Meta has made some updates to ads budgeting that could be very useful as we head into the holidays and beyond. You may not have these yet, but they are actively rolling out and you should get access soon.
In this post, we’ll cover the following updates:
- Daily BudgetA budget is an amount you're willing to spend on your Facebook campaigns or ad sets on a daily or lifetime basis. More Flexibility
- Recommended Budget Increases
- Daily Budget Scheduling
Let’s take a look…
Daily Budget Flexibility
Up until now, when you set a daily budget you might notice a message with a caveat…
That message reads:
You’ll spend up to $125 on some days, and less on others. You’ll spend an average of $100 per day and no more than $700 per calendar week on currently delivering ad setsAn ad set is a Facebook ads grouping where settings like targeting, scheduling, optimization, and placement are determined. More.
If you set a $100 daily budget, Meta might have spent up to 25% over your daily budget when your ads were performing well and there was an opportunity to get more conversionsA conversion is counted whenever a website visitor performs an action that fires a standard event, custom event, or custom conversion. Examples of conversions include purchases, leads, content views, add to cart, and registrations. More.
Well, that budget flexibility is getting a significant boost. In some ad accounts, you’ll see this…
If you click “What’s New,” you’ll see this…
It reads:
On days when better opportunities are available for you, we may spend up to 75% over your daily budget.
That’s quite an adjustment. In the case of our test ad set with a $100 daily budget, Meta could spend up to $175 on a given day.
Of course, Meta won’t spend more than your weekly budget (daily budget X 7) over a week, so that also means that you’ll spend less of your budget on other days to make up for it.
This wide range above and below your budget will surely create some confusion. But it might also lead to better results if the algorithm is able to take advantage of ideal opportunities.
Recommended Budget Increases
This is one that I haven’t seen in my own ad accounts, but it was shared in my Power Hitters Club – Elite community.
In this case, Advantage Campaign BudgetAdvantage Campaign Budget (formerly Campaign Budget Optimization) automatically manages your Facebook campaign budget across ad sets to get you the overall best results. More is used, so the budget is set at the campaignThe 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 level. I assume that this alert also appears in ad sets, but I can’t confirm for sure.
It’s an active campaign, and Meta is recommending that you increase the daily budget from $100 to $179. Not only is this a 79% increase, but this is the most unique part:
“You can increase your daily budget up to $179 without reentering the learning phase.”
Advertisers often try to avoid re-entering the learning phase when an ad set is performing well. That can lead to less stability and potentially hurt performance.
This message is unique because it provides clarity on budget increases that restart the learning phase that Meta has never provided before.
Meta’s own documentation about significant edits that restart the learning phase are incredibly vague on this point. It says that budget increases can restart the learning phase, but the examples given aren’t helpful:
For example, if you increase your budget from $100 to $101, that isn’t likely to cause one or more ad sets to reenter the learning phase. However, if you change your budget from $100 to $1000, one or more ad sets may reenter the learning phase.
So, if you increase the budget by $1, you’re likely fine. If you increase it 10 fold, it may reenter the learning phase.
While we’ve heard various ad reps and advertisers discuss using certain percentages that tend to be safe, this is the clearest example we’ve seen directly from Meta.
This could actually be a very smart way to get advertisers to spend more money. The fear of restarting the learning phase is real, and it absolutely prevents advertisers from making significant budget increases — if any increase at all.
By making this clear, advertisers are likely to feel much safer making that adjustment.
Daily Budget Scheduling
Finally, possibly the most valuable update of all. After setting your daily budget, you may see this message…
When you use Budget Scheduling, you still set a daily budget. But you can also schedule increases to occur during specific time periods.
Once you click the box to “increase your budget during specific time periods,” you’ll be able to set a start and end date and time when this increase will happen.
You can increase the budget by dollar amount or percentage.
You can schedule up to 50 different increases in a single ad set.
When outside of these time entries, your budget will revert to what you originally set.
What’s not clear here is whether scheduling a budget increase like this could result in re-entering the learning phase. I can see it going both ways. But my assumption is that this merely makes these budget changes easier and it won’t prevent you from re-entering the learning phase if it’s over some mysterious level.
Your Turn
Do you have these updates? What do you think?
Let me know in the comments below!
