My First Meta Campaign. Another Learning Experience.

As a Programmatic Director, I’ve managed millions in ad spend for some of the world’s biggest brands. But this time, I launched a Meta campaign with a much more personal goal: to land my next job. Spoiler alert: it didn’t go perfectly, but that’s what made it such a valuable learning experience.

Meta’s algorithm may have veered from my intended audience, but the algorithm did exactly what I told it to do.

Before I dive in, it's important to note that I did not have pixel tracking in place. This is a newbie faux pas but I'm having some difficulty with my account setup, permissions, etc., and to be honest, I didn't expect the algorithm to work this well! By selecting site traffic / clicks as my goal, we see it clung very tightly to these instructions - which is a great thing with the right measurement in place.

Key Findings:

• Age Surprise: Meta aggressively prioritized spend toward users 55+, outside our core demographic of 35-54. But here’s the twist: this older audience had the highest CTR and lowest CPC.

• Platform Showdown: Although we wanted distribution across Facebook and Instagram, the campaign leaned hard into Facebook. It delivered 97% of impressions there. Why? Facebook had a CTR over 4,000 times higher and a CPC 52% lower than Instagram. Once again, the algorithm prioritized efficiency.

• Placement Dominance: 94% of impressions were delivered in Facebook’s In-Feed environment. Not ideal for variety, but this placement drove the majority of engagement.

The good news!

Having a paid social campaign in market allowed me to reach my US audience. Organic social is still my key traffic driver (users are also much more engaged), but paid social allows me to drive traffic consistently while breaking into the US market.

Here we see Organic vs. Paid for US AND Canada

When we isolate US-Only, we see that paid is key.

Next Steps

1. Implement clean campaign architecture with proper pixel configuration

2. Exclude 55+ age group and trim custom audience for tighter targeting precision

3. Leverage US traffic success to expand paid strategy beyond Canadian LinkedIn Network.

   
   

Closing Thought

This campaign wasn’t perfect, but that’s the point. I’m not just saying I’m strategic, performance-focused, and relentlessly curious, I’m proving it. This is what learning in public looks like. And the next campaign? It’s going to be even better with a video coming your way.

Have tips for cleaning up a messy Meta account? I'd love to hear from you!