29 Essential Facebook Ads Jargons every Advertiser Needs to Know

Facecebook Ads can feel like entering a labyrinth of unknown as you encounter jargon after jargon, abbreviation after abbreviation.

You can feel there is no way out.

So, I created a Facebook Ads Glossary with the most important terminology you might encounter which advertisers throw around like everybody knows what they are talking about.

From essential Ad Account terms, Performance Metrics to Tracking Terminology, and marketing jargons this guide will help you navigate the world of Facebook Ads effectively.

Ad Account Setup Terms

1. Meta Business Manager (BM):

Or simply known as Business Manager, is an organizational tool provided by Meta to help you organize all your Facebook Assets and provide access to those assets to users and partners.

In the BM, you can find assets such as:

Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, Ad Accounts, Datasets, Product catalogs, Audiences, Users, Partners, domains etc.

You can find your Business Manager account(s) accessing this link: https://business.facebook.com/settings.

If you have more Business Manager accounts then Meta will redirect you to a selection page where you can choose which BM you want to log in.

The above link it's important because if you only go to https://business.facebook.com/it will redirect you to Business Suite, which is another tool, but totally different from Business Manager.

2. Business Suite (BS) - Formerly known as Creator Studio

This is how Meta defines it: "Meta Business Suite is a one-stop shop where you can manage all of your marketing and advertising activities on Facebook and Instagram.

It centralizes tools that help you connect with your customers on all apps and get better business results."

These are the tools I would recommend using in Business Suite:

Planner: Create and schedule your Facebook & Instagram posts and stories.

Content: Here you can see you published or scheduled posts. Also, you can see the performance metrics of your posts.

Inbox: Helps you manage messages and comments in, one place, from your Facebook & Instagram pages.

Insights: Track your posts and see how theyr are performaing. See insights and learn more about your Facebook and Instagram audience.

Instant Forms: Instant forms help you generate and qualify leads by asking people to fill out a form. What's really cool about using instant forms are that you can collect information from people who may be interested in your service without requiring them to leave Facebook or Instagram. This is important as Meta does not like users leaving their apps.

Leads Center: It only appears in business suite once you create a Lead Campaign. Here, all the leads will appear from your instant forms. It works as a CRM. You can connect the leads to an exising CRM or Email Service Provider, liek Mailchimp to automate lead nurturing.

In the home section of Business suite there is an inviting tool that helps you invite people who liked or commented on your posts (This si very useful and you don't have to use a third party tool for this).

All the other features in Business Suite are a waste of time.

Here is how I usually organize my Business Suite tools:

3. Campaign

The highest level of organization in your Facebook Ads account, where you set your advertising objective and budget.

4. Ad Set

A group of ads within your campaign that target a specific audience. Ad sets allow you to control budget, schedule, and targeting parameters.

5. Ads

The individual creatives that are displayed to your target audience within your ad sets. This is the actual post that users see. Images, videos plus the headline and text in the post.

6. Advantage+

Facebook's "premium" advertising offering that provides access to advanced features such as AI powered and machine learning tools.

This is the current big topic at Facebook and basically forces advertisers to use Advantage+ options in all aspects of Facebook advertising.

There are a couple of features with Advantage+ which you'll hear thrown around:

•  Advantage Campaign Budget - formerly known as Campaign Budget Optimization:

It manages budget on a campaign level and machine learning decides the allocation of budget on each ad set within a campaign.

•  Advantage+ Shopping Campaign

It's a simplified and preset setup that includes placements, age and more based on you ad account activity. You provide custom audiences at the account level and can define current customers and you can then determine a budget cap for how much of the budget is spent on current customers.

(I don't suggest to use this feature on a brand new ad account.)

•  Advantage+ Catalog - formerly known as dynamic ads:

It wil let you create an ad template that automatically pulls images and details (produict name, edescription, price) from your catalog. This means you don’t have to individually create an ad for each product.

•  Advantage+ Audience

It's Facebook's AI-driven targeting feature that utilizes pixel activity, conversion history, and ad engagement to identify your audience. You can suggest specific targeting criteria (interests, age) for Meta to prioritize initially before expanding its reach.

•  Advantage+ Placements - formerly known as Automatic Placements:

Meta will automatically optimize the selection of placements (Facebook Feed, Instagram Stories, Reels etc.) and timing to maximize results within your budget.

•  Advantage+ Creative

Your images and videos are automatically tailored to versions that resonate better with your audience.

Depending on the ad format or placements you choose, various creative optimizations may be accessible to you.

Choose wisely, you don't have to toggle on all options, it might ruin your creative. 

7. Targeting

A term is used to define the audience for your ads, including demographics, interests, behaviors, and location.

You can still manually target your audience in the Original Audience Controls.

These options will become obsolete, as Meta already says that it uses Advantage+ Detailed Targeting, anyway.

8. Broad Targeting

It means to eliminate all potential targeting filters, including custom audiences, lookalike audiences, or detailed targeting.

Instead, it relies solely on location and allows the algorithm to handle the targeting process.

9. CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization)

A feature that automatically distributes your campaign budget across ad sets to maximize results.

10. ABO (Ad Set Budget Optimization)

An alternative to CBO where you manually set budgets at the ad set level.

11. Campiagn Objectives

It's very important to choose the right objective for your campaigns. Facebook eliminated the original 11 objectives and compiled them into 6.

Here are the most used ones, in jargons:

•  Sales Campaigns (Conversions Campaigns) - It's used for e-commerce stores.

It can be used for all Meta Pixel Standard Events, and also custom events created by you. Some standard events: Subscribe, Registrations Completed, Submit Application, Leads, Start trial, Add to Cart, Initiate Checkout.

•  Lead Ads: Usually, it's a reference to a lead generation ad campaign.

  It could be a native instant form ad or it could be lead form on a website, such as a free trial subscription, free consultation, lead magnet download etc.  

•  Traffic Ads: Campaigns with this objective will bring clicks to your website

•  Engagement Ads: Campaigns with this objective will bring engagement to your ad on the specific platform (likes, comments, shares)

Performance Terms

I also like to call these Performance Metrics, not terms. I talked about these in DAS - Digital Ad Snack - Issue #01: Facebook Ads Metrics: What Matters and What Doesn't.

But let me list a couple of important jargons from this category.

12. Conversions (Website Conversions)

Refers to Purchases, Sales on your website

13. Conversion rate (CVR)

Percentage of ad clicks that converted to a sale 

14. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

Total revenue generated over the amount of money spent on ads.

15. CPC (Cost per Click)

The cost of one click on your Facebook ad.

16. AOV (Average Order Value)

It’s calculated by dividing the total revenue with the total number of orders.

17. ATC - Add to Cart

Users who add products to their cart.

18. CTR (Click Through Rate)

The number of users who clicked through from the ads to your website.

19. CPM

Cost per 1000 impressions (ad served).

Tracking Terms

20. Facebook Pixel - NO, not the pixels on your screen :))

Meta renamed it to Dataset, which is quite helpful because now, the name has to do more with its function: DATA.

It's piece of code, a script, provided by Facebook that you place on your website to track conversions, optimize ads, and build targeted audiences for future campaigns.

It's called browser side tracking, as the Pixel installs cookies on the visitor’s browser, and sends data back to Facebook via the browser.

However, this can easily be blocked by an Ad Blocker.

For european advertisers it's even more difficult, as the European GDPR laws force browser providers (Chrome, Safari, Opera, Edge) to automatically prohibit their tools to NOT send data to third-parties, such as Facebook and Google.

21. Conversions API: A tool that allows businesses to send data directly to Facebook from their own servers.

This way the events that occur on your website or app, are sent via servers which enable a more accurate tracking.

It's called server side tracking, and slowly but surely is becoming the norm for advertisers. (I predict that the Facebook Pixel will disappear in the couple of years).

Advertising Marketing Terms

22. Sales Funnel

I could talk about this all day. But in Facebook ads terms, a sales funnel is basically the user's sales journey from being a prospect to becoming a customer.

There are different stages in the funnel which I explain below:

23. TOFU - Top of the Funnel

It's the first step of the sales journey. People in this stage are also called a cold audience. The goal of a TOFU campaign is to introduce your products to new people.

24. MOFU - Middle of the Funnel

It's second step of the sales journey. People in this stage are potential customers who are aware of your brand and have already expressed an interest in what you have to offer. People in this stage are often called a warm audience.

25. BOFU - Bottom of the Funnel

This the final stage of the sales journey, the decision stage. This is where prospects become customers. These people interacted with your brand on multiple occasions and ready to buy. This is a hot audience, ready to convert.

26. Retargeting (Remarketing)

Serving ads to people who have already engaged with your content in some way.

They liked your posts or ads or performed some action on your website such as adding a product to cart.

It's used to help convert warm and hot audiences to customers.

To be able to run retargeting campaigns on Facebook, you will need to place the Facebook Pixel/Conversions API on your website.

27. CTA (Call to Action)

It is a query on your website that asks users to perform a specific action like buying, or subscribing. It's often in a form a button.

28. Ad Copy

These are the headlines and text in a Facebook ad.

29. Ad Creative

Creatives refer to the images and videos used in a Facebook ad.

Conclusion

I probably left out some but I hope this list will help you in your journey of creating Facebook Ads.

Armed with this comprehensive guide to Facebook Ads glossary of jargon, you're now ready to dive into the world of advertising with confidence.