Creatives

What ads do you want to use to recruit respondents to your study? This is what we need to define with “Creatives”.

You first need to create what we call “template ads.” To create any ad in Facebook, you first need to create a campaign, and we require that all template ads are in the same campaign, which we can also call a “template campaign”. Template campaigns, and template ads, are never actually run. Virtual Lab uses them as “templates” to build its own campaigns and ads, which it will manage.

Some parts of the template ads are ignored and some are used. The following parts of the ad will be ignored:

• Ad name.
• Anything related to a messenger destinations, including “Message template.”
• Anything related to destination URLs, including URL parameters.
• Tracking.

The parts that will be used are:

• Identity: Facebook Page and/or Instagram account.
• Ad setup: Using an existing post or creating new material.
• Ad creative: The images and/or videos you choose, along with any optimizations. Also, the Primary text, Headline, Description, and Call to Action.

By selecting a template campaign, you can then add as many “creatives” as you wish, selecting different template ads from the template campaign, and giving each a name which is used to refer to them in other configuration screens.

Each creative also needs to be linked to a particular “destination”. If you only have one destination (simple recruitment or pipeline experiment), they will all link to the same destination. If you have multiple destinations (Destination Experiment), then you need to specify different creative for each destination.