Paid Social Advertising
Meta advertising (Facebook and Instagram) is the most powerful paid acquisition channel for most B2C and many B2B products. This course teaches you how it actually works — the auction, the targeting, the creative, and the scaling — so you can run profitable campaigns without an agency.
What you'll learn
Course outline
Free — no account needed
How Facebook and Instagram Ads Actually Work
The auction, the algorithm, and the targeting logic that determines who sees your ad and at what price
Campaign Structure — Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads
How to organise your Meta account so it is easy to optimise and scale
Audience Targeting — Custom Audiences and Lookalikes
Find your customers on Facebook and Instagram using the targeting that actually works in 2026
Full course — $59 one-time
Creative That Converts — Formats, Hooks, and Copy
The ad creative principles that stop the scroll and drive people to click
Running Your First Campaign — Setup to Launch
Step-by-step: build, review, and launch a profitable Meta campaign from scratch
Reading the Data — What to Optimise and When
The metrics that tell you whether your campaign is working — and the ones that lie
Retargeting — Converting People Who Already Know You
Build a retargeting system that turns website visitors into customers at 3-5x the efficiency of cold traffic
Scaling — Budget, Creative Refresh, and CBO
How to increase spend without destroying the performance you built
Get the full course
8 lessons — from your first Meta campaign to retargeting and scaling profitable ads.
Written by the RadarTrek editorial team · Reviewed June 2026
About this course
Paid social advertising — running ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn — is one of the most scalable customer acquisition channels when the fundamentals are right: compelling creative, sharp audience targeting, and offers that convert. Learning paid social means understanding the ad platforms' auction mechanics, how to structure campaigns for learning and optimisation, creative best practices for each platform, and how to read the data and make decisions that improve ROAS over time.
Paid social skills are valuable for performance marketers, founders running their own campaigns, and agency professionals managing client accounts. After this course you will be able to set up and structure campaigns in Meta Ads Manager, create and test creative assets systematically, implement the Meta Pixel for conversion tracking, scale winning ad sets profitably, and understand the fundamentals that transfer to other paid social platforms.
Frequently asked questions
Which platform should I start with — Meta, TikTok, or LinkedIn?
For B2C products targeting consumers, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) is the most versatile starting point — the largest user base, the most mature optimisation algorithms, and the best targeting options. TikTok is excellent for consumer products with visual appeal, particularly for under-35 audiences. LinkedIn is the right choice for B2B products targeting professionals by job title, company, or industry. Start with one platform, learn it deeply, and expand once you have a profitable base.
What is ROAS and what should I aim for?
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) measures revenue generated per dollar spent on ads. A ROAS of 3x means you generated $3 for every $1 spent. What constitutes a good ROAS depends on your margins — a high-margin digital product might be profitable at 2x, while a low-margin physical product might need 5x+. Focus on contribution margin per acquisition rather than ROAS in isolation.
What is a creative testing framework?
Creative testing means systematically varying your ad creative to identify what resonates with your audience. A basic framework: isolate one variable at a time, run tests until you have sufficient impressions (typically 2000–5000 per creative), declare a winner based on your primary metric, and replace the loser with a new challenger. Continuous creative testing prevents ad fatigue and improves performance over time.
How much budget do I need to run paid social ads?
The minimum viable budget for meaningful learning is typically $50–$100/day, or $1500–$3000/month. Below this threshold, the platform's machine learning cannot gather enough conversion data to optimise effectively. The initial learning phase (typically 50 conversions per ad set) requires spending enough to generate those conversions in a reasonable timeframe.
What is audience targeting and what works best?
Meta's algorithm has become so good at finding buyers that broad targeting often outperforms narrow interest targeting, especially with conversion-optimised campaigns. Highest-value targeting: lookalike audiences (Meta finds users similar to your existing customers), retargeting (users who visited your website), and customer list uploads (existing customers for exclusion or lookalike seeding). Interest targeting is a reasonable starting point but should be tested against broad targeting.