Meta Ads Manager Creative Setup: A Beginner's Walkthrough

New to Meta Ads Manager and staring at the creative setup screen wondering where to even start? Here's a plain-language walkthrough of the whole flow, from opening Ads Manager to publishing your first properly customized ad.

Getting into Ads Manager

Head to Ads Manager and click Create to start a new campaign. You'll first choose an ad objective — what you actually want the ad to accomplish, like driving traffic or generating leads — and a conversion location, which is where that action happens.

Opening the creative wizard

In the Ad setup section, click Set up creative to open a dropdown, then choose either Image or Video. Don't worry too much about which one you pick first — the next screen lets you upload both images and videos regardless.

Uploading your media

The Media section is where you add up to ten images and videos for a single ad. If you're just starting out, aim to upload at least one square or near-square image for feed placements and one tall vertical image or video for Stories and Reels — that alone will make your ad look far more polished than a single stretched image.

Cropping for different placements

Hover over any thumbnail you've added and click Crop. This opens an editor where you can switch between Original and Crop settings and adjust the framing so your important content — logo, face, product, key text — doesn't get cut off in any placement.

Writing your text and finishing setup

Move through the Text and Image generation sections to add your ad copy, then continue to Enhancements, where you'll see the option to turn on Advantage+ creative. As a beginner, it's fine to leave this on to start — it can help Meta adapt your creative automatically while you're still learning the platform.

Reviewing before you publish

Finish the rest of your ad setup — audience, budget, schedule — and click Done to save your creative choices. Back at the ad level, you'll be able to preview exactly how your media looks across the different placements before your ad goes live.

The most common beginner mistake is uploading just one image and assuming it'll look fine everywhere. It won't — but now that you know where the crop and customization tools live, fixing that takes just a few extra minutes per ad.