How to choose the right campaign type

Last updated: December 22, 2025

Marketer offers multiple campaign types designed for different goals, budgets, and stages of growth. Choosing the right one is important—using the wrong campaign type can slow learning, limit spend, or produce misleading results.

Below is a practical guide to help you choose the right campaign type based on what you’re trying to achieve.

Retargeting campaign (Meta)

Best for: Converting high-intent users
Audience: Warm traffic only

Retargeting campaigns show ads to people who have already interacted with your store, such as:

  • Website visitors

  • Product viewers

  • Cart visitors

  • Past customers

Why use it

  • Typically the highest-converting campaign type

  • Focuses on users who already know your brand

  • Very efficient when enough traffic exists

When to use it

  • Your Meta Pixel/Dataset already has meaningful traffic

  • You’ve been running prospecting campaigns for a while

  • You want to capture missed conversions

Creatives

  • Uses a product catalog based on your store’s products

Budget behavior

  • May not spend full budget if the audience is too small

  • This is normal and improves as traffic grows

Prospecting campaign (Meta)

Best for: Testing products and finding new customers
Audience: Cold traffic only

Prospecting campaigns introduce your product to people who have never interacted with your store before.

Why use it

  • Core campaign type for growth

  • Helps Meta learn who is likely to convert

  • Ideal for discovering demand and audiences

When to use it

  • New store with limited pixel data

  • Launching a new product

  • Scaling beyond existing audiences

Creatives

  • AI-generated creatives optimized for the selected product

Single Item campaign (Meta)

Best for: Full creative control on one product or collection

This campaign is similar to prospecting but allows you to upload your own images and videos.

Why use it

  • You want full control over creatives

  • You already have proven assets (UGC, videos, branded content)

Landing page

  • Product page or collection page (based on selection)

Customized Creative campaign (Meta)

Best for: AI-driven creative testing on a small product set
Products: Up to 4

This campaign uses Marketer’s AI to generate and optimize creatives based on performance.

Why use it

  • The AI continuously learns which creatives perform best

  • Strong balance between automation and control

  • Good for testing multiple hero products without manual creative work

Use this when

  • You want AI to handle creative generation

  • You’re promoting a small group of key products

Product Catalog campaign (Meta)

Best for: Advertising many products at once
Products: 5+ recommended

Catalog campaigns automatically promote products using a carousel format.

Why use it

  • Scales well with large inventories

  • Automatically pulls product data from Shopify

  • Ideal for collections and broad discovery

Who it’s for

  • Stores with many SKUs

  • Brands promoting categories or collections

Performance Max (Google)

Best for: Capturing high-intent demand on Google
Primary placement: Shopping ads

Performance Max uses Google’s AI to show ads across multiple Google placements, with Shopping being the most important for e-commerce.

Why use it

  • Captures demand from users actively searching for products

  • Expands reach beyond Meta

  • Works well alongside Meta prospecting

Use this when

  • Your products are commonly searched for

  • Pricing is competitive

  • You want visibility in Google Shopping

Not ideal when

  • Products rely heavily on visual storytelling

  • Pricing is significantly higher than competitors

Quick decision guide

  • Want to convert past visitors? → Retargeting

  • Testing a new product or store? → Prospecting

  • Want to use your own creatives? → Single Item

  • Want AI-generated ads for a few products? → Customized Creative

  • Advertising many products at once? → Product Catalog

  • Want to advertise on Google? → Performance Max

Final note

Most successful accounts use multiple campaign types together over time:

  • Prospecting to drive traffic

  • Retargeting to convert it

  • Google Performance Max to capture search demand

If you’re unsure where to start, begin with Prospecting, then layer in Retargeting once data builds.