Meta Ads: Targeting and Creative Basics That Actually Matter

Meta Ads gives you a lot of targeting levers, but the ones that matter most for a small practice budget are simpler than they look.

Audience definition should start broad enough for the algorithm to learn, then narrow based on what the data shows — not the other way around. Creative matters just as much as targeting: a scroll-stopping first frame and a clear, honest message outperform clever copy on its own.

Tracking setup (pixel, events) has to be right before any of the rest of it means anything.