How To structure And Optimize Ad Campaigns On Meta And Google

A common question when running paid advertising campaigns is how often you should be making updates. Are monthly changes enough? Are daily changes too many? What’s the sweet spot to optimize your accounts performance? Here’s what we’ve learned working with hundreds of brands and spending over $30 Million on paid ads.?

Search vs. Display Platforms:?

The answer to this question depends on the type of platform you’re advertising on. Search platforms like Google or Bing require less frequent changes because they rely on users searching specific keywords. Search platforms are often referred to as “intent based”.?

Display platforms like Instagram, Facebook or TikTok can be optimized more often because they are displaying ads throughout a user's newsfeed, thereby interrupting their scroll. Hence the term “interruption based”.?

Search platforms like Google and Bing are intent-based, meaning they rely on people searching for something in order for an ad to show up. This typically results in a smaller number of impressions than social media channels. Conversely, display platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok show ads natively in the feed and have billions of daily users, resulting in more reach.

Budget considerations:

Generally speaking, the higher your budget, the more frequently you can (and should) be making changes. This is because the speed at which you’ll collect data is much faster on a $1,000/day budget vs. a $100/day budget.?

The Meta & Google examples below assume you are setting up your campaigns without any budget limitations. If your budget is between $50 - $250/day, consider making changes at half the speed.?

Campaign Structure vs. Creative & Copy:

The next consideration is what you are optimizing. Campaigns require the least frequent changes since their primary purpose is to host audiences and ads. Beyond that, a campaign is only used to set your budget and choose your objective (i.e. impressions, clicks, purchases, etc.).?

Creatives require the most frequent changes and have the largest impact on performance, since the creative is ultimately what will convince your prospect to click. Creatives also encompass more variables than campaigns or audiences. Within a creative, you have the visual, headline, description, CTA, and URL destination. If the visual is a video, you have additional variables to consider such as the hook, body, and CTA of the video.?

Audiences lie between creative and campaign optimizations. They will not be changed as frequently as creatives, but more frequently than campaigns.?

As a general rule of thumb, for every 12 optimizations you make to your creatives, you’ll likely make 4 optimizations to your audiences and 1 optimization to your campaign. We’ll call this the 1 > 4 > 12 rule. Similar to a clock, the seconds change faster than the minutes, and minutes change faster than the hours.?

The frequency of optimization varies between platforms. Let’s explore that next.?

Meta: Facebook & Instagram:

Since Facebook and Instagram are both interruption-based display platforms, creative testing will have the biggest impact on your performance.?

For our clients, we typically test 1 new creative every 3 days. For every new launch, we follow the same order of ABC testing. Note: ABC testing means testing 3 variables at once as opposed to A/B testing which tests 2 variables at once. This is best practice for paid advertising in 2024.?

In the first launch, we will try 3 versions of the same creative, all with slightly different hooks (the first three seconds of a video). After 3 days have passed we will deactivate the 2 worst performing videos, leaving 1 video remaining. We will then create 3 versions of that winning creative and test different headlines. This process repeats again for the URL and body copy.?

In total, we run each new creative through 4 ABC tests (hook, headline, URL & copy), each lasting 3 days, meaning we’ll find a winning creative every 12 days (4 ABC test X 3 days per test = 12 days to find winning creative).?

Each time a new creative is launched, it is done so within one audience, and all the subsequent split tests will occur within that audience. Since we are launching a new creative every 3 days, this means we will have 4 audiences/ad sets running at one time (12 days to find winning creative / launch new creative very 3 days = 4 active audiences at once).?

Each of these audiences are being held within 1 campaign.?

Bringing this full circle, within 1 campaign we will have 4 active audiences and 12 active creatives (1 creative per audience each running an ABC test, totalling 3 active ads per audience). Hence the 1 > 4 > 12 rule.?

To continue scaling your budget & campaign structure, duplicate your 1 winning creative out of the 4 split tests and 12 active ads into an Advantage+ campaign. This campaign performs best with proven creatives and a higher budget. This is what allows you to scale.?

Google:

Moving to the intent-based platforms, let’s first talk about campaign structure. On Google, we typically set up 3 search campaigns and 2 - 5 performance max campaigns, depending on budget and number of product categories. Let’s use the example of Lululemon.?

Our first search campaign is for general keywords such as “athletic wear.” The second search campaign is for branded keywords such as “lululemon leggings.” The third search campaign is for competitors such as “Nike activewear”.

Since our Performance Max campaigns are broken up by product category, we’ll have different campaigns for women’s activewear and men’s activewear. The reason for this is to set different CPP or ROAS targets or to separate genders/demographics.

Pro tip: you can create multiple search campaigns for different product categories as well to set different CPP or ROAS targets, and to observe performance between SKUs.?

When it comes to optimization, Google recommends making changes every 14 days at most. We’ve found that making keyword and budget changes every 7 days ensures optimal performance, but ad creative and copy should be left alone for 14 days at a time.

When optimizing ad performance, you can review the analytics of each ad and observe the effectiveness of every headline, description, image, and/or video. In a Search or Display campaign, Google will directly show you the CPC, CPP, and ROAS metrics, whereas in a Performance Max campaign, Google only gives you a rating out of three: poor, good, or great. In both scenarios, simply replace the lowest performing headline with a new headline that more closely resembles the best performer. Make these changes every 7 days and watch your performance rise over time.?

Conclusion:?

The frequency of updates to your advertising campaigns should be tailored to the platform you are using and the specific elements you are optimizing. For search platforms like Google and Bing, which are intent-based, less frequent changes are necessary—typically every 7 to 14 days. This allows the algorithms to gather sufficient data to optimize performance effectively. On the other hand, interruption-based display platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok benefit from more frequent updates, especially to creatives, due to their higher impression volumes and the dynamic nature of user interactions.

On Meta, the 1 > 4 > 12 rule serves as a practical guideline: for every 12 changes to your creatives, make 4 adjustments to your audiences and 1 to your campaigns. This approach balances the need for fresh and engaging content with the stability required for meaningful performance analysis. By understanding the unique requirements and best practices for each platform, you can strategically schedule updates to maximize your campaign’s efficiency and effectiveness. Remember, the key to successful campaign management lies in consistent monitoring, testing, and adjusting to your real-time results.