
  • Placement breakdown
  • Creative age

All of it is visible in your own Ads Manager, which means you can check any of it without asking us. We put the reasoning in the optimization log rather than behind a dashboard login, so a decision made in week three is still explainable in month five.

Straight Answer

Meta Ads is not right for every business. Here is how we tell.

Saying it in week one is cheaper for both of us than saying it in month three.

Worth doing Paid social earns its place when
  • The product or the result is something people can see
  • You can keep supplying photos, footage or offers to test
  • There is a customer list worth building audiences from
  • The buying decision does not need six months and a committee
  • Something on the site can record what happened after the click
  • You can tell us what a lead or a sale is actually worth
Worth waiting We will tell you to hold off when
  • There is no creative supply and no appetite to build one
  • The budget cannot buy enough conversions to learn from
  • The offer or the product is still being validated
  • Nothing can be tracked back past the form submission
  • The result is needed before any testing period at all
Not sure which column you are in? That is a twenty minute conversation, not a proposal. Tell Us What You Sell
Running an agency and looking to resell paid social under your own brand? See White Label PPC
The Money

What we charge, and what a Facebook advertising agency normally charges

Two costs. Only one of them is us.

Your situation
Month one
Month two onward
Starting from scratch No account yet, or one that has to be rebuilt.
Month one
Setup fee Management fee
Month two onward
Management fee No setup fee
Taking over a live account Running in house, with another agency, or by you.
Month one
No setup fee Management fee
Month two onward
Management fee Audit already done, at no charge
Your ad budget is separate and goes to Meta at cost. No markup on it, and no commission taken out of it.
Quoted separately Three things that are never inside the management fee
Video and photo production for ads Landing page design and build Changes to your existing website

Deciding what the next ad should say is inside the fee. Filming it is not. Writing the copy, choosing the angles and cutting footage you supply into variants are all part of the management work. Producing raw video or photography gets quoted on its own, in writing, before anyone starts. Plenty of clients shoot it themselves on a phone, and on Meta that often works better than a studio.

Why we do not publish a package price

Two accounts on the same budget are rarely the same job

Market count, catalog size and how many angles a product needs move the work far more than the spend figure does. A single published number would be wrong for almost everybody reading it.

Creative supply changes everything

A brand sending us footage every week needs a different amount of us than one supplying four images a quarter. Pricing on ad spend alone quietly charges the wrong one more.

A quote should hold still

Charge a percentage and the fee recalculates itself every month without anyone deciding anything. Ours is quoted against your account, agreed in writing, and held until a new figure is quoted and approved by you.

Published rates for Meta ads management sit at roughly 10 to 20 percent of monthly ad spend, or a flat monthly retainer, usually with a one time setup fee on top and creative production billed per asset. Sources: ClicksGeek and Linear Design, both 2026. We sit inside that range. What we do differently is quote a number instead of a formula.

Send us the account and one honest answer about your creative. You get a number, and the reasoning behind it. Ask What It Would Cost
How it starts

Four moves, in that order, before anything scales

Tracking and the audit

History read, Conversions API put in beside the Pixel, events deduplicated, and Event Match Quality raised to a score worth optimizing on.

Angles and audiences

The first batch of genuinely different concepts written and built, customer list uploaded, Lookalikes seeded from buyers, and the catalog checked if there is one.

Controlled launch

Structure decided rather than defaulted, budget consolidated so conversions pool instead of scattering, caps on, and daily eyes on it while delivery settles.

Read, cut, scale

Assets read on cycle, tired ones pulled before the cost per result moves, and budget stepped toward whatever the numbers will defend.

Start With The Tracking Audit The audit happens whether or not anything follows it.
Before You Hire Anyone

Questions worth asking any agency, including us

Answered here the way we would answer them on a call.

Cost, creative and commitment

How much does Facebook Ads management cost?

Two costs, and only one of them is the agency. Your ad budget goes to Meta. The management fee goes to whoever runs the account.

Published market rates for management sit at roughly 10 to 20 percent of monthly ad spend, or a flat monthly retainer, usually with a one time setup fee covering the tracking and campaign build. Creative production is normally billed on top of all of it. We quote a figure instead of a formula. The setup fee is charged once in month one, the management fee runs from launch, and from month two the management fee is the only thing that recurs.

The fee is quoted against your account and the spend level it covers, so a larger budget is quoted at a larger figure. What it will not do is recalculate itself every month. It is agreed in writing before anything starts, and it holds until a new figure is quoted and approved by you.

Is creative production included in Meta Ads management?

Deciding what the next ad should say is included. Filming it is not.

Writing the copy, choosing the angles, directing the concept and cutting footage you supply into ad variants all sit inside the management fee. Producing raw video or photography does not, and it gets quoted separately in writing before anyone starts. That is the normal split across the industry, where graphics and video are billed per asset on top of a retainer.

Plenty of clients shoot their own footage on a phone and hand it over. On Meta that often outperforms studio work, and it costs nothing extra.

What is the minimum ad budget worth starting Meta Ads with?

Enough to buy conversions the system can learn from. That depends far more on your cost per result than on any round number.

A business paying twenty dollars a lead and one paying four hundred dollars a sale need very different budgets to produce the same amount of learning in the same window. So the question worth asking is how many conversions a month the budget can realistically produce, not how many dollars it is.

If the honest answer is a handful, the budget is too thin to test creative properly. We would rather say that before taking the work than after.

Do you have to sign a long-term contract for Meta Ads management?

Not with us. There is nothing long to sign and nothing taken in advance.

What does get agreed at the start is a realistic working horizon, because a creative testing cycle cancelled after a few weeks has cost you money and taught you nothing. That is a planning conversation rather than a lock-in clause.

Scope and fee are written down before any budget moves. If it stops being worth doing, it stops.

Your account and how the work runs

What does a Meta ads agency actually manage?

Campaign strategy, structure and objectives across Facebook and Instagram, conversion tracking, audience setup, ongoing optimization, and reporting tied to revenue rather than to reach.

In practice the work has shifted. Conversions API running alongside the Pixel with events deduplicated, Event Match Quality kept high enough to optimize on, and a creative testing schedule that keeps producing new angles are now the parts that decide whether an account works. Audience configuration matters much less than it did.

A Facebook Ads management agency spending its time on interest lists and ad set naming conventions is optimizing for a system Meta has already replaced.

Can an agency take over an existing Meta Ads account?

Yes, and it is usually the faster start, because the account already has history worth reading.

Partner access is taken to your existing Business Portfolio rather than rebuilding somewhere new, so the pixel history, the audiences and the accumulated learning all stay where they are. The first thing to look at is the event setup, because that is what everything else has been learning from.

A takeover carries no setup fee. The audit comes first and costs nothing, whether or not anything follows it.

Who owns the Meta ad account, the pixel and the audience data?

You do. All of it, from the first day.

Your Business Portfolio, ad account, pixel, Conversions API setup, catalog and audience lists belong to you. An agency should be working inside your assets with partner access rather than holding them inside its own, which is what makes a handover a permissions change instead of a negotiation.

If you leave, access is removed and everything stays exactly where it is. Nothing has to be rebuilt and nothing gets held back.

What is the difference between the Meta Pixel and the Conversions API?

The Meta Pixel reports from the visitor's browser. The Conversions API reports from your server. The difference is what can block them.

Browser events can be intercepted by privacy settings, tracking prevention and ad blockers, so a share of what actually happened never reaches Meta. Server events are sent directly and are not exposed to any of that. Running both and deduplicating them on a shared event ID gives the delivery system the fullest picture without counting anything twice.

The Pixel on its own is no longer enough. It is the single most common thing missing from an account that reports better than it performs.

What is Event Match Quality and why does it matter?

Event Match Quality is a score Meta gives each conversion event, based on how well the customer information sent with it can be matched to a real person.

It is visible per event inside Events Manager. A low score means Meta is receiving conversions it cannot attribute confidently, so it is optimizing on a partial picture and the cost per result reflects that. Sending more matched fields, securely and consistently, is usually what moves it.

It is worth reading before a campaign spends anything. Optimizing on top of a weak score just teaches the system faster in the wrong direction.

Should Meta Ads targeting be broad or built from detailed interests?

Broad, in almost every account, with your own customer data used as the seed.

Meta's delivery system reads the creative and predicts who it is for. Stacking detailed interests shrinks the pool it is allowed to search, which raises what you pay in the auction without improving who arrives. Advantage+ Audience given a real customer list consistently finds buyers a hand-built interest set would have excluded.

There are exceptions. Regulated categories, narrow professional audiences and small geographic markets still need constraints, and those get set deliberately rather than out of habit.

How long does it take before Meta Ads start working?

Long enough for the account to produce conversions the system can learn from. That is a volume question rather than a calendar one, which is why nobody honest gives you a date.

What the early period buys is worth naming. The tracking gets verified, the first creative angles get tested against each other, and the account starts producing data worth acting on. An account being rebuilt often improves sooner than a new one, because fixing the event setup improves signal quality immediately.

You get told what changed and why while that is happening, rather than a report at the end of it.

Should a business run Meta Ads or Google Ads first?

It depends on whether people are already searching for what you sell.

Where there is real search demand and a clear action worth counting, paid search usually gets there faster and that budget belongs in Google Ads management. Where the product sells by being seen, or the category is one nobody thinks to type, paid social is where the demand has to be created rather than captured.

Most accounts end up running both. Which one goes first is a question about your market, and it deserves an honest answer rather than whichever page you happened to land on.

Do you manage Meta Ads for other agencies under their brand?

Yes, though not through this page.

Agency partnerships run under a separate arrangement with its own reporting, its own communication rules and its own commercial terms, because the sell price, the promised deliverables and the margin all belong to you rather than to us. That is set out on our white label PPC page.

This page is written for businesses running ads for themselves.

Start Here

Send us the account. We will tell you what is actually wrong with it.

The audit looks at three things: the event setup, the creative library and how the budget is split. You get back what we would change first, in what order, and what it would cost.

  • 12+ years running paid campaigns across search and social
  • A free audit of the existing account if something is already live
  • Scope and fee written down before any budget moves
  • A reply within one business day

Would rather talk it through? Book a 30-minute call and pick a time that suits you.

Meta Ads brief

Six fields. Enough for us to come back with something specific rather than a template.

This is the spend that goes to Meta, separate from any fee.

We reply within one business day. Your details are never shared.