Facebook has announced that as of September, a relatively new and controversial feature on their advertising platform called Campaign Budget Optimization will become the mandatory default. Not the optional setting that it is now.
You can expect that starting in September when you create your new campaigns, they will use Campaign Budget Optimization as the default whether you like it or not! You can also expect that any existing campaigns will be migrated to Campaign Budget Optimization as well.
What that means for you is that it’s time to prepare!
What is Campaign Budget Optimization?
First, let’s make sure that we know what it is we’re dealing with. Here’s what Facebook has to say on the matter:
“Campaign budget optimization is a way of optimizing the distribution of a campaign budget across your campaign’s ad sets. This means we automatically and continuously find the best active opportunities for results across your ad sets and distributes your campaign budget in real time to get those results.”
How Does Campaign Budget Optimization Work?
It’s still very early in this rollout, and the advertising community is still learning exactly how it’s going to work. But here’s the general idea:
“Using campaign budget optimization, advertisers can set one central campaign budget to optimize across ad sets by distributing budget to the top performing ad sets in real time. Campaign budget optimization is available for any campaign objective and is best suited for campaigns with multiple ad sets.”
“With campaign budget optimization, advertisers allow Facebook to distribute their budget across ad sets to get the best results for their campaign.”
Translation: If you have multiple ad sets running in a campaign, Facebook is going to spend your money the way they see fit!
Here’s what it will look like:
That sounds scary, doesn’t it?
Keep reading…it’s not all bad:
“In addition to setting a daily or lifetime campaign budget, businesses can set bid caps and spend limits for each ad set.”
Translation: You still actually have quite a bit of control over how Facebook spends your money, but you have to be a little more thoughtful about how you set things up.
The Benefits of Campaign Budget Optimization
So…why are they doing it then?
Here’s what Facebook as to say.
“By distributing more of a budget to the highest performing ad sets, advertisers can maximize the total value of their campaign. Budget optimization works in real time to determine the most effective use of a business’ ad dollars to help lower cost per result and increase return on ad spend.”
“Campaign budget optimization also saves advertisers time by eliminating the need to manually shift budgets between ad sets.”
Translation: We have much better data about our ad system than you do…so let us do the heavy lifting using Artificial Intelligence!
It’s Coming…Here’s What To Do.
This change is happening whether you like it or not, so the best thing you can do at this point is to accept it and get prepared. Here are our tips to help:
Tip #1: Test
You can start using Campaign Budget Optimization on your campaigns right now, so you might as well get some experience with it before it becomes mandatory. Set aside a small test budget and start running experiments.
Tip #2: Use the ‘minimum budget per ad set’ setting
This is an optional setting that allows you to ensure that a particular Ad Set gets at least a certain amount of dollars spent on it. This is your way of making sure that Facebook doesn’t completely turn off traffic to a particular Ad Set.
It’s Time!
Campaign Budget Optimization will be a requirement very soon – it’s time to start preparing and testing so you’re ready!
Tip #3: More budget per campaign
Since your budget is now being split across all Ad Sets in your campaign, you need to make sure you are upping your budget.
Tip #4: Adapt and overcome!
Campaign Budget Optimization is new for everyone. The strategies for the optimization of this new setting are still theoretical, and you will make mistakes. That’s ok! Adapt and overcome! Continue to monitor your campaigns, learn, and make adjustments.
