For years, complexity was often treated as a sign of sophistication in Meta Ads.
Accounts were divided into prospecting, retargeting, and several funnel stages. Each interest had its own ad set. Lookalike audiences were separated by percentage. New campaigns were created for every product, promotion, audience, and creative test.
The result looked organised inside Ads Manager.
It did not always perform well.
Meta's delivery system has become far more capable of identifying potential customers and deciding where to spend. Systems such as Andromeda can process a much larger selection of ads and identify complex relationships between people, products, and creative assets. This has reduced the value of excessive manual segmentation and increased the importance of strong creative, accurate conversion data, and enough budget for the system to learn.
That does not mean every Meta Ads account should contain one campaign, one ad set, and no controls.
It means every separation should have a reason.
A strong Meta Ads account is not the one with the most campaigns and ad sets. It is the one where every part of the structure supports a clear business goal and has enough budget and data to perform its role.
Account structure should solve a business problem
Campaign structure is often discussed as if there were one correct template.
There is not.
A store selling three products in one country does not need the same structure as a retailer operating across ten markets with thousands of products, several currencies, different margins, and a large creative testing programme.
The right structure depends on factors such as:
Daily budget
Number and type of products
Markets and languages
Product margins
Customer acquisition goals
Available conversion data
Creative production capacity
Promotional calendar
Stock and fulfilment limitations
This is why copying an account structure from another advertiser rarely works as expected.
Two businesses may sell similar products and still need different campaign setups. One may prioritise new customer growth, while the other needs repeat purchases. One may have equal margins across the catalogue, while another loses money when Meta favours a lower-margin product. One may have enough creative to support several testing campaigns, while another does not.
The structure should reflect the business behind the account.
What consolidation actually means
Consolidation does not mean removing every campaign and putting all products, audiences, and ads into one place.
It means removing divisions that no longer provide useful control or information.
A consolidated account usually has fewer campaigns and ad sets competing for the same objective. This gives Meta access to a larger pool of budget and conversion data, instead of dividing that information between many small segments.
For example, five ad sets may all target similar customers, use the same creatives, promote the same products, and optimise for Purchase.
They may have different names, but they are not performing different jobs.
In that situation, the structure creates separation without creating a meaningful test or business advantage.
A useful campaign structure should make it possible to answer questions such as:
What is this campaign responsible for?
Why does this ad set need its own budget or delivery?
What decision will we make from its results?
Would combining it with another part of the account improve learning without removing necessary control?
If there is no clear answer, the separation may not be necessary.
However, consolidation is not a goal by itself.
An account can also become too simple. Combining markets with different economics, products with different margins, or campaigns with different customer goals can make Meta's reported results look efficient while hiding important business differences.
The goal is not the smallest possible account.
The goal is the cleanest structure that still protects the decisions the business needs to make.
CBO vs ABO: the real difference is control
CBO and ABO are common names for two ways of managing Meta Ads budgets.
CBO refers to Campaign Budget Optimisation, now called Advantage+ campaign budget. A single budget is set at the campaign level, and Meta distributes it between the ad sets according to where it sees the best opportunities.
ABO refers to ad set budget optimisation. It is not a separate Meta product name, but common industry shorthand for setting a budget individually on each ad set.
Neither approach is automatically better.
The choice depends on whether the account benefits more from dynamic allocation or controlled spend.
When CBO makes sense
CBO works well when the ad sets are competing for the same overall objective, and Meta has permission to move budget towards the strongest opportunities.
It can be a practical choice for smaller or simpler eCommerce accounts because it reduces the need for constant manual budget movement. One campaign can contain several distinct creative or product tests, while Meta decides where the next part of the budget is most likely to produce a result.
Meta also allows minimum and maximum spend limits to be set for individual ad sets inside an Advantage+ campaign budget setup. These limits can be used when an advertiser wants Meta to manage the overall budget but still needs a particular ad set to receive a minimum level of spend.
For a smaller store, one practical testing structure can therefore include:
One CBO sales campaign
Separate ad sets for genuinely different concepts or product groups
A temporary minimum spend limit for a new ad set
Enough time for the new concept to collect useful data
Ongoing movement of the budget towards stronger results
A seven-day minimum-spend window can help prevent Meta from ignoring a new ad set before it has had a fair opportunity to perform.
This does not mean every new headline, visual change, or minor creative iteration needs a separate ad set.
A new concept may deserve its own testing space. A small variation of an existing concept may not.
When ABO makes sense
ABO gives the advertiser tighter control over how much each ad set spends.
This can be useful in larger testing programmes where each test needs a defined budget, enough delivery, and a cleaner comparison with other tests. It can also help when Meta would otherwise direct nearly all spending towards one proven ad set and leave new ideas without enough data.
ABO is particularly useful when the business needs to guarantee spend for:
New creative concept
Priority product or category
Separate country or market
Specific customer segment
Time-sensitive promotion
Controlled test with a fixed budget
However, ABO requires more active management.
The advertiser decides how much each ad set receives, which means poor budget allocation is not corrected automatically. A weak test can continue spending because its budget has been protected, while a stronger opportunity remains limited.
ABO therefore benefits from more creative volume, better data, clear testing rules, and enough time to evaluate the results properly.
Budget size alone does not decide
It is reasonable to use CBO for a smaller account and ABO for a larger creative testing programme.
But this should not become a universal rule.
A large advertiser may use CBO successfully for scaling because Meta can allocate a significant budget across many proven opportunities. A smaller advertiser may use ABO when it needs to guarantee that two products or concepts receive a fair test.
Human control still matters in a CBO campaign
Meta distributes campaign budget according to the results it has been asked to generate.
It does not automatically understand every reason a business may want to support a product, market, or customer group.
A CBO campaign may direct most of its budget towards the ad set producing the cheapest purchases. That can be a good outcome, but only if those purchases also make sense for the business.
The cheapest purchase may come from:
A product with a low margin
Existing customers rather than new buyers
Market with expensive fulfilment
Category with limited stock
Promotion that cannot be sustained
Customers with high return rates
An offer that weakens long-term profitability
This is where human budget control becomes necessary.
Meta can identify where it sees the easiest conversion opportunity. The campaign manager must decide whether that opportunity supports the wider commercial goal.
Minimum spend limits, maximum spend limits, separate campaigns, ABO structures, or manual budget changes can all be valid controls when they are connected to a real business context.
Automation should reduce unnecessary manual work.
It should not remove commercial judgment.
The learning phase is a guide, not a performance verdict
The learning phase is the period in which Meta's delivery system explores how an ad set may perform.
During this period, the system is testing different people, placements, and delivery opportunities in order to understand where the selected optimisation event is most likely to happen. Performance can be less stable while this exploration is taking place.
Meta generally recommends around 50 optimisation events per ad set within seven days of a significant edit. An ad set that is unlikely to reach that volume may receive a Learning Limited status.
That number is useful, but it is not a universal border between a good campaign and a bad one.
An ad set can be profitable with fewer than 50 weekly purchases. Another can achieve 50 purchases and still lose money.
The recommendation reflects the amount of data Meta would like for more stable delivery. It does not account for the advertiser's margin, average order value, customer lifetime value, or required return.
It is also important to distinguish between Meta's formal learning-phase label and the wider learning process.
An ad set may leave the formal learning phase, but the delivery system does not stop adapting. Customer behaviour changes, new creatives enter the campaign, competition shifts, and Meta continues to process new signals.
Learning is, therefore, not a task that permanently ends.
The label may disappear. Optimisation continues.
Do not protect the learning phase at the expense of the budget
Advertisers are often told not to touch a campaign while it is learning.
That advice is useful when it prevents nervous, daily changes based on weak data.
It becomes harmful when it stops a manager from correcting an obvious problem.
If an ad set is moving in the wrong direction, it should not be allowed to waste budget simply because Meta has not finished its formal learning period.
The challenge is knowing the difference between a weak early signal and a clear problem.
A decision should be based on meaningful data, not on the first click or first purchase. However, once enough evidence exists, acting quickly is often better than waiting for a status label to change.
Significant edits can cause an ad set to return to the learning phase or make delivery less stable. This is why repeatedly changing budgets, targeting, optimisation events, and creatives without a clear reason can slow down useful learning.
The answer is not to avoid changes.
It is to make changes for a reason.
Good optimisation allows enough time for the system to produce quality data, then responds decisively when that data supports a decision.
Broad audiences do not mean there is no targeting
Broad targeting is often misunderstood as showing ads to everyone.
In practice, broad campaigns still have controls. Advertisers can define important boundaries such as country, age where relevant, language, and customer exclusions. With the Advantage+ audience, Meta may use audience inputs as suggestions while searching more broadly for people likely to produce the chosen result.
The important shift is that more of the targeting work now happens through delivery, creative, and conversion data.
Meta learns from signals such as:
Who responds to different creative concepts
Which people complete purchases
Which products they view or buy
How they interact with ads
What similar customer journeys look like
Which placements and moments produce results
This is why the phrase "creative is the new targeting" has become popular.
It is not completely literal. Location, offer eligibility, customer data, and other controls still matter.
But creative now plays a much larger role in helping Meta identify who an ad is relevant to.
A product demonstration may attract customers who need proof. A comparison ad may speak to people already considering alternatives. A founder story may appeal to buyers who care about trust. A price-led message may reach a different type of customer from an ad focused on quality or convenience.
Broad targeting gives Meta room to find these relationships.
The creative gives it something meaningful to match.
Interest targeting can still be useful in specific situations, but it is becoming less central in many eCommerce accounts. It should be used because it solves a defined problem, not because every campaign is expected to contain several interest-based ad sets.
Broad targeting still needs time and creative depth
Broad audiences may initially struggle when an account has limited purchase data, a small market, a very narrow product, or a weak creative library.
The usual reaction is to restrict the audience.
Sometimes that is justified. Often, the campaign needs more time or better creative rather than another layer of targeting.
A broad audience cannot repair an unclear offer or repetitive advertising.
If every creative communicates the same argument, Meta has fewer ways to identify different types of potential customers. Adding more meaningful concepts gives the system more opportunities to learn which message works for which person.
This connects the account structure directly with creative diversification.
A consolidated, broad campaign with ten nearly identical ads is not a sophisticated system. It is a simple structure with weak inputs.
The account becomes stronger when it combines broad delivery with different concepts, angles, formats, and product messages.
Product groups still need a clear separation
Consolidation should not make product performance impossible to understand.
At Creative Brackets, we prefer to keep meaningful product groups separate so that budget, creative, and commercial performance can be evaluated clearly.
Different products may have different:
Margins
Prices
Conversion rates
Customer profiles
Purchase cycles
Stock levels
Creative requirements
Landing pages
Promotional priorities
If all products share one structure without control, Meta may favour the easiest product to sell rather than the product the business needs the most to grow.
The separation does not always need to happen at the campaign level.
Depending on the account, it may be handled through ad sets, catalogue product sets, creative groups, budget limits, or separate campaigns.
The important point is that the account should allow product-level decisions.
A structure that reports a strong overall ROAS while hiding poor category performance is not giving the business enough clarity.
Prospecting and remarketing do not need an oversized funnel
The traditional TOF, MOF, and BOF structure divided customers into awareness, consideration, and conversion campaigns.
The logic is understandable. Customer journeys contain different levels of intent.
The problem is that Meta does not see the funnel as three clean boxes.
People move between platforms, devices, pages, ads, and products. Someone may discover a brand and purchase on the same day. Another person may view several ads before returning weeks later.
Modern Meta delivery already uses many of these behavioural signals when deciding who may respond to an ad.
This reduces the need to create several small campaigns for every theoretical stage of the funnel.
Remarketing can still have a separate role, particularly when it uses a different offer, message, product set, or budget objective.
But it should not exist only because every account template contains a remarketing campaign.
Meta can report strong remarketing results by reaching people who were already close to purchasing. If too much budget is protected for those users, the account may appear efficient without creating enough new demand.
A simpler structure often gives prospecting more room while using remarketing only where it adds a genuinely different message or commercial role.
Signs that an account is too fragmented
An account may be overbuilt when:
Many campaigns receive very little daily spend
Several ad sets have the same objective and similar creatives
Most ad sets produce too few purchases for useful evaluation
New campaigns are created for every creative test
Budgets are moved manually almost every day
The team cannot clearly explain what each campaign is testing
Reporting focuses on individual segments, while the business result remains unclear
Fragmentation creates activity but not necessarily learning.
Signs that an account is too consolidated
An account may be oversimplified when:
Different markets share a budget despite very different economics
Meta directs most of the spend towards one product category
High-margin and low-margin products are judged together
Priority products receive almost no delivery
Testing cannot be separated from scaling
New and existing customer results are blended despite different goals
The overall result hides important product or market problems
Consolidation should improve clarity and learning.
If it removes both, it has gone too far.
A strong account changes with the business
There is no permanent Meta Ads structure.
The right setup can change as the daily budget grows, new products are launched, creative production increases, or the business enters new markets.
Meta's delivery systems and recommended practices change as well. The account should be reviewed as the platform evolves rather than preserved because it once worked.
A smaller store may begin with one CBO campaign and several clearly defined creative or product ad sets.
As the account grows, it may introduce controlled ABO tests, separate markets, new-customer campaigns, catalogue structures, or independent scaling campaigns.
The structure becomes more complex only when the business earns the need for that complexity.
Every new campaign or ad set should provide one of three things:
Better learning
Better control
Better reporting
If it provides none of them, it probably does not need to exist.
Give Meta freedom without giving up direction
The best Meta Ads account structure gives the delivery system enough freedom to learn while preserving human control over decisions that require full business context.
Meta can allocate budget, identify potential buyers, and adjust delivery faster than a campaign manager could do manually.
It cannot decide which products matter most to the business, which customers are most valuable, how much margin must be protected, or whether short-term performance supports the wider growth plan.
That is why account structure still matters.
It defines where Meta has freedom, where the business needs control, and how clearly the results can be understood.
At Creative Brackets, we build Meta Ads accounts as connected performance systems. Campaign structure, creative testing, tracking, budget allocation, product economics, and the post-click experience need to work together. That approach reflects how we manage Meta Ads for profitable eCommerce growth, with clean learning and clear guardrails rather than activity for its own sake.
If your account contains many campaigns but still struggles to learn, test, or scale consistently, the answer may not be another audience or another ad set.
It may be a clearer structure with a reason behind every part.