Auction Overlap can hurt your Facebook ad performance.
I’ve been talking a lot about Auction OverlapAuction Overlap can happen when you have two ad sets running at the same time, targeting similar audiences. When their ads are about to enter the auction, Meta first chooses the ad with the highest total value. That ad will be the one that enters into the auction. The other won't be considered. Meta does this to prevent you from bidding against yourself. When there's too much Auction Overlap, it can result in higher costs or under delivery. More lately in response to what some people tell me they’re doing related to scalingScaling is the process of increasing your budget or focus to get more results from an effective campaign or ad set. Advertisers often speak of vertical scaling (increasing your budget) or horizontal scaling (increasing your targeting audience) to achieve these results. More their campaignsThe campaign is the foundation of your Facebook ad. This is where you'll set an advertising objective, which defines what you want your ad to achieve. More.
A common strategy is to duplicate an active campaign, increase the budgetA budget is an amount you're willing to spend on your Facebook campaigns or ad sets on a daily or lifetime basis. More with the duplicate, wait until it’s performing well, and then turn off the campaign with the lower budget.
While this is certainly preferred over restarting the learning phase, AuctionFacebook uses an ad auction to determine the best ad to show to a person at a given point in time. The winner of the auction is the ad with the highest total value, based on bid, estimated action rates, and ad quality. More Overlap is almost certain to come about.
Auction Overlap is when two ads from the same page attempt to enter the same ad auction. To prevent that from happening, the ad with the highest total value will be chosen. The other ad will not enter the auction.
The result of this is one ad that may struggle to get delivery. It may not reachReach measures the number of Accounts Center Accounts (formerly users) that saw your ads at least once. You can have one account reached with multiple impressions. More its budget or get enough actions to exit the learning phase.
Because we’re duplicating a campaign, you’ll have two identical ads targeting identical audiences. This will certainly lead to Auction Overlap.
Whether that leads to noticeably bad results is another matter. But it certainly can.
My recommendation for scaling is one of two approaches:
1. Start with a high budget and pull back if you aren’t getting the results you want
2. Scale slowly using Automated RulesAutomated Rules allow advertisers to set automated processes (pausing, adjusting budget, or adjusting bid) based on performance. More based on performance.
How do you detect Auction Overlap? That’s another issue. Previously, you could view it in the Inspect Tool. That no longer exists. Now you will get alerts when it’s an “issue,” and you can also create Automated Rules to take care of it when it’s a problem.