How to structure a Meta Ad account in 2025

It’s 2025, not 2015. A lot has changed.

I’ve been running Meta Ads (formerly Facebook) since 2015. A lot has changed. Back then, it was about interest targeting, lookalike audiences, the shotgun method, and so on. Creative was an afterthought. You could win on technical prowess alone. That’s no longer the case. Today, the machine delivers results that no manual method could. It’s important not to fight this change. Embrace it, roll with it and you’ll see better results than ever.

Meta’s Power5 and Performance 5 best-practices form the backbone of my account structure strategy. I’ll be referring to them frequently in this post.

Don’t forget why you’re running ads.

You’re running ads to hit business growth and profitability targets, period. The in-platform ROAS number is secondary to business objectives. In fact, everything is secondary to business objectives. As operators, we have an arsenal of tools that we deploy to hit business objectives. Advertising is just one of them. We have product, marketing, operations, finance, people, and so on. Never forget the true objective of your advertising, to hit overall business growth and profitability targets. This is the only thing that truly matters.

The optimal way to structure a Meta Ad account in 2025.

First, what not to do:

I audit tens of accounts a month and still see many brands making fundamental mistakes in their account structure. In 2025, a large part of the structure of an account is getting out of the way of the machine. Stop using interests, stop using lookalikes, stop using excessive ABO campaigns, stop using age or gender targeting, and so on. The machine is already doing all of that for you.

In 2025, every conversion ad that you launch is automatically being shown to an in-market ‘lookalike’ audience. Meta’s pixel is on (nearly) every site on the internet. The machine knows exactly who’s interested in your category of products and when they’re most likely to purchase. It’s an incredibly powerful customer acquisition machine, if you get out of the way and let it do its job.

I have to caveat this by saying that in 99% of cases the above advice holds true. However, there are fringe cases where I will get more granular with account structure, targeting, and so on. I repeat, fringe cases. In 99% of scenarios account consolidation and simplification wins. Again, refer to the Power5 and Performance 5 for more information.

Creative Testing

This campaign is solely used to test new ad creative. In 2025, ad creative dictates 99%+ of your success. Frequently testing creative is a fundamental part of the process and should be treated as such. There are two creative testing structures that I deploy across client accounts, depending on their product range:

1. Option 1 - ABO Creative Testing Campaign

   1. An ABO campaign with the budget set on the ad set level. Use this structure if you have multiple products, with different prices and margins, and need to ensure that each test receives a certain amount of spend. In this campaign, create an individual ad set per test and set the budget on the ad set level.

2. Option 2 - CBO Creative Testing Campaign

   1. A CBO campaign with the budget set on the campaign level. Use this structure if you’re advertising a single product. In this campaign, set the budget on the campaign level and create a new ad set per test. The machine will allocate spend to the ad sets (creative test) that it predicts will perform best. Spend is the best signal of performance.

Scaling Campaigns

Always separate scaling campaigns by product or collection. Your products have different prices, margins and profitability targets. Do not put them in the same campaign and use blanket ROAS targets to allocate budget. If you do, you’ll have no idea which campaigns are driving the most contribution dollars. You will lose money (and profit) this way. Be smart and separate them out.

Here’s the optimal scaling campaign structure in 2025:

1. ASC+ Scaling Campaign 1 - Product/Collection 1

2. ASC+ Scaling Campaign 2 - Product/Collection 2

3. ASC+ Scaling Campaign 3 - Product/Collection 3

4. ASC+ Scaling Campaign 4 - New Arrivals

5. ASC+ Scaling Campaign 5 - Clearance

6. ASC+ Scaling Campaign X - (however many you need)

It’s really that simple. In 2025, the optimal scaling strategy is largely to get out of the way of the machine and spend 99% of your time and energy creating viral ads. I set the existing customer budget cap to 10% or less, depending on the client and their objectives. Depending on your product range you can test this setting, but don’t make things more complicated than they have to be. Just ship great ads.

Catalog Retargeting Campaign

It’s important to understand that, in 2025, all of your campaigns are doing some level of ‘retargeting’. By design, your ASC+ scaling campaigns are showing ads to the people that are most likely to purchase in that moment. Obviously, that’d be the warmest (a.k.a. retargeting) audiences then, correct?

That said, I utilise this campaign on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes it works incredibly well and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s worth testing. As this campaign is targeting the most in-market audience, I analyse results using 1-day click metrics. This somewhat ensures incremental new customer acquisition.

1. CBO Catalog Retargeting Campaign

   1. Retarget ads to people who interacted with your products on and off Facebook:

      1. Viewed or added to cart but not purchased in the last 30/60/90 days (test different timeframes)

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