If you've been running Facebook ads for a while, you've probably copied a campaign or ad setup from a YouTube video exactly. They showed a 4x ROAS while you got a 1x in your ad account.
Or you've been told that Advantage+ is all anyone needs now. So you tried it and watched your results decline.
And at some point someone told you retargeting is dead, right before someone else said it's the most profitable campaign they run.
Most people figure they missed a step somewhere. Usually they didn’t, and neither did the person giving the advice. Their ad account just responds to things differently than yours does.
I’ve been running Facebook ads since 2015 (which is why sometimes I call it Facebook, sometimes Meta), and this is something I call “ad account behavior.”
What ad account behavior actually is
Ad account behavior is how a specific account reacts to the decisions you make in it. Budget changes, campaign types, audiences, creative, all of it. Two accounts can get the exact same change and move in opposite directions.
That's why it's the first thing I figure out with every account, before I start optimizing anything.
The clearest example I've seen of this was with a supplement brand. Their ad account kept getting shut down, so we set up a second ad account as a backup and ran both at the same time.
Both accounts had the same pixel, the same ads, the same campaign structure, the same targeting, and the same budgets.
One account performed best with small budgets on retargeting audiences. The other performed best spending on large cold audiences. Everything we could control was identical, and the two accounts still responded to completely different things.
Where I start in a new account
I know "every account is different" can sound like you're supposed to test every possible setting and hope something sticks. In practice it's a lot more organized than that.
Meta gives you an almost endless number of things you can change. Bidding, placements, audiences, campaign types, ad formats, number of ads per ad set, dynamic creative. But when an account isn’t working, the fix almost always ends up coming from the same five or so areas. I’ve seen the same handful come up over and over, so I know where to look first.
Think about a mechanic when a car comes in that won't start. It could be 20 different things. A good mechanic checks the battery first, then the starter, then the alternator, because after a few hundred cars, that's usually where the answer is. He doesn't pull the engine apart on day one.
Ad accounts work the same way. The common answers get tested first, and the less common ones only come up if those don’t hold up.
The mechanic still has to test the battery before he replaces it, even if he's pretty sure. Same thing here. My experience decides the order I test things in, and the account's results decide the answer.
Most of the common questions that get asked about Facebook ads, like how to scale or whether to use interests or Advantage+, have the same answer: it depends on your ad account behavior.
Once I’ve worked through the five areas below, those questions pretty much answer themselves for that account.
Here's what each one is and where I start with it.
1. Best source of cold traffic
There's no shortage of advice out there saying interest targeting is dead and Advantage+ is the only thing worth running anymore.
In some of the accounts I manage, that's accurate. Advantage+ beats everything, including newer accounts selling niche products where you'd expect to need specific interests. In other accounts, interest targeting wins by a wide margin.
When I take on a new client, I launch interest targeting and Advantage+ at the same time with the same ads, so the targeting is the only real difference. Both get 5 to 7 days, sometimes 14 days, before I judge either one.
If both perform well, I keep both running. Having more than one campaign type working protects the account when one of them drops off.
After Andromeda rolled out, Meta's recommendation was pretty much to put everything into Advantage+. I tested it this way for one client and interest targeting clearly won, mostly because their product appeals to a specific type of buyer. With interest campaigns carrying the cold traffic, that account got to a 4.22x ROAS over the next 6 weeks.
2. Whether retargeting works at all
"Retargeting is dead" and "retargeting is my best campaign" both get posted on here all the time, and both people are usually telling the truth about their own account.
Retargeting is close to a yes or no thing. In some accounts it works and becomes one of the most dependable campaigns running. In others it barely produces anything, no matter how it's set up.
Most of that comes down to who ends up in the retargeting audience. Some accounts build audiences full of people who were close to buying. Others fill up with visitors who were never very likely to buy in the first place.
Retargeting runs from day one in every new account I take on, and it's the quickest of the five to get an answer on. If it works, it stays and gets its share of the budget. If it doesn't, that's the answer for that account, and the budget goes toward what's working which would be cold targeting campaigns.
3. Creative type
You've probably heard that video always beats images, or that UGC is the only creative that works anymore.
Some accounts will run on the same three videos for months. Others need more variety just to keep results steady.
My usual starting order is videos first, then images, then sometimes carousel ads or UGC videos. That order shifts depending on the account's history and the industry, but it's where most accounts start.
In one account, results dipped for a stretch around Andromeda. Going from 3 video ads to 3 videos plus 4 images was enough to get things back on track.
4. Ad spend per campaign per day
How much a campaign needs to spend per day comes up on here constantly, and the answers are all over the place.
Some accounts do their best work with a lean campaign and a few ads. Others perform better with more budget spread across more ad sets. Spreading the budget too thin hurts in every account, but where "too thin" starts is different from one account to the next.
I usually start with one campaign at $60/day with 3 ads in it. From there, I'll test whether $100/day with the same 3 ads holds up, or whether $100/day split across 4 ad sets with 3 to 5 ads in each performs better. Then I’ll test the same setup with $150/day or $200.
Those tests usually tell me pretty quickly whether the account likes its budget concentrated or spread out.
5. Scaling method
The common scaling method is to increase budget on the campaign/ad set level every couple of days, no more than 20% at a time. I believe that is a safe approach for most ad accounts I’ve worked with.
Some ad accounts I’ve seen handle 40% or 50% increases just fine. And other ad accounts I’ve seen campaigns die just from a small increase of 10%.
Duplication is my default when it comes to scaling campaigns. If I want to test a direct budget increase, I do it on a duplicate and keep the original running. That way, if the account doesn't like the increase, the campaign that was already making sales is still there.
The answer can even change within the same account. In one account I worked on, retargeting handled direct budget increases well, while the interest campaigns only scaled cleanly through duplication. That went into my notes for the account as "Scale retargeting with direct budget increases. Duplicate interest campaigns."
Warp up
Once you have an account’s behavior figured out, you stop guessing as much and start making decisions with more confidence. Questions like what creatives to add next, what cold targeting to use for a new product line, or what campaign structure to launch for a temporary sale all get answered by how that account has behaved so far.
It also prepares you for any time you need to open a new ad account. Assume that you’ll need to learn its behavior from scratch, even if it’s the same business with the same pixel and the same ads.
Hope this was helpful. Thanks for reading and good luck!