Do This in the First 72 Hours to Lower Your Facebook Ad Cost

In today's video, Ben will explain why you need to wait 72 hours before you mess with your brand new Facebook ad.  Seventy-two hours is very important and it's a tad bit complicated, but we're going to tell you exactly what to do and it will help you lower your Facebook ad costs.

Most people will start a Facebook ad and within the first 24 hours they will screw it up.  They screw it all up by messing with it.  It's what's happening behind the scenes that you need to know about to not screw it up.   The minute you hit the button to start running your ad, things start to happen immediately.  The second that ad gets approved, you're going to get this initial little bump.  This means that your ad is going to be put in front of a lot of people.  What Facebook is trying to do is determine if this particular ad getting play. Are people engaging with it?

 

After that initial bump, you will see a spike in your traffic and then it will come back down to what your normal traffic pattern will look like.  During the time when your traffic is normal, you're going to start seeing stats come in.  What happens over that first 24 hours is Facebook is judging if the ad is getting engagement or not.  If it is getting engagement, your ad cost is going to go down and it will get displayed more.  If it's not getting engagement then it's going to go the other way.

So What Happens in 24 Hours?

Think about it like this, let's say it's a Monday, and on that particular Monday you start your ad.   And on Tuesday you start making your decisions on how you want to change that ad.  The problem with that scenario is if you had started your ad on a Thursday or Friday, your going to get completely different results based on using just this 24-hour rule.  If you set your ad up where you are not going to touch it between 24-72 hours, you still have some varying data.

72 hours is the key!  That mark, there's something really powerful about it.  You got to think, If you start it on Friday, it runs the whole weekend but you still have a weekday.  If you start it on a Sunday, you get 2 weekdays and a weekend.  If you use the 72-hour rule, you will start to get more consistent data across the board.  Not only for the time of day that your ad is running but also for the day of the week.

Why does consistent data matter?

What happens is Facebook's algorithm is looking to see if your ad received engagement.  That engagement can vary widely depending on the day and the time of day. If you stretch out your ad testing time and you get more data, your going to get more consistent data for the algorithm.   The more data the algorithm has the more it can optimize based on what's REALLY going on.

The key with a Facebook Ad is a lot of consistent data and you want to give it time.  We have found that the folks in our AdLab Premium group who are getting the best results long term with their ads, do NOTHING to their ads for the first 72 hours, except to sit and watch what's happening. Now we do have ads that we let go a week before we touch them.  We have ads that go even longer than that before we touch them.  The key is to get at least 72 hours worth of data with the audience you are targeting and for the bid that you have established.   All of these things need to be the same for 72 hours.

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[ctt template=”2″ link=”Z_Ebj” via=”yes” ]Never decide if you have a good ad in the first 24 hours, give it 72 hours to play into all the variables for your audience. [/ctt]

Let's say my ads doing really good, and I want more people to see it at this cheap cost that I am getting because I am doing really well with my ad, it's getting a lot of engagement.  What do I do? They key here is once you start upping your bid to increase that audience, do it in small increments.  You never want to go above a 30% increment.  Because what will happen is, if you are spending $10 per day and you go to $100 a day, you will throw the algorithm WAY out of wack.  Facebook optimizes not only to your audience, not only to the days you are running, but it is also optimizing to the amount of money that you are spending per day.

You want to go in and help Facebook Help you.  And you don't do that by having wide swings in what you are doing.  You want consistent data coming through, you want to play to the algorithm.

The key takeaway is, never jump the gun and start deciding if you have a good ad or a bad ad within the first 24 hours. Give it at least 72 hours to play into all kinds of variables that are going to hit your particular audience.  And if you want more about how to run a Facebook Ad Agency check out this post. 

24 hours72 hoursBen Adkinsconsistent datafacebook algorithm