How many ads should be in an ad setAn ad set is a Facebook ads grouping where settings like targeting, scheduling, optimization, and placement are determined. More? There’s an official recommendation from Meta on this.
A Help Center article titled “About Managing Ad Volume” says the following:
Use 6 or fewer creatives per ad set. The delivery system favors ads with more delivery because conversion predictions are more accurate. Once you’ve added more than 6 ads, there is little marginal benefit.
It goes on to say if you want to test text, use the multiple text optimization.
And if you want to test creative, use Dynamic Creative.
To be clear, this page has existed for several years, so there’s some reason to doubt whether it remains relevant. But, it does include some updates in language since it was initially published, so it does still appear to be Meta’s recommendation.
What About Advantage+ Shopping?
That said, this advice surely doesn’t apply to Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. Documentation there says…
We recommend you import all eligible existing ads so we can automatically test your creative (up to 150 creative combinations) and deliver the highest performing ads.
This certainly isn’t consistent with the six ad limit. And that makes sense since it’s been quite clear from the beginning that Meta wants us to feed Advantage+ Shopping 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 with lots of creative.
So, if you’re running an Advantage+ Shopping CampaignAdvantage+ Shopping Campaigns offer a streamlined way of creating a Sales campaign that leverages machine learning to get the best results. Presets are locked in and can't be changed. The advertiser provides custom audiences at the account level that define current customers and can then determine a budget cap for how much of the budget is spent on current customers. More, the more the better. If you’re running a manual campaign, try not to exceed six ads.
These are just general guides, of course. Budget surely impacts your approach. Only larger budgets should consider pushing the edges of that limit, if not exceeding it entirely.
How many ads do you have in an ad set?
