How Does Budget Affect Ad Cost?
How much you set your budget at can affect the cost per like for your ads. But by how much? I decided to run a simple experiment to find out.
The Premise
Ads Cost More The Higher Your Budget
Or do they?
This is something I have always believed to be true. You put more money into a Facebook ad, and Meta just spends it for you, resulting in a higher cost per like. But is this commonly held belief true? I decided to run a simple test to find out for myself.
I would run three separate but identical campaigns.
One will start with a budget of £2 per day, one £10, and finally, one at £50.
These campaigns are all identical, with the same ad and settings. The only difference is the budget.
Overall Results
In the end, very similar - but there is nuance to it!
So the overall results, with nearly £500 spent on the ads was very similar with the £50 a day campaign actually bringing in the cheapest overall cost per like at 24 pence, next was the £2 a day campaign at 25 pence and finally the £10 a data at 26p. But if we dig a little deeper there are some interesting takeaways.
Initial Results
The ads got off to very different starts!
if we look at just day one, image below, then you will see that the cheapest campaign actually got off to a very poor start, whilst the most expensive campaign performed the best straight out of the gate.
This result would carry on for quite a while before the price started dropping on the cheaper campaigns.
My thinking is that the cheaper ads took a while to find the correct audience, this happened much quicker on the more expensive ad due to the higher budget.
With the £2 a day campaign, Facebook was very slow to work out the audience - leading to very high initial costs. However, this would change once the correct audience was found.
Last Few Days
By the end of the campaign there was one clear winner
Now, just focusing on the last few days of this experiment, we can see one campaign that was a clear winner. As I would have predicted at the very beginning, this was the cheapest of the three.
Takeaways
So, what can we learn from this?
In the end, a lower budget does result in a cheaper cost per like. However, the ads take time to learn and perform at their best, which happens much faster with a higher budget.
So, what do I recommend? Start your ads with a higher budget and then after a few days drop them down to a cheaper amount, this will result in the lowest overall cost per like for your campaign!
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