You heard that right. It was both surprising and scary for me too. But why did I have to do it?
Before answering that, let me give you some background.
I manage Meta ad campaigns for several small businesses, both locally and globally. Some of them have very low budgets, around $1-$3/day, and they typically run campaigns for just 3 to 4 days.
I receive weekly calls from the Meta Marketing Pro team, where they audit my ad accounts and provide suggestions to improve my campaign performance.
One fine morning, I was on a call with a Meta agent who pointed out that most of my low-budget, short-duration campaigns were struggling to deliver results.
This was happening because the ad budget was too low for the AI to generate enough conversion actions within the set time. As a result, the campaigns would struggle and fail to exit the learning phase. During the learning phase, your Meta ad campaigns are at their least effective, and results are likely to fluctuate significantly.
In order to exit the learning phase, a campaign needs around 30-50 conversion actions within 7 days. (source)
To solve this issue, the only solution was to increase the spending budget, at least for the first 7 days.
The agent suggested a budget of around $30-$50/day, which seemed almost impossible for clients spending just $1-$3/day per campaign.
However, I managed to convince the clients to increase their spending budgets by at least 300%. To cover the rest of the daily budget, I consolidated all the campaigns into one, using Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO).
Curious about the results?
The campaigns did stabilize, and I began seeing consistent performance. However, since combining the campaigns required me to use CBO, not all ads performed equally, which was an issue since each ad represented a different product.
To sum up:
- It’s wise to allocate a larger budget during the first 7 days of your campaign.
- The faster the campaign exits the learning phase, the better.
- There is a rational relationship between your ad budget, conversion actions, and the time needed for the campaign to exit the learning phase.
How should you determine your campaign budget?
You can find the answer in your past campaign reports:
CPA × 50 = Your Budget for 7 Days
What kind of ad budget do you typically use? Have you ever faced difficulties with campaigns not exiting the learning phase?
