Meta Definitions You Need To Know | A-Z
Knowing the language of Meta advertising is crucial for creating impactful campaigns. This blog translates the technical terms into actionable insights tailored for coaches, helping you engage your audience, optimize your ad spend, and grow your business like never before. Ready to elevate your ad game? Let’s go!
Pro Tip: We know the list is long. Don't forget to use control + f if you need to search for a specific definition. 😍
2-Second Continuous Video Play
- Definition: When someone watches your video for 2+ seconds continuously, with at least 50% of the video in view.
- For Coaches: If you’re running a video ad showcasing your coaching program, this metric helps you see how many people are engaging with your content for at least 2 seconds. Example: A quick intro video about your coaching style.
3-Second Video Play
- Definition: Recorded when someone views your video for 3 seconds or watches 97% of a video that’s less than 3 seconds long.
- For Coaches: A great way to measure initial interest in your content. Example: A teaser video for your upcoming group coaching program.
Account Spending Limit
- Definition: The maximum lifetime amount your ad account can spend, which you can set in Payment Settings.
- For Coaches: Helps you control your ad budget, ensuring you don’t overspend while promoting your services. Example: Setting a $1,000 limit for your monthly ad campaigns.
Ad Account Creation Limit
- Definition: The number of ad accounts you can create in Business Manager. Starts at 1 and increases with your ad history.
- For Coaches: If you’re just starting, you’ll likely have one ad account. As you grow, you can create more accounts for different programs or audiences.
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Ad Set
- Definition: A group within your Facebook campaign where you set targeting, scheduling, optimization, and placement options.
- For Coaches: Use ad sets to target different client personas. Example: One ad set for new coaches and another for experienced coaches looking to scale.
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Advantage Campaign Budget
- Definition: Automatically manages your campaign budget across ad sets to maximize results.
- For Coaches: Saves time by letting Facebook allocate your budget to the best-performing ad sets. Example: Promoting both a webinar and a free guide under one campaign.
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Advantage Custom Audience
- Definition: Expands targeting beyond your selected custom audience while keeping location, age, gender, and exclusions as constraints.
- For Coaches: Useful for finding new potential clients similar to your existing audience. Example: Expanding beyond your email list audience to reach similar individuals.
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Advantage Detailed Targeting
- Definition: Expands your audience beyond selected interests and behaviors when better results are expected.
- For Coaches: Allows Meta to find individuals who might resonate with your coaching program, even if they don’t fit your exact targeting criteria.
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Advantage Lookalike
- Definition: Expands your lookalike audience percentage for better results, using the original custom audience as a base.
- For Coaches: Reach more people who resemble your best clients. Example: Expanding your lookalike audience based on past clients who joined your group coaching program.
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Advantage+ App Campaign
- Definition: Automates app install campaigns using machine learning for optimal results.
- For Coaches: If you have an app for your coaching business, this is a great way to drive installs and engagement.
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Advantage+ Audience
- Definition: Meta’s AI-powered targeting option that identifies your audience based on pixel activity, conversion history, and ad engagement.
- For Coaches: Ideal for simplifying targeting, especially if you’re unsure about audience specifics. Example: Let Meta find people who are likely to sign up for your coaching webinar.
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Advantage+ Catalog Ads
- Definition: Dynamically shows ads from your product catalog to the right person at the right time.
- For Coaches: If you offer multiple courses or coaching packages, Meta can display the most relevant one to each user.
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Advantage+ Creative
- Definition: Adjusts your ad’s creative elements dynamically to improve results.
- For Coaches: Meta might tweak your ad’s headline or image to better resonate with potential clients. Example: Turning your static image into a video.
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Advantage+ Placements
- Definition: Automatically optimizes placements to maximize results for your budget.
- For Coaches: Ensures your ads appear where your audience is most active, whether that’s Instagram Stories or Facebook Feed.
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Advantage+ Shopping Campaign
- Definition: Streamlined Sales campaigns using machine learning to maximize results.
- For Coaches: If you sell digital products (e.g., eBooks or courses), this campaign type simplifies the process.
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Aggregated Event Measurement
- Definition: Meta’s protocol for handling tracking opt-outs from iOS devices.
- For Coaches: Ensures your ads continue to track conversions effectively despite privacy changes. Example: Tracking sign-ups for your coaching webinar.
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App Activity Custom Audience
- Definition: Targets people who launched your app or took specific actions within it.
- For Coaches: If you have an app, you can retarget users who’ve downloaded it but haven’t booked a call.
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Attribution
- Definition: How Meta credits an ad for a conversion.
- For Coaches: Helps you understand which ad led to a new client booking or course sale.
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Attribution Setting
- Definition: Determines how conversions are tracked and reported (e.g., 7-day click, 1-day view).
- For Coaches: Use this to align with your sales cycle. Example: Tracking webinar sign-ups within 7 days of clicking your ad.
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Auction
- Definition: The process Meta uses to decide which ad to show to a person at any given time.
- For Coaches: Your ad’s bid, estimated action rate, and quality determine its success in the auction.
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Auction Overlap
- Definition: When multiple ad sets target similar audiences, leading to one ad being prioritized.
- For Coaches: Avoid overlap to prevent higher costs. Example: Combine similar ad sets targeting women entrepreneurs.
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Audience
- Definition: The group of people your ads can reach, defined by age, gender, location, interests, and behaviors.
- For Coaches: Customize your audience to attract your ideal clients. Example: Women coaches aged 35-50 interested in personal development.
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Audience Insights
- Definition: A tool to analyze and understand your audience compared to the general Facebook population.
- For Coaches: Use this to refine your targeting. Example: Discovering your audience is more active on Instagram than Facebook.
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Automated Rules
- Definition: Allows you to automate processes like pausing ads or adjusting budgets based on performance.
- For Coaches: Save time by automating budget increases for high-performing ads.
Here’s a regenerated version of these definitions, tailored specifically for coaches:
B
Beneficiary and Payer
- Definition: Meta’s 2023 updates for ads targeting the European Union require advertisers to specify who benefits (Beneficiary) and who pays (Payer) for the ad to comply with regulations.
- For Coaches: If you're running ads in the EU to promote your coaching programs, you’ll need to clearly indicate whether the ad benefits you (as the coach) or a partner, and who is funding the campaign.
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Bid Cap
- Definition: A Bid Cap sets a maximum bid for Meta’s ad auction, ensuring you don’t overspend while competing for ad placements.
- For Coaches: This is ideal if you’re working with a strict budget and want to control costs while promoting your services, such as a free webinar or discovery call.
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Bid Strategy
- Definition: Meta automatically bids for you in ad auctions, but you can adjust your strategy to align with your goals. Options include Highest Volume, Cost Per Result Goal, Highest Value, ROAS Goal, and Bid Cap.
- For Coaches: Use Bid Strategy to optimize for what matters most—whether that’s maximizing sign-ups for your group coaching program or achieving a specific return on ad spend (ROAS).
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Breakdown
- Definition: A tool in Ads Manager that provides insights into ad performance by time, delivery, actions, or creative elements.
- For Coaches: Use Breakdown to analyze which audience segment (e.g., age, location, or placement) is booking the most strategy calls or engaging with your ad content.
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Broad Targeting
- Definition: Broad Targeting removes all filters (like custom audiences or detailed targeting) and relies on location and Meta’s algorithm to find the best audience for your ad.
- For Coaches: This works well if you’re promoting a general offer, like a free eBook, and want to let Meta identify potential clients without over-specifying your audience.
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Budget
- Definition: The amount of money you’re willing to spend on your campaigns, set on a daily or lifetime basis.
- For Coaches: Plan your budget based on your goals. For example, allocate $500 to a campaign promoting your high-ticket coaching program and $100 to retarget warm leads.
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Business Manager
- Definition: A tool to organize and manage your Facebook assets, like pages, ad accounts, and pixels, while granting access to team members or partners.
- For Coaches: Essential for keeping your ad campaigns and assets organized, especially if you’re working with a virtual assistant or marketing specialist.
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Buying Type
- Definition: Determines how you pay for your campaigns. Options include Auction (bidding for ad placements) and Reach and Frequency (paying for predictable reach).
- For Coaches: Use Auction for flexibility and cost control, or Reach and Frequency if you want consistent exposure for a launch or event, like a new coaching program.
C
Call-to-Action
- Definition: A call-to-action (CTA) is the button or link on your ad that prompts your audience to take the next step. Examples include "Learn More," "Sign Up," or "Book a Call."
- For Coaches: Use CTAs that align with your goals, like "Schedule a Strategy Call" for 1:1 coaching or "Download the Free Guide" to grow your email list.
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Campaign
- Definition: The campaign is the foundation of your Facebook ad, where you define your advertising objective and set the tone for the entire strategy.
- For Coaches: Create campaigns based on your goals, like driving traffic to your coaching program’s landing page or promoting a free webinar.
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Campaign Objective
- Definition: The campaign objective is the ultimate goal of your ad, such as Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App Promotion, or Sales.
- For Coaches: Choose objectives based on your focus. For example, use "Leads" to collect applications for your coaching program or "Engagement" to build your brand presence.
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Campaign Spending Limit
- Definition: A Campaign Spending Limit sets a cap on how much you’re willing to spend over the course of a campaign without affecting how your ads are delivered.
- For Coaches: Use this to control your ad spend while promoting a new course or program launch, ensuring you stay within budget.
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Carousel
- Definition: A carousel ad lets you display multiple scrollable images or videos, each linking to a different URL.
- For Coaches: Showcase your services with a carousel. For example, highlight testimonials, program features, and a call-to-action in one ad.
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Catalog Custom Audiences
- Definition: Audiences created based on engagement with your product catalog, used for targeting or excluding specific groups.
- For Coaches: If you offer multiple courses or products, use this to retarget people who viewed specific programs or exclude those who already purchased.
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Click Attribution
- Definition: Click Attribution credits a conversion to your ad when someone clicks it and takes action within a specified timeframe (e.g., 1-day, 7-day, or 28-day click).
- For Coaches: Use this to track which ads are driving sign-ups for your discovery calls or course enrollments.
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Clicks (All)
- Definition: The Clicks (All) metric includes all clicks on your ad, such as link clicks, reactions, comments, and shares.
- For Coaches: Monitor this metric to gauge overall engagement with your ad content, especially for brand-building campaigns.
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Compare Attribution Settings
- Definition: A feature in Ads Manager that lets you view conversions across different attribution windows (e.g., 1-day click vs. 7-day click).
- For Coaches: Use this to understand how long it takes for leads to convert after engaging with your ad, helping you refine your follow-up strategy.
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Content Views
- Definition: Tracks the number of times people viewed content, such as landing pages, credited to your ads.
- For Coaches: Measure how many people visited your program’s sales page after clicking your ad to assess interest and optimize your funnel.
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Conversions
- Definition: A conversion happens when someone takes a specific action, like signing up for a webinar, purchasing a course, or booking a call.
- For Coaches: Focus on conversions to track the success of your ads in driving meaningful results for your coaching business.
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Conversions API
- Definition: A tool that connects your conversion data directly to Meta, improving optimization and reporting accuracy.
- For Coaches: Use this to track offline events, like in-person workshop sign-ups, alongside online conversions.
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Cost Per Result Goal
- Definition: A goal set within the Highest Volume bid strategy to indicate how much you’re willing to pay for a specific action.
- For Coaches: Set this to control costs while optimizing for actions like webinar sign-ups or lead form submissions.
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CPC (Cost Per Click)
- Definition: CPC measures the cost for each click on your ad. Meta reports on CPC (All) for all clicks and CPC (Link Click) for link-specific clicks.
- For Coaches: Use CPC to evaluate how efficiently your ads drive traffic to your website or landing page.
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CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions)
- Definition: CPM calculates the cost to show your ad 1,000 times. It helps evaluate competition and audience reach costs.
- For Coaches: Monitor CPM to understand how much it costs to get your coaching program in front of your ideal audience.
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Creative Hub
- Definition: A tool for creating ad mockups to share with clients or team members before launching.
- For Coaches: Use Creative Hub to test ad ideas for your coaching offers and ensure they align with your brand before going live.
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Custom Conversion
- Definition: Custom conversions let you track specific actions by creating rules for events or URLs.
- For Coaches: Use this to track unique actions, like when someone completes your application form or downloads your free guide.
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Custom Events
- Definition: Events outside of Meta’s standard options, created to track specific actions relevant to your business.
- For Coaches: Track unique actions like "Watched VSL" to better understand how prospects engage with your funnel.
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Custom Metric
- Definition: A metric created by combining existing metrics with a formula to measure performance in a specific way.
- For Coaches: Create a custom metric to track "Cost Per Discovery Call" by dividing ad spend by the number of calls booked.
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Customer List Custom Audience
- Definition: An audience created by uploading a list of your customers, matched to Facebook users for targeting.
- For Coaches: Upload your email list to retarget past clients or upsell them on new coaching programs.
D, E, F, G, H, and I
Daily Spending Limit
Definition: A cap set by Meta on how much you can spend daily across your business account, ad account, campaign, page, or app.
For Coaches: Use this to control spending on campaigns promoting your coaching programs, ensuring you stay within budget while testing new strategies.
Daily Unique Reach
Definition: An optimization option that ensures your ad reaches each person in your audience no more than once per day.
For Coaches: Perfect for building brand awareness without overwhelming your audience. For example, use this for promoting a free webinar or challenge.
Engaged-View Attribution
Definition: Meta credits an ad for a conversion if a user views a skippable video for at least 10 seconds (or 97% if shorter) and converts within a day.
For Coaches: Useful for tracking conversions from video ads showcasing your coaching style or client testimonials.
Estimated Audience Size
Definition: The estimated number of people eligible for targeting based on your ad set’s settings.
For Coaches: Helps you gauge the potential reach of your ads when targeting specific groups, like women entrepreneurs or fitness coaches.
Event Custom Audience
Definition: An audience created from people who engaged with your Facebook event, allowing you to retarget them with ads.
For Coaches: Use this to retarget attendees of your virtual workshops or live events, encouraging them to book a call or join your program.
Event Responses
Definition: The number of people who responded "Interested" or "Going" to your Facebook event, credited to your ads.
For Coaches: Track this metric to measure interest in your events, like a free masterclass or group coaching session.
Event Setup Tool
Definition: A tool that allows you to add standard events to your website without coding, using the Facebook pixel.
For Coaches: Easily track actions like webinar sign-ups or course purchases on your website to optimize your ad campaigns.
Facebook Page Custom Audience
Definition: An audience created from people who interacted with your Facebook page, used for ad targeting.
For Coaches: Retarget people who liked, commented on, or shared your posts to nurture them into becoming clients.
Facebook Pixel
Definition: A tracking tool that helps advertisers monitor events on their website and retarget people who performed those actions with ads.
For Coaches: Use the pixel to track leads, webinar sign-ups, and course purchases, ensuring your ads reach the right people.
Frequency
Definition: The average number of times users have seen your ad, calculated as (Impressions/Reach).
For Coaches: Monitor frequency to ensure your audience isn’t seeing your ad too often, which can lead to ad fatigue.
Frequency Capping
Definition: A feature that limits how many times your audience sees your ad within a set time frame.
For Coaches: Use this to avoid overwhelming your audience while running long-term campaigns for your coaching programs.
Highest Value Bid Strategy
Definition: A bid strategy that focuses on maximizing the purchase value of conversions rather than the volume of conversions.
For Coaches: Ideal for high-ticket coaching offers, ensuring your ads prioritize attracting clients who are likely to invest at a higher level.
Highest Volume Bid Strategy
Definition: A bid strategy that focuses on achieving the highest number of optimized actions within your budget, without prioritizing value or cost per action.
For Coaches: Great for campaigns aimed at building your email list or getting more people to sign up for a free challenge.
Impressions
Definition: The total number of times your ad is displayed to your target audience, excluding bots.
For Coaches: Track impressions to measure how often your ad is seen, especially during awareness campaigns like promoting your brand or free resources.
Instagram Account Custom Audience
Definition: An audience created from people who engaged with your Instagram business account, used for ad targeting.
For Coaches: Retarget Instagram followers who liked, commented, or shared your posts to guide them to your coaching offers or free resources.
L-Z
Landing Page View
- Definition: A metric that tracks when someone lands on your destination URL after clicking a link in your ad.
- For Coaches: Use this to measure how many people visit your coaching program’s sales page or webinar registration page after clicking your ad.
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Lead Form Custom Audience
- Definition: An audience created from people who engaged with your Facebook lead ad forms, used for targeting or exclusions.
- For Coaches: Retarget people who started but didn’t complete your lead form for a free consultation or coaching session.
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Lifetime Budget
- Definition: A budget option that sets a spending cap for the lifetime of an ad set, with Meta evenly distributing the spend across the campaign's duration.
- For Coaches: Perfect for controlling costs during a time-sensitive campaign, like promoting a limited-time group coaching program.
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Link Click
- Definition: A metric that measures all clicks on links driving users to properties on or off Facebook.
- For Coaches: Track link clicks to see how many people are visiting your coaching website or booking page from your ads.
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Location Targeting
- Definition: Allows you to target or exclude specific locations, like countries, states, cities, or zip codes. In 2023, Meta removed the ability to target based on living or traveling status.
- For Coaches: Use location targeting to focus on areas where your ideal clients are based, like targeting U.S.-based entrepreneurs or narrowing down to specific cities.
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Lookalike Audience
- Definition: An audience created by Meta to find people similar to your existing customers or engaged users.
- For Coaches: Scale your ad campaigns by targeting people who resemble your best clients or those who’ve attended your webinars.
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Multi-Advertiser Ads
- Definition: Ads that appear alongside other similar products when a user has shown purchase intent by engaging with related content.
- For Coaches: Opt-in to increase visibility for your coaching service when someone engages with similar offers, like business coaching or personal development programs.
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Name Template
- Definition: Automatically generates consistent naming conventions for campaigns, ad sets, and ads based on campaign settings.
- For Coaches: Stay organized by using name templates to label campaigns, like “[Program Name] - [Objective] - [Audience].”
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Outbound Clicks
- Definition: The number of clicks on ads that take users to properties outside of Facebook.
- For Coaches: Monitor outbound clicks to see how many people are visiting your external landing pages, like your coaching application or course sales page.
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Page Engagement
- Definition: Tracks all actions users take on your Facebook Page and posts, such as likes, reactions, shares, and link clicks, attributed to your ads.
- For Coaches: Use this to measure the effectiveness of your ads in driving engagement with your coaching content or page.
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Performance Goal
- Definition: The goal selected within the ad set that determines optimization and delivery, showing your ad to people most likely to take the desired action.
- For Coaches: Choose goals like “Leads” to optimize for webinar sign-ups or “Conversions” to encourage program enrollments.
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Pixel Event Parameters
- Definition: Additional details provided when tracking standard or custom events using the Meta pixel.
- For Coaches: Use parameters to track specifics like the type of coaching program a user views or the value of a purchase.
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Pixel Events
- Definition: Actions tracked on your website using the Meta pixel for reporting, targeting, or optimization.
- For Coaches: Track actions like “Completed Application” or “Watched Video” to better understand and retarget your audience.
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Placement
- Definition: The location where your ad appears, such as Facebook Feed, Instagram Stories, or Messenger.
- For Coaches: Use placements strategically to reach your audience where they’re most active, like Instagram Stories for younger clients.
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Post Engagement
- Definition: All actions users take on your ad post, such as reactions, comments, shares, and link clicks.
- For Coaches: Track post engagement to see how well your ad content resonates with your audience and sparks interaction.
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Reach
- Definition: Measures the number of unique accounts that saw your ad at least once.
- For Coaches: Monitor reach to ensure your ads are getting in front of as many potential clients as possible.
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Reach Optimization
- Definition: An optimization setting under the Awareness objective that maximizes the number of people who see your ad while using a frequency cap.
- For Coaches: Use this to build awareness for your coaching brand or new program launch.
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Reservation Buying Type
- Definition: A payment method that allows advertisers to lock in a fixed cost for greater predictability, replacing Reach and Frequency.
- For Coaches: Use this for campaigns where you want consistent exposure, like a program launch.
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ROAS Goal
- Definition: A setting that focuses on maintaining a specific return on ad spend (ROAS) while optimizing for sales.
- For Coaches: Set a ROAS goal to ensure you’re getting a profitable return on your ad spend for high-ticket coaching programs.
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Saved Audience
- Definition: A saved set of targeting options that can be reused in future campaigns.
- For Coaches: Save audiences like “Women Entrepreneurs, 35-50” to streamline campaign setup.
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Scaling
- Definition: Increasing your budget or expanding your audience to achieve more results from an effective campaign.
- For Coaches: Scale successful campaigns by increasing your budget (vertical scaling) or testing new audiences (horizontal scaling).
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Special Ad Category
- Definition: A category required for ads related to Credit, Employment, Housing, or Social Issues, which restricts targeting options to comply with regulations.
- For Coaches: If your coaching relates to employment or social issues, ensure you select this category to stay compliant.
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Split Testing
- Definition: Testing variations of Facebook ad variables (like ad creative or audience) to determine which performs best.
- For Coaches: Use split testing to refine your messaging or test different audiences for your coaching offers.
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Tailored Campaigns
- Definition: Simplified campaign setups with locked defaults, such as Tailored Leads Campaigns.
- For Coaches: Use tailored campaigns for quick and easy ad creation when promoting lead magnets like free guides or webinars.
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ThruPlays
- Definition: The number of times your video ad was played for at least 15 seconds or to completion.
- For Coaches: Track ThruPlays to measure how many people watched your video ads promoting your coaching services.
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Video Engagement Custom Audience
- Definition: An audience created from people who viewed your video on Facebook or Instagram, used for targeting or exclusions.
- For Coaches: Retarget people who watched your video ads to encourage them to book a call or join your program.
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View Attribution
- Definition: Credits a conversion to an ad if a user converted within 1 day of viewing the ad (without clicking).
- For Coaches: Use this to track conversions from ads that build awareness or interest, even if users don’t immediately click.
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Website Custom Audience
- Definition: An audience created by matching website visitors with Facebook users for ad targeting.
- For Coaches: Retarget website visitors who viewed your coaching services page but didn’t take action.
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Website Custom Audience from Your Events
- Definition: Targets people based on specific actions or conversions performed on your website.
- For Coaches: Retarget users who completed actions like “Started Application” or “Downloaded Free Guide” to nurture them toward enrollment.
If you're feeling completely overwhelmed on where to start, book a FREE strategy call to learn how we can help you get started immediately.
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