Whenever you run ads on the internet, you will always be wresting with the algorithms and dynamic factors in the marketplace. At Book More Showings, we are constantly at the forefront of running the best strategies that focus on bringing you an ROI.
When you start a brand new campaign on Facebook (this process applies to other platforms as well), your ads will enter whats called a "Learning Phase"
What Is The Learning Phase?
In this section I will place direct quotes from Meta (Facebook). If you would like to read the exact article I am referencing below, please click here.
Each time an ad is shown, our ads delivery system learns more about the best people and places to show the ad. The more an ad is shown, the better the delivery system becomes at optimizing the ad’s performance.
The learning phase is the period when the delivery system still has a lot to learn about an ad set. During the learning phase, the delivery system is exploring the best way to deliver your ad set - so performance is less stable and cost per result is usually worse. The learning phase occurs when you create a new ad or ad set or make a significant edit to an existing one.
What Does This Mean?
Note that during the "Learning Phase", performance is less stable and cost per result is usually worse. This means during your first few weeks when launching a new campaign, you can expect leads to cost more and for them to come in unusual timings. It's not uncommon to see one day where you get zero leads and another day to get three. This is because during the day where you get zero, the ad set will learn its lesson and what type of people it shouldn't target. Then, during the day where you get three leads, it uses that as positive reinforcement to know who to target next time.
Based on these key ideas, you should be aware of the following
Do not touch your ads. If you change the budget from $10/day to $15/day, this is a 50% increase in advertising spend and a 50% increase in audience size. This is what Facebook would consider a 'significant edit' and would cause your ad to re-enter "The Learning Phase" and likely cause poor performance or even worse, a complete un-optimization of our audience.
If you make changes, be aware of the learning phase. As an online advertiser, you cannot escape the learning phase. Every advertiser has to deal with it and having unstable/higher cost leads is a part of doing online lead generation. If you would like to focus on optimizing your ROI, stick with one strategy and do not make significant changes in your advertising.
Facebook themselves has some best practices as well:
Best practices
During the learning phase, ad sets are less stable and usually have a higher CPA. To avoid behaviors that prevent ad sets from exiting the learning phase, we recommend you:
Wait to edit your ad set until its out of the learning phase. During the learning phase, performance is less stable, so your results aren't necessarily indicative of future performance. By editing an ad, ad set or campaign during the learning phase, you reset learning and delay our delivery system’s ability to optimize.
Avoid unnecessary edits that cause ad sets to re-enter the learning phase. Edits that meaningfully change how your ad set might perform in the future can cause an ad set to re-enter the learning phase. Only edit your ads or ad set when you have reason to believe that doing so should improve performance.
Avoid high ad volumes. When you create many ads and ad sets, the delivery system learns less about each ad and ad set than when you create fewer ads and ad sets. By combining similar ad sets, you also combine learnings.
Use realistic budgets. If you set a very small or inflated budget, the delivery system has an inaccurate indicator of the people for whom the delivery system should optimize. Set a budget large enough to get at least 50 total optimization events and avoid frequent budget changes (which can cause an ad set to re-enter the learning phase).
In summary, we highly recommend that you exercise patience and understanding with online leads knowing that the two biggest factors that will affect your lead quality are the following:
How long your ads have been active for without making significant edits
Having a budget that is realistic for your market.
How do I change my budget?
If you'd like to update your budget, we ask that you notify our team to do it for you. We have an internal strategy that involves making smaller edits to your ads to prevent you exiting the learning phase. This is important so that you can value your time and maintain a consistent and stable stream of quality leads.