The BEST Way To Optimize Facebook Ads (Post IOS Update)

In this article, I’m going to reveal the best new way to optimize Facebook ads in 2023.

Specifically, I’m going to go through the only metrics you must focus on, my results and what you should look for with sales and leads, and how to track your data in an unreliable Facebook dashboard.

Campaign Success Metrics

When you launch your campaign you should only have one success metric that indicates if your ad campaign is good or bad.

Usually, this success metric is…

• CPA( Cost per acquisition)
• ROAS.
• Cost per lead.
• Cost per webinar sign up

Always know this number first so you know if a campaign works or not for me, it’s always cost per customer and cost per lead.

And it’s this metric you’re going to use to discover what’s wrong with your campaign.

Why You Should Focus On This One Metric

I want you to forget about any other metric, don’t worry about your link clicks, impressions, or anything else.

Ultimately the end focus is the key which usually is the sale.

However, let's take a quick look at some variables I want you to think about when optimizing your ads.

Variables To Think About When Optimizing Your Ads

1. Facebook ad not getting any clicks to your landing page.
2. Getting clicks but not getting any conversions on your landing page.

For a quick summary of what I would do generally is to work backwards.

Starting with the end goal which could be acquiring a client or selling a product.

What comes before this is the email follow-up sequence, the oto page the optin page, and the Facebook ad itself.

Then I ask myself where in the funnel did something go wrong?

But for this example I want to stick with the Facebook ads optimization, and so let’s say the post-click experience is converting.

And now we want to look at Facebook ad results and see where I can identify the underperformers to turn them off or even change up and test the creatives.

Facebook Ad Optimization Examples

Sales Example and optimization

Now the results you can in the above image had far more sales and ad set 3 didn’t do as well as it shows on the screen.

Ad set 1 as you can see the volume of sales is far greater than ad set 3 and is a bit higher showing on Google analytics.

Ad set 3 had fewer sales the actual number was 5 sales and the cost was going up each time.

So this was going above my CPA and therefore I switched it off.

But a key thing here is this…
When it comes to getting sales directly from Facebook ads, usually you can expect the cost to keep going up, as you saturate the audience.

And if you have the cost going up slowly like ad set 1 and staying consistent this is a key indicator your ad is doing very well, and monitor it to change the creative once it starts rising higher faster.

Lead Example:

Now from these 12 ad sets you can see five ad sets highlighted because these are the ones that can remain switched on.

The cost per result on these was good and since I was getting such good results at 26 pence the lead on the best performer I could afford to switch off the leads that were above 50 pence.

Even though above 50 pence a lead was still good results.

Now if you look at the last 3 ad sets, you can see how expensive those leads cost, I would have actually switched these off much earlier but I left them running for longer as I wasn’t too bothered about the ad spend.

I would suggest monitoring it more and switching it off earlier because it’s clearly showing I’m losing money.

Now to mention a few of these ad sets did start to fatigue and the price increased but as soon as I switched up the creative the price started to decline and was getting good results again because the creative is key.

Make sure to keep an eye on creative fatigue as this will significantly increase your price or decrease depending on how many times it has been shown to people.

Facebook Ads Optimization And Delivery (Which Is Right For You?)

Choosing the right delivery in your Facebook ads is important to get right if you want the best results.

And that’s why I'm going to go through different campaign objectives, such as sales, leads, traffic, and engagement.
To then help you discover which optimization is right for you depending on different scenarios.

When you get this right, Facebook can deliver your ads in the correct way, and you’ll get the best ROI for your ad spend.

What Optimization Should You Use For Sales And Leads

With both leads and sales I use the same optimization so whatever I put for sales will be the same for leads.

Sales Conversion Optimizations

Going straight to the ad set, scroll down the ad then you will see Optimization & delivery.

Focus on optimization for ad delivery because this is where you’ll choose the event you want Facebook to optimize its outcomes.

Now, if you click the drop-down menu…

The first one which is pre-set on, is conversions this is the one I highly recommend for both leads and sales.

Because if you want a purchase or a lead that’s the end outcome you want which is a conversion.

Facebook will find the most likely people with high intent of making a conversion for a purchase or to take you up on a lead offer.

Then next under this, you have landing page views.

Now if you select this event, all Facebook will do is find people who will click on your landing page.

And that’s all it's going to do, so it’s not looking for high-intent buyers, just looking for people to view your landing page.

Additional Options:
Then you have other options which show, link clicks, daily unique reach, and impressions….

Now again, you do not want to optimize for any of these in a conversions campaign, because if you’ve told Facebook you want a purchase that’s it.

You only want that one specific action from people so ignore all of these for now.

Traffic Conversion Optimizations

So let's say for example, you want to get exposure to your website, blog, or even an amazon product, and you're not ready for a conversion on a landing page.

Go into the ad set, go down to optimization & delivery…

And click the drop-down menu for optimization for ad delivery.

Now I want you to always think about one important factor before choosing anything here.

Which is, again what’s the outcome your trying to attain?

For a traffic campaign is usually to get someone to view a page you’ll be sending them to.

So in this case between these four options…

I would go for the main desired outcome of landing page views…

You want to make sure the person you want, is a person who wants to view your page rather than just click by mistake or a click-and-go person…

And impressions or reach could be a bunch of people who only see your initial ad and scroll past.

But for landing page views, Facebook will only look for those who would go all the way to the desired outcome.

How To Optimize Video Views Delivery

And then a common campaign I tend to use a lot, is video views…

This is now in the engagement objective, select your ad.

Engagement type, video views and then down to the optimization & delivery.

You have ThruPlay or 2-second continuous video views.

Now with ThruPlay Facebook says it will deliver your ads to help get more completed video plays if the video is 15 seconds or shorter.

For longer video plays, this will optimize for people most likely to play at least 15 seconds.

And with 2-second continuous video views, They’ll deliver to get the most views from 2 seconds.
Now if you think about this…

When you scroll through your Facebook feed, and someone passes a video, it's most likely going to instantly play up to a few seconds.

This could be anyone who’s not interested and is just scrolling through their feed, and Facebook will count it as an engagement.

Were as ThruPlay…

You're at least holding the attention longer, and if it's past 15 seconds as Facebook says it will start optimizing for those people who hold longer attention.

So ThruPlay is what I would highly recommend for the best quality of engagement.

Quick Take-Aways And Tips When It Comes To Optimization

Now a quick thought I want you to take away on optimization for ad delivery which I can't stress enough.

Is to always focus on your outcome and what your end goal is with your adverting.

If you want conversions focus on getting conversions.

If you want post engagement only focus on getting that engagement.

Not only will you go after the end in mind, but you’ll work better with Facebook’s machine learning as you’ll be telling it exactly what you want it to do.

So when you find the best optimization for your Facebook ads make sure you put those ads in front of your best audience.

What I Do With Winners For Scaling

When it comes to winners and scaling ads, I usually just increase the budget between 10% and 20% every 3 or 4 days and continue to monitor the results.

If I increase the budget and notice the results start decreasing I then decrease the budget back or I duplicate the campaign level and delete the ad sets that didn’t work.

I also change the targeting and enter a higher budget, so pretty much I do horizontal and vertical scaling.

But overall this is pretty much all you do.

It's nothing fancy, but can change everything in your advertising.

And I want you to know this…

Optimization is the key to successful advertising on Facebook.

But like I mentioned earlier there are a lot of other things I do outside of Facebook when optimizing such as how I write my sales copy.

Because of all the different elements, such as the after-the-click experience from Facebook you should focus on all the other elements as well.

Optimize Your Ads With Accurate Data

Ever since IOS updates there is now lot of inaccurate data and a few with Facebook ads.

To help resolve this I highly recommend setting up GTM (Google Tag Manager) and using the analytics from Google to determine your results.

To make this even more accurate I recommend setting up GTM server-side tracking with Facebook CAPI.

The main reasons are because I don't trust Facebook’s metrics and it will improve the performance of your ads when the Facebook ai receives more accurate data.

Additional Resources For Optimizing Facebook Ads

Here are some additional resources you may find useful for further optimizing and improving the results of your Facebook ad campaigns:

• How long should you run your ad for.
• How to increase daily spending limits.
• Why your ads aren't converting.
• How to write Facebook ad Headlines.
• How to retarget.

I especially recommend learning more about Facebook ads targeting for helping reduce ad spend and finding your ideal audience.