Is Meta Spending Too Much on One Ad?
Today's question is about what to do when one ad takes 50% of your budget and performance starts declining over time. Jon explains why uneven budget distribution isn't necessarily a problem, how push delivery can test whether Meta's allocation is correct, and why creating new and uniquely different ads is almost always the real solution over micromanaging which ads get spend.
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Question
Hi, Jon. This is Beej, and I have a question. What do you do when Meta falls in love with one of your ads? It takes about fifty percent of the budget, and it initially results in good purchase conversions, but over time, it's still keeping fifty percent of the budget. And now the whole campaign is starting to deliver less, and you're getting less sales.
Do you turn it off? What do you look for?
Answer
Great question, Beej, and this is a common perceived problem. I say “perceived” because the assumption is that it’s a problem when it isn’t necessarily.
First, one ad taking 50% of your budget isn’t at all unusual. Depending on how many ads you have running at once, that could leave plenty of budget for the other ads in your ad set.
Second, I want to emphasize that we should worry less about which ads are being shown and more about how performance is overall. Without knowing anything about the distribution of your budget, the behavior you describe is normal.
When ads first get shown, Meta’s likely to start with the lowest hanging fruit, which is often your remarketing audiences. You can prove this with audience segments and breakdowns.
Over time, that audience gets exhausted and Meta shows your ads more and more to a new audience. While the new audience will still convert, it’s likely to be at a lower rate. And the rate at which your ads convert for a new audience is the true test of their effectiveness.
The fact that the same ad is getting 50% of your budget while performance dropped isn’t necessarily a problem. It could be a reflection that Meta knows those other ads are less likely to convert.
But if your results are dropping to rates that are no longer acceptable, that means it’s time to do something about it.
If you’re going to stick with the ads you have, try the Push Delivery to This Ad feature for the ads that aren’t getting as much delivery. Not everyone has this feature, but it can at least help answer questions about whether what Meta’s doing is correct.
If you’re getting 10% to one ad, push that to 30% for a few days or a week and see what happens. While it’s always possible this will reveal something new, the most likely result is that you’ll confirm that pushing that budget didn’t help.
If you don’t have this feature, and you’re not getting good results, you could turn off the ad that’s getting 50% of your budget. But again, I have doubts that this would help.
Avoid micromanagement like this whenever possible because we often do more damage than good, and we just spin our wheels.
The one change that is most likely to help is to create new, better, and uniquely different ads. That will always be your main lever.
Hope this helps, Beej!
