Facebook campaigns have three different components that come into play when determining the campaign’s results and how much they cost:
Campaign objective
The objective of a campaign should be aligned with your business goal, and the reason you are advertising on Facebook. For example, a campaign objective could be driving awareness of your business, or increasing conversions on your website. When you create a new campaign in AdEspresso, the campaign type you select determines your objective. Campaign objective cannot be modified once a campaign is published.
More information
Optimization goal
This is the measurable result you want to drive with your ads, or the action that Facebook’s algorithm will help you achieve by showing your ads to the people who are most likely to take that action. Your budget will be optimized to get you the best performance from your ads based on your optimization goal. A common optimization is for Link clicks, which means your ads will be shown to people who are more likely to click. Select what your campaign is optimized for in the Budget & Bidding step (4) of campaign creation.
Billing event
This is the action that you pay for during a running campaign. The most common billing event is impressions but, depending on the campaign objective and optimization, can sometimes be customized, for example to link clicks or app installs. Select your campaign's billing event in the Budget & Bidding step (4) of campaign creation.
If you decide to pay for actions like installs, they will typically be more expensive than paying for impressions, because you are paying only when you get an install, regardless of the number of impressions it takes to get one. Facebook is giving you impressions without potentially being paid if you don’t get any installs/billing events, so they require a higher bid. If you pay for impressions, on the other hand, you are paying Facebook regardless of whether you get any installs, so Facebook is more likely to sell top spots to a lower bid in ad auctions.
These examples are the most common combinations of campaign objectives, optimizations, and billing events:
Objective: Website conversion
Optimization: Link clicks
Billing event: Link clicks
Objective: Website conversion
Optimization: Page engagement
Billing event: Impressions
Objective: Website conversion
Optimization: Link clicks
Billing event: Impressions
The Summary tab of each running campaign indicates what the objective, optimization, main conversion goal, and billing event is for the campaign.