Boosting Posts vs. Using Facebook Ad Manager: Which one is better?
Most business owners would easily agree that with over 2.8 billion active monthly users, Facebook provides invaluable access to a vast and diverse audience for businesses to connect with their potential customers.
One might even go so far as to say - if you can't find your ideal customer on Facebook, they don't exist!
For those business owners who recognize the value of advertising on Facebook, they eventually come to ask the question
Should I Boost a post or use Facebook Ad Manager? Is there really a difference? If so, which one is better?
In this article, we'll explore both methods of advertising on Facebook, their unique, defining features, and hopefully we'll help to answer the question of whether it's better to advertise on Facebook by Boosting a Post or using Facebook Ad Manager.
Topics covered in this article
Is there a difference between boosting a post and using Facebook Ad Manger?
The simple answer; yes.
Boosting a Post and Facebook Ads Manager are both ways that advertisers can access Meta's tools in order to advertise their business to Meta's audience. That includes audiences on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
For advertisers, tools like this can help them to effectively take advantage of the literal billions of people who use Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp (collectively the Meta suite) everyday.
To put things into perspective, access to Meta's audience is an insane advantage. Facebook alone has over 3-billion monthly active users (MAU)! That's more than other other social media platform (statista, 2023). WhatsApp and Instagram both have over 2-billion MAU active users, respectively, and Facebook Messenger which has been a separate application from the Facebook app since 2014, has over 1-million MAU.
As many know, organic posting on Social Media is a great practice, but the potential reach of a post from your Facebook or Instagram page doesn't have anywhere near the same potential reach as paying for that access through ads can provide.
With that said, let's take a closer look at some similarities and differences between advertising by using the Boost Post feature and using Facebook Ads Manager.
What is Boosting a Post on Facebook?
Even if you've never run an ad on Facebook, if you have a business or brand page, you've seen the option to boost a post.
This blue "Boost Post" button is located below each post on your feed as a Call to Action.
If you click this button, you'll have the opportunity to increase the reach of your post to Meta's entire audience - that includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
Welcome to the world of advertising.
What is Facebook Ads Manager?
Facebook Ads Manager is a tool that, similar to boosting a post, will allow you to advertise your business services on Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp).
The most marked difference between Boosting a Post and using Facebook Ads Manager is that Facebook Ads Manager is an entire backend application, available only to advertisers. Unlike the Boost Post feature which is easily accessible through your business page on Facebook.com, to access Facebook Ads Manager, you'll need to go through the Meta business suite to setup an account.
Ads Manager provides a set of robust tools designed for businesses of all sizes to customize their advertising on all Meta platforms.
Because it's a separate application, there's a bit of a learning curve. This is just one of the many differences.
In both instances, you are paying money to Facebook (Meta) to show your ad on their platform.
For the sake of simplicity, we'll keep our analysis today to the following categories;
​ | Boosted Posts | Ads Manager |
Ad Objectives | By default your objective is Traffic targeting, link clicks | You have 6 options for advertising objectives; awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion, and sales. |
Ad Format | Limited to image, video, and carousel ads | Offers more creative slideshow ads, canvas ads, and interactive ad formats. |
Ad Management | You’ll need an ad account to boost posts | You’ll need an ad account run ads in ads manager |
Budget | Choose a daily budget and start/end dates for your ads | Choose either a daily or lifetime budget for your ads |
Targeting | Basic demographic targeting; gender, location, age, interest targeting | Demographic targeting + custom lists, retargeting website/page visitors, |
Reporting | Primary metrics are in ‘Insights’ in Page Manager | View results directly in ads manager - per campaign, per audience, and per ad. You can also export custom reports. |
Ad Objectives & Goal Setting
The first difference you'll notice are the choices available to you for advertising objectives.
An advertising objective is self explanatory enough - why are you running ads? Where do you want users to go and what do you want them to do?
Ad Objectives & Goal Setting with Boosted Posts
With Boosting a Post, the "Objective" is called a "Goal". Despite the different name, they are the same thing.
Unlike, with Facebook Ads Manager, your options here are limited to five; Get more messages, get more engagement, get more leads, and get more site visitors. You're even provided with the option of allowing Meta to automatically choose a goal for you.
Ad Objectives & Goal Setting with Facebook Ads Manager
With Facebook Ads Manager, you're able to choose from 6 advertising or Campaign Objectives. If you hover of each choice, you'll see a short explanation for the possible application or use-case of each type;
Awareness: Reach (reach as many on the platform as possible), Brand awareness, video views, store location awareness
Traffic: Link clicks, landing page views, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, or calls
Engagement: Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp engagement, video views, post engagement, conversions, or calls
Leads: instant forms, Messenger and Instagram direct messages, website conversions (a lead form on your website), or calls
App Promotion: app installs or other app events
Sales: conversions, catalog sales, calls, or sales through Messenger, Instagram shop, or WhatsApp
Additionally, once you choose a Campaign Objective, more specific 'sub-objectives' or 'conversion locations' open up to you. These are additional options for how you want to reach your main Campaign Objective.
For example, if we choose the 'Leads' campaign objective, we have further options for getting leads through a website form, a Facebook Instant form (a form on Facebook), through Messenger, through Instagram direct message, by calls, or through your app.
You can see how for many use-cases, using Ads Manger would allow for greater control and customization of your advertising campaign.
Ad Management
Ad Management with Facebook Ads Manager
In Ads Manager, the first step after choosing your objective is the option to name your campaign.
This option to provide a unique name for your campaign, audience, and ad is not an option available to those Boosting posts. However, when you're running multiple campaigns with ads for different objectives to different products or locations, the simple option to name and organize your ads is invaluable.
Additionally, Ads Manager has tools that will help you to manage your ads - such the 'rules' tool which allows you to set parameters based on spend, cost-per-action, and
Ad Management when Boosting a Post
Once you boost a post, you can manage that boosted post through 'Ad Center'. You can reach Ad Center directly through your Facebook Business page.
Here, you can stop your ad (boosted post) from running, edit the settings of your boost, and view basic metrics for your ads up to 90-days: reach, post engagements, link clicks, and messages started.
Targeting
This is probably where the two methods differ the most - your ability to choose your target audience.
Again, Facebook's most valuable asset is their audience. It's the access to their audience that they "sell" to advertisers and so the ability to choose which portion of the 3-billion user audience you're advertising to is potentially invaluable.
With boosted posts, you do have basic demographic targeting options; where they are, their gender, their age, and basic interest targeting (for example, people who have shown interest in 'Marketing').
These options are enough for some advertisers, but for people who want to make Facebook advertising an essential part of their funnel or for those spending hundreds of dollars on Facebook, you're simply wasting or at the very least inefficiently using your advertising budget by not taking advantage of Facebook's advanced targeting options.
Some of these advanced targeting options include;
All people who have visited your website
People who have visited specific pages on your site (your schedule page or your main product page)
People who have visited your product page + added an item to your cart + have not completed their purchase
People who have viewed more than 3 seconds of your promoted video AND that have visited any page on your website
It's not simply targeting specific 'groups' of people, but layering that targeting as well that will supercharge your advertising.
Of course, before you take advantage of any type of targeting, make sure that your Facebook Pixel is installed on your site and that Facebook's Conversions API is properly configured.
Reporting
For Boosted posts, reporting on results for your ads can be found in the 'Ad Center' tab, accessible directly through your page.
Here's you'll find basic metrics on the performance of your boosted post like amount spent, reach, post engagements, and link clicks.
Reporting in Ads Manager has 2 main locations: one in the Ads manager dashboard where you can view live metrics pertaining to the performance of your ads. The option for metrics to view here are endless and as a convenience, Facebook has several preset 'views' you can choose from.
Ad Placement Options
Where your ad will appear is an important consideration when running an ad on social media. Beyond just "Facebook or Instagram" there are different places where ads are eligible to show to users outside of the newsfeed.
The Ad placement options you'll find with Boosted Posts are simple; you have the option of automatic placements with 'Advantage + Placements" or to choose between the following 3 options: Facebook (all), Instagram (all), and/or Messenger (all).
If you've never ran ads on Ads Manager, you might be wondering what else there could be [remove this].
With Ads Manager, your options for Placements are Vast. For the sake of brevity, we'll just cover a few here. You can view all available placement options in this guide.
Automatic placements are an option in Ads Manager as well.
However, if you choose the option for Manual placements, you'll see the vast amount of options for ad locations you have available to you.
First, you can control whether to show your ads on Desktop or Mobile devices
Even though Mobile seems like the 'obvious' choice, but a recent study from Backlinko found that only around 81% of Facebook users access the platform through mobile only.
The remaining 20% or so access the platform either through both mobile and desktop or through desktop alone.
If you take advantage of Facebook's reporting tool, which will tell you who and how users interact with your ads, you may find that users in your specific audience access the platform through mobile at a higher rate.
In either case, it's recommended that you either choose automatic placements to start or entire platforms with all placements - for example, you might choose to advertise on Facebook only (no Instagram) with all placements.
Once you choose your device type, you can then choose specific platforms (Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger) and locations on each respective platform where you'd like your ads to show.
You can see that locations include feeds, stories & reels, instream video ads, search results, messages, and apps & sites. Within each placement option are additional options for customizing your ads placement.
Feeds
stories/reels
in stream video ads
Search Results
Messages
apps & sites
One quick note - actual placement options may vary depending on your chosen campaign objective and conversion type.
Creative Formatting & Customization
Finally, we'll take a look at options for Ad Formatting between Boosting a post vs. using Ads Manager.
Remember that when boosting a post, you are simply taking a regular post and pushing it out to Facebook's audience.
Your creative options are limited to those used with Facebook posts;
Allows for more creative customization, such as adding multiple images or videos in a single ad, testing different ad variations, and optimizing creative elements for better performance. carousel ads, slideshow ads, and interactive ad formats, compared to the limited options in boosted posts.
Scaling
This refers to the ability to do more advertising. I'll describe how the process for creating ads, duplicating, and
Scaling here, refers to the ability to test at a large scale and to increase, quickly, on what's working.
Unless, you currently have a consistent advertising strategy, the concept of testing may not be one you're completely familiar with. Many questions in advertising can be answered through testing - which creative type will work best? Which of these versions of copy will resonate best with my audience and get me the best results?
Research is important, but ultimately the market (or in this case, the audience) determines what it likes through it's actions (likes, engagements, clicks, and comments).
Thus, testing is important and being able to quickly and efficiently test is essential.
With Boosted Posts, you create posts one by one and then set settings for your 'boost' individually as well.
The process is far from efficient from the perspective of testing several variables across many different ads.
Ads Manager, however, is built for large scale actions. It's easier to bulk-create ads and you can even edit existing ads in bulk as well.
So, should you Boost Your Posts or Use Facebook Ads Manager?
Ultimately, there is no "wrong" answer. The method you choose to advertise on Meta will be up to you.
Generally, if you're planning to make Facebook and Instagram a large part of your advertising strategy, you'll benefit greatly from the tools and interface offered by Ads Manager.
If Facebook ads aren't a large part of your strategy, if you're just testing things out, if you don't see a need to take advantage of Facebooks' audience tools and targeting options - then Boosting a Post will be fine enough.
Are running ads on Facebook even worth it? Do Facebook Ads still work?
If you're familiar at all with Facebook, then you know that the majority of their revenue comes from advertisers.
Facebook has almost 3 billion monthly active users which makes it, still, the most popular social media platform - yes, even more so than Tiktok!
That 3-billion users only includes Facebook - not other Meta platforms, which you'll also be able to advertise on.
Because of their large audience, advertisers will pay a lot of money for the opportunity to show their ads on the platform.
In 2022, Advertisers spent $xx to advertise on Facebook. Money leaves a clue for success.
Despite your mother's advice to not jump off of bridges with your friends, advertising online is different.
If people are spending money there, trust that there is opportunity present and you need to get on it or risk missing out!
You can read more on the current state of Facebook Ads here. There, we'll go in depth to cover common questions like, Are Facebook Ads dead in 2024? Do Facebook ads still work? And, How much do I have to spend to get results with Facebook Ads?
If you're on the fence and not sure how Facebook ads would fit into a marketing strategy for your business, maybe you should start with a marketing audit.
A marketing audit will take a look at your current strategy, your competitors, and the online space for your industry.
With the findings from the audit, you'll have the information that you needin order to craft an effective, multi-patform, omnipresent strategy. You can learn more about the marketing audits offered by Datafyix here.