Help. What does “I’m stuck in the ‘Facebook Ads Limited Learning’ Phase” mean?
Do you ignore the yellow⚠warning triangle? Ignore the Facebook Ads limited learning warning and march on.
That limited learning ⚠ flag means your Facebook Ads ad set will not exit its learning phase. Does that matter? Should you care? Will my ROI crash and burn? What should I do?
Here is how you solve for limited learning.
But, What is Facebook Ads Limited Learning?
It is this yellow triangle warning displayed in the delivery column inside of a Facebook Ads ad set. The triangle is the warning the ad set will not exit the learning phase.
The learning-limited Facebook ads warning shows when an Ads Set does not achieve the 50 conversions events in a 7-day period.
This warning only shows after
a) a new ad set is published/launched
b) significant edit is made to a stable and active ad set, and have not gotten the 50 conversions.
Don’t worry, I am Urban Renström, there is always science and research involved in everything I talk about, teach, and demonstrate.
What is the Learning Phase of Facebook Ads?
The Facebook ads “learning phase is the time window when the delivery system finds the best people and ads placements to show to get the desired results”.
*Desired results* are the set campaign objective—traffic and conversions as selected in the Optimization & Delivery method.
For example, if you chose the Conversion campaign objective and want 30-60 years old M and F, with an interest in SMB and Richard Branson living in the UK, download a pdf cheat sheet. This audience is 10 million in size, and you use a daily budget of €20.
During the learning phase, the ad delivery system will test segments of the audience and placements to find combinations that will convert.
When people convert (buy, signup, register etc.) a tally mark is noted by the Facebook Pixel and is feedback to the ads delivery system, creating a virtuous cycle. 🌀
If no conversions the feedback loop will not. Naturally, a prerequisite is the Facebook Pixel installed on your website.
This learning phase does not end with an active campaign. The ad set learnings and refinings continue indefinitely.
You see:
"The more an ad is shown, the better the delivery system optimizing the ads performance" this is the virtuous feedback loop➰.
During the learning phase, the KPIs – the CPM, and CTR are less stable and the CPA are usually worse (more expensive) compared to after the learning phase.
Can I Ignore the Limited Learning warning?
Yep, absolutely.
This is me asking you the tough question – is the cost per action, CPA, in the limited learning ad set within acceptable limits?
‘Within acceptable limits‘ for example, if your upper CPA is €4.5 for leads and the limited learning leads cost €2.5 then you are still within your range of acceptable costs.
How to get out of the Learning Phase Facebook
A.K.A How to Exit the Facebook ads Limited Learning Warning?
Easy.
Follow the suggestions offered by Facebook and then act on those suggestions!
Yes, existing learning limited is really that simple.
"...because its (the ad sets) budget may be too low...Consider raising your budget or combine similar ads sets to consolidate their budgets"
In the image above the suggestions are simple and clear.
And the ad set must get 50 events in a 7-day time frame in order to exit the limited learning phase.
Here are Four Suggestions on How to get out of Facebook Ads Limited Learning are:
- Raise the budget (daily or campaign)
- Raise bid or cost controls
- Expand your audience
- Combine ad sets and campaigns
- Verify audiences overlap in your campaigns is <20%
How do Know Which of these five to Action?
Raise your daily Budget
*if your daily budget is €10.
*and the CPA or Cost per Result is €4
*and you are on day 3.
*Then €10/4 = 2 results per day. And we *know 2 results/day * 4 days = 8 total results.
*8 – 50 = -42. Your race to 50 events will fail by 42.
Therefore, raise the budget to €42/day.
Because 42 results / 4 days = 10.5 results/day. The current CPA is €4, and €4 * 10.5/day = €42/day.
Budget €600 for the entire 7 days to ensure you achieve the 50 events.
After you have the 50 events you can lower the budget back to €10-20/day or whatever you choose.
Raise bid or Cost Controls
Have you entered an amount in the Cost Control field 1, in the image below?
If no, then raising the bid or cost control suggestion is not the problem with your limited learning Facebook ads warning.
Expand your Audience
If your audience is 50k people and you are optimizing for the purchase of a €249 course then the FB ads delivery system will struggle to find groups of people in your audience to display your advert who will click and convert on your website.
Simply there are not enough people in this 50K audience that will fulfil your requirements.
The solution is to expand your audience to 500K-1Mil.
Combine Ad Sets and Campaigns
The net effect of combining campaigns is to increase the daily budget.
With two ad sets and each is generating 3-4 conversion events per day then by combining the ad sets and budgets this super ad set will generate 7-8 per day and easily reach 50 in a week.
Verify that audience overlap in your campaigns is less than 20%
*Go to Ads manager
*Click on the Hamburger
*Click Audiences
*Choose the two audiences in question
*Click the ellipse
*Choose *show audience overlap*
This is what a bad audience overlap looks like:
What if I don’t exit the Facebook ads Learning Limited stage?
Your costs will fluctuate and the budget may not spend properly and worse your results will suffer.
Without achieving 50 events in a week, Facebook is unable to gather the knowledge from its audience it needs to stabilize delivery effectively.
Consider readjusting your optimization event for higher in the funnel. For example, optimise for Landing page views instead of conversions.
Have a question? Ask in the comments
