Facebook is one of the favorite channels of many marketing managers operating in the digital sector, in abroad, for its very high targeting capabilities and incredible audience reach. If you also use Facebook for your digital campaigns, you know that this tool’s complexity is precisely in optimizing the budget at the campaign level. Back in November 2022, Facebook announced the introduction of Facebook CBO or Campaign Budget Optimization, intending to help companies and individuals manage budget optimization better to ensure optimal results.
What Is Facebook Campaign Budget Optimization?
CBO is a new Facebook feature with which marketing managers allow Facebook to automatically distribute the budget between ad groups to generate better results, no longer at the ad level. An important note is that this option is certainly not new in the digital marketing market. Google has implemented the same optimization for more than ten years.
Difference Between Conversion Optimization And Campaign Budget Optimization?
As many know, Facebook already has an algorithm that automatically optimizes advertisements based on the possibility of conversion of the audience to which they are shown. This type of optimization occurs at the insertion group level and is based on a learning phase by the algorithm. On the other hand, budget optimization happens differently, as it considers the target audience that could convert better than who to show a specific ad within an audience. Although there are some commonalities, the two types of optimization are different and should be treated as such.
As marketing managers, we will no longer decide the budget per ad group and how much we would like to spend specifically for each audience. Still, we will tell Facebook how much funding we have for the campaign, and the algorithm will decide for us. It can be complicated at this point to imagine how this new feature can affect the campaigns it is enabled on and those on it is not. Before getting into the specifics, however, we think it is helpful to take a step back and briefly explain how Facebook manages the budget by a campaign to ensure you don’t get lost on the road.
How Are Facebook Campaigns Structured?
Facebook has three main elements that characterize its campaigns:
- Countryside
- Listing Groups
- Creativity
Campaign
This element represents an organized effort towards the achievement of a common goal. The campaign refers to the collection of ad and creativity groups we will use to reach our target.
Listing Groups
Taking a step further, let’s explore the following element: the insertion group; these represent an ad group with the same audience, targeting, bidding and programming. At this level, we go to set up the budget and here, we “collide” with the new optimization method, the Campaign Budget Optimization or CBO.
Creativity
At this level, we will define the images and the text (and the videos) we will present to our potential users. The more creatives reside within an ad group, the more possibilities for granular optimization we will have. As explained, the budget resides at the ad group level, not at the campaign or creative story.
How To Get The Most Out Of Your Campaign With Facebook CBO
What has been explained so far is what happens on Facebook without implementing Facebook Campaign Budget Optimization. But… What is the “secret” to getting the most out of CBO?
Plan For A Learning Period
Each ad group needs a minimum of 50 conversions to be considered “stable” in delivery. When it comes to CBO, in most cases, the algorithm takes between 4 and 7 days before it is ready to increase performance.
Make Sure That The Various Stages Of The Funnel Break Down The Campaigns
Facebook Campaign Budget Optimization works best when campaigns are divided into “Top of the Funnel or TOFU “, “Middle of the Funnel or MOFU”, and “Bottom of the Funnel or BOFU “. The idea, of course, would be to proportionally allocate more budgets to audiences that are more likely to convert rather than other audiences at the top of the funnel.
Select A Minimum And Maximum Budget For Each Listing Group
In the “Budget and Schedule” section, you can select this option by clicking on the spending limits of the ad groups, as shown below. Selecting these limits is very important as the Facebook Campaign Optimization Budget can sometimes make “extreme” decisions, especially for new campaigns with little data available.
How To Evaluate Results With The Subdivision Effect?
Facebook’s guide to the Campaign Budget Optimization feature stresses that it is essential to evaluate campaign performance by looking at the whole rather than the single ad group. Facebook refers to this phenomenon with the term “split effect “. In practice, each audience can generate up to a maximum of conversions for a specific price.
As soon as the audience starts to get saturated, the price will also begin to increase, and therefore good practice to improve the campaign’s capacity by assigning more budgets to other audiences. The idea with the Budget Campaign Optimization is that thanks to this algorithm, the budget distribution takes place automatically to the channel that works best, without necessarily having to worry about doing it manually.
How To Prepare For This Change?
If Facebook has notified you that your advertising account will be converted to CBO from the beginning of September, it is essential to be ready. At the time of the change, all campaigns we manage will have this function activated automatically. So it will be essential:
Do As Many Tests As Possible With Facebook CBO
Simple to say but above all fundamental to do. At this point, you have to try this function on new or existing campaigns to understand its possibilities and potential. It is important to remember that each insertion group must have the same goal.
Check The Results As Explained A Little While Ago
If you have two types of campaigns, one in which the CBO is active and the other half in which it is not, it is essential to analyze their performance. September is when budgets start to rise again, and if you haven’t had a chance to test this feature in the past, it’s good to decide if CBO doesn’t work well. Q4 is a crucial semester for many companies. Testing without fully understanding the purpose or what you want to test can lead to negative results.
In Conclusion
Key Learnings:
- Facebook CBO will be active from the beginning of September
- This function aims to automate the distribution of the budget for the various campaigns (such as Google UAC)
- Campaign Budget Optimization, although similar, is not the same as optimization by conversion
Tips:
- Keep calm. This feature was designed to help you manage your Facebook campaigns
- If you haven’t had a chance to test this feature, give it a try before prices go up in Q4
- Consider the split effect to evaluate the results of your campaigns.
Also Read: CREATE AN ENGAGING ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN ON INSTAGRAM