Nobody on Facebook is looking for you. That is the whole job: interrupt well enough to be worth the interruption, then measure whether it sold anything.
Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, and one ad account runs across all of them. Most people still say Facebook ads, which is fair enough, because that is where the button used to be. What matters is that a single campaign can appear in a Facebook feed, an Instagram story and Reels without you managing three of anything.
The important difference from Google is intent. Somebody searching for an emergency plumber wants a plumber right now. Nobody scrolling Instagram at nine at night has decided they want anything. Google captures demand that already exists. Meta creates it, which is harder, cheaper per click and completely different work.
That is why the two need different measurement, different creative and different expectations, and why an agency that runs Meta the way it runs Google will lose your money.
Get A Free AuditThe account is rarely the problem. Four things account for nearly every underperforming Meta campaign we are handed, and only one of them is a settings issue.
On Google you can run the same text ad for a year. On Meta the same creative shown to the same audience stops working within weeks, because they have already seen it. Creative volume is the single biggest driver of performance, and it is the thing most accounts do least of.
The feed is somebody’s friends, family and football. Something that arrives looking like a billboard gets scrolled past. What works is content that earns the second of attention first and sells second, which is why we shoot in house rather than licensing stock.
Apple’s app tracking changes broke a great deal of pixel-only measurement, and plenty of accounts never adapted. Without the Conversions API sending server-side events, Meta is optimising towards a fraction of your actual results and reporting numbers you cannot reconcile.
Running conversion campaigns to people who have never heard of you is the expensive way to do it. Cold audiences need to be warmed, and retargeting the people who watched, clicked or visited is where most of the return actually comes from.
Give us view access to your Business Manager and we will go through the creative, the audiences and the tracking, then tell you straight what is worth fixing. No charge, and no obligation.
Meta rewards volume of creative and clean data. Everything below is in service of those two things.
Pixel, Conversions API and event matching, so Meta is optimising on real results rather than a sample. This is unglamorous and it is the difference between a campaign that learns and one that guesses. We do it before any spend.
Not one hero ad, a batch. Different hooks, different formats, video and still, so the algorithm has something to choose between. We shoot in house, which is why this does not take six weeks and a production quote.
Cold audiences see content built to earn attention. The people who engage with it, watch most of a video or reach your site get the offer. Retargeting is usually the highest returning part of the account, and it only exists if something warmed the audience first.
Creative fatigue is measurable: frequency climbs, cost per result follows. We kill tired ads before they get expensive, put budget behind what is working, and keep new creative in the queue. Reporting is one page: spend, results, cost per result, and what changed.
The most common thing we see in accounts running both is Meta getting blamed for sales that Google took credit for. Somebody sees your ad on Instagram on Tuesday, searches your name on Thursday and buys. Last-click attribution hands the whole sale to Google and the Meta campaign looks like it lost money.
It did not. It created the search. A rise in branded search volume after Meta spend starts is one of the clearest signals the channel is working, and almost nobody looks at it.
We plan the two together and report on branded search alongside the ad numbers, so you can see the whole picture rather than the last step of it.
Get A Free Quote TodayWhich of these you need depends on whether people already know you exist. The audit will say.
Instant forms that fill inside Facebook or Instagram, or traffic to a landing page. Forms convert better and qualify worse, so we usually test both and let the cost per real enquiry decide.
The people who visited, watched or engaged and did not act. Consistently the best returning campaign in almost every account, and the cheapest to run.
Meta’s automated ecommerce campaign. It works when the catalogue and events are clean, and burns budget when they are not. The setup is where the result is decided.
Where the cheap attention currently is. Short, vertical, and made to be understood with the sound off, because most of it is watched that way.
Food, product and premises photography and video, shot in house. Stock imagery is the fastest way to look like every competitor in your suburb, and it never matches what you actually sell.
Built alongside the campaign rather than pointing at your homepage. A page that continues the promise the ad made is the cheapest conversion improvement available.
Nex Gen Digital Agency has been an absolute game changer for our business. From the very beginning, the team has been professional, responsive and genuinely invested in helping us grow rather than simply delivering a service and moving on for us at Unmatched Support Services. A special mention has to go to Paul Sera, who has honestly been a godsend and a saviour throughout the whole process. His knowledge, patience and willingness to go above and beyond have made a huge difference.
Second to none! Unbelievable service and could not recommend enough. They did incredible work in relation to our website and have always been readily available for any further assistance. Thank you Paul and team
Paul has always worked hard and gone above and beyond, seo working well, very happy with his service.
We prioritise results across all digital channels, delivering the best strategy to achieve your goals and increase sales.
Contact Us TodayThe questions we get asked most often, answered straight.
Both, and they are the same thing. Facebook rebranded to Meta in 2021, and the advertising platform now covers Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp from one ad account. Most Australians still search for Facebook ads, which is why this page uses both names.
Intent. On Google somebody has typed what they want, so you are competing for a decision that is already being made. On Meta nobody is looking for you, so the job is to interrupt well enough to create interest and then follow it up. Meta clicks are usually cheaper, harder to attribute and better suited to products people can be persuaded to want. Google suits things people go looking for.
Enough for the campaign to get out of its learning phase and for you to test more than one piece of creative, which for most small businesses means a meaningful daily budget rather than a token one. Spread too thin across too many audiences, Meta never learns and the money goes nowhere. We would rather run one well-funded campaign than five underfed ones.
You do. We set up Business Manager in your name and work inside it with agency access. If you leave, the account, the pixel, the audiences and the historical data stay with you. Audiences built over a year are genuinely valuable, and an agency that keeps them on its own Business Manager is holding an asset that is not theirs.
Creative fatigue. Unlike search, where the same ad can run for a year, a Meta ad is being shown repeatedly to the same people and they stop noticing it. You will see frequency climbing and cost per result climbing with it. The fix is a steady supply of new creative rather than a change of settings, which is why we treat creative as the main job.
Usually yes, and it is the highest leverage thing on the list. Stock imagery is instantly recognisable and makes you look like every other business in your category. We shoot in house, so it is a shoot day rather than a production project, and one session normally produces enough material to keep a campaign fed for months.
Tell us where you are stuck. We will come back with a straight answer, a timeline and a fixed price. No jargon, no pressure.
