How do you run Facebook ads for an ecommerce store?

A Sales campaign optimized for Purchase events is the right starting point, because purchases are the action that pays you. It needs a Meta pixel sending Purchase events from your checkout, and Meta's developer docs say the Purchase event requires a value, so every order reports what it was worth. While you have no purchase history, a Visitors campaign is the fallback, since it needs no pixel.

Lead with shipping, not only price

Baymard Institute puts the average documented cart abandonment rate at 70.22% across 50 studies. Among shoppers who left for a reason other than browsing, 40% blamed extra costs such as shipping, tax and fees, and 20% said delivery was too slow. So the offer in your ad is often "free shipping over a set amount" or "arrives in a stated number of days", shown in the ad so the total at checkout is no surprise.

Plan for the sale size and the calendar

Shopify reports that its merchants sold a record $14.6 billion over Black Friday-Cyber Monday 2025, with an average cart of $114.70. If your products sit near that price, one ad needs to carry a product, a price and a shipping promise. Make your holiday offer ads in October, not the week of the sale.

Formats that suit a store

Use a product image ad per hero product with price and shipping on it. Add a short UGC-style video, a person showing the product in use, for anything that needs demonstrating. ScaleShot makes both: image ads from templates or prompts, and video clips of 4-10 seconds. If you want an ad that follows each visitor to the products they viewed, see our guide to dynamic product ads.

Check your category first

Meta's commerce policies say content may not promote the buying, selling or trading of alcohol, tobacco, weapons, or ingestible supplements. Ads follow separate Advertising Standards, so check both before you build if you sell in these categories.

This is the order that avoids rework. Shopify-specific detail is on Shopify Facebook ads.

1. Install Meta's channel. In Shopify go to Settings, Sales channels, Shopify App Store, search Facebook, then Add channel. Connect a business portfolio and a Facebook Page; the portfolio must own the Page. Shopify says the channel is free on all plans.
2. Turn on data sharing and pick one pixel. Shopify offers Standard, Enhanced and Maximum data levels. Remove any pixel code you pasted in by hand, or events are counted twice.
3. Sync your products to a catalog, which also powers Shop and product-based ads. An ad account may be needed to finish some features.
4. Make the creative. Give ScaleShot your store link; it learns your logo, colours, fonts and voice, and its Ads Agent writes a 30-day plan and makes the image and video ads.
5. Launch a Sales campaign on Purchase events with a daily budget you can leave alone for two weeks. ScaleShot launches to your connected Meta ad account and asks before it changes anything.

Spend what you can leave alone, then judge by profit per order, not clicks. LocaliQ lists $0.59 per click and a 1.88% click-through rate for traffic campaigns in Shopping, Collectibles & Gifts in 2026. At that price, $10 a day buys about 17 clicks. Those are click costs, not purchase costs: we found no ecommerce cost-per-purchase from a primary source, so work out your own break-even from the margin on one order.

Creative is the other cost. Our plans start at $19.95 for the first 2 weeks, then $42 every 2 weeks; a fast image ad is 10 credits, an HQ image 20, and video 10 credits per second. Meta bills ad spend separately, we run Meta ads only, and we do not guarantee sales or ROAS.

• Surprise shipping at checkout. Extra costs were the top reason for abandonment in Baymard's list. Say the shipping terms in the ad.
• Ignoring people who nearly bought. With 70.22% of carts abandoned, a retargeting campaign aimed at visitors and cart-adders is where many small stores should spend after the first test.
• Two pixels. A hand-pasted pixel plus Shopify's channel double-counts events.
• Choosing Purchase before you have purchases. Sales campaigns need a pixel with Purchase events; until they flow, use Visitors.
• One ad for the whole catalogue. Make one ad per hero product, and look through our examples of product ads for ideas.
• Copying a dropshipper's or Etsy seller's playbook. Shipping times and platform rules differ; see dropshipping and Etsy sellers.