Paid social
We plan, build and run paid campaigns on Facebook and Instagram for UK businesses. The price is agreed before we start. You keep your ad account, your pixel data and your creative, and you can take all of it with you if you ever leave.
The short answer
Meta ads management is the work of planning, building, testing and adjusting paid campaigns across Facebook and Instagram so the money spent brings back more than it costs.
In practice it splits into four jobs. Someone has to decide what the campaign is for and what a result is worth to you. Someone has to build the tracking so results can be counted properly. Someone has to make enough creative for the system to have something to test. And someone has to read the numbers each week and decide what changes.
Boosting a post is none of these. That is why boosted posts rarely produce enquiries you can trace back to a cost.
The demand evidence
Ofcom publishes an annual study of how the UK uses the internet. The 2025 Online Nation report is the most reliable picture available, and it is worth reading before you decide where to advertise.
Average UK adult time on Meta services. In 2025 this passed Alphabet, on 1 hour 7 minutes, for the first time.
Reached by Facebook and Messenger combined, making it the most widely used Meta service in the UK.
Spent on services owned by either Alphabet or Meta, so two companies hold half of UK attention.
That is the honest case for paid social here. Your customers are already on these apps for a little over an hour a day. Figures from Ofcom Online Nation 2025.
Budget
There are two costs. What Meta charges to show your ads, and what an agency charges to run them. This section covers the first.
Typical UK range across most campaign types, with a median near £1.11. Traffic campaigns can sit below this. Competitive sectors sit above it.
Feed placements usually land near the middle of this range. Reels tend to run cheaper because fewer advertisers compete for them.
Christmas is the most expensive auction of the year. UK cost per click peaked at £1.49 in December 2025 while the global figure sat near £1.01.
These ranges come from agency managed-account datasets rather than from Meta, so treat them as directional. Your own numbers depend on your sector, your audience and your creative.
One practical floor is worth knowing. Below roughly £1,000 a month, campaigns often cannot gather enough conversion events to settle down, so results stay unpredictable and you learn very little from them.
New this year
On 1 July 2026 Meta began charging a location fee on ads delivered to people in six countries. The UK sits at the lowest rate.
The only rate that applies if you advertise to UK audiences alone
Three details decide whether this hurts you. It is charged on where your ads are shown, not where your business sits, so a County Durham firm advertising to UK customers pays the UK rate. It is added on top of your budget after delivery rather than taken out of it, so the invoice can be larger than the budget you set. And it does not appear in Ads Manager, so your cost per result looks unchanged while your real cost has risen.
What the UK rate costs at three budget levels
Google has passed this cost on since November 2020 and Amazon since 2024, so Meta was the last of the large platforms to do it. We show the fee as a separate line in your reporting from the first month, so our figures match your invoice.
Before launch
Most underperforming accounts we look at are not badly targeted. They are badly measured. If the platform cannot see which clicks became customers, it cannot find you more of those customers, and you cannot tell what worked.
We confirm it fires on the pages that matter and that it is not counting the same action twice.
Browser tracking alone misses a share of events. A server side connection recovers many of them.
An enquiry, a booking or a sale. Not someone landing on a thank you page by accident.
If enquiries close on the phone or in person, that outcome goes back so the system learns which leads were worth having.
Campaigns named so a report opened in six months makes sense without a translator.
What you get now, before we start, so any change can be judged against something real.
What changed
In February 2026 Meta merged its manual and Advantage Plus setup into a single flow. AI optimisation is now the default across nearly every new campaign, and detailed interest targeting carries far less weight than it used to.
This deserves a straight answer. A large part of what agencies charged for five years ago, building audiences and hand tuning placements, has been taken over by the platform itself.
The platform optimises toward whatever you tell it to value. Getting that number wrong is the most expensive mistake in paid social.
Automation is only as good as the signal behind it. Bad tracking makes a smart system optimise toward the wrong thing.
The algorithm can only pick between what you give it. Creative volume and variety are now the main lever you control.
Knowing when a dip is a problem and when it is a normal week is judgement, and it is what stops budget being wasted on panic edits.
If an agency is still selling you audience building as the main skill, they are describing a job the platform now does on its own.
The process
What a lead or a sale is worth to you, what you can afford to pay for one, and what you are getting today.
Pixel, Conversions API and conversion events set up, then checked with real test actions rather than assumed to work.
Several different angles, built vertical first, because that is the shape of most Meta inventory now.
Changes restart learning. We hold still long enough for the data to mean something.
Small adjustments weekly. Structural changes monthly, with the reason written down so you can see the thinking.
Channel choice
We run both, so we have no reason to steer you either way. The difference comes down to whether people are already looking for what you sell.
What it does
Puts your offer in front of people who were not looking for it.
Catches people who are already searching for what you sell.
Suits
Visual products, new offers, and reminding people who already visited.
Urgent needs, established demand, trades and local services.
Speed of results
Slower at first. It needs conversion volume before it settles.
Faster, because the intent is already there.
Main lever
Creative. Photos and video do most of the work now.
Keywords and landing pages.
Sensible starting budget
Around £1,000 a month to gather enough data.
Can start smaller on a tight set of keywords.
If demand for what you sell already exists, start with Google Ads. If you need to create demand, start here. Running both works well once each one pays for itself on its own. For traffic you do not pay for each click, see SEO and local SEO.
Coverage
We run campaigns for businesses across the UK, and most of the work happens over calls and a shared screen. Our UK business partner is based in County Durham, so if you are in the North East and would rather sit down with someone, that is easy to arrange.
Pricing
Ongoing Meta ads management starts at £400 a month plus VAT, with no minimum term. Account setup and anything running across several objectives or markets is quoted on scope. Your ad budget is paid by you straight to Meta, so we never mark up your spend or take a cut of it. A percentage fee pays an agency more for spending more of your money, which is the wrong incentive to build a relationship on.
one off
Getting the account, the tracking and the first campaigns built properly.
a month
One active objective, run and reported on properly.
a month
Several objectives or markets running at the same time.
Your advertising budget is paid by you directly to Meta and is never handled by us. The figures above cover the management work only.
Your ad spend and the 2% UK location fee are paid by you directly to Meta and are not included in the figures above.
Questions
Around £1,000 a month is the realistic floor. Below that, campaigns struggle to gather enough conversion events to leave the learning phase, so results stay unpredictable and you learn very little from the spend.
You do. The ad account, the Business Manager, the pixel and its whole history are in your name. We work as a partner on your account, and you can remove our access at any time without losing anything.
Expect two to four weeks before the numbers mean much. The system needs conversion volume before its decisions get good, and changing things during that period sends it back to the start.
No. We charge a fixed fee. A percentage model pays an agency more for spending more of your money, and we would rather not have that sitting between us.
It is a location fee Meta began charging on 1 July 2026 on ads delivered to UK audiences. Meta charges it, not us. It lands on your invoice from Meta rather than showing in Ads Manager, so we report it separately.
For most UK businesses selling to consumers, yes. Ofcom found Facebook and Messenger reach 93% of UK online adults, and UK adults now spend more time on Meta services than on Alphabet ones.
Google Ads if people already search for what you sell. Meta if you need to create demand or your product is something people buy once they see it. Both once each one pays for itself on its own.
Boosting optimises for engagement, not enquiries. Likes and comments are cheap to buy. A campaign built around a conversion event, with tracking behind it, is what produces enquiries you can put a cost against.
Usually yes, and it matters more now that the platform handles the targeting. Most Meta placements are vertical, so square and landscape images taken from a website rarely fit the space properly.
You give notice, we hand the account over, and everything stays exactly where it is. There is no rolling contract and nothing is held back to make leaving awkward.
Send a short note about what you sell, what a customer is worth to you and what you have already tried. You will get a straight answer on whether paid social suits your business, and a fixed price if it does.
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