Facebook (FB) is slowly rolling out its new Campaign Budget Optimisation (CBO) feature, and all users should have it by January 2020. But is it a good thing for advertisers?
In the olden days (and by that we mean about 90 days ago), you would set a budget at the adset level. The campaign budget would then, naturally, be the total sum of the adset budgets.
E.g. If you have 3 adsets, and they each have a budget of £20 per day, then the total campaign budget is £60.
So far, so good.
Why the old way might not have been great
The good thing about controlling the budgets at the adset level (rather than at the campaign level) is that you can manually adjust each adset based on the results.
However, that’s fiddly and relies on your skill and judgement. Wouldn’t it be nice if that was automated?
Well that’s what the CBO does…
- Instead of setting budget at the adset level, you’ll set it at the campaign level.
- FB’s algorithm will continually monitor the performance of your adsets across the entire campaign.
- If a particular adset is doing well (and producing great results) FB will automatically increase that budget…
- …and slide down the budget of the adsets that aren’t performing so well.
You won’t spend any more than your overall campaign budget, and, in fact, it’s better than doing it manually, as you’d need to adjust all the adset budgets appropriately to avoid spending more overall.
But what if I want more control?
You still have the option to set bid caps (top prices you’ll pay for an outcome, like a click) at the adset level, meaning you can still control the price per outcome.
However, Facebook has one of the most powerful algorithms in the world, meaning it is actually better to leave it up to FB to optimise your campaign.
So is it a good thing for advertisers or not?
It is a good thing for most of us.
It’s good if you’re lazy…
If you don’t like having to log in each day and check your campaigns, then this makes life easier for you by automating.
It’s good if you target a lot of interests…
If you do a lot of different, but similar targeting then this will help with ‘audience overlap’.
In other words, if you target ‘Nike trainers’ and ‘running shoes’ there’s a good chance that there a lot of users in both groups. Using CBO will help to avoid over-serving that advert.
It’s not good if you’re a bit anal about your adsets…
If you like to control everything or you’re convinced that Facebook’s goal is to empty your wallet, then you’re not going to be happy.
In short, it means you’ll be spending less time tinkering with budgets and you’ll likely get better Return On Investment (ROI) in the longer term.
Here’s a great summary of the changes by Ben Heath.
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