meta-ads

Meta Ads

Strategic guide for creating and managing Meta advertising campaigns, analyzing performance, and building dashboards from cached data. Default to Advantage+ unless the user explicitly requests manual control.

Out of scope — defer to other skills

Requirements

• Hyper MCP installed and connected. https://app.hyperfx.ai/mcp
• Meta Business integration connected (Facebook + Instagram, with at least one ad account and one Page) at https://app.hyperfx.ai/apps.
• Firecrawl integration connected for site research and screenshot grounding (discovery phase).

If meta_ads_adaccount_list is not in the tool list, stop and tell the user to enable Hyper MCP and connect Meta Business.

If you suspect a connection issue (missing ad accounts, page publishing failures, or permission errors), call meta_ads_health_check() and report the diagnostics before proceeding.

Tool names

Use the exact tool name from your connected tool list. Canonical names are meta_ads_* (listed below). On Hyper platform chat, legacy meta_business_* names (e.g. meta_business_list_ad_accounts) and the retired plural names (e.g. meta_ads_campaigns_create) resolve to the same tools via aliases — if a call fails with "tool not found", search the live catalog for the canonical name.

CLI users: translate tool names with the hyper-cli skill (hyperai search "<tool name>").

Rules that must never be forgotten

BUDGETS IN CENTS: $20.00 = 2000. $5.50 = 550. $100 = 10000. Never pass dollar amounts directly.

ACTIVATE, DON'T UPDATE: Use meta_ads_campaigns_activate(campaign_id) to go live. Never meta_ads_campaign_update(status="ACTIVE") — that silently leaves ad sets and ads PAUSED so nothing serves.

ALWAYS START PAUSED: Create campaigns with status="PAUSED". Never launch live without user review.

BUILD STEP BY STEP: Create campaigns with the individual tools — meta_ads_campaign_create → meta_ads_adset_create → meta_ads_creative_create → meta_ads_ad_create, capturing each id from the previous response. (The old blueprint tools were removed.) The tools validate requests before sending — campaign objective rules, bid-strategy/bid-amount pairing, billing-event/optimization-goal compatibility, budget coherence — but objective-specific ad-set fields (optimization_goal, promoted_object) are YOUR responsibility: match them to the campaign objective using the reference file for the campaign type.

REGULATED ADVERTISERS NEED `special_ad_categories`: For gambling, financial, housing, employment, credit, or political advertisers, declare the category on meta_ads_campaign_create (e.g. special_ad_categories=["ONLINE_GAMBLING_AND_GAMING"]).

FIXED RUN WINDOWS GO ON THE AD SET: When the user gives a run duration or dates ("run it for 7 days", "through end of month"), set start_time AND end_time (ISO 8601) on meta_ads_ad_sets_create. A daily-budget ad set with no end_time runs continuously until manually paused — the requested window is silently lost.

GROUND COPY IN THE DESTINATION PAGE (RESEARCH FIRST): When the brief centers on a URL ("build a campaign for https://..."), fetch that page FIRST (web_pages_fetch) — before discovery and before writing any copy — and ground ad copy in what the page actually says (product name, value props, offer). Never invent copy for a page you have not read; even when the user supplies exact copy or headlines, fetch the page to verify the destination matches the offer.

EU-TARGETED AD SETS NEED DSA FIELDS: If an ad set targets the EU, set dsa_beneficiary and dsa_payor on meta_ads_ad_sets_create (who benefits from / pays for the ad) — required under the EU Digital Services Act, or delivery is restricted.

UTMs ON EVERY DESTINATION AD (`url_tags`): Set url_tags (UTM params, e.g. utm_source=meta&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=...) on every creative that drives to a destination — downstream measurement (e.g. AppsFlyer + a data warehouse) stitches on these, so an ad without UTMs is effectively unmeasurable. Use the advertiser's canonical template; if you don't have one, ask rather than ship untracked.

See references/constraints.md for the full constraint set.

All reference files live in `references/`. Read them at references/<file> (e.g. references/discovery.md). They are not in the same directory as this SKILL.md.

Core process

Every task follows this sequence. Do not skip steps.

1. Identify the goal — creation, analysis, or both?
2. Check the routing table and read the referenced files before calling any tools
3. Make a written plan — state campaign type, budget in cents, optimization goal, and sequence of steps; show it before acting
4. Execute step by step, re-checking references/constraints.md at each creation step
5. Show ad previews before activation
6. Activate only when the user approves using meta_ads_campaigns_activate()

Automated / scheduled runs: If there is no user present to interact with (e.g. a scheduled task), skip steps 3 and 6. Do not write a plan and wait for confirmation — proceed directly. Do not activate unless activation was explicitly included in the task instructions.

Routing table

Worked examples

• Full sales campaign (ecommerce, Advantage+, step-by-step): references/examples/sales-ecommerce.md
• Full leads campaign (B2B SaaS, website pixel, step-by-step): references/examples/leads-form.md