Originally published September 2019. Some details have changed since: Facebook is now Meta, campaign budget optimization (CBO) is now called Advantage+ campaign budget, and the “50 events a week” guidance in the original is old.
Short answer: the 2019 article argued that campaign budget optimization was not set and forget. Its five lessons were to start small, consider conversion volume, separate tests from proven creative, keep ad sets comparable and use available spending controls.
I wrote the guest post on Mobile Dev Memo (published 5 September 2019; the site has since moved from mobiledevmemo.com to mdm.co). It anticipated mandatory CBO and included feedback from Sharath Kowligi. These were subjective observations, with results varying by vertical, geography and scale.
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What were the five historical lessons?
- Starting small. The article recommended a couple of hundred dollars a day, the strongest audiences and creative, and three or four ad sets. It described raising spend after performance stabilized.
- Planning for data volume. It used “about 50 events a week per ad set” as a target: five ad sets at $40 per event implied $10,000 a week. It proposed starting with a fraction of that budget. This old threshold and consolidation advice are superseded below.
- Separating tests from established ads. It proposed core campaigns for proven creative and audience pairs, and lower-budget test campaigns for new creative. Successful tests would move into core.
- Keeping ad sets comparable. The article favored similar audience sizes, one optimisation event and one operating system per campaign. It attributed uneven delivery in its examples to mixed sizes or events; that was its interpretation, not a controlled finding or a current structure rule.
- Using available controls. It described bids, ad set spending limits and the campaign budget as ways to retain control, arguing that CBO still needed active management.
What is out of date?
- The 50 events a week target. That is really old guidance; see why 50 conversions a week is no longer the rule. Today we plan budgets around conversions a day per campaign.
- Ad set counts and merging weak ad sets. Our current view on structure is in how to structure Meta campaigns for creative testing, and the one-sentence version is that creative, not ad set count, is the main lever. For scaling a budget today, read how to scale a Meta ads budget for app campaigns.
Frequently asked questions
What is Facebook CBO? Campaign budget optimization lets you set one budget at campaign level and have Meta distribute it across ad sets. Meta now calls it Advantage+ campaign budget.
Is CBO still mandatory? That was the original article’s expectation. Current Meta documentation retains manual campaign features; do not treat the 2019 statement as a current requirement.
