Budget and schedule

How to Use Ads Manager to Set a Budget and a Schedule?

Set a Budget

1. Set a budget for your ads

When you create an ad campaign, make sure that you’re using a business’s money wisely. Setting a budget for a campaign can help you assess how much money you’ll need to spend in order to reach business goals. 

An ad budget can prevent you from overspending and enable you to allocate resources efficiently.

2. Determine a budget strategy

In Ads Manager, a budget is the amount of money you’ll spend on an ad to reach people in your audience in order to achieve a business goal. You can set a budget at the campaign level or the ad set level.

There are two types of budgets:

• Campaign budget optimization (CBO)

This budget type makes the most efficient use of spending for the best overall results. Set one budget at the campaign level that will automatically be distributed in real time to the ad sets that present the greatest opportunity to achieve business goals.

• Individual ad set budgets

This budget type enables you to set an individual budget per ad set so you have more control over how much budget is getting allocated to an ad set.

3. How you are charged

Meta charges for ads in three possible ways. Depending on the ad objective you choose, you’ll be charged based on either impressions, clicks or actions. Let’s learn more about these options and how they might be applicable to a business:

• Impressions

Get charged for every 1,000 impressions you receive on a campaign, also known as cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM). CPM measures the total amount spent on an advertising campaign divided by the number of impressions and multiplied by 1,000. This means you’ll be charged for every 1,000 times an ad is shown on screen to your target audience. Most ad objectives will charge you on a CPM basis.

• Clicks

Get charged for every click on an ad, also known as cost per click (CPC).

• Actions

Get charged every time someone completes the action you want, also known as cost per action (CPA). This charge choice is only available for a few objectives, like Video Views and App Installs.

4. Refine your budget

There are two types of ad budgets to choose from in an ad set: daily and lifetime budgets. You can select each type of ad budget from the dropdown menu next to Budget under Budget & Schedule in an ad set. Let’s review the differences between each one.

• Daily budget

The average amount you’re willing to spend on an ad set or campaign each day. Meta strives to get roughly your daily budget’s worth of the result you optimized for. However, there may be certain days when better opportunities are available. On those days, Meta may spend up to 25% over your daily budget. For example, if your daily budget is $10, Meta may spend up to $12.50 on a given day.

• Lifetime budget

The amount you’re willing to spend over the entire run of an ad set or campaign. You won’t be charged more than your lifetime budget for your ad set’s results unless you change your delivery settings. 

If your ad set is running for five days and has a $250 lifetime budget, Meta may spend $50 on each of the first two days. On the third day, if lots of results are available, Meta may spend $75. Then, if there aren’t as many opportunities available, Meta may spend $25 on the fourth day and $50 on the fifth day.

Determine an account spending limit

An account spending limit applies to all of a business’s campaigns over their lifetime. When the amount spent reaches the current limit, your ads will pause so that you’re not spending money. Your account spending limit will not automatically reset. To continue advertising after you’ve reached your limit, you’ll need to update your limit.

Set a schedule for your ad

After you’ve set a budget for an ad set, you can set a schedule to determine when the ads will run.

1. Set a different start and end date

Use the chart to select the specific times throughout the week that you want your ad set to run. Note that this option is only available with ad set level budgets and not if you select CBO. Select Set a Start and End Date to choose when your ad will run. You can also select the specific times that you want an ad to start and finish running. When you’re done, you can see the number of days the ad set will run and the maximum budget amount that will be spent based on the budget and dates you selected. 

When you select a lifetime budget, you can refine the ad set schedule even further. You’ll need to select Show More Options to view this scheduling option.

2. Advanced scheduling options

• Coordinate your ad schedule with your events

Think about how you can align your ad campaign schedule to promotions, events and other dates on your business calendar.

• Run your ad in a specific time zone

You can also set your campaign’s time zone at the ad set level to specify where your audience is located. If you want your ads to be seen by your local audience, set the time zone of your city.