Buying Types

One of the first options you have when creating a new campaign is selecting a buying type.

This is going to be a simple lesson because this is an option that is surely used in fewer than 1% of all cases. And those who use it have a high budget and sophisticated reason for it.

This is an introductory course. The existence of the option is only clutter for most advertisers. Do not overwhelm yourself with this type of option.

That said, allow me to give you a brief explanation. If you want to read more, I will provide links within the Training Materials.

Auction

The default buying type is Auction. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is the only buying type you will ever use.

This simply means that your ads enter into an auction and compete with other ads to get shown to your ideal audience. There are layers to this.

First, understand that the primary goal of the ad auction is to show ads to people who are most likely to act. The typical auction rewards the highest bidder, but Meta can’t do that. Otherwise, your feed would be filled with irrelevant ads based on who paid the most to reach you.

There are three factors.

1. Bid

Yes, the bid is part of it. Most bidding is handled automatically. Unless you are an advanced advertiser, there’s no reason to worry yourself about manual bidding. But, know that it’s an option to consider at some point.

2. Estimated Action Rates

Based on Meta’s data, how likely is a particular person to engage with your ad?

3. Ad Quality

This is determined through user signals like hiding, reporting as spam, and other actions.

The ad that is most likely to win the auction is the one that is of a high quality and likely to get the action that the advertiser wants.

Reach and Frequency (Reservation)

The other option is Reach and Frequency, which is also named Reservation in some Ads Managers (no idea why it hasn’t been updated everywhere yet!).

This option does not involve an auction and is for advertisers wanting to reach at least 200,000 people, spend a nice chunk of change, and have predictability about costs. This is mostly about getting in front of your ideal audience, rather than optimizing for your ideal action.

Once again, I wouldn’t worry too much about this. It’s rarely an option worth considering.

Training Materials

You could easily move on to the next lesson from here, but if this is a topic that you’d like to learn more about, make sure to check out the additional links in the Training Materials tab.