| name | 52-account-structure-global |
| description | Use when an ad account HIERARCHY needs designing or cleaning up — campaign, ad set, and ad structure by objective, a naming convention that keeps data readable, CBO versus ABO by stage, how many ad sets and creatives to run, and the minimum daily budget an ad set needs to exit learning. Trigger on 'account structure', 'campaign structure', 'naming convention', 'how many ad sets should I run', 'CBO or ABO', 'our account is a mess of duplicated campaigns'. Not for — scoring an existing account against 84 checkpoints, see `21-ads-audit-global`; pixel and conversion setup, see `53-tracking-setup-global`; budget across channels, see `54-media-plan-global`; scaling a winner, see `55-scaling-ads-global`. |
| metadata | {"version":"1.0.1","category":"performance"} |
| license | MIT |
| triggers | ["account structure","campaign structure","naming convention","set up campaign","how many ad sets","CBO or ABO","restructure ad account","ad account setup"] |
| output | File .md — full campaign structure by stage, naming convention, budget allocation, minimum ad set budget math, and a pre-launch checklist |
| related | ["product-marketing-context-global","51-audience-research-global","53-tracking-setup-global","54-media-plan-global","05-ad-copy-global","19-ab-test-setup-global","55-scaling-ads-global"] |
Account Structure (Global)
Good structure means data you can read, optimizations you can trust, and scaling that does not fall apart. Run this after 53-tracking-setup-global verifies green, and after 51-audience-research-global and 54-media-plan-global exist.
Information gathering
Read the media plan and audience profile if they exist. If information is missing, ask up to 4 questions:
- Which platforms and objective? Meta / Google / TikTok / LinkedIn — lead gen / conversion / traffic / awareness?
- How many products or offers are running? Each primary offer generally deserves its own campaign.
- Total monthly budget and target CPA? This determines how many ad sets the account can actually feed.
- Which stage are you in? Testing / scaling / maintaining?
Principles
- Consolidate before you split. Fewer, better-funded ad sets is now the platform-recommended structure on both Meta (Advantage+ / broad) and Google (Performance Max, broad match + smart bidding). Splitting an already-small budget across many ad sets starves every one of them.
- Consistent naming from day one. Renaming later is painful, and historical data becomes unfilterable.
- One campaign, one objective. Never mix lead generation and purchase optimization in the same campaign.
- Cold stays separate from retargeting. Different campaigns, different message, never a shared audience pool.
- Do not touch an ad set that is still in learning. Meta needs roughly 50 optimization events per ad set per week to exit learning. Every significant edit restarts it.
- Structure follows budget, not ambition. If the budget cannot fund the structure, cut ad sets, not budget per ad set.
Workflow
1. Hierarchy overview
Account
|-- Campaign 1 — [Objective] — [Product/Offer] (Cold Testing)
| |-- Ad Set 1.1 — [Broad / Advantage+] -> Ad A (hook 1) / Ad B (hook 2)
| |-- Ad Set 1.2 — [Interest theme A] -> Ad A / Ad B
| |-- Ad Set 1.3 — [Interest theme B] -> Ad A / Ad B
| \-- Ad Set 1.4 — [Lookalike 1-3%] -> Ad A / Ad B
|-- Campaign 2 — [Objective] — Scale winner (split out once a winner is proven)
\-- Campaign 3 — Retargeting
\-- Ad Set 3.1 — [Warm 7-30 days] — objection-handling creative
2. Naming convention
