Meta removed the old “Conversions vs Video Views vs Reach” maze. In 2026 you get six objectives: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, Sales, and App Promotion.
That simplification helps most advertisers. It confuses music teams because a song is not a product. You are selling attention first, then taste fit, then repeat listening.
Here is the decision rule:
- Discovery first: optimize for attention, not clicks.
- Intent next: optimize for a real music intent event you can track.
- Sales last: only when Meta can see confirmed intent.
What Each Objective Actually Trains Meta To Do
Each objective activates a different delivery model. Meta is not showing the same ad to the same people with a different label.
Awareness
Awareness pushes toward maximum reach or ad recall. It is useful when you are seeding a very broad market or a tour announcement, but it is usually wasteful for songs because it optimizes for people who are easy to reach, not people who watch music.
Use it rarely for music, mostly for:
- tour / merch pushes to warm audiences
- brand moments where reach itself matters
Traffic
Traffic finds link clickers. Meta is very good at finding people who click a lot and buy nothing.
Traffic is a tool, not a goal. Use it only when:
- your landing page is clean and fast
- you can measure the intent event after the click
If you cannot measure intent, Traffic becomes a click farm.
Engagement
Engagement optimizes for actions on Meta: video views, reactions, comments, shares, profile visits, and follows.
For music, Engagement is a discovery objective. Use it to teach the system who watches your clips to completion.
Leads
Leads optimizes for form submits or messages.
Music teams should think of Leads as “pre‑save + email / SMS capture.” If you want to build a list around a release, Leads is the cleanest objective, as long as you send the matching event to Meta.
Sales
Sales is the replacement for Conversions. It optimizes for high‑value off‑platform events.
For music, Sales should mean:
- confirmed save
- confirmed follow
- ticket or merch purchase
If Sales is pointed at a weak proxy like “landing page view,” you are telling Meta to find people who bounce.
The Music Funnel Playbook
Phase 1: Cold discovery
Objective: Engagement (Video Views / ThruPlay).
Reason: you want Meta to learn who actually watches music clips. Reels placements behave best when the objective matches watch time.
Start with Reels‑native creatives and let Advantage+ placements expand delivery.
Phase 2: Intent capture
Objective: Leads or Sales, depending on your setup.
- Use Leads if you are capturing email/SMS through an instant form or a pre‑save flow that includes a form step.
- Use Sales if you can send a confirmed save/follow event via Conversions API.
Reason: Meta needs a clean intent signal before it can optimize for quality traffic.
Phase 3: Warm conversion
Objective: Sales.
Audience: 95%+ video viewers, landing visitors, previous savers, list subscribers.
Creative: second‑angle hooks, creator proof, lyric context, longer story cuts.
Reason: at this point the model has enough taste information to find adjacent fans who will stick.