How to run Instagram ads, step by step: account, objective, budget and tracking

What do you need to run Instagram ads?

To run Instagram ads, you need a professional Instagram account, a payment method and a definition of the result you expect from the ad. An ad can be placed from the Instagram app in a few taps. If you want a measurable result such as sales, forms or messages, the setup is done in Meta Ads Manager and actions on your site are measured with the Meta Pixel.

The steps in this article are based on pages in the Meta Business Help Center, the Meta Ads Guide and the Instagram Help Center, as they read in November 2026. Meta updates its menu names and spec recommendations from time to time. You can check the current pages in the sources at the end of the article.

If you do not want to handle the setup and weekly monitoring yourself, our Instagram and Meta ads management service sets up the ad account in your business's name, adds the Meta Pixel based on cookie consent, and leaves you paying the ad budget directly to Meta.

1. Switch to a professional account

According to the Instagram Help Center, you need a professional account, meaning a business or creator account, to advertise on Instagram. An existing personal account can be switched to a professional account, or a new professional account can be opened. Ads placed from a professional account can be shown on both Instagram and Facebook through Meta's tools.

If you manage a Facebook Page, you can connect your professional Instagram account to that Page. According to the Instagram Help Center, ads created from the Page can appear on both Facebook and Instagram. Opening the ad account, the Page and the pixel with your business's own account means these assets stay with you if you later work with an agency or specialist.

2. Boost a post or use Ads Manager?

The Instagram Help Center lists five ways: boosting from the Instagram app, boosting on instagram.com, ads from a Facebook Page, Meta Business Suite and Meta Ads Manager. When you boost from the app, the audience and placement options are set automatically. The full set of Meta's Advantage+ features is available only in Ads Manager.

As of November 2026, according to the Instagram Help Center, in most regions an Apple service fee of 30 percent of the total payment, before taxes and local fees, may apply when you add funds to your ad account in the Instagram iOS app. Apple collects this fee. On the same page, Instagram recommends using instagram.com instead of the iOS app to avoid it.

When each path is enough is compared in detail in our article on boosting vs Ads Manager. The rest of this article describes the steps in Ads Manager.

3. Choose an advertising objective

In Ads Manager, every campaign starts with an advertising objective. According to the Meta Business Help Center, there are six: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App promotion and Sales. After you choose the objective, you set the conversion location, meaning where people will take the action (website, messaging app, form), and the performance goal, meaning the result the system optimizes for.

For a service business that wants quote forms or messages, Leads is the right objective; for a business selling on its site, Sales is. The Awareness objective aims to reach the most people likely to remember the ad. If you want to measure forms or sales, choose the objective that matches that result. Choosing the objective based on the result you expect from the ad also makes the report meaningful.

4. Define your audience

The audience is set at the ad set level. With Meta's Advantage+ audience option, the audience is found by Meta's system using past conversions, Meta Pixel data and engagement with previous ads. According to the Meta Business Help Center, this option is not recommended for retargeting campaigns.

To reach people again who have visited your site or added a product to their cart, you create a custom audience from the events the Meta Pixel has recorded. That is why the pixel should be set up before the first campaign. Basic limits such as location, age and language are set based on the area your business serves and your customer base.

If your ad is about financial products or services, employment, housing, or social issues, elections or politics, Meta requires you to turn on the Special Ad Category. Targeting options are more limited in this category.

5. Set the budget and schedule

In Meta, the budget is set at the campaign level (Advantage+ campaign budget) or separately for each ad set. A daily budget is the average amount to be spent each day; a lifetime budget is a ceiling that will not be exceeded over the campaign's run. As of November 2026, according to the Meta Business Help Center, the daily budget can be exceeded by up to 75 percent on days with good opportunities. In a calendar week, spend does not exceed seven times the daily budget.

A new ad set first goes through the learning phase. According to the Meta Business Help Center, an ad set usually leaves this phase once it gets 50 results in a week after its last significant edit. Editing the ad often during this period resets the learning. A very low budget also prevents enough results from being collected, and Ads Manager then shows the Learning limited status.

Meta's page does not suggest a fixed budget amount. Thinking together about what one result is worth to your business and how many results are needed to leave the learning phase helps you set a realistic starting budget.

6. Prepare the ad format and specs

The Meta Ads Guide lists image, video, carousel and collection formats for Instagram. Feed, Stories and Reels need different aspect ratios. In vertical placements, keeping text and logos out of the top 14 percent, the bottom 35 percent and 6 percent on each side of the image stops the profile icon and the call-to-action button from covering important information.

For Reels ads, Meta recommends using audio from the Meta Sound Collection or royalty-free audio instead of licensed music. Content made for vertical viewing on a phone, showing what is on offer in the first second, is easier to understand in these placements.

7. Set up the Meta Pixel and the Conversions API

The Meta Pixel is a piece of code added to your site. When a visitor takes an action on the site, such as adding a product to the cart or making a purchase, the pixel records that event. Events appear in Events Manager, and the ad's results are measured with these events. Meta asks that prohibited information, such as health, financial and children's data, is not shared through the pixel.

The Conversions API creates a direct connection between your server, your site platform or your customer records system and Meta. According to Meta, many integrations can be set up without a developer. When the pixel and the Conversions API are used together, the event deduplication described in Meta's help pages is set up so the same event is not counted twice.

The Meta Pixel uses a marketing cookie. In Türkiye, the pixel should only fire after the visitor consents to marketing cookies. Actions by visitors who do not consent do not appear in the report, so read the results together with your own form and message records. This is not legal advice; consult your lawyer about your own site. Meta Pixel setup is included in our E-commerce Premium package and our Business website Premium package.

8. Ad review and policies

Before ads run on Facebook or Instagram, Meta reviews them against its Advertising Standards. The review covers the images, video and text, the targeting information, the page the ad links to and special ad categories. According to the Meta Business Help Center, most ads are reviewed within 24 hours, and ads can be reviewed again while they are running.

When the targeting, creative, optimization or billing event of a running ad is changed, a new review starts. Changes to the budget, bid amount or schedule do not trigger a new review. If you think your ad was rejected by mistake, you can request another review from Meta Business Support Home.

9. Payment and tax

This section applies to advertisers in Türkiye. As of November 2026, according to the Meta Business Help Center, Meta ads in Türkiye can be paid with a credit card or a co-branded debit card (Mastercard, Visa and American Express in one of the accepted currencies) or with PayPal. The payment method chosen when you create your first ad sets the account's payment setting. If you choose a card or PayPal that supports recurring payments, the account is set to automatic payments.

According to the Meta Business Help Center page on VAT in Türkiye, since 1 April 2019 Meta Ireland Ltd. has been registered for VAT in Türkiye, and VAT at the applicable local rate is added to payments from advertisers whose Sold To country is Türkiye and who have not added a VAT number to their ad account. If you add a VAT number, you confirm that you are responsible for calculating and paying the VAT yourself, and Meta does not add VAT to your payment. Since VAT is added on top of the charges, you may be charged more than your billing threshold.

Meta does not give tax advice. Ask your accountant whether to add a VAT number and how to record the payments. This section is not legal or financial advice.

What to check in the first weeks

On the first day, check whether the ad has passed review and whether pixel events appear in Events Manager. Seeing the event recorded from a test form or a test order catches measurement errors at the start of the campaign.

In the first weeks, watch the status of the ad set in the Delivery column. Results can fluctuate during the learning phase, and frequent edits are not recommended in this period. The Learning limited status shows that not enough results are being collected. In that case, you can consider combining similar ad sets or reviewing the budget.

When you evaluate, read spend, number of results and cost per result together instead of likes and follower counts. How many of the incoming messages and forms turn into sales shows up only in your own records. No setup guarantees a certain number of sales or inquiries. The same steps for Google search are covered in our guide to advertising on Google, and preparing the page the ad will send people to is covered in our article on what to prepare before you hire a web designer.