---
title: How to structure a Meta ads account in 2025–2026
slug: meta-account-structure-2026
summary: The campaign layouts practitioners actually run — Dara Denney's testing campaign + Advantage+ (ASC) core, Smart Marketer's one-campaign-per-objective "Andromeda portfolio", CTC's evergreen (acquisition/retention ad sets filled to 150 ads) + marketing-moment campaigns, Ben Heath and Jon Loomer's one-campaign-one-ad-set start, Mars Men's 40 pillar campaigns — plus multiple products, countries, retargeting and the 2020 baseline.
domain: marketing
tags: [meta-ads, account-structure, advantage-plus, campaign-structure, ecommerce]
related: [meta-creative-testing-by-budget, meta-consolidation-vs-sprint-approach, meta-targeting-broad-vs-interests, meta-ads-per-ad-set-and-budget-minimums, meta-andromeda-gem-lattice, meta-scaling-winners, meta-underspend-and-never-turn-off-ads, meta-bid-strategy-min-roas-vs-cost-cap, meta-new-account-low-volume-setup, meta-audience-segments-and-remarketing, meta-strategy-by-spend-level]
sources: [yt:ZqM6jPUAaeQ, yt:BIVnOWcGnfA, yt:kn4ByanAe-s, yt:aCkulCPAYzw, yt:aNCUFwQw524, yt:x1b4h42HTG8, yt:-BYAC0ALW78, yt:sjd711834hc, yt:vaBxYgZ7MAU, yt:tcQ_1mm_bHU, yt:Ha0gOItSZaU, yt:du6rDgRf06g, yt:FyWyHJh_6Ng]
updated: 2026-10-24
---

# Meta account structure (2025–2026)

## TL;DR
- **Default ecommerce core (Dara Denney, 2025):** 1 creative-testing campaign (manual Sales objective) + 1 Advantage+ shopping/sales campaign (ASC) as the scaling home for winners. Works from ~$5K to $500K+/month.[^1][^2]
- **Multiple products:** add a *separate* ASC for catalog/DPA ads (otherwise catalog can soak up all spend). Forcing spend into per-product campaigns usually costs efficiency.[^3][^4]
- **Meta's recommended Andromeda layout (Smart Marketer, Jan 2026):** one campaign per business objective; campaign budget; **one ad set**, broad, **exclude existing customers**, automatic placements; **15–20 genuinely different ads**.[^5][^6][^7]
- Split top-of-funnel campaigns **by avatar** (moms vs gift buyers) when each has its own creative/landing page; add one simple win-back retargeting campaign.[^8][^9]
- **Countries:** creative-test only in your biggest market (often the US); run an ASC per additional country with localised versions of proven formats.[^10][^11]
- **CTC canon (Jul 2026):** *evergreen* campaigns split into acquisition and retention, ad sets filled sequentially up to Meta's current **150-ad** limit, plus a DABA ad set in acquisition; separate *marketing-moment* campaigns for anything time-bound (sales, launches).[^22]
- **New/small accounts (Ben Heath, Jon Loomer):** start with **one campaign, one ad set** and add complexity only for a proven, data-backed problem.[^23][^24]

## Details
**Dara's core.** Winners from testing get duplicated into ASC; she's now liberal about what goes into ASC — including historical top performers from months or years ago and ads that underperformed in testing but might suit warmer audiences.[^2] Separating testing from scaling throttles a little cash to new creative without muddying the winners.[^12] She runs **no retargeting** on most brands, even at $500K–$1M/month, and no reach/awareness/engagement campaigns — Meta lift tests show they can work only for brands spending multiple seven figures a month, with months-long payback.[^12][^13] Per-product ASCs are sometimes justified by inventory, perishables or retail spillover, but aren't optimal.[^4] Her later take (Dec 2025): after Andromeda/GEM, account structure matters far less than creative.[^14]

**Alternatives that also work.** Her partner Miguel runs a **one-campaign** setup for brands above $1M/month; Seed launches 4–5 creative tests a month, **each in its own ASC**, scaling within those and occasionally combining top performers into a "super ASC".[^15][^16]

**Smart Marketer's version.** Campaign 1: new-customer acquisition (TOF); campaign 2: a second TOF campaign for another avatar; campaign 3: win-back retargeting. Some of their accounts run exactly 3–5 campaigns this way; others still need 10+.[^8][^9] Excluding existing customers matters: consolidated setups can look great on ROAS/CPA while Meta mostly retargets warm users, and the share of new customers quietly falls.[^6] For catalogues with distinct product lines/outcomes/avatars, they mostly separate campaigns by product; even closely related products (e.g. vehicle accessories) get their own campaigns first.[^17][^18]

**Campaign-heavy alternative (Zach Stuck, Mars Men).** ~40 active campaigns, one per creative pillar — mostly CBO with a minimum spend per ad set, each ad set a concept or concept + new landing page — chosen for reporting clarity. Starting out, he agrees one campaign is enough until you have direction.[^19][^20]

**CTC's evergreen/marketing-moment split.** Tony Chopp: sales objective in ~95% of cases, value-optimised with minimum ROAS on ASC or CBO with inflated budgets, 7-day click, broad with acquisition/retention exclusions; new creative flows into the current acquisition ad set until it hits 150 ads, then ad set 2. Never turn off ads; fix underspend with the 4-phase framework in [[meta-underspend-and-never-turn-off-ads]].[^22][^25]

**Simplest-first (Ben Heath, Jon Loomer).** A new account: one campaign, one ad set, one offer (the bestseller), multiple ads.[^23] Loomer audits struggling accounts for unnecessary complexity — multiple ad sets for different targeting groups reach the same people anyway because lookalikes and detailed targeting are only suggestions, so they compete with each other and water down budget.[^26] At ~$100K/month Ben does run multiple campaigns — per product range, offer or funnel stage (e.g. lead-magnet TOF + retargeting opt-ins to book a call) — plus 10–30% in testing campaigns.[^27] Never scale by running identical duplicate campaigns (auction overlap).[^28]

**2020 baseline (Savannah Sanchez).** For contrast, her "advanced default" ecommerce structure (June 2020): CBO everywhere, **70% prospecting / 30% lower funnel**; prospecting split into a dynamic-creative testing campaign (5 creatives × 3 texts × 3 headlines, on a 1% purchaser lookalike + broad interest) and a "super ads" campaign (winning combinations rebuilt as normal ads via post ID to keep social proof, scaled across ~5 audiences: 5% LAL, interest stacks ≥2M, always with interest expansion and automatic placements)[^33]; re-engagement (~10%: 365-day FB/IG engagers, 75% video viewers, email list); remarketing (30-day site visitors, 180-day purchasers, high-AOV/repeat lists); DPA catalog campaign (14-day view content/add-to-cart; 30–180-day purchasers), each excluding the next funnel stage.[^29][^30][^31][^32]

**Ready Set's guardrails (Ignacio Manchi, mid-2026).** Fewer, simpler campaigns, and split only with a purpose. Valid purposes: testing vs scaling, validated personas, products with different AOVs and CACs, and sometimes prospecting vs retargeting. Test audience segments first, since a consolidated campaign can still serve retargeting assets.[^34][^35] Use CBO to scale (optionally with ad-spend thresholds) and ABO as a guardrail for testing. Ad sets may split by persona or product. **Never split ad sets by format** (statics vs videos) — that's "the old playbook".[^36] Run ~15–20 ads per ad set, optimise for the event that matches the business outcome (purchases, not page views), and follow "variety, velocity, volume" at the ad level.[^37]

**Persona ad sets (Josh Brampton, Motion).** Some customers run an evergreen and a testing campaign, each with one ad set per persona (9 personas → 9 ad sets); winners move to the same persona ad set in the evergreen campaign.[^21]

## Disagreements / caveats
- **Retargeting:** Dara runs none; Smart Marketer (relaying Meta) keeps a win-back campaign.[^12][^9]
- **One vs many TOF campaigns:** Meta says one per objective; Molly's gut and results favour one per avatar; Zach runs 40.[^8][^19]
- **Separate testing campaigns:** Dara and Ben (at high spend) use them; Loomer and Ben (at low volume) avoid them and test inside the ad set with Meta's tools; CTC uses no testing campaign but adds an "underspend" ASC.[^27][^26]
- The 2020 structure relies on interest/lookalike splits and separate retargeting tiers that 2025–2026 practitioners consider obsolete — useful only to understand legacy accounts.
- Dara's structure video is from June 2025, before the Advantage+ sales rollout completed (July 2025) — "ASC" now means an Advantage+ sales campaign.

## See also
- [[meta-creative-testing-by-budget]] — what goes inside the testing campaign
- [[meta-consolidation-vs-sprint-approach]] — when to consolidate
- [[meta-ads-per-ad-set-and-budget-minimums]]
- [[meta-underspend-and-never-turn-off-ads]] — CTC's operating model
- [[meta-new-account-low-volume-setup]]
- People: [[people/dara-denney]], [[people/ignacio-manchi]], [[people/molly-pittman]], [[people/zach-stuck]], [[people/tony-chopp]], [[people/ben-heath]], [[people/jon-loomer]], [[people/savannah-sanchez]]

[^1]: yt:BIVnOWcGnfA @ 00:00 — Dara Denney
[^2]: yt:BIVnOWcGnfA @ 01:33 — Dara Denney
[^3]: yt:BIVnOWcGnfA @ 06:12 — Dara Denney
[^4]: yt:BIVnOWcGnfA @ 07:13 — Dara Denney
[^5]: yt:kn4ByanAe-s @ 27:07 — Molly Pittman
[^6]: yt:kn4ByanAe-s @ 27:58 — Molly Pittman
[^7]: yt:kn4ByanAe-s @ 29:02 — Molly Pittman
[^8]: yt:kn4ByanAe-s @ 21:30 — Molly Pittman
[^9]: yt:kn4ByanAe-s @ 22:18 — Molly Pittman
[^10]: yt:BIVnOWcGnfA @ 08:46 — Dara Denney
[^11]: yt:BIVnOWcGnfA @ 07:13 — Dara Denney
[^12]: yt:BIVnOWcGnfA @ 01:33 — Dara Denney
[^13]: yt:BIVnOWcGnfA @ 03:04 — Dara Denney
[^14]: yt:x1b4h42HTG8 @ 00:50 — Dara Denney
[^15]: yt:BIVnOWcGnfA @ 10:09 — Dara Denney
[^16]: yt:BIVnOWcGnfA @ 11:16 — Dara Denney
[^17]: yt:kn4ByanAe-s @ 1:02:33 — Molly Pittman
[^18]: yt:kn4ByanAe-s @ 1:10:21 — Molly Pittman
[^19]: yt:aCkulCPAYzw @ 49:25 — Zach Stuck
[^20]: yt:aCkulCPAYzw @ 50:11 — Zach Stuck
[^21]: yt:aNCUFwQw524 @ 47:00 — Josh Brampton
[^22]: yt:-BYAC0ALW78 @ 11:23 — Tony Chopp
[^23]: yt:vaBxYgZ7MAU @ 11:37 — Ben Heath
[^24]: yt:Ha0gOItSZaU @ 01:33 — Jon Loomer
[^25]: yt:-BYAC0ALW78 @ 06:37 — Tony Chopp
[^26]: yt:tcQ_1mm_bHU @ 05:35 — Jon Loomer
[^27]: yt:du6rDgRf06g @ 00:48 — Ben Heath
[^28]: yt:FyWyHJh_6Ng @ 16:46 — Ben Heath
[^29]: yt:sjd711834hc @ 00:47 — Savannah Sanchez
[^30]: yt:sjd711834hc @ 02:18 — Savannah Sanchez
[^31]: yt:sjd711834hc @ 07:14 — Savannah Sanchez
[^32]: yt:sjd711834hc @ 11:23 — Savannah Sanchez
[^33]: yt:sjd711834hc @ 04:44 — Savannah Sanchez
[^34]: yt:ZqM6jPUAaeQ @ 48:24 — Ignacio Manchi
[^35]: yt:ZqM6jPUAaeQ @ 49:21 — Ignacio Manchi
[^36]: yt:ZqM6jPUAaeQ @ 50:09 — Ignacio Manchi
[^37]: yt:ZqM6jPUAaeQ @ 51:06 — Ignacio Manchi