How and why I run Meta ads with two campaigns. (bookmark this one)
1. CBO - Scaling
This is where all your proven winners live.
β Launch one ad set every month
β Set min spend limits on each ad set to make sure your ads get spend
β Post ID winning ads from testing into the current month's ad set
2. ABO - Testing
This is where you test new creative.
β Launch one ad set for every concept, emotion, or angle you test
β Be strategic about what you're testing
Example: If you're targeting women over 50 who golf, be clear with that in your messaging. Meta reads and listens to your ads, so the more clear you are about who you want to target, the better your targeting.
Optimization strategy:
For every newly launched ad (in testing or scaling), keep it running for a minimum of 3 days.
β This gives it time to optimize
For ABO tests, it must spend 3-4x your average CPA.
β This gives it enough time to get a handful of purchases
β Those purchases help validate your metrics like CPA and ROAS
Once a test succeeds in the ABO:
β Post ID it to that month's scaling ad set
β Turn up the spend on the ABO ad set
It doesn't hurt to horizontally scale each ad set while also running a scaling campaign.
Many ads that work at $100-200/day don't work at $10k/day.
So keeping them on at lower spend means you pick up extra purchases you wouldn't get if the ad was off.
Now the why:
I recently talked about scaling in one campaign. I think that's fine for most brands, but if you're spending over $100k/month it gets messy.
I personally like a little more control.
The reason I don't believe in dropping all your ads into one ad set is because Meta will often pick the wrong ad to spend on.
Or a better way to say it: Meta will often pick the ad that used to perform, even if it's fatigued.
Meta also tends to pick the ad that gets the most clicks because it correlates that to conversions.
How do I know this?
I have a client that sells a product that only converts with women, but the photos are of women in bikinis.
Because of that, Meta tries to target men for the clicks even though they don't convert.
I've seen this time and time again.
So instead, we have to control where it spends.
What ends up happening:
If you drop new ads every day into the same ad set as your top performers, Meta usually won't spend on them.
You'll probably miss out on winners.
Meta just gets distracted by old ads with more likes and comments (and therefore more clicks).