Magazine · Social Ads
Social ads for small and mid-sized businesses: budget, formats, impact
In short
What this cluster is about
Social ads, for us, means Meta, so Instagram and Facebook, built on creative from our own shoots, no Google Ads, nothing bought in. You pay two separate things: the media budget, passed through 1:1 to Meta, and a fixed monthly fee for strategy, creative and campaign management. The articles in this cluster cover how that works, which format earns its place where, and what it costs.
What social ads are with us, and what they aren't
Social ads, for us, means paid advertising on Meta, so Instagram and Facebook, run through the same Ads Manager and the same ad account. We deliberately don't offer Google Ads, search advertising or other networks: we advertise where video creative decides the outcome, and that's Meta, not a text ad in a Google search result. If you need a search campaign, we're the wrong shop for that, and we'd rather say so before you send an inquiry than after.
Instagram and Facebook run through the same ad account and the same Ads Manager under the hood, so we treat them as one system rather than two separate channels. Which of the two placements ends up getting more budget is decided by results during the campaign, not by a fixed choice baked into the quote upfront.
The two line items: media budget and management
Money moves to two different places with social ads, and the two should never get mixed up. The media budget goes straight to Meta and funds the auction for ad space; how that auction works and what counts as a sensible starting budget is covered in detail in How much do Instagram ads cost?. Management is a second, separate line: strategy, creative production, audience steering and reporting, priced at a fixed monthly fee with us, no percentage on top of the media budget. Together they make a campaign, but they stay two line items with two different logics.
That split is more than bookkeeping: you can adjust the media budget yourselves at any time, because it lives in your own ad account, while management is an agreement about work, not ad spend. Every report then shows plainly what went to our work and what went to the ads themselves, without the two blending together.
Formats and placements
Which format belongs where comes down to placement, not taste. A video that works in the feed can feel too long in a story, and a vertical clip loses half its impact in a horizontal feed. The table below shows the combinations we run most often.
| Format | Placement | Aspect ratio | What it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reel ad | Instagram feed, reels | 9:16 | Reach, reaching new audiences |
| Story ad | Instagram story, Facebook story | 9:16 | A short message, a direct swipe-up to your site |
| Feed video | Instagram feed, Facebook feed | 1:1 or 4:5 | Explanation, a more detailed creative |
| Static image | Instagram feed, Facebook feed | 1:1 or 4:5 | A companion to video, for A/B testing |
How long an ad should run per format, and what needs to happen in the first seconds, ties closely to the placement. As a rule of thumb: the shorter the window before someone swipes away, the sooner the ad has to show what it's about, a reel in the feed has more room to breathe than a story that gets swiped through in seconds.
Why our video ads come out of our own shoots
Plenty of agencies buy in video production and price the markup into the quote; with us, ad creative comes out of the same shop as the strategy, often from the same shoot as a brand film or a piece of social media content. How long an ad should run per placement is covered in How long should a video be on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn?. You can see examples of our work in our references; the full scope and pricing live on the social ads page.
A working ad doesn't make up for a quiet channel: land someone on a profile that's been silent for weeks after the click, and you lose the trust the ad just built. If you'd rather start organically first, social media content is a good place to begin. We never promise guaranteed reach either way, nobody honest can.
The matching service
Ready for social ads built on your own creative?
We handle strategy, creative and campaign management for your Meta ads at a fixed monthly fee, your media budget goes straight to Meta with no markup. Here's how social ads work with us.