What to make Meta optimise for

TL;DR

• Meta’s optimisation is literal. Ask for link clicks and you get link clicks, bots included. Ask for leads and you get leads, whether or not they’re any good.¹²
• Pick the lowest-funnel event you have volume for. Ben Heath’s webinar ladder: registrant → attendee → booked call → purchase. Go one step up whenever you have fewer than ~20–25 a week of an event.³
• Make only qualified leads count. Turn on conditional logic in instant forms, for example “budget <$1K → close form, non-lead end page”. On websites, route disqualified answers to a thank-you page without the lead event.⁴⁵
• Instant form type: pick Higher intent with phone OTP verification over “More volume”. It stops fake details and bots. Ben now defaults more and more accounts to it.⁶⁷
• Sales campaigns: switch from maximise number to maximise value of conversions when you have enough purchases. Ben would rather pay $30 for a $200 sale than $10 for a $20 one.⁸⁹
• Don’t optimise for add-to-cart, initiate checkout or view content to get “volume” (Jon Loomer). You attract habitual cart abandoners and trash traffic.¹⁰

Details

Qualifying questions (Ben): budget, location (stops leads from outside your service area), timeline (e.g. a wedding photographer asking “have you set a date?”), industry for B2B. Combine several if needed.

The point is the feedback loop. If you filter leads manually afterwards, Meta still thinks it is succeeding. If unqualified answers never become leads, it learns to find people who qualify.¹¹¹²

Ben used to recommend low-friction “more volume” forms. Lead quality has fallen far enough that he has switched his default.⁷

Value and CRM feedback. At higher spend, connect the CRM and send back which leads became customers, and their value. Then optimise for conversion leads or value.¹³ Repeat purchases and lead-to-customer rates Meta can’t see go in through Meta value rules — bid more for people worth more (instead of restricting targeting).

Bad tracking is worse than none. A purchase or lead event firing on page load tells Meta that every click converted, so it sends maximum traffic, bots included.¹⁴

Quality over volume. Loomer’s foundational rule: “Your cheap results mean nothing if they’re worth nothing.”¹⁵

Disagreements / caveats

• Value optimisation threshold. Ben says skip value optimisation with only a handful of conversions a week. He also recommends it to most sales advertisers now, even when Meta doesn’t suggest it.⁸¹⁶ Loomer’s low-volume recipe sticks with maximise number of conversions.¹⁷ CTC defaults to value optimisation with a minimum ROAS (Meta bid strategy — minimum ROAS vs cost per result goal vs lowest cost).
• Shallower events can be a deliberate strategy. Some app advertisers optimise for shallower events to reach new audiences (signal engineering, see Signal engineering — auditing and shaping the conversion events ad platforms optimise on). Ben’s and Loomer’s warnings are about using shallow events as a volume crutch.
• Friction trades volume for quality. Watch cost per qualified lead and downstream sales, not cost per lead.

See also

• Meta value rules — bid more for people worth more (instead of restricting targeting)
• Signal engineering — auditing and shaping the conversion events ad platforms optimise on
• Starting a new or low-volume Meta ad account — the simplest setup that can work
• People: Ben Heath, Jon Loomer

Footnotes

1. Use this Facebook Ads set up, you'll thank me later! @ 00:00 — Ben Heath ↩

2. How To Succeed With A NEW Meta Ad Account in 2026 @ 10:44 — Ben Heath ↩

3. Learn 97% of Meta Ads in Under 29 Minutes @ 20:32 — Ben Heath ↩

4. Use this Facebook Ads set up, you'll thank me later! @ 02:24 — Ben Heath ↩

5. Use this Facebook Ads set up, you'll thank me later! @ 05:34 — Ben Heath ↩

6. Use this Facebook Ads set up, you'll thank me later! @ 06:25 — Ben Heath ↩

7. Use this Facebook Ads set up, you'll thank me later! @ 07:14 — Ben Heath ↩ ↩²

8. Learn 97% of Meta Ads in Under 29 Minutes @ 19:34 — Ben Heath ↩ ↩²

9. Use this Facebook Ads set up, you'll thank me later! @ 11:14 — Ben Heath ↩

10. A Simple, Volume-Focused Ad Strategy @ 01:41 — Jon Loomer ↩

11. Use this Facebook Ads set up, you'll thank me later! @ 04:43 — Ben Heath ↩

12. Learn 97% of Meta Ads in Under 29 Minutes @ 18:47 — Ben Heath ↩

13. $100 vs $100,000 Facebook Ads Strategy @ 11:07 — Ben Heath ↩

14. How To Succeed With A NEW Meta Ad Account in 2026 @ 04:19 — Ben Heath ↩

15. The Foundational Elements of Meta Advertising Today @ 06:22 — Jon Loomer ↩

16. Use this Facebook Ads set up, you'll thank me later! @ 10:28 — Ben Heath ↩

17. A Simple, Volume-Focused Ad Strategy @ 04:10 — Jon Loomer ↩