Meta ads launch checklist for ecommerce

Work through this before the first Meta ad set leaves draft, and again whenever a store rebuilds its ad account. Most of the difficulty sits in the measurement layer and the catalogue rather than in the campaign settings, so the order matters: verify the domain, get events flowing from both the browser and the server, connect the catalogue, then build the campaign and the creative around them.

Tracking and data foundations

Verify the store domain in the business account before building anything.Why: Domain verification is what lets you control event priority and keeps ownership of the domain with your business.How: Add the DNS record or meta tag for the root domain, verify it in the brand safety settings, and confirm the verified status before creating events.
Install the browser pixel and the server side conversions API for the same events.Why: Browser only tracking loses events to blockers and short cookie windows, especially on mobile devices.How: Use the store platform integration for the server connection, send matching event names, and pass a shared event id so the two are deduplicated.
Set the eight event priority order with purchase at the top.Why: Aggregated event measurement only reports the highest priority event a person triggers, so the order changes your numbers.How: Open the events manager, rank purchase first, then initiate checkout, add to cart and view content, and save the order before any campaign runs.
Pass hashed customer details alongside the purchase event.Why: Better matching means more real orders are attributed and the delivery model learns from a larger sample.How: Switch on the advanced matching fields in the platform integration so email, phone and postcode are hashed in the browser before they are sent.

Catalogue and product sets

Connect the product catalogue and compare its item count with the store.Why: Dynamic ads can only show items that exist, are approved and are marked in stock in the catalogue.How: Link the catalogue through the store platform app, run the catalogue diagnostics, and compare the approved item count with your published product count.
Create product sets for the products you actually want to push.Why: A single catalogue wide set gives delivery no way to favour the products that are worth selling.How: Build sets by margin band, best sellers and new arrivals using catalogue filters, and name each set so anyone can tell what is inside it.
Map a dedicated feed field for any overlay text on dynamic ads.Why: Overlay text pulled from a stale field puts the wrong price or claim on a live ad without anyone noticing.How: Map a separate field for badge text, keep it empty outside promotions, and check the rendered ad preview after every catalogue sync.

Campaign build

Optimise the first campaign for purchase rather than add to cart.Why: Optimising for an upstream event buys people who browse instead of people who complete an order.How: Choose the sales objective and the purchase conversion event, and fall back to add to cart only if the account records very few weekly purchases.
Exclude recent purchasers from every prospecting audience.Why: Paying to reach someone who bought yesterday spends prospecting budget on an existing customer.How: Build a customer list or site event audience of buyers from the last thirty days, and add it as an exclusion on each prospecting ad set.
Keep the number of ad sets low enough for each to leave learning.Why: Splitting one budget across many ad sets means none of them gathers enough conversions to stabilise.How: Start with one or two ad sets, hold the budget at campaign level, and add ad sets only when weekly purchase volume can support them.
Set a spend limit that matches what the warehouse can pack.Why: Fulfilment and stock, not the ad account, decide how quickly a store can safely grow its order volume.How: Agree a daily order ceiling with whoever packs the orders, convert it to spend at your current cost per order, and set the account limit there.

Creative

Launch with three genuinely different concepts, not three colour variants.Why: Testing near identical assets tells you nothing about which message persuades people to buy.How: Build one product demonstration, one customer story and one problem led concept, each with its own hook in the first two seconds.
Produce every ad in a vertical format for feeds and stories.Why: Most impressions are served on a phone held upright, and cropped landscape assets lose the message.How: Export a four by five and a nine by sixteen version of each concept, keeping text away from the top and bottom safe zones.
Put the product and the reason to buy in the first line of primary text.Why: Primary text is truncated on mobile and the second sentence is often never read at all.How: Open with the product and its benefit, keep that line short enough to survive truncation, and put the detail after the more link.
Check every claim against advertising policy before uploading.Why: A rejected ad slows a new account's launch, and repeated rejections affect the standing of the whole account.How: Remove before and after imagery, personal attribute language and health claims, and read the policy pages for your product category first.

The first two weeks

Leave budgets untouched while ad sets are still in learning.Why: Every budget edit resets learning, and each reset costs another run of expensive early impressions.How: Diary a review for the end of the second week, and in the meantime switch off only ads with clear policy or delivery problems.
Compare in platform purchases with store orders each week.Why: Attributed conversions and real orders always differ, and you need the size of that gap before making budget calls.How: Export store orders for the week, compare them with reported purchases over the same window, and record the ratio so the trend is visible.
Watch frequency on prospecting audiences and refresh before fatigue.Why: Rising frequency with falling click through is the clearest signal that the creative has been seen enough.How: Add frequency to the reporting columns, review it weekly, and have the next concept ready to publish before the current one tires.

Questions

Yes. Running both with a shared event id matches more orders than either alone, and the browser event still carries information the server call cannot see.

Enough that delivery has recent examples to learn from. If weekly purchases are in single figures, consolidate ad sets rather than splitting the same budget further.

Start broad with firm exclusions and let the creative do the targeting. Interest stacks narrow delivery without telling you whether the message itself worked.

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Meta ads launch checklist for ecommerce

Tracking and data foundations

Catalogue and product sets

Campaign build

Creative

The first two weeks

Questions

Do I still need the pixel if I have the conversions API?

How many purchases does an ad set need each week?

Should I start broad or with interest targeting?

Related

Your plan is free.