How Long Should You Let Your Ads Run?

Something I'm asked a lot is:

"How long should I let an Ad run before I turn it off?"

It's a great question and one I've personally struggled with in the past.

There's no cookie-cutter answer though, unfortunately.

To give you some numbers to work with...

Let an Ad run for an absolute minimum of 3 days. The Facebook algorithm needs this time to figure out who to show your Ads to.

Having said that, the algorithm will continue learning who to show your Ads to with every single impression; whether it's been active for 3 days or 3 months.

Ads are always learning and improving.

If the performance of an Ad is looking good after 3 days, or I feel it needs more time to prove itself, I'll let it run for a total of 7 days.

If things aren't looking good after 7 days though, I'll pull the plug on it.

7 days is more than enough time in most cases for an Ad to get some traction.

If it's not getting any traction after 7 days, chances are, it's not going to work after 14, 21, 30, 60 days. So I'll turn it off and test something else. 

A couple of things to keep in mind here, as a caveat to the above, are seasonality and market conditions, that are completely outside your control.

Big events such as Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc, can all have an impact on Ad performance.

Even the weather can affect how your Ads perform.

In instances such as these, it can take longer to collect the data you need to make an informed decision on an Ad.

Your budget will also play a role in how long to run an Ad for.

With higher budgets, you'll collect data much more quickly than with lower budgets.

An Ad spending $5 per day will need to run for 7-10 days at a minimum, in my experience.

Whereas an Ad spending $50 per day could collect enough data after 3 days to make a confident decision on.

As I mentioned earlier, there's no cookie-cutter, off-the-shelf solution to how long you should let an Ad run.

But in general, I like to give Ads 3-7 days.

To Your Success
– Matt