Meta campaigns
Run your Meta ad campaigns by hand inside Gene App. See what each one spends and brings in, switch it on or off, change budgets, audiences and ads, build a new campaign step by step, and manage your Page's lead forms.
On this page
Meta campaigns (Ads > Meta campaigns) is a manual Ads Manager inside Gene App. Everything the AI sidebar can do with a Meta campaign, you can also do here yourself, in your own connected Meta ad account. Every change goes straight to Meta.
Two entries in the Ads left menu belong to it:
- Meta campaigns: your campaigns, their results, and building a new one.
- Lead forms: the forms on your Facebook Pages that lead ads open.
Both show where your workspace can publish to Meta. If Meta is not connected yet, the page says so and Open Meta Ads settings takes you to Settings > Lead Sources > Meta Ads, where you connect it and pick the ad accounts and Pages Gene App may use.
The campaign list#
Pick the ad account at the top. Gene App remembers the last one you picked. The picker holds only this workspace's own ad accounts and Pages: those of the business that owns the Facebook Page connected here, or, before a Page is connected, the ones ticked when connecting Meta. Other ad accounts the same Meta login can reach (another client's, say) are not shown. Each campaign shows:
- An on and off switch.
- Its objective, its budget and its schedule.
- Its results for the dates you pick (Today up to All time, or your own dates): spent, impressions, clicks, CTR, cost per click, leads and cost per lead.
Budgets are in the ad account's currency. When your workspace runs in another currency, the budget shows both, at today's rate.
Search by name, or show only campaigns that are switched on, paused, or that have issues or were rejected. Open in Meta Ads Manager opens the same account in Meta, and New campaign starts the step-by-step build below.
Cost per lead is what you spent divided by the leads that sent the form.
One campaign#
Click a campaign to open it. It shows the campaign as a tree, its ad sets and each ad set's ads, with the results of each for the dates you pick.
Click any row (or Edit campaign) to open it in a popup. Every field saves on its own as you change it and goes straight to your ad account. A changed ad goes back through Meta's review.
| Level | What you can change |
|---|---|
| Campaign | Name, budget, bid strategy and a spending limit for the whole campaign |
| Ad set | Name, budget (or, on a campaign budget, a minimum and maximum daily spend), bid amount, start and end, places, interests, languages, Advantage+ audience, placements, optimisation goal, pixel and conversion event, advertiser and payer |
| Ad | Picture or video, primary text, headline, description, button, link, UTM tags, Instagram account and lead form. It also shows what Meta's review said about the ad |
Each row's menu has Pause or Switch on, Duplicate (the copy is made paused), Archive and Delete. Delete asks first.
A few things Meta does not let you change after the fact, and the popup says so where it applies:
- Age and gender are fixed, because property ads run in Meta's Housing category (see What Meta fixes, not Gene).
- Where a tap goes is set when the ad set is made. To change it, duplicate the ad set and build the copy differently.
- A started ad set keeps its start date, even while paused.
- A carousel's cards are changed in Meta Ads Manager.
Switching on costs money#
Pausing happens straight away. Switching anything on opens a popup first that says what starts spending per day, and only Switch on and start spending puts it on. Switching on a campaign whose ad sets and ads are paused offers to switch them on too, since without them nothing delivers.
Raising a budget asks first too, and says whether it can start spending the higher amount right away.
Build a new campaign#
New campaign walks you through it step by step:
- Basics: the ad account, the Facebook Page the ads run from, the campaign name and the goal (Leads, Website visits or Awareness).
- Budget and dates: one campaign budget that Meta shares across the ad sets (recommended), or a budget on each ad set; per day or in total; bid strategy, an optional spending limit, and the start and end. You can type the amount in another currency, and Gene App converts it to the ad account's currency at today's rate.
- Audience: one or more ad sets, each with its places, interests, languages, Advantage+ audience, placements, its own dates if it needs them, and where people go (a lead form on Facebook and Instagram, your website, or a WhatsApp chat). A leads campaign that sends people to your website also needs your Meta pixel and the event that counts as a lead.
- Lead form (lead form campaigns only): use one of the Page's forms, or make a new one right there.
- Ads: a picture, a video or a carousel, picked from your finished Gene ads, your workspace photos or your computer, with the words, button, link and UTM tags.
- Check and build: Gene App runs the same check as the AI sidebar (photos, interests, the lead form, the website and Meta's own rules), shows what needs fixing and what it fixed for you, then Build it, paused.
Your draft is kept in the browser until it is built, so leaving the page does not lose it.
Everything is built paused: it is in your ad account, but nothing spends until you switch it on. After the build Gene App shows what Meta stored.
The same rules apply as for a campaign the AI sidebar builds: no promises of returns, lead form ads need the Page to have accepted Meta's Lead Ads terms, and ads that reach India need one answer in Ads Manager. See Things Meta checks before it accepts a campaign.
Lead forms#
Ads > Lead forms lists the lead forms on each of your Facebook Pages (pick the Page at the top), with their questions, whether they are active or archived, and how many leads each has had. Leads from these forms arrive in Gene App through your Meta lead source.
Select Show archived forms to include archived forms on the selected Page, and clear it to hide them again. When every form on the Page is archived and the box is clear, the list says so and points you to Show archived forms. The list loads all pages of results from Meta, so older forms remain visible.
- New lead form builds one: the name, the questions in the order people see them (name, phone, email and your own questions with answers to pick from), your privacy policy link, an optional intro, and the thank-you screen. Meta requires the privacy policy link; Settings > Business Profile keeps it for next time. If the Page already has a form with the same name and questions, that one is used instead of a copy.
- Archive stops new ads from using a form. Its leads stay. Meta never deletes lead forms and keeps the name taken, so pick names you will recognise.
A Page that has not accepted Meta's Lead Ads terms cannot have lead forms; the page tells you where to accept them.
The AI sidebar does the same#
Everything here, the AI sidebar can do too: ask it to build a campaign from a brief, read how a campaign is doing, or change a budget. See Build a full campaign from the AI sidebar. Changes you make on this page and changes the sidebar makes land in the same ad account, so both always show the same campaign.