Campaign Setup Checklist for Google Ads and Facebook Ads

At adpatches, we treat campaign setup as a ritual of clarity. In the same way a craftsman tests each edge before a final cut, a marketer should verify each hinge of a campaign before it goes live. This checklist distills years of practical practice into a compact, repeatable process—designed not to overwhelm, but to illuminate. You’ll find the steps grounded in a culture of measurement, privacy-conscious defaults, and a preference for transparent analytics over glossy conjecture.

Why a Structured Setup?

The history of digital advertising is a ledger of false starts and pivot moments. Early campaigns rewarded volume over precision; today’s ad tech demands discipline—naming conventions that scale, attribution windows that align with business reality, and pixel setups that respect user privacy while delivering meaningful signal. Our checklist nods to those tensions, offering a practical framework that translates the theoretical elegance of modern measurement into everyday workflow.

What’s Inside the Checklist

• Account and Campaign Architecture: naming conventions, structure, and budget pacing to keep campaigns sane as they scale.
• Tracking Foundations: pixels, events, converters, and server-side measurement where appropriate, with privacy-first defaults.
• Attribution Windows: aligning measurement windows with funnel realities to avoid misinterpretation of early signals.
• Privacy Considerations: consent, data minimization, and compliant measurement practices across major platforms.
• Quality Assurance: pre-flight checks to prevent disapprovals, misattribution, or budget drift.

From Draft to Dynamic: A Practical Workflow

The checklist is designed to be a living document. In the spirit of adpatches—small, informed updates that incrementally improve outcomes—you’ll perform a quick preflight, then a deeper audit as data accrues. The aim is not perfection at the moment of launch, but reliable signals that evolve into real, attributable performance.

Printable Template

For teams who value a physical checklist at hand, this page provides a printable version of the core steps. It preserves the same logic—clear sections, actionable items, and space to annotate findings during QA sessions.