Creating a Campaign

A campaign is one ad push: a single goal, a single audience, a single budget. The create flow walks you through five steps so nothing is missed. Goal, Audience, Budget, Creative, Review.

When you finish, the campaign is saved as a Draft. Nothing goes live and no money is spent until you publish it from the campaign page.

The form follows the network you are advertising on. Pick a Google Ads account and you get Google's goals and Google's character limits. Pick a Meta account and you get Meta's. Fields a network never uses are not shown at all, so you cannot fill in something that quietly goes nowhere.

Before you start

You will need:

• At least one Active ad account connected. If you have none, see connecting an ad account.
• A clear idea of what the ad should do: send people to a release page, collect sign-ups, sell merch, or simply get noticed.
• The link you want to send people to. A smart link, a store page, your website.
• An image for the ad. Optional on some networks, required on others, and worth having either way.

How to start

1. Go to Ads then Campaigns in your dashboard.
2. Click Create Campaign in the top right.
3. The five-step builder opens. The step you are on is highlighted, finished steps stay clickable so you can jump back, and steps you have not reached yet are greyed out.
4. Use Next to move on and Back to return. Cancel on the first step leaves without saving.

Step 1, Goal

Name the campaign, choose which ad account it runs on, and say what outcome you are after.

• Campaign Name is for your reference only. Use something you will recognise later, like "Summer Single Promo" or "Berlin tour date".
• Ad Account lists the active accounts you have connected, with the currency each one bills in.
• Campaign Objective appears as a set of cards once you pick an account. Until then you see a note that each network runs a different set of goals.

The goals

Every network runs these four:

• Traffic, drive visits to your website.
• Awareness, reach people likely to remember your ad.
• Engagement, get more likes, comments and shares.
• Video views, get your video watched.

Beyond that it depends on the account you picked:

• Meta (Facebook & Instagram) adds Leads (form), Leads (website), Sales, App installs and Catalog sales.
• TikTok Ads adds Leads (form), Sales and App installs.
• LinkedIn Ads adds Job applicants.
• X (Twitter) Ads adds App installs.
• Google Ads and Pinterest Ads run the core four.

Some goals need something extra before they can go live, and the card says so underneath the goal. Sales and Leads (website) optimise toward an action on your own website, so they need that tracking already set up on your ad account. Leads (form) needs an instant form on the network. Catalog sales needs a product catalog there. App installs needs your app id and store link.

The goal decides who the network shows your ad to, so pick the one that matches what you actually want. Choosing Awareness when you want sales will spend the budget on people who were never going to buy.

Step 2, Audience

This is where you decide who sees the ad.

• Youngest age and Oldest age, anywhere from 13 to 65. Keep the range as wide as your real audience, because narrow ranges push the cost up.
• Countries. Search by name or by code, and a row of the most commonly used countries sits under the box for one-click picking. Everything you choose appears as a chip above the search, so your selection never disappears behind a new query.
• Cities and regions. Search for a place and click it to add it. Chips again, removable.
• Interests. Type at least two characters and pick from the results, for example "live music". Adding several widens the audience rather than narrowing it, because anyone matching one of them can be shown the ad.
• Custom audience. Any audience you built from your contacts on this ad account appears as a chip with its approximate size. Click one to use it, click it again to clear it. See custom audiences.
• Let the platform widen this audience. Turn this on and the network treats everything above as a starting point rather than a boundary. It usually lowers your cost per result, and it will spend outside the countries and interests you chose.

Not every network honours every dimension, and anything a network does not honour is dropped before your campaign is sent:

• Meta and TikTok use everything here, though widening is a Meta feature.
• Google, Pinterest and X use countries and the age range.
• LinkedIn targets by country only.

Step 3, Budget

• Budget Type is either Daily Budget, the average you are willing to spend per day for as long as the campaign runs, or Lifetime Budget, a total cap the network paces across the run.
• Budget Amount (USD) is your spend in US dollars, minimum $1.
• Start Date and End Date set the run window and are both sent to the network. Leave the start blank to begin as soon as you publish, and leave the end blank to keep running until you pause it.

Step 4, Creative

This is the ad itself. Which fields appear depends on the network you chose, and a required one is marked with an asterisk.

• Headline, the bold line at the top. Where the network caps the length, a counter under the field shows how much you have left. Some networks have no headline at all, so the field is simply not shown.
• Body Text, the longer copy. Also counted where there is a limit.
• Destination URL, where clicks go. Paste a full address starting with https://. A smart link makes a great destination, because you can change where it points later without touching the ad.
• Call to Action, the button text: Learn more, Shop now, Sign up, Listen now, Watch more, Book now, Get tickets, Subscribe, Download or Apply now.
• Image. Click Upload image to send a file straight from your computer, or paste a link to an image you already host. Uploads land in your media library, so you can reuse them. Square images work well nearly everywhere.
• Video (optional) appears on Meta accounts. Adding a video makes this a video ad, and the image above becomes its thumbnail, so a video needs an image too. The form tells you if one is missing.

Some fields carry a ? next to the label with a note about how that network uses them, which is worth a click the first time you advertise somewhere new.

Match the button to the goal. Listen now for a single, Get tickets for a show, Shop now for merch.

Step 5, Review

The last step lays out everything that decides where your money goes:

• Name and Objective
• Budget, with its type and amount
• Age Range
• Countries, and Places for any cities or regions
• Interests
• Custom audience, when one is selected
• Widening, when you turned it on
• Headline and URL

Read it through. To fix something, click an earlier step at the top. When it is right, click Save as Draft.

What happens when you save

• The campaign is created as a Draft and appears at the top of your campaigns list.
• Nothing has reached the ad network. No spend, no impressions.
• To take it live, open the campaign and click Publish. See managing campaigns.

Publishing is also where completeness is checked. If a field your network requires is empty, publish is refused and the message names the field, so polish the draft before you click it.

Tips for a strong first campaign

• Start with a small daily budget, five to ten dollars, and let it run a few days. Scale what works rather than guessing up front.
• Pick one goal. A campaign trying to do three things does all three badly.
• Use a smart link as the destination so you can change where fans land without editing the ad.
• Make the image and the headline agree. If the image shows merch, the headline should be about merch.
• Once it is live, add a second creative to the same ad set rather than building a second campaign. See ad sets and creatives.

Where to go next

• Publish, pause or edit your campaign in managing campaigns.
• Build a retargeting list first with custom audiences.
• Get help picking a goal or writing copy from Mira.
• Track the spend against the income it brought in from income.