How Many Ads to Test Each Month for Optimal Campaign Performance │MagicBrief

How Many Ads Should You Test Each Month to Optimise Ad Performance

Discover how high-volume ad testing can dramatically improve your campaign's performance and increase conversions.

Are you running just one or a few ads for your campaign? Then you might be missing out on valuable data that could significantly boost your success. With nine out of ten ads underperforming due to changes in market trends, audience behaviour, or even seasonal variations, it’s crucial to test more ads to uncover what really works.

How Many Ads Should You Test Each Month?

Okay, now we get to the juicy part. How many ads should you test each month to see optimal results?

The short answer is:

It's recommended to test around 50 new ads every month for every $25,000 in ad spend. This volume allows you to quickly identify and scale the most effective ad creatives, keeping campaigns fresh and engaging while driving more conversions.

Remember that this is a general guideline, as it’ll depend on the size of your business, ad budget, and marketing platform. Facebook and TikTok, for example, typically require higher ad volumes due to their dynamic and fast-paced nature. And ofcourse, smaller businesses will need to test fewer ads due to budget constraints.

Why Should You Launch 50+ New Ads Per Month?

Here's why you should launch a high number of ads every month for your campaign:

Keeps Ad Creatives Fresh and Engaging

As said, audience preferences and market dynamics constantly evolve. Launching and testing a large volume of ads allows you to see these changes and adapt your ads accordingly.

We recommend refreshing your creatives every 4-6 weeks, or every week if you're running Facebook ads. Once your audience has seen your ad three times, the chances of it being noticed and clicked on significantly drop.

Uncovers New Audience Segments

Your target audience comprises multiple segments, each with unique characteristics and preferences. For example, you may target parents with young children, but within that group, there could be subsets of first-time parents, working parents, or stay-at-home parents. You can discover These potential segments by testing a large volume of ads and analysing the data.

Maximises Data Collection

Testing many ads allows you to collect more data than testing just a few. This allows you to quickly discover creative elements and messaging that resonate best with your target audience. Use this data to optimise your ads, improving key metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and cost per acquisition.

Enhances Sustainable Growth

Many ad campaigns don't work long-term due to algorithm changes. For example, in 2018, Facebook implemented an updated News Feed algorithm to prioritise posts from friends and family over public content from businesses and brands. This shift made it harder for brands to reach their target audience without paid advertising.

By testing and optimising your ads, you can stay ahead of these algorithm changes and ensure sustainable growth for your business.

Will High-volume Ad Testing Increase My CPA?

No, and here’s why:

High-volume testing lets you identify top-performing ads and poorly-performing ads faster and more accurately. With more ad variations to test and compare, you'll better understand what resonates best with your target audience. This allows you to make informed decisions, adjust your campaigns in real-time, and allocate your budget towards the most effective ads.

Now, contrast this with running just a few ad variations. You have fewer comparisons, which means slower insights and optimizations. This can lead to suboptimal campaigns, resulting in higher CPAs (Cost Per Action) and lower conversion rates. Additionally, without regular testing, you risk falling behind competitors who are constantly improving their ads and targeting strategies. This could lead to decreased market share and hinder overall business growth.

How to Minimise CPA Impact During Ad Testing

After launching a new ad set, you'll probably see a slight increase in CPA due to the campaign's learning phase. However, you can mitigate this by doing the following:

Create a Separate Testing Ad Set: Isolate your new ad tests in a separate ad set. This helps to control the budget and isolate the performance of new ads without affecting your primary campaigns.
Budget Allocation: Allocate less than half of your monthly ad spend to your testing ad set. This strategy prevents you from overspending on low-performing ads.
Monitor and Adjust: Track your ad sets and be sure to pause or delete underperforming ads.
Analyze and Scale: See certain ad creatives driving more conversions. Discover why and scale them up by allocating more budget to those ads.

The premise of our ad testing strategy is simple: you need a certain amount of data to make informed decisions. That's why high-volume testing is key.

What Should You Test in Your Ads

With dozens of ads running simultaneously, you're at the perfect spot to start testing different variables, also known as A/B testing.

Here are some elements you can test to boost performance:

Ad Creative: This includes images, videos, and copy.
Audiences: Test different demographics or interests to see which ones respond best to your ads.
Call-to-Action (CTA): Try using different language for your CTA button or even testing out different buttons altogether.
Ad Placement: Experiment with placing your ads on different platforms or placements within a platform.
Landing Pages: Test different versions of your landing pages to see which ones drive the most conversions.
Ad Formats: Different ad formats, such as carousel ads or canvas ads, can greatly impact performance.
Timing and Frequency: Test running your ads at different times of day and varying the frequency at which they are shown.

Try incorporating emojis, different colours, or even slightly different tones in your ads, even if they always appear to match your audience's preferences. You may just uncover new and exciting ways to connect with your audience and discover new ones.

How to Launch A lot of Ads Quickly and Efficiently

Step 1: Set Up a New Test Ad Set

In your current ad campaign, create a new test ad set aligned with your current goal (e.g., driving website traffic, increasing conversions, etc.). This will serve as your control group for comparison.

If you're testing audiences, use the same one from your past top-performing ads. For other types of tests, such as ad creatives, copy, or placements, introduce new variations within this ad set. This approach allows you to test new elements while leveraging an audience that has already demonstrated strong engagement.

PRO TIP: Ensure to name your ad set clearly indicating what you're testing so it's easily identifiable later on, e.g., "Ad Creative Test #1" or "Audience Test #2."

Step 2: Launch Ads in Bulk

When launching ads in bulk, batch together multiple ads within a new test, changing only one element (e.g., the copy) while keeping all other elements constant. For example, if you're testing 20 different headlines, keep your audience, visuals, and ad placement the same across all 20 ads. This will help identify which headline resonates best with your audience.

For Facebook Ads: We recommend launching ad sets with 10-25 ads, though you can go up to 50.

For TikTok Ads: We recommend launching ad sets with 4-6 ads.

These ad ranges provide enough variety for meaningful testing while ensuring the platform can effectively optimise the ads.

PRO TIP: Use automated rules to streamline your testing process. Set rules to pause underperforming ads and increase the budget for top-performing ones.

Step 3: Set Your Budget

Ensure your budget is high enough to leave the exit phase between 1 and 1.5 weeks. This allows for faster data collection, minimises the long-term CPA impact, and ensures the platform has enough data to optimise ad delivery effectively. The faster you can gather data, the sooner you can optimise your ads for better performance.

We recommend using the ad budget optimisation (ABO) feature for Facebook to better allocate your budget across ad sets. TikTok campaigns with a budget lower than $100k per month should opt for 'Campaign Budget Optimization' (CBO) due to increased creative turnover rates.

Facebook ABO: Set an ad set daily budget that gets at least 3 conversions a day with your expected CPA.

TikTok CPO: Set a daily budget that gets at least 50 conversions per week.

Step 4: Pause Ads that Aren't Performing

After 48 to 72 hours, pause underperforming ads with a CPA higher than your target. This will free up more budget for the top-performing ads and allow for more efficient testing. Just keep in mind that due to changes in iOS App Tracking Transparency, conversion reporting might be delayed by up to 72 hours.

Continue this process for 1 to 2 weeks or more, depending on your campaign goals and budget. Soon, you'll have multiple ads performing well and delivering conversions at or below the target cost. Use these ads as the foundation for your next round of testing and optimisation.

Step 5: Scale Your Winning Ads and Repeat

Start allocating more budget to your best ads in your test ad sets or campaigns. These winning ads have proven their effectiveness and efficiency, so it makes sense to invest more in them.

You can then iterate on your winning ads by making small tweaks, such as changing the visuals, ad copy, or targeting to create even better-performing variations. This will help you continuously improve and optimise your ads for better performance.

Just remember to keep all untested elements consistent to get an accurate understanding of what's working and what isn't.

How MagicBrief Can Help Marketers Test More Ads Effectively

Creating and launching multiple ads is great in theory, but simply pumping out poorly made ads won't yield the results you want. You risk producing too many low-quality ads that fail to perform. This imbalance means you won’t have enough successful ads to scale and refine for future campaigns, leading to wasted time, resources, and budget.

To ensure a favourable ratio of high-performing ads to low-quality ones, sign up to MagicBrief. With our various inspiration and ad creation tools, you'll easily generate a large volume of high-quality ads that are primed for success.

Here are our top features that can help you test more ads effectively:

Vast Ad Library: Save and organise ads from Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to find inspiration and explore new creative concepts and ideas.
Metrics Tracking: Connect your ad account to track key metrics, such as CPA, ROAS, and CTR, in an easy-to-understand format.
Automated Ad Management: Automatically pause underperforming ads, allowing you to focus on and invest in high-performing ones.
Real-Time Visual Analytics: Sync your ad account data for real-time visual breakdowns of ad performance, enabling prompt adjustments.
Creative Brief and Storyboard features: Build detailed briefs with a block editor and collaborate with team members to create engaging ad stories.

With MagicBrief, you'll have all the data you need to create awe-inspiring ads that capture attention, drive conversions, and generate a positive ad spend return. Sign up for MagicBrief today and take your ad performance to the next level.

Key Highlights

Test More Ads: Shoot for 50 new ads for every $25,000 you spend to boost your ad game and hit your targets.
Fight Ad Fatigue: Keep your ads fresh by testing regularly to mitigate ad fatigue and accommodate changes in audience preferences.
Boost Your Metrics: Regular testing helps you nail down those crucial numbers like CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).
Find New Audiences: Testing a lot of ads helps to discover and reach new audiences.
Smart Testing Setup: Launch tests in separate ad sets with budgets that won’t go over your CPA. This helps you get clear, actionable insights.
Scale What Works: Once you find winning ads, scale them up and use them as a model for future tests. It’s all about learning and improving as you go!
Utilise MagicBrief: Leverage MagicBrief's tools and insights to create, test, and optimise high-quality ads efficiently, ensuring a higher success rate and better campaign performance.

Final Thoughts

Ad testing is a fundamental part of any successful digital marketing strategy. However, many people fail by simply not testing enough ads to draw meaningful conclusions. By conducting high-volume ad testing, you'll quickly discover which ads are delivering results and how to scale them effectively.

By following the steps outlined in this guide, you'll be on your way to running successful ad campaigns that drive conversions and help achieve your business goals. Keep testing, keep optimising, and keep achieving success! ̨

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