Launching an ad campaign on Meta is only the beginning. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that once their ads are live, the work is done. In reality, the real results come from how you manage and optimise those campaigns while they’re running. This can mean ongoing work from the day you set your new strategy live.
Monitor performance regularly
Checking in on your ads daily, or at least a few times a week, is essential. Look beyond surface-level metrics like impressions or reach and pay close attention to cost per result (for your objective whether it’s lead or sales), click-through rate and conversion rate. These numbers will tell you whether your ads are resonating with the right audience.
Avoid making changes too soon
It can be tempting to tweak ads as soon as you see metrics populate, but Meta’s learning phase needs time. Allow campaigns to run for at least three to five days before making adjustments. If you can wait, we really recommend at least 7 days. This ensures the algorithm has enough data to optimise delivery properly.
Use breakdowns to spot trends
The breakdown feature in Ads Manager is a powerful way to understand what’s working. You can breakdown multiple insights such as demographics, location, placement, delivery and more. Insights like this can help you gain further knowledge on how your budget is being spent and where it’s optimising. For example, we set a UK-wide campaign live. We wanted to know which region within the UK was converting the best to inform further campaign builds. We used breakdowns to find that the Northern Irish market was the highest spend and higher CTR for us. Not only does this indicate that we maybe need to do a little work on the UK market to improve results, but, that we have a strong existing NI market.
Test creative variations
Even strong campaigns can suffer from ad fatigue, where audiences get bored of seeing the same visuals or messages. Regularly introduce new images, videos or copy variations to keep your campaigns fresh. Small creative changes often lead to noticeable improvements in performance. After 7 days, you should be monitoring your ads for which creative type is performing best and turning off those that are not performing well. You should replace the under-performers with ads that follow similar rules to your winning creative. e.g. if your winning creative is a video, create more videos… If your winning ad is testimonial-based, rotate in more of those!
Reallocate budget strategically
Rather than letting Meta spread your budget across all adsets/ads on an ongoing basis, keep an eye on which ads or ad sets are driving the best results. You can manually shift more budget towards top performers while reducing spend on weaker ones. This approach helps maximise return on investment. You can do this by using an ABO setup for adsets and reallocating budget or by turning off any underperforming ad sets (if you’re using CBO) or ads.
Keep an eye on frequency
High frequency can be a warning sign that your audience is seeing your ads too often, which may lead to declining performance or negative feedback. If frequency is creeping up, it might be time to refresh creative or expand your audience targeting.
Look at results in context
Not all campaigns will have the same goals. A lead generation ad might naturally have a higher cost per result than a traffic campaign, as the “result” is a higher intent action in conversion campaigns. Always measure your results against the campaign objective and the bigger picture of your business goals.
Learn and apply insights
The most successful advertisers treat every campaign as a learning opportunity. Make notes on what worked, what didn’t, and why. Over time, you’ll build a clear picture of the strategies and creative angles that consistently deliver the best results for your business.
Good luck!
