You are competing with someone’s friends.

Yes, more than most advertisers realise. Interested users frequently tap through to the profile before enquiring. An abandoned profile with old posts undermines the ad that brought them. It does not need to be prolific — current and credible is enough.

Reels for reach, because that is where distribution now sits. Feed still works for considered propositions where a longer caption helps. Most advertisers should be testing Reels-first creative and treating feed as secondary.

You can, and it is usually a mistake for video. Instagram expects vertical, native, fast-paced content; Facebook tolerates more variety and older audiences. Cropping one square asset into every placement is efficient and visibly so.

Costs vary by category, season and audience competitiveness, and are higher during festive periods when everyone is bidding. Rather than a benchmark, the useful figure is your own cost per qualified lead, which is the only number that tells you whether to continue.

They can, particularly through whitelisting — running ads from the creator’s handle, which performs better than the same content from a brand account because it reads as native. It works best with genuinely relevant creators rather than large follower counts.

Usually one of three: the landing page does not continue the ad’s promise, the profile they checked first was unconvincing, or the offer was interesting to look at and not interesting enough to act on. All three are diagnosable in an hour.