Does Adding More Ads Actually Hurt Performance?

Question

Hi Jon, this is Stacey Hughes. When it comes to ad creative in a single ad set, do you think there's a point where adding more ads actually hurts delivery? I like to focus on format diversity rather than chasing a specific number of ads. Curious as to what your thoughts are around the variety of format versus volume of creative.

Answer

This is a great question, Stacey, and the reason why I love it is there isn’t an easy answer.

I know the hope a lot of advertisers have, and I’m not saying this is you, Stacey, but people want a clear threshold. That’s why it was nice when Meta actually came out and said a few years back that there was no benefit to having more than six ads in an ad set.

Of course, Meta removed that recommendation, which coincided with the Andromeda updates, so all bets are off now. And that makes things a bit murkier.

So the first thing is, you’re doing the right things by focusing on creative diversity. Meta encourages using multiple formats, uniquely different visuals, and different text. It’s what replaces targeting to reach our ideal audience.

But I do think we can overdo it, and it may even be backed by performance. I’ve personally seen no benefit to creating a whole bunch of ads at once. Even if it doesn’t hurt performance, it’s a complete waste of time and resources since Meta will generally dedicate most of your budget to a handful anyway.

Something I like to do is start small. So I’ll create a new campaign and ad set with only a couple of ads. Still lean into creative diversity with different formats, visuals, and text. And honestly, if you have the new creative workflow, you could even start with one ad, but up to 10 creatives.

Then I let it go for a week or two. If results are great, I don’t mess with it. If I want better results, I create more ads.

But in the process, you will likely get to a point where you have a bunch of ads in one ad set. And you can’t have more than 50, of course. So even if you don’t do it immediately, you might continuously throw more ads in there over time.

And you might find that Meta simply doesn’t spend on certain ads, or spends very little.

Now, my advice in the past was to just let it go. Even if your ads get a few impressions, they may be for the right people. And you’ll also see that which ads get the bulk of impressions might change from week to week.

But I’m also starting to see evidence that it can help to prune a bit if you aren’t getting great results. If you’re blessed with a huge budget, this might be less necessary.

But I’ve just had the sense that the delivery algorithm can get a bit lost when it has too many options for the budget. That truly is just a hunch at this point, and Meta hasn’t come out and said it.

So to answer your question, I do believe there are signs of this, that you can create too many ads.

Now, that doesn't mean there's a certain number of ads you should avoid, but it's certainly something to monitor. At the very least, pausing some of your ads should be one of your options.

If you’re not getting the results you want and you keep creating more ads without improving results, start turning off the ads that Meta is rarely showing anyway. See if that helps.

It’s not a proven science at this point, but it is an option to try.

Thanks for your question, Stacey!