Last week, I wrote about how to define the appropriate number of Meta ads campaigns you should run at the same time. This week, let’s focus on the number of ad sets.
In both cases, I encourage you to limit unnecessary complexity where possible. Prioritize a simplified approach that allows you to consolidate your budget as much as possible. Each extra campaign and ad set waters down your budget, and it may result in auction overlap or audience fragmentation.
In a vacuum, $100 per day dedicated to one ad set is more efficient than $100 split up between five ad sets. That doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions when you should split up your budget, but approach such decisions with this knowledge.
What we want to eliminate is the unnecessary ad sets that advertisers create. We often think they’re necessary, but they may actually create problems without solving any.
Let’s take a closer look at the individual questions you should ask before creating more ad sets.
1. Budget -> Performance Goal -> Expected CPA
I covered this when discussing campaigns, too, so I won’t get too far into the weeds here. But the reality is that this is just as important for ad sets. Your budget helps determine what’s reasonable with ad sets.
There isn’t a magical dividing line between what is defined as a “large” budget and a “small” budget. You could spend thousands of dollars per day, and the conditions may be similar to an advertiser spending a fraction of that amount.
This is because how far your budget goes depends on your performance goal and expected cost per optimized action. If you’re collecting leads for a free PDF and those leads cost you $2 each, $100 per day will get you 50 leads on average. But if you’re spending $1,000 per day and those leads are for professional services with an average cost of $500, that $1,000 won’t get you very far.
While I’d avoid separate ad sets in both cases, I’d especially see it as a bad idea for the professional services example. With the general rule of thumb of 50 optimized events per week per ad set in mind, you want to consolidate when possible.
Everyone has their reasons for creating separate ad sets. But before even considering those, understand how this complexity prevents you from reaching that 50 optimized event threshold.
2. Targeting Considerations
One of the most common reasons advertisers have for creating multiple ad sets is to separate delivery by audience. Let’s walk through the questions to ask to determine when or if these separate ad sets are necessary.
Ad Sets by Location
While creating separate ad sets by location should be considered an exception, there are times when it can make sense.
Are you promoting different physical locations in distinct states or countries? Is your product or messaging different by location? A separate ad set to restrict the audience to a relevant group and serve an ad focused on that location would have value.
You may also consider creating separate ad sets by country or group of similar countries, especially if you have business goals related to sales and revenue by country. While the typical advertiser should combine countries to consolidate budget, you may find success keeping them separate.
But these examples are exceptions and should only be tried if enough budget is available to generate meaningful volume from each ad set. There’s also no guarantee that you’ll get better results by breaking them up.
Ad Sets by Age or Gender
Sometimes advertisers will create uniquely different ads by age group or gender. So the approach might be creating separate ad sets for men and women where the ads are uniquely positioned for each group.
While I understand this approach in theory, it may also be overthinking things. One of the primary benefits of creative diversification is that you can create ads catered to uniquely different groups. In theory, an ad directed to men will be shown primarily to men. And even if it isn’t always, Meta may determine that the ad for men also works for women.
Once again, such segmentation should be the exception, rather than the rule. Meta discourages advertisers from structures that lead to audience fragmentation. They’re less efficient.
But if you have the budget to sustain breaking up these audiences and you have uniquely different strategies for different demographics, it’s at least an option. I’d prioritize keeping the ads together in the same ad set first. See how these ads are delivered and perform using breakdowns before separating them.
Ad Sets by Detailed Targeting or Lookalike Audience
Detailed targeting and lookalike audiences are almost always suggestions now. Depending on the performance goal, it’s unlikely that you’re able to restrict your targeting by these audiences.
What that means is that if you create separate ad sets by detailed targeting or lookalike audience where those inputs are used as suggestions, you’re capable of reaching all of the same people in each ad set. You’re not actually segmenting the targeting.
You may see different results by ad set, but that’s more likely to be due to random distribution than it is the audience definitions. Bottom line: It’s likely a pointless exercise to create separate ad sets for this purpose, regardless of your budget.
Ad Sets by Remarketing and Prospecting
Now, let me start by saying that you shouldn’t prioritize creating separate ad sets specifically for remarketing audiences to begin with. Meta doesn’t need you to restrict targeting to your general remarketing audiences, like your website visitors, existing customers, and people who engage with your page or profile.
That happens naturally already. You can prove it if you’ve defined your audience segments in Advertising Settings. When running sales campaigns, you can see how your budget is distributed by engaged audience, existing customers, and new audience.
Creating separate ad sets for remarketing and prospecting should be an exception, not the rule. But it’s being done to solve a known problem.
You may determine that Meta dedicates too much of your budget to remarketing through algorithmic targeting (discovered using the breakdown by audience segments). There are logical reasons this could happen since Meta knows these people are most likely to convert.
And that’s partly why there could be a problem to be solved. Remarketing yields misleading results (from view-through and engage-through conversions) that are less incremental than those that come from prospecting. Of course, it’s generally much more difficult to get a completely new customer, too.
Meta doesn’t care about misleading results. So a situation is possible where Meta might spend half of your budget on remarketing. While this could lead to good surface-level results, it may not help you reach revenue growth goals.
This is why you might create separate ad sets for remarketing (restricting your audience to specific custom audiences) and prospecting (excluding those same custom audiences). You could then control the spend for each group.
3. High Ad Volume
Another reason to create multiple ad sets is related to high ad volume. Since Meta sets a cap at 50 ads per ad set, you may need to create separate ad sets to keep up with ad production.
It shouldn’t need to be said, but such an approach should only apply when you have the budget and resources to sustain it. Don’t create more ads for the sake of creating more ads. The focus should be on quality over quantity. You’re unlikely to see the benefits of high ad volume at a modest budget.
But I’ve heard from many advertisers who have a creative team ready to churn out dozens of ads at a time. They need something to do. And if the budget is there, there could be benefits.
An approach to consider would be separate ad sets by theme or customer persona. Each ad set may target broadly. But the separate ad sets are created mostly to organize similar ads, knowing that the alternative is a mishmash of ads in multiple ad sets.
4. Product-Specific Goals
You might create separate ad sets for separate products or product categories. But I want to be clear that this shouldn’t necessarily be your default approach.
In theory, you could combine ads for different products in the same ad set. Meta would then distribute budget to them optimally in an effort to get you the most conversions (or value, depending on your performance goal).
So if your primary goal is to generate the most sales or value, you still should prioritize combining these ads in the same ad set. You’d just need to use the right performance goal to prioritize volume or value.
But, as always, there are exceptions. If you have company goals related to using ads to generate sales for specific products or categories, you’ll need to assign dedicated budgets to them. Or if you’re creating a high volume of ads, as described above, it would make sense to potentially separate your creative by product or category.
In either of these exceptions, though, budget and volume of results will be important.
A Note on Advantage+ Campaign Budget (CBO)
Before we wrap up, it’s worth mentioning this. If you create a campaign with multiple ad sets that utilizes Advantage+ Campaign Budget (formerly known as Campaign Budget Optimization or CBO), the impact is far less restrictive than with it off. But there are layers to this.
When you run a campaign with three ad sets and CBO, delivery is optimized at the campaign level. In other words, the budget is unlikely to be shared equally between ad sets, and it will adjust dynamically. One ad set may get most or all of the budget, similar to how delivery works to individual ads in an ad set.
In theory, there is little difference between a campaign using CBO with three ad sets running four ads each and a single ad set running the same 12 ads together. It’s mostly organizational.
When you turn CBO off, however, you are forcing a predetermined amount of budget to each ad set. It’s no longer optimized or efficient. If each ad set can reach the same people, auction overlap is also more likely to become an issue.
One alternative is setting ad set spend minimums or maximums using CBO. Depending on how strictly these are set, there’s little difference between this approach and separate ad sets with designated budgets.
A Standardized Approach
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. But there is a general recommended approach that allows for exceptions.
Your primary goal should be to consolidate your budget using the fewest ad sets possible without negatively impacting results. Do not look for reasons to water down your budget by audience, creative theme, or product category. Each time you do this, know the risks involved. Create separate ad sets to solve a specific problem.
It doesn’t mean that one ad set is necessarily better than two or that you’ll get obviously worse results by creating that separate ad set. But make sure there’s a proven problem to be solved when you do it.
When possible, start with one ad set and consolidate your budget as much as you can. Monitor results. If you need to create separate ad sets, monitor how performance changes when you do. And when possible, turn on Advantage+ Campaign Budget.
Your Turn
How many ad sets do you tend to have running at once in a single campaign?
Let me know in the comments below!
