You're Overthinking Your Ad Setup

So a common problem I see with advertisers is that they suffer from paralysis from analysis. They get stuck in the planning and preparation stage, and while they are stuck, they are hung up on all the what if questions about setup and performance. They are already thinking two steps ahead about what to do when the results do this or that.

Let me give you a scenario that is especially common these days, thanks to Andromeda and the new buzz phrase, creative diversification. Advertisers are obsessed with ad planning. They create different ads for different customer personas, different sets of messaging for each persona, some ads with videos, some with static images, and some with carousels.

They make everything look uniquely different because that is what we are told to do. They spend all this time planning, waiting for these assets to be ready, and then weeks later they finally hit publish on 20 or 30 ads.

After all that work, Meta spends most of the budget on one ad. And the results are just okay. Not that good. Maybe even bad.

So what was the point of all that planning and development if only one ad gets shown? You are anticipating the need for all those ads, but there is a much smarter and more efficient approach.

Just get started.

Start small. Start with a single creative direction. One customer persona with one messaging goal. Use five primary text and headline options. You could create two ads, one using images and one using videos. Or you could create a single ad and customize by placement so that you use nine by sixteen videos for Reels and Stories and static images everywhere else.

You could also make use of flexible ad format, which Meta loves, and provide up to ten images or videos for a single ad.

But instead of mapping out all these various approaches with 10 or 20 or 30 ads, start with a small handful. It could be one or two. Hit publish. Just get started.

Then sit back and see what happens. The chances are high that these initial ads will not be perfect.

Are your results good enough?
If so, let it ride for a while.

Otherwise, learn from your results and move to phase two. What seemed to work well? What did not work at all? Apply that knowledge to your next ad or your small set of ads, your next creative direction.

I strongly recommend using Meta's creative testing tool when you publish that next set. This is something I am making part of my process now. When you do this, you force a percentage of your budget to those new ads during the test, and you keep the test ads within your main ad set. That way you can learn from what happens when those ads get budget, and you can make informed decisions when the test ends and Meta delivers ads normally without forcing spend.

Once that test is done, you move to phase three. What worked? What did not? Are the results good enough yet in aggregate? If not, learn from those results and develop the next test. Rinse and repeat.

The key is that you are doing this in stages. You may eventually end up with 20 or 30 ads, but you are not doing it all at once, and you are not anticipating the entire set from the start and slowing everything down.

You are starting small, hitting publish quickly, learning from results, and making incremental improvements.

You can apply this to your overall campaign construction too. Advertisers often get lost in the weeds of planning new campaigns and make them far too complicated from the beginning. They overthink it and lose valuable time stuck in planning and development that could be spent learning from results.

Start simple and start quickly. Just get started so that you can learn from it.

Here is the bottom of the glass.

The least productive moments for an advertiser are when ads are not running and budget is not spending. Minimize this time window. There is no single most effective campaign construction or creative approach that will guarantee results. No matter how good you think that initial batch of polished ads is, it is unlikely to give you the best results.

The true value of an advertiser is not found in the initial planning of a campaign. It is found in how they react to results and make adjustments.

Stop overthinking it and just get started.