How to Link an Ad Account to Facebook Business Manager

We’re almost there, I promise!

If you’ve followed the steps in the previous two posts, you should now have boosted a post from your page and set up your Facebook business manager. 

That means there’s only one thing left to do, and this step is super easy: link an ad account to Facebook business manager. Just to be clear (because this is an area where Facebook has made it confusing): your ad account is not the same as your page.

Your ad manager is just a small part of the total business manager, where you can do more than merely run ads, but it is a crucial part for our purposes. You should only have one business manager (you can’t set up more than one on the same account anyway), but you can have more than one ad manager, for example if you also manage ads for others. For most of us, we’ll have one business manager and one ad account (and you can link multiple pages to that one ad account in case you have separate pages for separate pen names, for example).

You may have already done this step after setting up your business manager because Facebook prompts you to link it when you set that up, but in case you haven’t, this is the last step to get all ready to run Facebook ads. I’ll show you how to check if your set up is correct.

GO TO YOUR FACEBOOK BUSINESS MANAGER

There are multiple ways to get to your business manager, but I find this the easiest (this is on desktop). Click on the little arrow at the top of your screen, then select “Business Manager” from the drop down menu.

SELECT BUSINESS SETTINGS

Once you’re in your business manager, you should see this menu on the left hand side. Now, Facebook constantly makes changes to this layout, which can be super frustrating, but this is what it looks like now. 

If you click on the little dots, you’ll see the whole menu, but for now, we only need Business Settings.

 

You’ll have to make some choices next, but we’re gonna walk through them all. 

CHECK IF YOUR AD ACCOUNT IS ALREADY LINKED

You should see a page very similar to this with your name and the “assets” you have control over. In my case, that’s my page and my ad account, which shows that I’m all set up. If you see your page(s) here and an ad account, you’re good to go. If either or both are missing, you have to fix that. 

ADD AD ACCOUNT

If you don’t see an ad account for you, click on “Ad Accounts” on the left hand menu. This page will show up and now you click on the blue “Add” button.

SELECT THE RIGHT OPTION FOR YOU

You now have three options: add an existing ad account, request access to an existing ad account, or set up a new ad account. The middle won’t be applicable unless you’re managing someone else’s ad account, though it may be useful for co-authors who both want access to an ad account on one of their accounts. 

But for most, it’s either add an existing one or create a new one. Which one it is depends on whether or not you’ve ever run ads, which include boosting a post. If you have, you have an ad account and you can add that one. If you’ve never ever run ads in any way, set up a new account. 

An ad account can only be linked to one business manager, so if you have a shared ad account with someone else (eg a co-author), one of you can add it and the other will need to request access, which is something else. It’s like the difference between the owner and the admin/mod of a group. 

If you need to ad an existing account, it will show up automatically, since Facebook knows which account is linked to you. (it knows everything anyway, haha. If it doesn’t show up automatically, it will ask for your ad account ID. You can find that by going to your Facebook home screen and then click on that arrow at the right top that we also used to go to the business manager. One of the options there is ad manager and if you click on that, you’ll be able to find our ad account ID.

If you have to set up a completely new account, just follow the steps now. This means adding a form of payment as well, like a credit card.

And that’s it! You now have everything in place to start running ads. Congrats!