I don't have professional photos or video. Can I still run ads?

Before running ads, what do I need in place?

A product page that answers buyers’ questions, a few photos or clips that show the product clearly, and a budget that lets you test more than one ad. Tracking has to work before the first dollar is spent.

• The Meta pixel connected to your store, for example through Shopify’s Facebook and Instagram app, so purchases are reported
• A product page with several photos, the price, delivery costs and the returns policy where buyers can see them
• Several clearly different ads, not one ad you hope will work
• An offer worth acting on: a reason to buy now, not only a picture of the product
• Ownership of the ad account and pixel in your own Meta business portfolio

Can phone photos work as Facebook and Instagram ads?

Yes, if they are sharp, well lit and show the product clearly. In a feed full of posts from friends, a photo that looks like a real person took it can stop someone scrolling.

Phone material that suits ads:

• The product in use, filmed in one take
• Unboxing: what arrives and how it is packed
• A close-up of the material, the stitching or the finish
• The founder explaining, in a sentence or two, why the product exists
• Customers’ own photos, used with their permission
• A side-by-side of the problem and the product that solves it, as long as the claim is true

What phone photos do badly is the setting. A sofa photographed in the warehouse cannot show a buyer how it looks in a living room, and that is the photo the ad and the product page most need.

What makes an ad work when it is not polished?

The first second and the offer. The ad has to show what the product is straight away and give a reason to click now.

• Show the product in the first frame of a video, not after an introduction
• Say one thing per ad: one benefit, one problem solved, one offer
• Add captions to video so the ad works with the sound off
• Put the price or the offer in the ad when it is a strong one
• Send the click to a product page that matches the ad

How many different ads should I test?

More than one, and each should be genuinely different: a different angle, message or format, not the same photo cropped three ways. With broad targeting and Advantage+ campaigns, the ad itself does much of the work of finding buyers.

Different ads give Meta more ways to reach different groups of buyers. How different creatives need to be under Andromeda explains what counts as different, and how many new creatives you need each month covers volume as spend grows.

When is professional imagery or video worth it?

When the ads find buyers but the product page does not convert them, when you need new ads every week to keep up with spend, or when phone photos cannot show the product in the setting that sells it.

Bartley Studio sells each service on its own. Product imagery is made from a couple of phone photos of each product, made with AI and finished by hand, from $350 plus GST for one product with six images. Product video comes as a 9:16 vertical or a 16:9 loop, from $430 for a single 6-second video. Ad creative is built to Meta placement specs, as distinct concepts rather than variations of one image, with a test plan for each batch; get your price.