Simple Ads is the second app I ship under Lift Apps Studio. It lets a Shopify merchant launch a Facebook and Instagram campaign from inside their admin, in minutes, without an agency and without ever opening Ads Manager.
Problem
Meta Ads Manager is built for media buyers. A merchant who just wants to advertise a product faces objectives, audiences, placements, bidding and creative specs before spending a dollar — and then a blank text field where the copy is supposed to go. Most give up, or pay an agency a retainer for what is, for a single product, a fairly mechanical setup.
My role
Founder and engineer on the whole thing: the Meta Marketing API integration, the AI copy and targeting layer, the campaign deployment pipeline, and the embedded Vue 3 wizard.
Key decisions
The campaign runs in the merchant’s own ad account. Simple Ads connects via Meta OAuth with AES-256-encrypted credentials and deploys into the merchant’s account — they keep the pixel history, the billing relationship and the campaign if they ever stop using the app. Anything else would be renting merchants their own marketing.
Targeting comes from Meta, live. Locations and interests are searched against Meta’s own data rather than a hardcoded list, and audience size comes back from the Delivery Estimate API, so the number a merchant sees before launching is the number Meta will actually deliver against.
Previews render as the real placement. The wizard shows the ad as it will appear in the Facebook and Instagram mobile feeds while the copy is still being edited — the fastest way to kill a bad ad is to let someone see it.
Product data stays synced and read-only. The app reads the Shopify catalog to build single image, video and catalog carousel ads, so creatives never drift from live product data.
Outcomes
- A campaign goes from Shopify admin to live on Meta in a single guided flow, with Advantage+ handling budget, audience and placement optimization.
- UTM tags are generated automatically on every campaign — which means the traffic is attributable by default, and pairs directly with True ROAS AI for profit-level reporting.
- The performance dashboard tracks spend, revenue, ROAS, CPC, CTR and cost-per-purchase without the merchant returning to Ads Manager.
Lessons
Building the sibling of a product I already run changed how I scoped this one. Simple Ads deliberately stops at “launch a good campaign” and hands the hard question — did it make money? — to True ROAS AI. Two focused apps that compose beat one app that does both jobs adequately.
