Campaign structure: Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad

Part 1 previewed the three-level hierarchy. This part covers exactly which settings live at which level — a genuinely different split than Google Ads' Campaign → Ad Group → Ad structure, and getting it right shapes how the rest of this series' techniques actually get applied.

Campaign level: the objective, and increasingly, the budget

Campaign: Sales — Coffee Subscriptions
  Objective: Sales
  Campaign Budget Optimization: On (or Off — covered in part 13)

The objective from part 3 is set once, at the campaign level, and applies to every ad set beneath it. Budget can live here too, if Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) is enabled — Meta's system then distributes one shared budget across every ad set automatically, based on real-time predicted performance, a genuinely different model from Google's per-campaign budget that this series covers fully in part 13.

Ad Set level: audience, placement, and budget (if not using CBO)

Ad Set: Core Audience — Coffee Enthusiasts
  Audience: Interests in specialty coffee, ages 25-54, United States
  Placements: Advantage+ (automatic)
  Budget: $15/day (if CBO is off)
  Optimization event: Purchase

This is the single biggest structural difference from Google Ads worth internalizing early: targeting lives at the ad set level here, not attached to individual keywords the way Google's ad groups work. Every ad inside one ad set shares the exact same audience and placement settings — which is exactly why Bright Leaf Coffee's two ad sets from part 2 (Coffee Enthusiasts, Gift Shoppers) are split by audience, the natural unit of division in Meta's structure, the same way Google Ads splits by keyword theme.

Ad level: the actual creative

Ad: Carousel — Subscription Plans
  Images: 4 product cards, one per subscription tier
  Primary text, headline, description (part 10)
  Destination: brightleafcoffee.com/plans

Creative — images, video, copy — lives at the ad level, with multiple ads able to share the same ad set's audience and budget, letting several creative variations compete for delivery within that one audience automatically (Meta's own built-in creative testing, distinct from the formal A/B testing tool covered in part 18).

A full, real structure for Bright Leaf Coffee

Campaign: Sales — Coffee Subscriptions (Objective: Sales, CBO: On, $30/day)
  Ad Set: Core Audience — Coffee Enthusiasts
    Ad: Carousel — Subscription Plans
    Ad: Single Image — Ethiopian Light Roast Feature
  Ad Set: Retargeting — Website Visitors (30 days)
    Ad: Single Image — Complete Your Order
  Ad Set: Retargeting — Cart Abandoners (7 days)
    Ad: Single Image — 10% Off, Finish Checkout

Three ad sets, each targeting a genuinely distinct audience — a cold interest-based audience, and two different-intensity retargeting windows (part 6 and part 17 cover building these properly) — with each ad set holding one or two creative variations for the delivery system to test within that specific audience.

Comparing directly to Google Ads' structure

Google Ads:  Campaign → Ad Group (keyword theme) → Keywords + Ads
Meta Ads:    Campaign → Ad Set (audience)         → Creative (Ads)

Both are three-level hierarchies, but the organizing principle at the middle level is fundamentally different — keyword theme on Google, audience on Meta — which is exactly why a campaign structure built for Google Ads can't simply be copied over to Meta unchanged; the underlying unit of segmentation is a different thing entirely.

Next: Core Audience targeting — the actual demographic, interest, and behavior options available at the ad set level, built out for real.