Social media advertising

Facebook and Instagram ads are managed from one place, Meta Ads Manager, and the same campaign can run on both at once. What makes Estonia different is the size of the market. If you pick narrow interest targeting and add age and city limits, so few people remain that the same users see the ad several times within a week. That is why broader targeting, where the ad itself does the selecting, usually works better here.

Meta's algorithm needs results to learn from: its own guidance is about 50 optimisation events per week for each ad set. A small budget will not produce that many purchases. In that case it makes sense to keep the money in one or two ad sets instead of splitting it across ten, and where needed to optimise for a more frequent event, such as add to cart or opening the enquiry form.

Language is a separate question in Estonia, because more than a quarter of residents speak Russian as their first language. We build Estonian and Russian ads separately, and each leads to a landing page in the same language. English ads make sense when you sell to expats, tourists or customers abroad. Mixing languages in one ad gives the impression that neither audience was really considered.

Meta has automated targeting settings year after year, and fewer manual controls remain. Who sees the ad and who stops scrolling is decided more and more by the ad itself: the image, the video and the first line. When results are weak on the same budget, the cause is more often the creative than the audience settings.

With video, the first couple of seconds decide. Reels and Stories placements need vertical 9:16, while the feed works with square or 4:5. Many people watch without sound, so the message and subtitles have to be readable on screen. Expensive production is not always needed: a real product, a real employee or a customer's experience filmed on a phone often performs better than a polished commercial.

In a small market ads wear out fast, because the same person sees them repeatedly. So in the Growth package we produce 3-5 new variants every month and replace the ones whose results decline. From you we need raw material: product photos, short clips of the work in progress, customer feedback. Larger video production is a separate service.

Retargeting shows ads to people who have already come across you: visited the website, added a product to the cart, watched a video or interacted with your Instagram account. They already know you, so the offer can be more specific than for a cold audience. For this to work, the Meta Pixel and Conversions API must be running on the site with events set up correctly.

In Estonia the retargeting audience is usually small. If a couple of thousand people visit the site each month, there is no point giving it a large share of the budget, because the same person would see the ad far too often. We keep the retargeting budget small, watch frequency and exclude those who have already bought or sent an enquiry.

The Pixel may collect data only after a visitor has accepted cookies. A customer list can be used as an audience only if you have a valid basis for it under data protection rules. These limits shrink the audience, but they have to be dealt with at setup, not after the first complaint.

Social ads reach people who are not looking for anything at that moment. They fit when the product is new and nobody knows to search for it yet, when the product is visual, when the buying decision is quick and the amount small, or when you are promoting an event. They also suit local businesses such as a restaurant, a salon or a gym that needs to reach people in one city or district.

Search ads are better when the need arises suddenly and the person goes to Google for a solution: a plumber, roadside help, an accountant, a translation agency. Nobody orders drain unblocking because they saw a nice ad on Instagram. For a narrow B2B service, Google Ads or LinkedIn is often the more sensible choice than Facebook.

The channels often work together. Someone sees an ad on social media, does not click, and later searches for the company name on Google. In the report it looks like the credit belongs to search or a direct visit. So we do not judge social ads by the last click alone. We also look at how brand searches and the total number of enquiries change.