A Facebook Ad is how a business or brand can start to promote their product or service on Facebook. This ad unit is 100% branded by the advertiser with copy and image and does not include any social actions. It can link to a Facebook Page, application or external website. An ad directed to a Facebook Page or application can generate social actions for future campaigns.

A Social Ad is a Facebook Ad with a user’s friends’ interactions with a Facebook Page or Application as the headline. It includes the branded image and copy from the advertiser alongside the social action.

Your ad can appear either within a user’s News Feed as sponsored content or in the ad space along the left column of the site. To view sample ads in these locations, please click here.

You can view your ad as well as all the statistics related to the ads you have created on the Ad Campaigns page of the Ads and Pages Manager. On this page you can change your cost per click or CPM at any time while your ads are running, pause or unpause your ads, and delete your ads.

You will not see your ad actually running on Facebook unless you are a member of the target audience that you selected for your ad. Additionally, even if you are a member, you aren’t guaranteed to see your ad. However, if you are seeing impressions reported in your ad statistics, this means your ad is appearing for other users.

Once your ad has been created, you can only change the cost per click or CPM for your ad. If you wish to change the targeting or content of your ad you will need to pause the ad and create a new one with the correct criteria. You can also use the "Create a Similar Ad" function beneath any of your ads in the Ad Manager to recreate an ad and easily make changes to it.

If you would like to see some of the ads that have been shown to you in the past while you were browsing Facebook, you can visit here. This will show you some of the ads that have been served to your account during the past 24 hours. You can also view this page by clicking the "More Ads" link that appears below most Facebook Ads.

This link will take you to a page with many of the Facebook Ads that have been displayed to your account over the last 24 hours.

As a CPC advertiser you are indicating that what is most important to you is having people click through to your website and controlling the actual cost to drive each individual person to your site. As a CPM advertiser you are indicating that it is more important to you where your ad shows up and what your ad looks like. For this reason, we offer the ability to an advertiser using CPM to select whether they want to bid on the ad space or News Feed.

You can choose to advertise a web page or content you’ve created on Facebook, like a Page or application. On this page, please choose where you’d like users to be directed when they click on your ad. To link your ad to any external website, use the "I have a website I want to advertise" option. To link your ad to any page within Facebook, including a Facebook Page or application, use the "I have something on Facebook I want to advertise" option. If you do not already have a Facebook Page, you can create one by clicking on the "Help me make a Page" option.

If you are the creator or admin of a group, event, application, Page, or Marketplace listing, you can have your ad link directly to it. Any items that are eligible to be advertised will appear in the drop-down menu when you select the "I have something on Facebook I want to advertise" option when creating your ad.

A musical artist, business, or brand can create Facebook Pages to share information, interact with their fans, and create a highly engaging presence plugged into Facebook’s social graph. These Pages are distinct presences, separate from users’ profiles, and optimized for these presences’ needs to communicate, distribute information/content, engage their fans, and capture new audiences virally through their fans’ recommendations to their friends. Facebook Pages are designed to be a media rich, valuable presence solution for any artist, business, or brand that can be integrated seamlessly into the user experience with socially-relevant applications.

Your ad, which must include a title and body, is limited to 25 characters for the title and 135 characters for the body.

Your ad cannot include any image with dimensions greater than 110 pixels wide x 80 pixels tall and should have an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 16:9. Uploads must be less than 5 megabytes. If your image is larger or smaller than the dimensions specified, we will resize your image accordingly. If you are an advanced user you may wish to size your photo for optimal results. Please note that we do not support animated or flash images.

Social Ads leverage the actions that users take with Facebook Pages and applications to create highly relevant promotions. If you choose to add social actions to your ad, we will attach any relevant interaction that a user’s friends have with your brand or business on Facebook as the headline for your creative.

When you create your ad, you will be able to specify which Pages or applications should contribute social interactions for your particular campaign. This option can be found at the bottom of the page by making sure the box is checked next to "Add Social Actions to my ad." You will then need to check the boxes next to each Page, application, etc, you’d like to include Social Actions from on your ad. You should only choose to include Social Actions from sources that are relevant to the ad you are creating.

For help writing your ads, try visiting our Suggested Best Practices and our Advertising Guidelines.

Your ad is more likely to perform better and continue running successfully if it is being displayed to the users who are most likely to be interested in your product or service. Because of this, we recommend targeting your ads to smaller, more specific groups of users at one time. This will also allow you to write ad text that is more personalized, making your ad more appealing to the users you are reaching.

Facebook determines the location of a user based on IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, which can help identify the country or city where a user is physically located. The location of a user is not based on the city or hometown they may have listed and is also separate from any geographic networks that they may have joined.

Keywords are based on interests, activities, and favorite books, TV shows, movies, or job titles that users list in their Facebook profiles. For example, if you choose to target the keyword "Dave Matthews Band," then your ad will only display on users’ accounts that have listed Dave Matthews Band in the "Favorite Music" section on their profile.

When you choose to check all the boxes next to certain targeting criteria (e.g. "Males" and "Females"), this means your ad will only be shown to users who have selected to fill in this information on their profile. If a user has chosen not to fill in this section of their profile, they will not see your ad. If you do not check any of the boxes, your ad will be shown to any user, including those who have selected an option and those who have not filled in this section.

The second section of the targeting page will allow you to choose a more specific audience within the location that you have already specified. Your ad will only be eligible to show for users who meet the criteria that you select. Once you have chosen a country, all other targeting is optional. If you wish to target all users in the location you have selected, you do not need to fill out any of the other sections.

To select these schools by name, select either "College Grad" or "In College." Once one of these options has been chosen, two boxes will appear. In these boxes, you can type in the names of up to 20 schools and/or 20 majors.

Unfortunately, our targeting capability internationally is still somewhat limited. Cities may not be available in certain countries due to the small number of users in these locations. Cities will be made available as traffic in the area increases.

The country I’d like to target isn’t available.

Unfortunately, our targeting capability internationally is still somewhat limited. Certain countries, regions, and cities may not yet be available to target your ads to due to the small number of users registered on those networks. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. These locations will be made available as soon as there is enough traffic to run ads on them.

The keyword I’d like to target isn’t available.

If the keyword you’d like to target is not currently available, then this means that not enough users have listed this word in their profile information. The keywords section only targets the information that users have listed in the activities, interests, favorite music, TV shows, movies, and books sections of their profiles. Once more users have listed this keyword on their profile, we will add it as an available targeting option.

I want to target a specific high school.

Facebook Social Ads are not currently available to be targeted to specific high school networks. However, you can still use Social Ads to reach the high school population. To do so, please run your ads in the geographic network(s) in which the high school(s) you wish to reach are located. You can then target your ad by age, selecting the age range "13-18" in order to display your ad to the high school students in that region.

With each new ad campaign, you can set a new daily budget. This allows you to organize your ads and allocate your advertising budget in a more specific way.

The budget that you set is your daily budget. It represents the maximum amount that you are willing to spend for each day you are advertising. Our system will automatically stop showing your ad once your budget has been met for the day, and you will never accrue charges in excess of your budget each day.

Pay for Clicks (also called cost per click or CPC) advertising allows you to specify a certain amount that you are willing to pay each time a user actually clicks on your ad. Pay for Views (also called cost per thousand impressions or CPM) advertising allows you to specify how much you are willing to pay for 1000 views (or impressions) or your ad.

As a CPC advertiser you are indicating that what is most important to you is having people click through to your website and controlling the actual cost to drive each individual person to your site. As a CPM advertiser you are indicating that it is more important to you that many people see your ad, not that they actually take action after seeing your ad. CPM advertising is usually more effective for advertisers who want to raise awareness of their brand or company, while CPC advertising is more effective for advertisers who are hoping for a certain response from users (like sales or registrations).

For any available ad inventory, Facebook selects the best ad to run based on the cost per click or impression and ad performance.

If you choose a CPC model, you will also bid on how much you are willing to pay for each click on your ad. Facebook will display your ad in the Ad Space, News Feed, or both. The amount you are charged will never exceed your daily budget.

If you choose a CPM model, you will bid on how much you are willing to pay for every thousand impressions of your ad. Your ad will only be eligible to appear in the Ad Space.

Social Ads are priced on either a CPC or CPM basis, depending on what you choose for your particular advertising campaign. When you set up your ads, you are able to choose a daily budget and a maximum CPC or CPM. There is no set cost for these advertisements, and the CPC or CPM you need to set in order to be successful varies depending on the quality of your ad and the targeting you choose. You will only ever be charged for the clicks or impressions that you receive and our system will never charge you more than the total of the Daily Budgets that you have set for your active campaigns.

For any given ad unit, we select the best ad to run based on the cost per click or cost per thousand impressions and ad performance. We have a process in place that will automatically calculate the minimum price that the advertiser could pay and still have the highest cost per click or CPM ad, and the advertiser will only be billed that price. This price may be below the advertiser’s maximum cost per click or CPM. Because we lower the cost per click or CPM on your behalf, we recommend that you enter your true maximum cost per click or CPM when creating an ad. This will increase the likelihood that you do not miss out on clicks or impressions that you otherwise could have received.

The current minimum cost per click is $0.01.

The current minimum CPM is $0.15 for the ad space and $0.15 for News Feed.

The minimum daily budget for CPC and CPM is $5. In addition, your budget must be at least 2x the CPC or CPM you have specified. For example, if you specify a $10 CPC, then your daily budget must be at least $20.

No, you will never be billed more than your maximum cost per click or the maximum CPM that you have specified.

Your maximum cost per click or CPM must be less than your daily budget. Your daily budget must be at least 2x the CPC or CPM you have specified. The total billable value of clicks or impressions in a Facebook billable day will never exceed your daily budget.

The total billable value of clicks or impressions in a Facebook billable day will never exceed your daily budget. A Facebook billable day begins at 12am PDT. For example, the Facebook billable day for September 1 will range from 12am PDT to 11:59pm PDT on that day.

Your Daily Spend Limit works like a credit limit on a credit card. This is separate from the Daily Budgets that you set for each of your campaigns. The Daily Spend Limit represents the most that our system will ever allow you to spend in one day. If the combined Daily Budgets of all your campaigns is less than your current Daily Spend Limit, you will never hit your Daily Spend Limit. Our system will never charge you more than the total of the Daily Budgets that you have set for your active campaigns.

The Daily Spend Limit for your account is predetermined by our system when you open your account. Our system will periodically increase your Daily Spend Limit based on a history of successfully payments on your account.

If your ad was disapproved before it received any impressions or clicks, you will not be charged.

We will not charge you for your ad if you chose CPM pricing and your ad did not receive any impressions. We will also not charge you for your ad if you chose CPC pricing and your ad did not receive any clicks.

Currently, credit cards and co-branded debit cards (Visa/Mastercard/American Express) are the only accepted method of payment for ads. We do not currently offer an invoicing as a payment options for ads.

No, all charges and payments for ads will be made in US Dollars. All values detailed for ads (CPM, CPC, daily budget, etc) are in US Dollars.

At this time, credit cards are the only accepted method of payment for Facebook Ads. We hope to make more payment options available in the future. If you need a printed invoice, you can access and print one from within your account. When viewing your ad campaigns, simply click the "Account Billing Summary" link at the bottom of the page. On the summary page, you can click on each charge to see more detailed information.

In general, you will be charged once per Facebook billable day. However, we reserve the right to charge you more or less frequently at our discretion.

We take click fraud seriously and have put several measures in place to reduce it. If you believe that you are being charged for fraudulent clicks, please contact us.

We do our best to consistently bill users. However, we reserve the right to bill users as often as everyday to as little as every few days. To find all of your billing information, please click on 'Account Billing Summary' at the bottom of your 'Ad Campaigns' tab. In order to view your billing for each month, you will need to select the appropriate month from the 'Month of' drop down menu at the top of the page.

Advertisers only pay for the clicks received or impressions delivered. If your ad has not received any clicks or impressions yet, then you will not find any charges on your account.

Only Visa, Mastercard, and Discover card are accepted as payment for Social Ads.

Credit cards (Visa/Mastercard/Discover) are the only accepted method of payment for ads. You may also pay with a co-branded debit card (Visa/Mastercard/Discover). Unfortunately, pure debit cards not associated with these brands won’t be accepted. Additionally, we are currently unable to perform invoicing for advertising campaigns. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Your CSC credit card code isn’t validating.

Unfortunately, the error message that you are receiving indicates that your credit card is not passing our fraud protection system. Please confirm that the information you have input is correct and accurately reflects the information that your bank has on file for your account. If you are still unable to make a purchase using your card, please either try using a different credit card or contacting your credit card issuer. We do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

You have an outstanding balance.

To resolve your balance, please go here.

A coupon code is activated through Facebook’s online ad system and then becomes an advertising credit. This advertising credit can be redeemed for advertising on Facebook.

Coupon codes for Facebook Ads are given out from time to time as part of special promotions.

The value of each coupon code varies and is stated when you receive the coupon code. A coupon code can only be activated and the advertising credits can only be redeemed for Facebook Ads through Facebook’s online advertising system. To view your advertising credits account balance, please click on the "Billing" tab at the top of the Ads Manager. Then click on the "Funding Sources" tab on the Billing Summary page. You will then be able to view your current advertising credit balance, the expiration date for your advertising credits and the date you activated your coupon code.

Yes, each coupon code and the advertising credits have a limited time in which they can be redeemed. The expiration date is included with the coupon code when you received it. The coupon code will expire regardless of whether or not the coupon code has been activated.

To view your advertising credit account balance, please click on the "Billing" tab at the top of the Ads Manager. Then click on the "Funding Sources" tab on the Billing Summary page. You will then be able to view your current advertising credit balance, the expiration date for your advertising credits, and the date you activated your coupon code.

Yes, you can redeem your advertising credits when you create a new Facebook Ad or for an existing Facebook Ad campaign.

If this is your first time advertising through Facebook’s online advertising system, or you wish to create a new Facebook Ad, you can activate your coupon code and then redeem your advertising credits at the final page of the ad creation flow. If you already have a credit card stored to your advertising account, simply click the "I have a coupon to redeem" link located directly above the "Place Order" button. If you do not have a credit card stored to your advertising account, you will need to first enter your credit card information and then click the "I have a coupon to redeem" link.

We require you to enter your credit card information so that we have a funding source to charge if your Facebook Ads continue to run after your advertising credits have been fully redeemed.

If you activate a coupon code, we will deduct from your advertising credits balance until they are fully redeemed. If you choose to continue running your Facebook Ad after your advertising credits have been fully redeemed, we will charge the primary card associated with your Facebook advertising account for all additional advertising that is run. Whether you are using advertising credits or a credit card, the total billable value of clicks or impressions in a Facebook billable day will never exceed your daily budget.

No, the advertising credits will be used in their entirety (unless they expire first) once you choose to redeem them. The amount that is deducted from your advertising credits each day will never exceed the daily budget that you have set. Once you have used all the advertising credits, we will charge your credit card.

Please login to your Facebook advertising account by clicking on the "Ads and Pages" link in the Applications column. Click on the "Billing" tab at the top of the Ads Manager. Then click on the "Funding Sources" tab on the Billing Summary page. Click on the "Enter Coupon Code" and enter your coupon code as shown.

The coupon code you are trying to use is invalid, may have already been used or has expired.

If you just created your ad, please check back in a couple hours. It is possible that your ad is receiving clicks and impressions but the statistics haven't updated yet.

With Social Ads, you are not guaranteed any set number of clicks or impressions. Fluctuations in traffic are normal and can be related to a number of different factors, including increased competition for the audience you are targeting.

For any given ad unit, our system selects the best ad to run. This is based on the CPC or CPM that you have set, as well as your ad’s past performance. This means that if your ad has performed well in the past, it has a better chance of showing up in the future.

If you’re not receiving as many clicks or impressions as you’d like, you might want to try increasing your maximum CPC or CPM. We also suggest making sure that your ad is as relevant as possible by targeting your ad to the most appropriate audience. Your ad is likely to perform better and continue running successfully if it is being displayed to the users who will find it most useful and relevant.

You are not guaranteed to get any number of clicks or impressions. If you are not receiving as many clicks or impressions as you would like, we suggest increasing your maximum cost per click or maximum CPM, making your ad more relevant, and/or relaxing your targeting constraints.

There is not currently a way to estimate how much your max cost per click or impression should be. We do recommend that you enter your true maximum cost per click or CPM when creating an ad – this will increase the likelihood that you do not miss out on clicks or impressions that you otherwise could have received. The cost per click or CPM associated with an ad, along with the ad quality, influences how often it is shown.

As you select each targeting criterion, we will display the approximate number of users that your targeting encompasses. Please keep in mind that this estimate is not exact and that if you are not receiving as many clicks or impressions as you would like, it is possible that your targeting constraints are too restrictive. Please consider relaxing your targeting constraints if this is the case.

Under normal circumstances, your ad will stop within an hour. Any clicks or impressions that occur after the time you pause/stop your ad will never cause you to exceed your daily budget.

Under normal circumstances, your ad will start within an hour.

Under normal circumstances, your ad will begin being served within an hour of the time you have chosen to begin running your ad. If you are creating an ad on Facebook for the first time, it is possible that it may take longer than an hour from the time you create your ad for it to begin running on the site.

In general, we do not give refunds. If you know that you might need to pause/stop your ad early, we suggest that you set an end time for your ad.

No, there is not a way to control what hours of the day your ad is shown.

The ad will start running at 12am PT on the start date and end at 11:59pm PT on the end date.

Organic promotion refers to the News Feed stories automatically generated from the actions taken by users on your Facebook Page. You can increase the distribution of these stories to your fans' network of friends with Social Ads.

Paid promotion are the Social Ads created specifically to promote traffic to your Facebook Page.

Yes, you may export the data as a CSV or a Microsoft Excel (.xls) formatted file. To do so, please visit your Ads Manager and click on the Reports tab. On this page, you can select the type of report you’d like to export.

You can export performance statistics from your account. This includes information on impressions, clicks, and your clickthrough rate. You may export this data at the account, campaign, or ad level.

When exporting a report, you can choose from three different types- Account, Campaign, and Ad. Account reports will give you statistics at the account level, which means that all clicks and impressions will be totaled across all ads and campaigns. The Campaign reports will break these statistics down to the campaign level, and the Ad reports will break them down further to the individual ad level.

To view an Insights page, the user must be an administrator of the Facebook Page or Social Ads. You may invite another administrator or you may export the data to a CSV or a Windows Excel formatted file.

Under normal circumstances, your ad will begin being served about an hour after being purchased. Statistics will be available within one hour after delivery starts. Additionally, you are not guaranteed any number of clicks or impressions. If you are not receiving as many clicks as you would like, we suggest increasing your maximum bid and/or making your ad more relevant. It is also possible that your targeting constraints are too restrictive, and there are not enough users who satisfy the criteria. Thus, you should also consider relaxing your targeting constraints.

Metrics will be available within a day after you publish your page. It is possible that your page is receiving page views and other activity but the statistics have not updated yet. Additionally, you are not guaranteed any number of page views. If you are not receiving as much traffic as you would like, we suggest promoting your page with social ads.

Hourly data is updated on the hour for the last full hour. Daily data is updated 12 hours after the full day. However, we reserve the right to change the update frequency at our discretion.

Some metrics are updated hourly while others are updated daily. In addition, metrics for the current Facebook day are estimates only and may differ slightly from the final statistics.

Today's metrics refer to the current total since 12am PT to current time. Yesterday's data refers to the full day prior from 12am PT to 11:59pm PT. The numbers may differ slightly from final statistics.

To report offensive ads you find on the site, please use the report link found on your Ad Board. Once here, please select a reason for your report from the list of available options in the drop down menu. Facebook will keep on eye on these reports and remove ads that we deem inappropriate.

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