"Why can't I add a second video to my ad?"

Someone brand-new to Ads Manager — pixel just installed, first campaign in progress — got stuck here and asked for help. It reads like a bug. It isn't one.

What's actually happening: a standard "Single image or video" ad holds exactly one creative. That's the format, not a limitation of the tool. If you want to show more than one video (or mix videos and images) inside a single ad, you need Carousel format instead — it supports 2 to 10 cards, and each card can carry its own video, image, headline, description, and link.

If you're stuck looking for a second upload slot that doesn't exist, you're most likely building a single-creative ad. Switch the ad format to Carousel and the option to add more videos appears.

"I set everything up and Events Manager just shows... nothing"

This one came from someone who said they'd "just added the pixel" to their site — and then opened Events Manager's Data Sources page to find it empty. Also not a bug, and also not evidence the pixel is broken. It usually means one of two specific things.

1
The code on the site isn't tied to a real Pixel yet

Pasting a generic pixel snippet onto a page isn't the same as the Pixel existing as an asset. The code needs your actual Pixel ID, created inside Events Manager first — not a placeholder or an example snippet copied from a tutorial.

2
You're looking at the wrong Business Portfolio

A Pixel can exist and be perfectly healthy while you're viewing Data Sources inside a different Portfolio than the one that actually owns it. Check which Portfolio is currently selected before assuming the Pixel is missing.

Check both before concluding anything is actually broken — a real, working Pixel almost never just "shows nothing" for no reason.

"My ad's doing great — so why am I losing money?"

This is the sharpest question of the three. Someone described a real ad performing well by Meta's own numbers — costing a bit over $5 per initiated checkout — and asked why they still weren't making money. The honest answer: a good cost-per-result and a profitable ad are not the same thing.

The number that actually matters: cost-per-result only means something next to your own margin. If a checkout costs you $5 and your profit on that item is $4, the ad is working exactly as intended — and still losing you money on every sale. There's no universal "good" cost-per-result across every business; there's only your break-even number.

Before judging any campaign as a win or a loss, work out your actual break-even cost-per-result first: what you can afford to spend to acquire one sale or lead and still come out ahead once product cost, fees, and margin are accounted for. Compare every result against that number — not against a benchmark from a completely different business.

Why this matters more than the usual "beginner mistakes" list

All three of these came from real people, asking in public, with nothing to gain by getting the question wrong. That's a different — and often more honest — signal than a curated list of "common mistakes" written from the outside. If three strangers hit the same wall in one comment section, it's a safe bet plenty of people reading this have hit it too, just never asked out loud.