Instagram ads are bought through Meta, from the same ad account as Facebook ads, but people use Instagram differently, mostly through full-screen vertical images and video, and the ads need building for that. An ad cut for a desktop news feed and dropped into Stories or Reels usually wastes the money spent on it.
If you want your whole Facebook and Instagram account run month to month, monthly Facebook and Instagram ads management is the broader service. This page is for brands whose buyers are mostly on Instagram, or whose product sells on how it looks, and who want that side of the account done properly.
When Instagram deserves its own budget
Instagram suits things people choose with their eyes: clothing and accessories, beauty and skincare, food and drink, homeware, fitness, travel and events, and any London restaurant, bar or venue whose room does the selling. It also suits brands that already post well, because the organic posts people save and share are often the best raw material for ads.
I don’t decide on assumptions about who uses which app. Unless an account already has history to read, I start with one campaign running across Facebook and Instagram, then look at the placement breakdown in Ads Manager, which shows spend and cost per result for each placement. If Instagram Stories and Reels bring in sales more cheaply than the Facebook feed, that is the evidence for giving Instagram its own campaign, creative and budget.
Instagram is the wrong place to lead when:
- Customers look for you at the moment they need you, as with emergency trades or legal help. Google search ads reach that moment; a Reel rarely does.
- The product cannot be shown or grasped in a picture or a few seconds of video, and the sale depends on a long explanation.
- Nobody can produce vertical photos or video, and nothing on your profile shows the product well.
- The budget can only buy a handful of sales a month, which is too few for Meta’s system to learn who buys.
What the work covers
Placements: feed, Stories, Reels and Explore
Each placement shows an ad in a different setting. Feed ads sit between posts from accounts people follow and suit a portrait image, a carousel or a short video. Stories and Reels fill the screen: Stories are tapped through quickly between friends’ updates, while Reels ads sit among short videos people are watching for entertainment. Ads in Instagram Explore reach people browsing for accounts and ideas they don’t follow yet.
I choose placements by what your creative can support. When I restrict a campaign to Instagram alone, I tell you why, because narrowing the placements can raise what each impression costs.
Objectives and what Meta is told to find
The campaign objective and the conversion event decide which people Meta’s system goes looking for. A campaign set up for engagement finds people who like and comment; one optimised for purchases finds people who buy. For a shop I optimise for purchases, for a service business for completed enquiries or bookings, and I use awareness or reach only where being seen in a particular week matters, such as a launch or a ticketed event.
Ads can send people to your website, open a form inside Instagram or start a conversation in Instagram Direct. I pick the destination by where your sale actually happens, not by which one produces the cheapest click.
Audiences
Meta now finds most buyers through the creative and the conversion data rather than through hand-picked interests, so I keep targeting broad for new customers. The care goes elsewhere: leaving existing customers out of campaigns meant for new ones, and building engagement custom audiences from people who visited your profile, watched your Reels or messaged you. Those warm audiences feed retargeting campaigns that bring back people who looked but did not buy.
Creative briefs and copy
Meta shows each ad to the people most likely to respond to it, so two different videos for the same product can end up reaching quite different buyers. That makes the creative brief as important as any audience setting. I write the captions and on-screen text, and brief each image and video by placement: what happens in the first second of a Reel, the frame size, where text can sit inside the safe zone so the caption and buttons do not cover it, and whether a piece should look polished or like an ordinary post filmed on a phone. Where I am unsure which style will work, I test both rather than guess.
Your team, photographer or creators produce the assets, and I check them before they run. For campaigns built mainly on video across both apps, the page on Facebook video, Reels and Stories ads covers that work in more depth.
Your profile, shop and tracking
Many people tap through to your profile before they visit your website, which makes the profile part of the sale: a clear bio, a working link and recent posts that show what you sell and what it costs. If you sell online, product tags from your Meta catalogue let people tap from an ad through to the product they saw, and Facebook and Instagram ads for online shops covers the rest of the shop funnel.
Behind it all, the Meta Pixel and the Conversions API must record each purchase or enquiry once, with the pixel firing only after the visitor’s consent as UK privacy rules require. Otherwise Meta optimises towards the wrong people and the reports cannot be trusted.
How I build an Instagram campaign
- Look at what you already have. Your profile, any past ads, the posts Instagram Insights shows were saved and shared most, and whether the tracking records real results.
- Agree the number that matters. What a sale or enquiry is worth to you and the most you can pay for one. That figure sets the budget and tells us when to stop something.
- Test placements before splitting. Instagram gets a campaign of its own only once the placement breakdown shows it earns one.
- Build for each placement. Vertical versions for Stories and Reels, portrait versions for the feed, copy written for each, and UTM tags so your analytics can tell which ad brought which visit.
- Launch and leave it to learn. In the first days I check for rejected ads and broken links, but I don’t keep editing, because each significant change sends the ad set back into Meta’s learning phase.
- Refresh before the ads wear out. An Instagram-only audience is smaller, so the same people see each ad sooner. I watch frequency and cost per result, and brief new creative before performance slides.
Where Instagram campaigns usually go wrong
- Video made for Facebook running in Stories and Reels. A landscape or square cut appears with empty bands above and below, or with its text cropped off, and people swipe past.
- Text where the buttons sit. Prices, offers and logos placed at the bottom of the frame end up hidden behind the caption and the call-to-action button.
- Clicks sent to the homepage. Someone who tapped an ad for one product should land on that product, on a page that loads quickly on a phone. Landing pages built for ad traffic solve this when the main website cannot.
- Comments left unanswered. Questions about sizing, delivery or price under an ad are public. Ignored, they cost sales; answered quickly, they do some of the selling.
- Judging success by followers or profile visits. Both are easy to buy and neither pays you back unless people go on to buy. The measure that counts is cost per sale or enquiry.
UK advertising rules on Instagram
Instagram ads shown to people in the UK fall under the CAP Code, which the Advertising Standards Authority enforces, as well as Meta’s own advertising policies. Claims about skincare results, weight loss, health or environmental benefits need evidence you could produce if challenged.
When a brand pays a creator, or gives them products and has a say in what they post, the post must be obviously identifiable as an ad, usually with a clear label such as #ad at the start. Alcohol, gambling and some food and drink products also carry rules on who may see their ads. I check which rules apply before I write a word of copy.
What you receive
- A placement plan: which Instagram placements to use, which to leave out, and the reason for each.
- Campaigns built in your own ad account and running under your Instagram handle, with access you can remove at any time.
- Copy for every ad, and a brief for each image or video with frame sizes and safe zones marked.
- A tracking check confirming that sales or enquiries are recorded once each, and only after consent.
- A monthly report showing spend, results and cost per result by placement, with what I changed and why.
- A running log of every test and what it showed, so the lessons stay with your business.
What it costs and how to start
There are two costs. Ad spend goes from your own ad account straight to Meta, billed in pounds, and you can change or pause it whenever you like. My fee covers planning, building and running the campaigns, and I quote it once I have seen your account, your goals and how much creative briefing the work needs. Adding Instagram placements to an account that already works is a far smaller job than launching Instagram-led campaigns for a new brand that needs fresh creative every few weeks, which is why I don’t publish one fixed price.
If you would like to check the basics yourself first, the Facebook and Instagram ads checklist lists what should be in place before launch. When you are ready, send me your Instagram handle and website through the contact page and I’ll tell you whether Instagram is the right place for your budget and what I would test first.