How To Leave The Meta Learning Phase
by Olivia Pasfield
Are your Meta (Facebook and Instagram) ads stuck in the learning phase? Unfortunately, many advertisers experience trouble with getting their ad set to exit the Meta Ads learning phase, meaning their ads are not fully optimised according to the platform's algorithm.
Our guide will help you understand what the learning phase is and walk you through the three main strategies to exit the Meta Ads learning phase.
Understanding the Meta Learning Phase
What is the Meta Learning Phase?
When launching a new ad set or making significant changes to an existing one, Meta's delivery system needs time to decipher who resonates best with your ad, what placements to use and when to show your audience your ads to ensure that your budget is being spent efficiently to achieve your goals, this is known as the Facebook ads learning phase. Typically, an ad set needs to generate 50 result actions (such as clicks, leads, or purchases) over a seven day period to exit the learning phase.
There are three stages of learning within Meta: Learning Limited, Learning and Active, let's delve into each stage in detail. Firstly, we have Learning Limited which occurs when Meta's delivery system predicts that your ad set will not achieve enough optimisation events to go into learning. Next, we have the learning phase which is where most ad sets would be. This means that the platform has generated enough optimisation events that it can start to learn more about how to serve your ads to the audience. The last delivery status is Active which means that the platform has learnt how to service your ad set and it is running as expected.
To track your learning phase progress within Ads Manager, navigate to the delivery column of your ad set.
Why Is the Learning Phase Important?
The learning phase gives Meta's algorithm the opportunity to learn about the best ways to deliver your ads to achieve your goals.
While your ads are in the learning phase, you may notice unstable results and higher costs. Exiting this phase allows the algorithms to deliver your ads more effectively, leading to better performance and lower costs. In short, getting out of the learning phase means your ads are more likely to reach the right people at the right time.
Strategy 1: Use Fewer Facebook Ad Sets
If you are using campaign budget optimization you could be spreading your budget too thin across multiple ad sets. When you have too many ad sets, your budget gets divided, making it harder to reach the 50 result actions needed to exit the learning phase. You may also find that your audiences are overlapping with multiple ad sets.
When you consolidate ad sets, it helps to speed up the process so that you can exit the learning phase quicker. If you're concerned about the number of ad sets you are running, note down their similarities so that you can combine the ones with similar attributes.
Strategy 2: Increase Your Campaign or Ad Set Budget
Sometimes, the budget you set is simply not enough to achieve the required 50 result actions. By increasing your budget, you can accelerate the process of exiting the learning phase.
Calculating the Required Budget
Here's how to calculate the budget needed to exit the learning phase:
Determine Your Cost per Result: Look at your historical data to find the average cost per result over the last 30 days (e.g., cost per click or cost per purchase).
Multiply by 50: Multiply your cost per result by 50. This gives you the total budget needed to generate 50 result actions.
Divide by 7: Divide the total budget by 7 to find your required daily budget.
Strategy 3: Avoid Making Significant Edits
Making frequent edits to your ad set/ads resets the learning phase, making it harder to leave. You should try to refrain from making changes whilst your ads are still in the learning phase, although this is sometimes unavoidable. In this instance, make all edits in bulk so that you are not continuously resetting the learning phase.
Additional Tips for Exiting the Learning Phase
Align Your Campaign Objectives
Make sure your campaign objective matches the desired outcome. If you want to drive product purchases, use the sales objective to optimise for purchases, not traffic or post engagement. This will ensure that your ad set delivers according to your goals, meaning you are more likely to achieve 50 optimisation events and exit the learning phase.
Monitor and Adjust
Continuously monitor your ad performance. If you notice that elements of your campaign are underperforming, make a note of them and make adjustments in one hit to achieve optimal performance.
Review Your Audience
If you are using an interest based audience, make sure you review it before setting your ad set live to ensure that your audience size is big enough. Utilising a narrow audience can stop your ads from successfully leaving the learning phase.
Summary
Exiting the Meta learning phase is crucial for optimising your ad performance and reducing costs. By using fewer ad sets, increasing your budget strategically, and avoiding actions that reset the learning phase, you can accelerate this process and achieve better results.
It is also imperative to remember that your ads can enter/exit the learning phase at any given time, so ensure that you regularly monitor the performance of your campaigns and follow the processes outlined to achieve the results you are looking for.
