Quickstart: launch your first ads with uplads

This walkthrough takes you from an empty workspace to live ads in a single sitting. The Ad Launcher is one screen: load media, choose ad sets, write copy, preview, launch. Your work is kept as a draft when you click Save, so you can stop and resume any time. If you want the bigger picture first, read What is uplads and how does it work? and Understanding the Ad Launcher.

Before you start: connect your Meta account

Launching needs a connected Meta (Facebook & Instagram) account and an ad account picked in the top bar of the launcher. If you haven't done this yet, follow How to connect your Meta account. With no ad account picked, the launcher asks you to select one before it shows the cards.

If your account won't link, see Why is my Meta account not connecting?.

1. Load a creative

Open Ad Launcher from the sidebar and click Load Media in the Ads panel on the left. The dialog opens on the Media Library tab.

1. Drag an image or video into the drop-zone, or click it to browse your computer.
2. The file uploads directly to storage and appears as a tile once it finishes.
3. Click the tile to select it (a checkmark appears), then confirm. It lands in the Ads panel as one ad.

You only need one creative for your first launch. A few things worth knowing:

• Videos keep uploading in the background; you can carry on with the ad sets and copy while they finish.
• You can also load from Dropbox or Google Drive, or from your existing Facebook and Instagram posts. See How to upload creatives to the media library.
• If an upload fails, check How to fix creative upload failures.

2. Pick a Page and an ad set

The top bar and the Ad Sets card tell Meta where the ad runs.

1. In the top bar, choose the Facebook Page the ad will publish from (and optionally an Instagram account). If you've set account defaults, this is pre-filled for you.
2. In the Ad Sets card, search by name or ID and tick one or more ad sets; each ticked ad set receives a copy of your ad. Use New Campaign or New Ad Set if you need somewhere new.

Need to build the structure as you go? See How to create a campaign or ad set during launch and How to select your Page, campaign and ad sets.

3. Write the copy

The Ad Setup card holds the ad copy. At minimum, fill in:

• Primary Text, the main body copy above your creative.
• Headline, the bold line under the creative.
• Web Link, where people land when they click.
• Call to Action, which defaults to Learn More; change it if you like.

You can add multiple primary texts and headlines for variations, load a saved template with Load Copy, and let AI draft copy for you. See How to generate ad copy with AI and How to write ad copy, URLs and CTAs.

Relaunching an existing ad or running a partnership/Spark ad? The copy fields are not needed, since that copy already exists on the post.

4. Check the ad name and preview

The Ads panel shows the final ad name for each ad, built from your naming convention. The name shown here is shipped to Meta byte-for-byte, so what you see is what you get.

• Edit any name inline if you want to tweak it.
• Click Edit in Table Mode to edit several ads at once.
• Click Preview to see the ad rendered per placement before anything is created.

More detail: How to review and edit ad names before launch and How to set up a custom ad naming convention.

5. Launch and watch real-time progress

The Launch button reads Launch 1 Ad for one ad in one ad set. The number is always ads times ticked ad sets, so you can confirm the math before you click.

1. (Optional) Flip Launch ads as Paused / Active in Ad Setup, or use Schedule to launch paused now and have uplads activate the ads at a chosen time in the ad account's timezone.
2. Click Launch 1 Ad.

uplads queues the work and shows the launch in the Ad Launches tab below the launcher. Each creative moves through states like Uploading…, Meta is processing the video…, and Creating ads…, polled every few seconds, until it reads live. When everything finishes you'll see the success and failed counts.

From the finished launch you can:

• View launch details to inspect each created ad.
• Open in Meta Ads Manager to confirm the ads went live (it deep-links straight to the launched ad sets).
• Start the next launch right on the same screen: the Ads panel is ready for the next Load Media.

If any ad failed, a Retry failed button reruns just those. For help reading the results or diagnosing failures, see How to track launch progress and read results, Why did my launch fail and how do I fix it?, and Why don't my launched ads appear in Meta Ads Manager?.

That's a full launch end to end. Next, learn how drafts save and resume your launch so you never lose progress, and explore setting ad status and scheduling a launch.