If you are spending hours agonising over your Meta campaign setup, you are overthinking it. Trust me – after years of managing ad spend at every level, I can tell you that success on Meta comes down to a few simple, disciplined principles. Fancy structures and endless variations might look impressive on paper, but they rarely outperform a lean, focused strategy.

Here is exactly how we structure Meta accounts to consistently test, scale, and drive serious growth for our clients.

How to Run an Effective Testing Campaign: ABO is Still King

When it comes to testing new ideas, you do not need complicated funnel setups or endless variables. A simple ABO (Ad Set Budget Optimisation) campaign is more than enough to identify winners.

• Focus on testing big, high-concept creative ideas at the ad set level. You want to swing big here – not tiny headline tweaks.
• Each ad set should run between three to five ads. Not two, not seven. Keep it clean so you can quickly see patterns without drowning in data.
• Budget around £40 to £80 per concept per day. You do not need to spend thousands to generate meaningful signals.
• Hold your nerve until ads reach at least 2,000 impressions before making any decisions. Anything earlier is just guesswork.
• After 72 hours, cut your bottom performers mercilessly. Do not get emotionally attached to creative – the data does not lie.

This approach keeps your testing agile, efficient, and rooted in actual performance rather than assumptions.

Scaling the Winners: Move into Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns

Once you have identified your top performers, it is time to graduate them into scaling campaigns using Advantage+ Shopping (ASC). Here is how to do it properly:

• Migrate your winning ads into ASC by using the exact same post IDs. This preserves social proof and engagement momentum.
• Set up robust audience exclusions to prevent your scaling campaigns from cannibalising each other.
• Each top product or offer should have its own dedicated ASC to allow vertical scaling without overlap.
• Start by allocating double your original testing budget, then increase slowly as performance justifies it. Aggressive scaling only works if you maintain control.
• Keep your original testing campaigns live, even once you scale. They serve as ongoing creative references and will often continue pulling in profitable traffic at a lower cost.

Scaling is not about dumping more money into the account overnight. It is a disciplined, incremental process that rewards consistency over panic moves.

Retargeting the Right Way: Keep it Simple and Focused

Retargeting often gets needlessly complicated. In reality, a straightforward setup works best:

• Create one campaign targeting all website visitors from the past 30 days. There is no need for hyper-segmentation at this stage.
• Limit yourself to two or three ad sets maximum. Adding endless breakdowns only spreads your budget too thin.
• Use a different creative strategy compared to your cold traffic campaigns. Retargeting audiences already know who you are – focus on handling objections, reinforcing trust, and showcasing social proof.
• Retargeting should account for roughly 10 to 15 percent of your total budget. It is there to support your prospecting efforts, not replace them.

Overthinking retargeting often leads to bloated setups that perform worse than simple, focused campaigns built on clear customer intent.

Critical Audience Exclusions You Must Implement

No matter how well your campaigns are structured, if you are not implementing proper exclusions, you are leaking budget every single day. Here is what we always do:

• Exclude all past purchasers from all prospecting and retargeting campaigns. Use both your pixel data and synced Klaviyo lists to ensure full coverage.
• Meta’s platform is designed to drive new customer acquisition. Retention should be handled elsewhere – like through email or loyalty programmes.
• In your prospecting campaigns, make sure you exclude recent website visitors. Otherwise, you muddy the waters between cold and warm audiences.
• If you are running multiple ASCs, set up exclusions between them too. You do not want your scaling campaigns fighting each other for the same buyers.

Without airtight exclusions, your data gets messy, your costs rise, and your scaling stalls before it even gets going.

Rounding Up

Running Meta ads at scale is not about building the most complex account structure you can think of. It is about nailing the basics with discipline, consistency, and a clear understanding of the platform’s strengths.

Keep your testing tight. Scale methodically. Retarget simply. Exclude ruthlessly.