How to run Facebook ads from Shopify: setup, budget math and your first Sales campaign

Can I run Facebook ads directly from Shopify?

Yes. Once your Meta basics exist (a Facebook Page, a Business portfolio, and an ad account with a payment method) and Meta's Facebook & Instagram channel is sending purchase data from your store, an ads app inside Shopify can launch Meta Sales campaigns for you. Adly for Shopify designs the ad from your product photo and launches it with Run as ad. If you want every targeting and bidding lever, build in Meta Ads Manager instead.

The short version of everything below: Meta is where your accounts and tracking live. Shopify, with the right app, is where you can make the ad, launch it and read the results. You still pay Meta for the ads themselves.

Who should take which path

• New store, 1 to 10 productsMake a designed ad from your best product photo and launch it with Run as ad in Adly for Shopify. It is the fewest screens between a product and a live ad.
• One hero product or a launchTest several creatives at once with New campaign in Adly for Shopify: up to 5 ad sets and 6 ads in one Meta campaign.
• Large catalog with steady visitorsAdd an Advantage+ catalog campaign so Meta can show people products from your catalog. Brand the catalog images first.
• Hands-on media buyerBuild in Meta Ads Manager for custom audiences, placements and bid settings. Keep the Facebook & Instagram channel for tracking.

Which Shopify app are you really looking for?

Search the Shopify App Store for Facebook ads and you will see several kinds of app. They do different jobs, and most stores need three or four of those jobs done. Here is the map, with the part Adly for Shopify covers next to each one.

1. 1

   The Meta channel app

   Meta's Facebook & Instagram channel connects your pixel and the Conversions API without code and syncs your products into a Meta catalog. Every route on this page relies on it.

   With Adly

   Adly works alongside it. Run as ad uses the store's Meta pixel, so keep the channel installed and sending data.

2. 2

   Ad creative makers

   Turn product photos into ad images and videos, so you are not waiting on a designer for every test.

   With Adly

   Image Studio ad designs from the product photo, Animate for a short video from a still, UGC creator videos and Scene Studio multi-scene product films, all in your store's brand style.

3. 3

   Campaign launchers

   Create and launch Meta campaigns from the Shopify admin, so you open Ads Manager less often.

   With Adly

   Run as ad on any result, New campaign for full campaigns with up to 5 ad sets and 6 ads, catalog shopping campaigns from a Meta catalog, and an Ads page listing every campaign in the ad account with its results.

4. 4

   Catalog ad designers

   Add a branded look to the product images Meta uses in catalog ads.

   With Adly

   Meta catalog designs: approve one template, Adly applies it to every product and gives you a feed URL for Meta Commerce Manager.

5. 5

   Social posting schedulers

   Post product content to your own pages between ad campaigns.

   With Adly

   Post or schedule any result to your Facebook Page, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and X (X on paid plans), with a caption Adly writes. For the web version of this job, see our guide to scheduling to Meta and Instagram automatically.

6. 6

   Phone apps for checking ads

   See spend and results while you are away from the desk.

   With Adly

   Brands that run their marketing on an Adly account can use Adly for iPhone to make designs and UGC videos, post to five networks, and see Meta ad results without opening Ads Manager.

Adly for Shopify covers jobs 2 to 5 in one app, installed from the Shopify App Store with no separate Adly sign-up. It writes and speaks 60+ languages and picks your store's language from its country. Job 1 stays with Meta's own channel. One tracking source keeps your purchase counts clean, and clean counts matter more than any feature list.

Three routes from a Shopify product to a live Meta ad

Every route uses the same Meta ad account and the same pixel. What changes is where you do the daily work and how much you set by hand.

Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Shopify and the other product names here belong to their owners. Adly is not affiliated with them.

The one-time Meta setup every route needs

Do this once. No Shopify app can skip it, because Meta needs to know who owns the Page, the ad account and the card.

Facebook Page, Business portfolio and ad account

• A Facebook Page for the store. Your ads run under its name. Connect your Instagram account in the same portfolio so ads can run under it too.
• A Business portfolio in Meta Business Suite that owns the Page. It is the newer name for what used to be Business Manager.
• An ad account inside that portfolio. Set its currency to the one your store sells in, so the ROAS math below lines up.
• Admin access for you on all three. Missing permissions are a common reason an app cannot see your ad account.

Payment method, and who bills what

Add a card or other payment method under billing in your ad account. Meta charges your ad spend there, on its own billing schedule.

Your Shopify bill is separate. Shopify bills app plans, including Adly for Shopify, every 30 days. Adly never charges for ads. Expect two lines in your books and keep them apart when you work out profit.

Connect the pixel and Conversions API from Shopify

Install Meta's Facebook & Instagram channel from the Shopify App Store. Inside it, connect your Business portfolio, Page, ad account and pixel. In the channel's data sharing settings you pick a level: Standard, Enhanced or Maximum. Pick Maximum. It sends events from the browser with the pixel and from Shopify's server with the Conversions API.

Sending both is normal. Meta removes the duplicate when the two copies of an event carry the same event name and event ID, and the channel sets those for you. Trouble starts when a third source joins in: old pixel code pasted into the theme, or another app firing its own pixel. Remove those, and do not paste pixel code into your theme files.

Sync your product catalog

The channel also syncs your products into a Meta catalog, which catalog ads need. Three things commonly block the sync: a password page on the store, products that are not made available to the Facebook & Instagram channel, and products with no image, price or stock status. Check the result in Meta Commerce Manager, which lists products with issues.

Check purchase tracking before you spend

1. Open your store with ad blockers off and accept the cookie banner. Blockers and declined consent hide events during a test.
2. Use Meta Pixel Helper, a browser extension from Meta, or the Test events tab in Meta Events Manager.
3. View a product, add it to cart and start checkout. You should see ViewContent, AddToCart and InitiateCheckout.
4. After a real order, confirm a Purchase event arrives from both browser and server, and counts once.

If Purchase is missing, fix it before anything else. A Sales campaign learns from that event. Without it, Meta is guessing.

Launch your first Sales campaign from Shopify with Run as ad

Step 1: Pick the Sales objective and skip Traffic

A Traffic campaign tells Meta to find people who click. A Sales campaign optimized for purchases tells it to find people who buy, using your Purchase event. Cheap clicks from people who never buy are the classic first-campaign trap.

Run as ad in Adly for Shopify launches a Sales campaign optimized for purchases, so this choice is already made for you.

Step 2: Pick a product with room in its margin

Start with one product that already sells without ads and has a healthy margin. Run the break-even math first. Our rule of thumb: a first test is easier when the product's break-even ROAS is under about 2.5, because Meta has room to miss while it learns.

Thin-margin products can still work later, inside a bundle that raises the order value.

Step 3: Make the creative from your product photo

In Adly for Shopify, pick the product from your catalog. You can search, browse by collection, or pick many products at once. Then choose what to make:

• Image Studio ad design: your product photo inside a finished ad layout in your brand style.
• Animate: the same photo turned into a short video.
• UGC creator video: a creator-style video talking about the product. Pick several products and Adly can write a different line for each one.
• Scene Studio: a multi-scene product film that runs hook, product, proof and call to action.

Results land on the Results page, newest first. If one beats your current product photo, add it to the product's Shopify media in one click. An image can become the main photo.

Those numbers describe what brands create on Adly. They say nothing about ad results. They do show that starting from the photo you already have is the normal path, and that most designs go out as made.

One more contrast from the same data: among 263 retail brands, video was 13% of outputs, against 9% across all brands. If you only test static ads, add one short video to the mix so you have something to compare.

A few examples of these formats from Adly's showcase:

Step 4: Connect Meta and set budget, countries and end date

Connect your Meta ad account once. Then choose Run as ad on the result you want. You set three things, and the ad links to the product page.

• Budget: take it from the worksheet in the budget math section. Pick an amount you can leave running for at least 7 days.
• Countries: only places you ship to at a cost buyers will accept. Each extra country spreads a small budget thinner.
• End date: set it 14 days out. It caps spend if you forget, and it gives you a review date.

Testing more than one creative? Use New campaign instead. It builds a full Meta campaign with up to 5 ad sets and 6 ads, so a static design, a short video and a UGC video can run side by side.

Step 5: Write the words

Meta shows a few lines of text with the creative. A plain order works: the problem, what changes with the product, then the action. An illustrative line for a mug set:

Coffee cold before the meeting ends? Double-wall stoneware keeps it warm longer. Two mugs for $48. Order today.

Put the price in the text if it is fair for what you sell. It can filter out clicks from people who would leave at checkout.

Worked example: one first campaign with every setting filled in

Store

An illustrative ceramics shop on Shopify, selling to the United States and Canada

Product

Two-mug stoneware set, $48

Margin per order

$25.26 before ads (see the math below)

Route

Adly for Shopify, New campaign

Objective

Sales, optimized for purchases with the store's Meta pixel

Structure

1 ad set, 3 ads: an Image Studio design, an Animate video and a UGC creator video

Budget

$20 a day

Countries

United States, Canada

End date

14 days after launch

Destination

The product page

First review

Day 8, after 7 untouched days

Plan usage

The Starter plan includes 25 images and 16 video units every 30 days as of November 2026. The UGC video uses 2 video units.

Illustrative example, not a forecast. Your prices, costs and results will differ.

The same campaign in Meta Ads Manager: Create, choose Sales, set the conversion location to your website with the pixel's Purchase event, set budget and schedule, choose Advantage+ audience or your own audience, keep automatic placements, then upload each creative with its text and the product URL. Allow extra time for the creative, which you make somewhere else.

One designed product ad or an Advantage+ catalog campaign?

Designed product ads find new buyers for a few products you choose, with your price, angle and brand look. Advantage+ catalog ads let Meta pick products from your catalog for each person, which suits large catalogs and returning visitors. Many stores use the first to bring people in and the second to bring them back.

When a designed product ad wins

When you have a clear best seller, a launch, a bundle or an offer. The ad can carry your price and your angle. Plain catalog images often look like every other store selling the same item.

When catalog ads earn their place

When you have many products and enough visitors that Meta has browsing data to work with. A catalog campaign can show someone the exact item they left behind. In Adly for Shopify, New campaign can build a catalog shopping campaign from your Meta catalog.

Give catalog images your brand look without breaking the feed

The weak spot of catalog ads is the image: a product on white, often the same supplier photo other stores use. Adly for Shopify's Meta catalog designs handle this. You approve one template, Adly applies it to every product, and you get a feed URL to add in Meta Commerce Manager. Your products stay the same products. The images get the branded design.

One caution: replace the catalog's existing data source with the new feed URL. Adding it as a second source with the same product IDs gives Meta two versions of every product. For the full process, read our guide to designing Meta catalog images from product feeds. If you are weighing a dedicated catalog design tool, our Confect.io vs Adly catalog ads comparison covers that choice.

Run both: new buyers and returning visitors

A simple two-campaign setup for a mid-size catalog: one Sales campaign with designed ads for two or three best sellers, aimed at new buyers, and one catalog campaign with branded catalog images for people who already viewed products. Judge both against the same break-even ROAS, worked out from your average order value.

How much should a Shopify store spend on Facebook ads?

Spend follows margin. Work out what one order leaves you before ads: that is the most you can pay Meta for a sale and still break even. Then pick a daily budget that buys enough purchases in 7 days to judge the ad.

Work out margin per order

Illustrative numbers. The fee line is an assumption, so use the fees shown on your own payouts.

Break-even ROAS and target cost per purchase

Break-even ROAS = price / margin per order
Break-even cost per purchase = margin per order
Target cost per purchase = margin per order minus the profit you want per order

For Product A, keeping $10 a sale means a target cost per purchase of $15.26 and a target ROAS of 3.15 ($48 / $15.26).

Now run both products at the same 3.0 ROAS. Product A spends $16 to win each $48 sale and keeps $9.26. Product B spends $10 to win each $30 sale and loses $3.20. Same ROAS, opposite results. A single benchmark like 2x or 4:1 cannot tell you if your ads work. Your margin can.

Want the app cost in the math too? Spread the plan over your ad orders. Adly for Shopify's Starter plan is $19 every 30 days as of November 2026, so at 20 ad orders a month it adds $0.95 per order. If orders hold several products, use average order value in place of price.

How many days of budget before you judge?

Meta's delivery goes through a learning phase after launch, and significant edits restart it. So our rule has two parts. Leave the ad set untouched for 7 full days. And do not judge it until it has spent at least 3 times your break-even cost per purchase. Whichever comes later wins.

Pause rule: if spend passes 3 times break-even cost per purchase ($75.78 for Product A) with zero purchases, pause. Change the creative or the product before you change the budget.

Scale rule: if cost per purchase stays under target for a full week, raise the budget in modest steps and give each step a few days before the next. $10 a day works for a first look, but it buys few purchases, so treat its verdict as early.

Two bills, kept apart

A UGC video uses 2 video units. Usage comes back automatically when a result fails, and you can report a result that is not right within 14 days to get its usage back.

How to read results without leaving Shopify

Adly for Shopify shows spend, purchases and return on ad spend for each campaign, and its Ads page lists every campaign in your ad account. Three numbers decide almost everything.

The three numbers to watch

• Spend: is it pacing to your budget? If spend is near zero after a day, check billing and countries.
• Purchases: the event your Sales campaign optimizes for.
• ROAS: compare it with your own break-even ROAS. Someone else's benchmark comes from someone else's margin.

Why Shopify and Meta show different purchase counts

Expect a gap. Meta credits a purchase to an ad within its attribution setting, which can include some purchases after someone only saw the ad, and it can model some conversions it cannot observe directly. Shopify credits orders by its own rules.

The two counts measure different things. Pick one source for decisions, use it every time, and watch the trend.

What clicks and purchases tell you together

Refresh, pause or scale

Refresh creative when the same ad's clicks fall week after week while spend holds. Pause by the rule above. Scale only on purchases at or under target.

If you also run messages, leads or reach campaigns for the business beyond the store, the AI Facebook Ads Manager in the Adly web app runs those and audits the whole ad account.

Fixes for common Shopify and Meta ad problems

Menu names in Meta and Shopify change. If a path moves, search for the setting name.