Paid Facebook ads

Overview

Mallard Bay’s paid Meta (Facebook / Instagram) tools help you promote a listing, collect leads with a built-in lead form, send people to that listing’s public booking URL, and review reach, engagement, and spend from Meta.

In the dashboard you use two main screens (both under the same Meta connection):

• Create Ads (/paid-facebook-ads) — List ads your outfitter has through Mallard Bay, launch new ones, and pause or activate an existing ad.
• Ad Reporting (/paid-ads-reporting) — Filter by ad account, campaign, ad set, and ad; pick a month or year; then scan summary metrics and a detailed performance table sourced from Meta.

These areas are separate from general business Reporting (bookings, payouts, payments). Ad numbers live on Ad Reporting, not alongside those finance-focused reports.

Prerequisites

Before the Create Ads list, the ad builder, or Ad Reporting can show live data:

1. Meta must be connected for your outfitter. If Meta is not set up yet, you will see the connection flow instead of the main screens.
2. Ad accounts and Facebook Pages available in Mallard Bay must match what you expect in Meta. You choose an Ad Account and Facebook Page when building an ad.
3. Listings you want to advertise must exist and be selectable in Mallard Bay. The wizard ties each ad setup to exactly one listing.

Optional checks from the UI:

• If you see “Meta ad account configuration in progress” with guidance to contact support, Mallard Bay is still finishing account setup on the backend side.
• If you see “Import in progress” suggesting you refresh in a few minutes, ad account data is still importing. Waiting and reloading is appropriate.

Whether a given team member role can access these screens is controlled by permissions in Mallard Bay; that mapping is not verified from this codebase alone.

Step-by-step: Create Ads (`/paid-facebook-ads`)

See your ads

1. Open Create Ads (page URL /paid-facebook-ads).
2. When Meta is ready, you get a paginated table with Ad Name, Campaign Name, and Status.
   • While a campaign name is still syncing, Campaign Name may show “Syncing…”.

Pause or activate an ad

1. In the row for the ad, open the more actions menu (ellipsis).
2. Choose Pause Ad or Activate Ad (whichever applies to the current status).
3. Confirm in the dialog. On success, the dashboard shows a success message for updating the ad.

The dashboard does not expose a screen to edit an ad’s image, headline, or lead form after creation—those are chosen in the creation wizard below. Changing creative or form details likely requires Meta’s Ads Manager unless Mallard Bay adds an edit flow elsewhere.

Create a new ad (/paid-facebook-ads/new)

1. On Create Ads, click Create New Ad.
2. Use the wizard steps across the top: Listing → Ad Details → Ad Content → Review And Approve. Later steps stay disabled until earlier steps validate. Use Close when you want to return to the ad list without finishing.

Step 1 — Listing

• Pick the listing this promotion is for.
• Defaults for names and previews update from that listing once selected.

Step 2 — Ad Details (“Meta Ad Settings”)

Fill in:

• Ad Account — Select one of your Meta ad accounts available to Mallard Bay.
• Facebook Page — Page that represents your business on Meta for this placement.
• Ad Name and Form Name — Identifiers Mallard Bay and Meta use for the ad entity and linked lead capture form (defaults suggested from the listing).
• End Date — When the associated ad scheduling should end within this setup flow.
• Daily Budget — Must meet the minimum enforced in the form. The product copy states the daily budget must be greater than $1.

Mallard Bay names the backing Meta structure in a consistent pattern (for example, campaign and ad set names derived from your Ad Name), so objects stay organized in Meta.

Step 3 — Ad Content

This step combines visible creative and lead form copy:

• Ad preview reflects:
  • Ad title (primary text callers see).
  • Ad CTA label — The call-to-action label on the creative.
  • Ad Image — Required; defaults to the listing cover image but can be replaced.
• Lead form preview reflects:
  • Lead Form Title
  • Lead Form Description (guest-facing explanatory text defaults to wording about filling out the form so your team can follow up.)

The creative’s destination link is the Mallard Bay public listing URL for the selected listing ({your Mallard Bay site root}/listing/{listing id}). The lead form’s follow-up action also routes to that same listing URL after submit, aligning ad clicks and form completions with booking.

Step 4 — Review and approve

Summaries pull together Meta Ad Settings, the creative preview, and lead form preview before you finalize.

Submitting completes the createMetaAdAndCampaign action; on success you are returned to Create Ads and should see “Meta ad created successfully.”

Step-by-step: Ad Reporting (`/paid-ads-reporting`)

1. Open Ad Reporting (/paid-ads-reporting).
2. Same Meta connection gates as Create Ads apply (including configuration / import status messages).
3. Choose a period — Toggle By Month or By Year (starting point defaults to the current month).
4. Refine filters (each list loads from your connected Meta hierarchy):
   • Ad Account
   • Ad Campaign (optional)
   • Ad Set (optional)
   • Ad (optional)
5. Read Performances — Metric cards aggregated for your filters and chosen month or year (empty state shows No data when nothing is returned).
6. Read Ad Performance Data — Table columns include Ad Name, Campaign Name, Objective, Impressions, Reach, Clicks, Spend, CTR, CPM, and CPC (values are formatted strings from Meta’s metrics API).
   If the current slice has no ads, you’ll see messaging like No ads for the current selection.

Common pitfalls

• “Configuration in progress” or “Import in progress” — These come from Mallard Bay’s Meta onboarding jobs, not from a broken Integration screen. Refresh after a wait for imports; contact support when the messaging tells you to.
• Disconnected or incomplete Meta — You cannot reach the ads table or metrics until Meta is enabled; you’ll instead get prompts to connect Meta.
• Daily budget rejected — The form rejects budgets at or below about one dollar; enter a higher daily budget.
• Expecting to edit creative after launch — The dashboard supports pause and activate only for existing ads. For deep creative changes, plan on working in Meta Ads Manager or creating a new ad setup in Mallard Bay.
• Mixing up reporting areas — Ad Reporting is only for paid Meta stats. Bookings revenue, payouts, and guest payments remain under the main Reporting section; comparing ad spend to payout reports requires reconciling two different systems on purpose.
• Campaign name shows “Syncing…” — Data may still be catching up from Meta; refresh after a short wait.

Related workflows

• Meta integration (Integrations) — Connects Meta, Pages, and ad account access. Create Ads and Ad Reporting both depend on this integration; status banners on these pages may appear even when the Integrations page looks fine.
• Listings — Each new ad setup is anchored to one listing’s public URL and default creative.
• Leads — This ad type includes a Meta lead form with text you control. Inbound interest from Meta advertising is part of the broader lead workflow in Mallard Bay; exact field mapping and sync timing depend on how your Meta integration and lead ingestion are configured (not spelled out in the dashboard UI examined here).
• Clients and follow-up — After you respond to leads or guests land on the listing URL, downstream steps (quotes, bookings, client records) continue in your normal sales and operations flows.
• Website and booking widget — The promoted link is the Mallard Bay listing URL, which may relate to how your marketing site exposes trips, but website builder settings are unchanged by the ad wizard itself.

Unknown without backend or product-docs review: Exact subscription or paywall rules for Create Ads, whether paused ads appear in metrics with zero delivery, Meta review / policy handling for creatives, every default lead-form field shipped inside Meta’s lead-gen object, and any server-side latency limits on how fast new ads surface in the dashboard after creation.