Solved: Cross-posting Ads on Facebook and Instagram?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your question about Facebook and Instagram placements. It's a common one for people just starting out.

The short answer is that the question itself is probably leading you down the wrong path. The choice between Facebook and Instagram isn't really the decision that'll make or break your campaigns. The real levers for success are buried a bit deeper in your strategy, specifically in who you're targeting and what you're asking them to do. Getting that right is far more important than worrying about which platform to tick a box for. Let's unpack that a bit.

The Real Problem: Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

Before we even touch the Facebook Ads Manager, we need to address the most common mistake I see people make. They define their customer with vague demographics like "women aged 25-40 who like yoga". This tells you absolutely nothing useful and leads to generic ads that get ignored.

To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain. You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, and expensive nightmare. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state.

For example, if you sell project management software, your ICP isn't "small business owners". It's a founder who is terrified of missing a critical client deadline because her team is communicating over five different apps and nobody knows who is responsible for what. That's a nightmare. Once you know that, you can craft a message that speaks directly to that fear.

Only after you've defined this nightmare do you ask: "Where does this person go to try and solve this problem?"

• -> Do they hang out in Facebook Groups for entrepreneurs to ask for advice? Then Facebook is a great placement.
• -> Do they follow productivity gurus on Instagram for quick tips? Then Instagram Stories or Reels could be a winner.
• -> Do they read industry blogs that are part of the Meta Audience Network? Then that placement might work.

You see? The placement is the *last* piece of the puzzle, not the first. The platform is just a vehicle to get your message in front of a person experiencing a specific problem.

We'll Need to Look at Your Campaign Objective (Because You're Probably Paying to Find Non-Customers)

Here’s an uncomfortable truth about Meta advertising. When you set your campaign objective to "Reach," "Brand Awareness," or even "Traffic," you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and very unhelpful, command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being the efficient machine it is, does exactly what you asked. It seeks out the users inside your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever pull out a credit card. Why? Because those users are not in demand. Their attention is cheap. You are actively paying one of the world's most powerful advertising machines to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

For almost every small or growing business, there is only one objective that matters to begin with: Conversions. Whether a conversion for you is a lead, a signup, or a sale, this objective tells the algorithm: "Don't just find me anyone. Find me people within my target audience who have a history of doing the thing I want them to do." The algorithm will then analyse millions of data points to find users who look and behave like people who have previously converted on similar offers. Yes, the cost per impression might be higher, but the quality of person seeing your ad is infinitely better. This is probably the single biggest mistake new advertisers make and it costs them a fortune.

I'd say you should trust the machine (at first)

So, to finally answer your direct question: should you post to both or do them seperate? My advice for anyone starting out is to use Advantage+ Placements (what used to be called Automatic Placements). This lets Meta's algorithm decide where to show your ad to get you the best results for your chosen objective (which should be Conversions!).

The system is incredibly sophisticated. It knows in real-time which user is on which platform and how likely they are to convert. It might find that it can get you cheap leads from Facebook Feed in the morning and from Instagram Stories in the evening. By selecting placements manually, you're trying to outsmart a system that has infinitely more data than you do. It's a losing battle.

You mentioned that "not all options are there" when you cross-post. You're right, and this is an important nuance. It's not about the targeting options, but the creative formats. For example:

• Feeds (Facebook & Instagram): Work best with square (1:1 aspect ratio) images or videos.
• Stories & Reels (Facebook & Instagram): Work best with vertical (9:16 aspect ratio) videos.
• In-Stream Video: Requires a landscape (16:9) video.

When you use Advantage+ Placements, Meta will try its best to adapt your one creative to all placements, but it can sometimes look a bit rubbish. The professional approach is to provide creative variations for the most important placements. In the ad setup, you can customize the creative for each placement group. I'd recomend, at a minimum, creating a 1:1 version for feeds and a 9:16 version for stories/reels. This gives the algorithm the best tools to work with across all its properties.

So, the workflow isn't to create seperate campaigns for each platform, but to use one campaign with Advantage+ Placements and then customise the creative for each placement *within* that single campaign and ad set.

You'll need a proper campaign structure

Getting your account structure right from the beginning will save you a lot of headaches. Forget about creating campaigns for Facebook and campaigns for Instagram. Instead, structure your account based on the temperature of your audience. I generally recommend a simple two-campaign setup for beginners:

Campaign 1: Prospecting (Cold Audiences)

• Objective: Conversions (e.g., Sales or Leads).
• Who you're targeting: People who have never heard of you before. This is where you test your interest-based audiences and lookalike audiences.
• Example Ad Sets inside this campaign:
  • Ad Set 1: Targeting interests related to your competitors (e.g., people who like Shopify if you sell a Shopify app).
  • Ad Set 2: Targeting interests related to your audience's "nightmare" (e.g., people interested in 'cash flow management' if you're a fractional CFO).
  • Ad Set 3 (once you have data): A 1% Lookalike Audience of your past purchasers or best customers.

Campaign 2: Retargeting (Warm & Hot Audiences)

• Objective: Conversions (e.g., Sales or Leads).
• Who you're targeting: People who have already interacted with your business in some way but haven't converted yet.
• Example Ad Sets inside this campaign:
  • Ad Set 1: All website visitors from the last 30 days (excluding anyone who has already purchased).
  • Ad Set 2: People who added a product to their cart in the last 7 days (excluding purchasers).
  • Ad Set 3: People who watched 75% of one of your video ads in the last 14 days.

Within each of these campaigns and ad sets, you will use Advantage+ Placements. The algorithm will then figure out whether to show your prospecting ads on Facebook and your retargeting ads on Instagram, or vice-versa, based on where it's cheapest to get a conversion. This structure gives you control where it matters (audience and message) and gives the algorithm freedom where it's smarter than you (placements and delivery).

You probably should calculate what you can afford to pay

Before you spend a single pound, you need to understand your numbers. The real question isn't "how low can my CPL go?" but "how high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer is in your Lifetime Value (LTV). Knowing this number frees you from the trap of chasing cheap, low-quality leads.

Once you know you can afford to pay, say, £333 for a lead, a £50 CPL on Facebook doesn't seem so scary anymore. It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks intelligent, aggressive growth.

Your Action Plan

Tbh this is a lot to take in when you're just starting out. To make it simpler, here is the exact advice I would give you for setting up your next campaign.

This approach takes the guesswork out of placements and lets you focus on what actually moves the needle: your audience, your message, and your offer. Setting things up this way provides a solid foundation for testing and scaling.

Of course, this is just the setup. The real work comes from analysing the results, testing new creatives, trying different audiences, and optimising your landing page. It's a continuous process of improvement, not a 'set and forget' task. It can be quite a complex and time-consuming process, which is why many businesses eventually decide to get expert help to manage it for them.

Hope this helps clear things up! It's a much better way to think about your advertising than just worrying about Facebook versus Instagram.

If you'd like to go over your specific situation and have us take a look at your account, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can walk through your strategy and give you some tailored advice.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh