Since Meta introduced the Outcome-Driven Ad Experiences (ODAX) framework in 2022, it’s become the gold standard for structuring Facebook campaign objectives.
In 2025, ODAX is fully rolled out across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads—bringing consistency to ad setup. It also enables smarter campaign management through real-time analytics and AI-powered automation, including targeting, creative optimization, and budget allocation.
On Facebook, there are 6 campaign objectives: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App Promotion, and Sales. These remain at the core of ODAX.
But here’s the catch: most advertisers still only scratch the surface of what ODAX can do—because they’re not thinking in terms of objective-based advertising. This guide will help you change that, so you can stop leaving powerful features and optimizations untapped.
Key Takeways:
- Your campaign objective determines not just who sees your ads, but whether they are likely to take the action you want.
- Facebook’s algorithm adjusts delivery based on the objective you choose. If it doesn't match your goal, you risk wasting the budget.
- To get the most out of ODAX, align each objective with your customer journey stage and track metrics that reflect your real business goals.
How to choose the right Facebook campaign objective
Choosing the right ad objective is key to ensuring the success of your campaign. Imagine your marketing efforts are tailored with laser-like precision, and each campaign is aligned with a specific purpose. Whether you aim to skyrocket website traffic, foster brand awareness, generate leads, or boost sales, Facebook Ads Objectives can offer you a roadmap to success.
When choosing a Facebook ads objective, ensure it aligns with your business goals. Objectives in Facebook rely on algorithmic learning, meaning that the Facebook algorithm looks for patterns in people’s past behaviors to predict future actions.
If you choose an objective such as “traffic” when you’re looking for “store purchases,” the algorithm will look for users most likely to click, not users most likely to buy. So, before deciding on a campaign objective, it’s important to define what your business aims to achieve.
Meta’s ODAX framework penalizes generic objectives by deprioritizing ad delivery to high-value users. You're paying for the wrong customers if you buy traffic but need sales.
The 6 Facebook ad campaign objectives
Awareness
When you create a Facebook awareness campaign, the stage will unlikely lead to a sale directly. The purpose of awareness ads is to attract people that are likely to go deeper into your sales funnel and gather enough data to create custom audiences.
Depending on the price tag and complexity of your products or services, you can choose to tell your whole brand story in one ad or use the ad to pique interest and redirect viewers to blog posts, guides, or videos.
At the ad set level, you can set the optimization for the ads for:
- Impressions
- Reach
- Ad Recall Lift
Pro tip:Â Although awareness campaigns focus on reach rather than engagement, the average engagement rate on Facebook is 0.063%. Visual formats like photo albums and videos tend to perform best for awareness, with album posts getting up to 0.15% engagement and videos around 0.12%.
Traffic
When combined with content marketing, the traffic campaign objective can be a great way to get more people to visit your website and even your product pages.
The traffic objective can also lay the groundwork for conversion campaigns.
When your pixel is brand new, setting up a conversion campaign straight away isn’t likely to work well, and you will not get any conversions because you don’t have enough data to work with.
It can attract people interested in your products and assist you in compiling a custom audience that you can later re-target with conversion ads.
For this objective, at the ad set level, you can set the following optimizations:
- Landing Page Views
- Link Clicks Impressions
- Daily Unique Reach.
Remember, use traffic objectives only if:
- Your goal is clicks, not sales (e.g., publishers, bloggers, content sites).
- You monetize via display ads, affiliate links, or email capture.
- You pair it with highly engaging creatives (e.g., teasers, cliffhangers).
👉You might want to discover the top 9 reasons why a Facebook ad is not delivering
Engagement
The engagement campaign objective can help you get more shares, likes, and comments on your ads and posts, as well as more video views and messages.Â
It can also help you reach people more likely to participate in your events and claim your offers. Every form of interaction with your page can be set on this campaign objective.
The engagement objective has different optimizations depending on the conversion location you set at the ad set level. The available conversion locations are:
- Your Ad
- Messaging Apps
- Website
- App
- Facebook Page
The available optimizations are direct messages on Messenger, Instagram Direct, and WhatsApp, as well as video views, post engagement, event responses, conversions, landing page views, link clicks, impressions, and daily unique reach.
Leads
This objective is strategically designed to cater to individuals who possess prior familiarity with your brand, have demonstrated keen interest in your offerings, and are actively contemplating a potential purchase.
If your goal is to encourage potential customers to showcase substantial interest in your products or services, this refined objective is instrumental.
The leads objective encompasses a broad scope of channels for the conversion location, which are:
- Your Website
- Instant Forms
- Messenger
- Calls
- Your App
App promotion
With the app promotion campaign objective, Facebook targets people within your target audience who are more likely to install your app.
The optimizations for app promotions are:
- App Installs
- App Events
- Value
Note that the Value option will deliver the ad to people to maximize the total purchase value to get the highest Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).
Some recommendations to improve your Meta campaign ads when using this objective are:
- Video Ads: Show app UX in action (e.g., “See how we find your next date in 30 sec” for a dating app).
- Playable Ads: Let users demo the app without installing (boosts install rates by 2–3X).
- Social Proof: “5M+ downloads” or “Editor’s Choice” badges.
- Lookalikes of Paying Users: 2X higher ROI than interest-based targeting.
- Exclude Existing Users: Use Meta’s app activity exclusion.
- Stack Interests: Gaming app? Target “mobile gamers” + "in-app purchases.” Fintech app? Target “crypto trading” + “personal finance.”
- Use App Events (Purchase, Signup): Optimize for high-value users after 50+ installs.
Sales
Facebook ad objectives for the sales stage are best used on hot leads who know your business and have strong buying intent. This objective works best with people at the bottom of your funnel who just need that last push or reminder to buy.
The sales objective includes catalog sales. This objective is the bread and butter of advertising for e-commerce businesses. Your e-commerce store's product feed generates ads catalog sales, bringing a personalized shopping experience to your target audience directly in their social feeds.
For example, if you sell winter boots and someone clicks on a pair of your shoes but fails to follow through with the purchase, you can use Facebook to remind them about the shoes they previously looked at.
👉You might also be interested in 27 Facebook ad examples for ad creative inspiration
The sales objective can include the following conversion locations:
- Your Website
- Your App
- Your Website and App
- Messenger or WhatsApp (If you accept payments on these messaging apps already)
For each of them, you can set the optimization, just like the other objectives, but if you put a value, you will need to have a value-based event configured on Facebook events manager.
We leave you with a couple of recommendations when preparing your sales objective ad:
- Don’t ignore ad frequency. High ad frequency can annoy users and increase costs—monitor and adjust as needed.
- Don’t set and forget. Failing to monitor and optimize your campaign can result in wasted spend and missed opportunities.
- Don’t overlook the customer journey. Pushy sales messages to cold audiences rarely convert; use retargeting and nurture strategies.
How to maximize results with ODAX Facebook Ad Objectives in BĂŻrchÂ
Bïrch allows you to create your ads for Facebook with the ODAX objectives in the bulk creation or post boosting features.
You can update objectives and conversion locations directly in the Campaign tab. If you want to learn how to use the Bulk Creation feature or boost your posts automatically using BĂŻrch, you can check our Help Center articles related to our top tools for creating and optimizing ad campaigns:
- Bulk Creation: With BĂŻrch, you quickly create ad campaigns in bulk by uploading creatives, setting objectives and budgets, defining audiences, and customizing multiple ad variations.Â
- Post Boosting: Set custom rules based on post performance to streamline your promotions. Select posts to boost, define conditions like engagement thresholds or keywords, and choose campaign objectives, budgets, and targeting.Â
The impact of smart objective selection on campaign success
Selecting the right Facebook ad objective is essential for running a successful campaign. The objective you choose determines who sees your ads—and which metrics matter most.
Start by aligning your ad objective with your business goals and your audience’s stage in the customer journey. For example, if you're building awareness, start with reach campaigns. Once you've built an audience, shift to traffic to drive visits. When you're ready to convert, move to leads or sales objectives.
Always define clear goals and KPIs before launching a campaign, and regularly review performance to optimize results. The better your objective and measurement match your business needs, the better your ROI.
Are you ready to start making smarter campaign decisions? With BĂŻrch, you can set the right objectives, automate post boosting, and scale ad performance. Try BĂŻrch for free and make the most out of your Facebook campaign setup.
FAQ
What is Facebook ODAX?                                                           Â
ODAX stands for Outcome-Driven Ad Experiences. ODAX aims to streamline the process for advertisers to define their campaign objectives and set up Facebook, Instagram, and Threads ad campaigns focused on achieving your business goals.
ODAX allows advertisers to select a single campaign objective and lets Meta’s algorithms optimize delivery for each platform. This cross-channel approach ensures that ads reach the right audiences most effectively, maximizing both reach and impact
‍What are the 6 meta objectives?
The six ODAX campaign objectives in Facebook Ads are: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App Promotion, and Sales.
What is the engagement objective on a Facebook campaign?
The engagement objective aims to get more people to interact with your content, such as liking, commenting, sharing, or responding to events and offers. It’s designed to increase visible activity and social proof on your posts or page.
What are the objectives of a campaign?
Campaign objectives define the main goal you want to achieve with your ads. In Facebook’s ODAX system, objectives align with key marketing goals—such as building brand awareness, driving website visits, increasing engagement, generating leads, promoting app installs, or boosting sales.
What is the leads objective on Facebook ads?
The leads objective is designed to help you collect information from potential customers. This can include encouraging users to fill out forms, sign up for newsletters, request quotes, or interact via Messenger or WhatsApp to become a lead for your business
What is the difference between awareness and traffic campaigns?
- Awareness campaigns focus on maximizing the number of people who see your ads, aiming to increase brand recognition and recall.
- Traffic campaigns are designed to drive users to a specific destination, such as your website or app, encouraging them to click through and learn more or take an action.
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