I spent 6+ years as an engineer at Meta. I’m seeing a lot of recycled advice on campaign structure that doesn’t hold up. Here’s what’s actually working right now:
The Structure Breakdown
🔹 Level 1: Server Signal Collection
I'm a huge advocate of having a combination of paid and email marketing. When they work in tandem, you get the highest quality signals that can feed into each other for not only retargeting, but also prospecting. Capturing intent, aka Leads from email popup opt-ins (not just purchases) via server-side events gives you a signal-weighting advantage inside Meta’s system, often 3x more weight than pixel-only.
🔹 Level 2: Signal Enhancement
During busy times, Meta may rebuild audience models every 6-8 hours, not every 24-48. You must feed consistent, granular signals: views, adds to cart, initiated checkouts, via server-side integration. This is where you give the algorithm its “brain food.”
🔹 Level 3: Conversion Drive
A rule of thumb for ad creative: if you’ve spent $500 or 5-6x AOV (whichever number is higher) and haven’t driven more than a single conversion, the ad is not working for now.
You probably want to dedicate enough budget to run ~10 rounds of testing, keeping in mind the minimum daily spend guidelines from the prior section.
Why Size Matters (2-3x your AOV/day min)
Lower budgets don’t give Meta enough volume to learn. At a minimum, you need to set your daily budget to match your AOV. Ideally, you’d set the budget to 2-3x your AOV.
Results We See
- $500/day account → 4.8× ROAS with first-party focus and server-side only
- BFCM campaigns → 3-4× better vs. pixel-only setups
Success is straightforward when you pair the diamond structure with first-party, server-side data.
Implementation Checklist
- Real-time API integration
- Server-side requests for every key event
- Value‐based optimization
- Customizable server events
- Custom server events for New Customer/Return Customer
Conclusion:
Forget outdated funnels. Stop relying on pixel-only data. In 2025, strong first-party infrastructure + diamond campaign structure is your winning combo.