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Izzy: We’ll just give it maybe one to two minutes for people to join and then we’ll get started. I’d be curious to hear if the comments are enabled, if anyone recognizes this cover photo.
Rachel: I actually, I feel like I do, but what was it from, what did you get it from?
Izzy: Do you know the, “when will my husband return from war” meme?
Rachel: Yes, I do.
Izzy: Also Rachel, I just noticed that your name is my name. I don’t know if you’re able to change that.
Let’s get started. Okay. I think we’ve gotten enough time for people to be in the room with us. So I’m going to jump in.
Welcome everyone to our webinar, How Long Do Ads Take to Work? And just to start off we’ll do some introductions.
Hello, my name is Izzy Seidman. I am flight’s content marketing specialist. And at least in the context of today’s webinar, I’ll be talking a lot about Meta ads specifically.
Rachel: And I am Rachel Burgard-Kelly. I am our paid search specialist, and I’m going to be talking about Google ads.
Izzy: Awesome. All right. So just to get us a little agenda for what we want to cover in today’s webinar, this is a very practical question that we get from clients all the time. How long is it going to be before I know whether or not it’s working, whether or not investing in ads is good? And it’s our job to explain and set expectations.
We joke in the office pretty often that “it depends” is the go-to answer of every marketer. But it really does depend. All that being said, we want this to be a very practical, actionable webinar.
So we’re going to talk a lot about what exactly happens when you launch a new ad campaign or start a new ad account. We’re going to talk about why your results look the way they do in those sort of early stages, when you can start to begin judging that performance and making decisions about, should I be scaling my ads up? Should I be continuing steady as she goes? Or should I be maybe looking to turn ads off and pivot to something different? And then some tips on what slows down a campaign and why that timeline for understanding whether or not your ads are working might be longer than you want it to be.
All right. So just to jump straight in, we’re going to do the very quick and dirty honest answer. Like I said earlier, it does depend on many variables, and we’ll get to that later in the webinar.
But first things first, just to know on Meta, typically when you launch a new campaign, you’re going to start seeing results within a few hours. The learning phase usually lasts between one to two weeks. And then you won’t hit that reliable level of performance until two to four weeks. And again, this is the average.
And then Rachel, if you want to talk to Google.
Rachel: So for Google, results start generating within the first 24 to 48 hours. The learning phase lasts anywhere from one week to one month, depending on how many clicks you’re getting. And then you can gauge a reliable performance anywhere from six to 12 weeks. But that again, really depends on that level of search that you’re getting.
Izzy: Yeah. I think you guys will see as we go through these slides, that there’s a lot of overlap between the way that meta works and the way that Google works. But generally speaking, Meta’s going to be a little bit faster than Google is.
So let’s talk about the learning phase. This is something that every ad platform has, whether they call it the same thing or not. It’s basically the time period right after your ads launch where the platform is quite literally learning what are going to be the best strategies to deliver your ads.
So you as the advertiser have a lot of control over things like bid strategy, budget, audience targeting, all that good stuff, but there are so many other layers of machine learning that we don’t see that are happening when those ad launch happen.
Meta is going to be paying attention to different placements across their platforms. They’re going to identify which audience members are responding best, and then make these minute adjustments to show ads to people who are similar to those audience members. So in a lot of ways, those early stages, the learning phase is a little bit like a big science experiment, right? We’re throwing spaghetti against the wall and waiting to see what happens.
And then the ad platform is going to automatically create some optimizations as a result. And during the learning phase, just so you guys know what the platform is looking for is conversions. So it depends on what your objective is for the campaign, right? You can have an awareness campaign, you can have a traffic campaign, you can have sales. Whatever your objective is, the platform is going to be measuring how many conversions it’s getting during this learning phase.
And it’s typically going to last until you get at least a minimum of 50 conversion events. So that could be 50 clicks to your website, it could be 50 sales in your online store. It could even be something as specific as 50 video plays on a specific video that you’re advertising with.
And that’s where that typical 7-to-14-day period comes in. Because Meta has a pretty broad audience and we’re reaching them while they’re spending time on the platform, not necessarily just when they’re specifically searching for something. You’re going to be able to collect that data a little bit faster.
So what is happening during the learning phase? When you first publish an ad campaign you’re going to have to go through an approval period. This is mostly relevant for advertisers working in a special ad category. If you’re doing something related to finance, politics, housing, jobs any of those where really following the policies on non-discrimination are important, Meta is going to be reviewing the individual ad images and copy that you’re using to ensure that it’s meeting guidelines.
And just to note, if you do get an ad rejected, don’t panic. You can click on the rejection notification, view the reason that is cited that it got rejected, and then make appropriate edits to the ad and submit a request for review. Most of these approvals or rejections are coming through an AI algorithm and so sometimes it’s just misinterpreting or it’s picking up on something that wasn’t the original intent. And it can be a little bit of a broader blanket than we want it to be. So don’t be afraid to submit a request.
After your ads have been approved, they begin getting delivered, basically being shown to people on Facebook and Instagram. And this is where that learning phase begins. It can also happen if you’ve made major edits to an existing campaign. So it’s not necessarily just for new ad campaigns. Maybe you overhauled your ad creatives or you significantly changed your budget. Things like that can jumpstart the learning phase again. Same thing goes for if you had a campaign that you paused and it was inactive for an extended period of time.
This happens for some of our clients who run seasonal businesses, for example. They might have ads running from May to September and then nothing over the winter. And we have to plan for the fact that when those ads start again in the spring, they’re going to need to go through the learning phase again.
During that learning phase, the platform is testing audience segments and placements. And then, like I mentioned earlier, it comes to an end when you reach 50 optimization events, 50 conversion events, usually within those seven days, although it really does depend on which conversion you’re using.
Meta is learning things the same way that we as advertisers are learning during that period of time. So it’s figuring out which audience segments respond best within the parameters of audience targeting that you’ve set, or especially if you’re using something broad like Advantage Plus.
Which specific creatives are driving engagement? So typically, we’re looking to launch an ad campaign with multiple variations on an ad creative, not just one. And Meta is going to deliver all of those variations and then determine which one gets the most engagement and run with that as the primary creative.
And then which placements convert? Is your audience looking in Facebook marketplace or are they scrolling on Instagram reels? Depending on what type of content you have, the industry or service that you are promoting and the demographics of your target audience, those successful placements are going to vary. And then once it finds the users who are converting, we’re doing what we want them to do, it’s going to match all of these other behaviors to find more people like that.
So all of this is happening in the background that we, as advertisers, can’t necessarily see during that learning phase period, and it’s going to drive how your ads are delivered after the learning phase ends.
There are a couple things that can make your learning phase longer. One of them being your budget is too low. This is not the time to be using a $1 a day budget. Because it’s so important that Meta is gaining those 50 conversion events during a short period of time. Let’s imagine if you have a long sales cycle or an expensive product, the amount of effort it takes for a user to want to take that conversion is going to be much higher. And so if you’re using a really low budget, the likelihood that you’re going to get enough conversions in a short period for Meta to exit the learning phase is pretty low.
So we always suggest that our clients start out with a $1,500 per month budget. That’s our personal minimum. That’s not to say that you can’t have a different budget, but we’ve found that is the most budget efficient we can be while still being able to exit that learning phase in a relatively short period of time.
Rachel: That’s for Google as well.
Izzy: Yeah. And then if you break your campaign down into too many ad sets, that can also muddy the waters, mostly because it is it’s segmenting your budget into really small bits and pieces.
So maybe your campaign budget is actually pretty decent, but you’ve got a dozen ad sets that are all trying to eat a piece of that pie. And it’s just not enough concentration for the platform to be able to have a significant quantity of data on any one individual ad set. We typically go maybe three to five ad sets per campaign at most. That tends to be the best breakdown for us, but it will depend, obviously, on what your budget is.
So just be wary at the very beginning. Maybe start broad. Start with one or two. You can always build more ad sets within the campaign later on. Having narrow audiences can also slow the learning phase. This is a problem that is quite common with local businesses. If you have a store and you’re looking for people to come visit you in person, your radius that you’re targeting within is probably pretty small. It’s within a couple miles, right?
We’re up here in Portland, Maine. We do count as a city, but we’re a pretty small city. And sometimes if you’re targeting just that small geographic area, the audience size, the number of people that the platform has the ability to test their ads against is too small for us to get enough significant data. So this is another one of those scenarios where depending on what your audience demographics look like, you may need to start broad and then plan to narrow your audience down later after your campaign has exited that learning phase.
We also recommend that during that first 30 days you avoid making frequent edits. If you launch a campaign and then the very next day you say, oh, I didn’t really like that copy that I wrote, I’m going to go put in a new headline. You can restart the learning phase algorithm in that sense. Do your planning before the campaign launches and then let it be for a little while. That’s not to say that you can’t make edits later on, but you really want to allow the platform time to learn about all of the variables that you’ve set up during that first phase.
And the last one, which is a little bit more amorphous, is lack of tracking. If you don’t have a Meta pixel on your website and connected to Google Analytics, you might not necessarily be giving Meta back the data that it needs to understand whether or not the users it’s showing ads to are doing what we want.
So if you want people to click the link in an ad to visit your website, and then when they’re on their website, let’s say you want them to fill out a contact form and submit it. If you don’t have tracking set up for that contact form, then Meta has no way of knowing whether or not the person that clicked on your ad is actually qualified. And that means not only are they not going to be able to optimize, but the quality of the traffic that you’re getting from your ads is going to be significantly lower. So definitely making sure you have tracking set up before your ads launch is extremely important.
What should you do while you’re waiting? In the meantime, during those 7 to 14 days that your ads are going through a learning phase, there are some things you should be doing. First and foremost, you should be paying attention to the data. So in the same way that the platform is gathering intel and making minute optimizations, you can start to notice some of those early patterns. So what are the top performing ad variations in your ad set? Are there early trends in the audience, age, or gender, or perhaps the platform that they’re using? Are they on mobile or are they on desktop?
And then which placements are getting the most results? I don’t necessarily do anything with this information yet. Like I said, we don’t want to be making major edits, but gather them and make note so that when it’s time to optimize you have some ideas of the direction that you’re going to go in next.
And then there’s this thing in Meta ads, I actually don’t know if this exists for Google, but it’s called Learning Limited. And it basically means you’re stuck in the learning phase jail, and your ads have not been able to exit that early period. A lot of it has to do with budget, and you’ll get that little notification from Meta when this happens that says, “We suggest you increase your spend.” The platform’s always going to tell you to increase your spend, but sometimes that is what can jumpstart you out of learning limited. So your own personal parameters, try increasing the budget to see if you can improve the volume of conversions that you’re sending back to the platform.
You can also reset the learning phase. Do the opposite of what I said earlier. Make a major edit. Maybe it just didn’t go well with the first sort of set of variables that you tested. Try something different and see if that changes the data that Meta’s receiving.
Rethinking your conversion event is a big one. You may have started too far down the funnel. So if you have a brand-new ad account and a brand-new campaign, you haven’t been collecting any data previously through an ad platform like Meta and you jump right away to a sales campaign and you’re looking for conversions immediately. The platform just may not be able to identify the right users for that bottom of the funnel event, and you could have the opportunity to exit the learning phase by moving a little bit further up. So testing something like a brand awareness or a traffic campaign starting fresh is always an option. You can always launch a new campaign.
And then the last thing is maybe nothing. This might come as a surprise, but we have a number of clients who do have a long sales cycle or an expensive product that requires that higher level of consideration. And their ads are almost always in a learning limited state. The big caveat here is that you, as the business owner or as the advertiser, need to have a benchmark for what you consider to be success for the campaign.
So a successful campaign for your business might mean you only get one to five leads per month. That is never going to look like enough data for Meta to exit the learning phase. But if it’s working for you and you feel like you’re getting value out of it, you know your cost per acquisition is good, the quality of those leads is high, then it’s okay to be in learning limited. You can stay in that space. So just so you know, it’s not always a problem.
All right. Some of the things that you might see after you launch new ads include high cost per acquisition or cost per result. Like I said, the platform is throwing spaghetti against the wall and it’s going to utilize your budget to its maximum to get that data. So right out of the gate, some of your cost per results might be higher than you want them to be. Don’t be too scared. We’re waiting for that learning phase to end before results begin to level out, and then you can make a judgment call on whether or not that CPA is something that you can absorb long term.
You might also see fluctuating CPCs, cost per click. So one day they could be 20 cents and the next day they could be $3. Again, this is just because the platform is learning and testing different variables, and that important data that it’s getting back on cost per click will eventually lead to more stable results.
Performance volatility, very similar to the first bullet point, and then inconsistent conversion rates. So you might get a high volume of clicks, but a low volume of people filling out that contact form or making a sale. And then next week it could flip. You could get a much smaller quantity of people to the website, but more of them are converting. Patience is the key here.
So when do Meta ads work? Within the first one to three days, it’s delivery and early testing. We can’t really make any judgment calls at that point. In three to six days that learning phase will start to stabilize. It will have a better idea of which placements and audience it’s going after and the metrics that you’re getting back will start to seem more similar. And then within two to four weeks, typically your performance will become pretty reliable. On a day to day, that average cost per click, your average conversion rate will be pretty close to the previous day. As always, it depends.
I wanted to include a quick little case study so you guys can get an idea of just how long it sometimes can take for ads to work. We’ve been working with a client who launched a new service-based business. They’re local, so they have a storefront where they serve their customers. It’s in Portland. So just as we talked about earlier, that audience is quite small. And they were brand new to the scene. They had not only never run ads before, but they had a brand-new website, brand new store in person. They did not have an existing customer base. And so there was very little data to go off of.
They had some great guesswork in terms of predicting what their lifetime customer value was going to be or their desired cost per acquisition. And all of that was incredibly helpful. But even in doing all of the right things, you can see on this chart that the first six months of running ads for them, we had extremely volatile cost per click.
So this time series that we’re looking at, it’s a traffic campaign that we ran for them beginning in, I believe it was May of 2024. We’re still running it today. Obviously, things have changed in the campaign since then, but it’s the same campaign, same objective. Those first six months, the cost per click was all over the map. But by the time we hit sort of month eight, the standard deviation between our average cost per click is so much smaller. And what that means for us now is that we’ve been able to experiment with other conversion events, other ad types, different creatives, and have reliable predictions for how that performance is going to look.
And this just gives you an idea of yes, you can get results from Meta within the first one to two weeks. But if you’re looking for Facebook ads and Instagram ads to be part of your long-term marketing strategy, it’s going to take a lot longer before you get to a point where you can solidly say, I’m going to launch this campaign, and I know what’s going to happen with it.
All right. We will have time for questions at the end, but for now I’m going to pass it to Rachel.
Rachel: Alright. Thank you Izzy. Alright, so the Google ads learning phase. Want to go to the next slide for me?
Izzy: Yeah.
Rachel: Okay. So during this time, very similar to Meta, you’ll notice that a lot of these things are really similar between the two. As Izzy said, you’ll see your bids fluctuate. You’ll see that cost per click varying. Your targeting will be a little broader and you’ll be hopefully building conversion data.
This phase usually lasts from 7 to 10 days, depending again on the amount of leads you’re getting and the amount of clicks that you’re receiving. So the actual timeline, the first stage your ads are approved, traffic should begin flowing in. That’s between the first 24 and 48 hours.
If you’re not seeing any movement after 48 hours, it means something is likely wrong. They might not always tell you what it is, so it requires a little bit of investigating. But things should be moving after that 48 hours. This is when the learning phase sets in and data collection starts. This is between one week and one month, and then optimization and eventual stability between 6 and 12 weeks.
So what is Google learning? The algorithm is learning which search queries convert. Search query is what your users are typing in to activate your ads. Which keywords drive value. Say your keywords are things like marketing agencies in Portland or Google Ad Services near me. How many clicks are each of those keywords getting versus how many conversions?
The first could be a super high click volume. Lots of people are clicking it, no one’s converting versus the second keyword. Maybe it’s getting a lower volume, but all the people who click it are filling out your form. So it really just depends. And then it’s seeing which audiences convert after they’re searching for those keywords. What are their demographics? What are they interested in? Where do they live? What things have they searched for before? Things like that. And then optimal bid levels. This is seeing what your cost per click needs to be in order to stay competitive with others in your industry. And they’re really just trying to build a persona of who is going to convert and then find more of those people.
Why Google takes a little longer optimization happens at the keyword and search query level. So the system needs click data, conversion data, and search behavior patterns. So where Meta is showing ads to a cold audience or a maybe a little bit warmer, but generally more cold, Google is showing their ads only to people who have searched for those keywords. So it’s just a little bit different. And again, they’re just trying to build the persona and see who is most likely to do what you want them to do.
Meta versus Google optimization. So Meta finds the right people initially. Google captures existing demand because users are searching for those products and services and being matched with your ads. Meta is a little creative heavy, and while Google has become a little more or is starting to emphasize more on creatives, it’s more keyword and search heavy. Meta has faster learning, but Google has a longer optimization timeline.
Patience is key. Something we definitely have to have to let our clients know, because it is really difficult not to put all this effort and money into something and wait a long period of time to see if it works. It’s difficult. Meta minimum evaluation window is seven days versus Google’s minimum evaluation window being 30 days.
But again, this all depends. It could be slightly longer if you have a $500 a day budget versus a $50 a day budget, that learning phase is going to happen a lot quicker.
Izzy: Yeah, basically don’t decide that it’s a failure and don’t decide that it’s a raging success until at least 7 to 30 days.
Rachel: Yeah. Doesn’t usually happen this way. Usually, it takes a while to start building up the conversions and then you really hit your stride. But we have had clients where the first month we surpassed all our expectations, then set our expectations much higher, and then have had a really hard time matching that conversion level after that. So yeah, it’s good to not get too excited or discouraged within that first one.
What actually determines the speed of the learning process? Some things that affect this are your budgets. Like I said before, a $50 a day budget versus a $500 a day budget is a huge difference. If your cost per click is $1, that’s 50 clicks in a day versus 500 clicks in a day. A lot quicker when it’s 500 clicks in a day, obviously.
Similar to Meta, what is your objective? If we’re looking for form fills, if we’re looking for phone calls, if it’s just clicks on a link because that’s where your focus is right now and you want to get eyes on a certain page, that’s usually a little bit easier to accomplish than getting people to fill out an entire form.
Clicking on a link also is not a great conversion to focus on entirely just because it’s harder to count concrete conversions. It’s just clicks and a view page view versus someone who’s actually filling out the form. How many conversions you’re receiving, tracking accuracy, how big your audience is. Like Izzy said, if your radius is three miles around Portland, that’s a lot smaller audience size than all of Maine or all of New England.
The quality of your creatives and your level of industry competition. So if you’re a big fish in a small pond, not as much of an issue with higher cost per clicks and other people getting in the way of your spot on Google. But generally with most industries, there is some competition there.
Final takeaway, the real timeline for both, for either, is launch. You immediately should start generating traffic. That learning phase one to four weeks, depending on whether it’s Meta or Google. The optimization period can start within one to three months, depending on how much data you’ve already gathered. And scaling is ongoing for both platforms.
Izzy: Yeah. And maybe just to give folks in the audience an idea of how we personally work at flyte, I believe most of our ad contracts are a minimum of six months. Mostly because when we get to that stage of optimization, months one to three, we’re trying really hard to be good scientists about it and change one variable at a time. Because if you do a lot of things, it’s hard to know what exactly worked or what didn’t and why your results might be different. And so it just takes time to take those incremental steps towards better success.
Rachel: It’s a scientific method we try.
Izzy: Yeah.
Rachel: All right. And that brings us to the question portion. Let us know if you have any questions that came up while we were talking. But also, as always, feel free to reach out afterwards if you don’t think of your questions right now. Or if you’re thinking about them a little later on and something comes to you, we’re always happy to answer questions.
Izzy: Awesome. See you on the other side.