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Ad Limits for Facebook Pages will take effect next February

After announcing a coming limit on how many ads a business Page can run last November, Facebook has now announced how its new regulations will work.

Advertisers will be placed into one of four categories. Your category will define how many ads you can run at a time. Your limit on the number of ads a Page can run will be based on the highest monthly ad spend the previous year:

Facebook ad limits

Facebook said:

“When an advertiser runs too many ads at once, each ad delivers less often. This means that fewer ads exit the learning phase, and more budget is spent before the delivery system can optimize performance.”

This change will begin rolling out in February of next year, through to the summer.

Why would Facebook limit volume?

Facebook’s aim is to help brands lower their costs by running less ads but more efficient campaigns. Essentially, Facebook ads need to be running for a period of time before we see optimal results.

This means that when advertisers are running multiple ads at the same time, many promotions may never get that chance. Whenever an ad is shown, the algorithm builds its learnings. But more ads, means each version is shown less times.

Facebook say that 4 in 10 ads never even exit the Learning Phase – which could result in budget being spent with less or no return on investment. The ‘learning phrase’ is the period in which Facebook’s ad system is learning the best way to maximise ad performance. This will be based on your audience, how they respond and how that aligns with your digital marketing campaign goals.

Currently, Facebook offers almost limitless ad targeting and customisation, which provides advantages for advertisers. However, it can also be tempting to constantly make changes as you see results – especially when running many ad variants. According to Facebook’s data, this could be problematic, which is the reason for it’s new limits on how many ads can run at a time.

Facebook has advised against creating a second Page to get around the limit for three reasons:

  • Your two Pages would compete against one another in the ad auction.
  • The algorithm will be creating two separate sets of learnings.
  • One brand will then have to manage more than one Page, as both would be tied to their business.

The new ad limits will come into effect from February 2021 – so you still have time to refine your ads down if you are not currently meeting the above thresholds. 

Advertisers will be able to find out when their limit will go into effect by viewing Ad Limits per Page within Ads Manager. You can read more about the update here.

What do you think of the change? Feel free to get in touch.