Practitioner pattern · Alper Taner
Track cost per new ad that beats your current ads, not how many you test
Expert says fewer, better-reasoned tests beat 500-a-month volume; no numbers
What they did
In their words
Creative Misfires, False Positives, and Meta's Auction Flaws — Alper Taner, Stealth-Mode App Studio
Alper Taner… second failed. It's the same concept. It's just slightly different messaging and such. So, that's why you would always test with few variations just to avoid such cases where you don't just jump to conclusion of a whole concept and so on. I think that's also important. So, there could be, of course, false positives and so on like nothing is perfect, but also, I'm not also saying like, "Oh, you should trust algorithm blindly and stuff like that."
Alper TanerWhat I'm just saying is we should be able to interpret the results and then drive conclusions to shape the next creative iterations based on that. So, that's when you need to interpret the output. And then what matters at the end of the day is your success rate and not the amount of creatives because I think LinkedIn nowadays is full of, "Oh, you know what? We just tested 500 creatives." "Oh, no, we tested 700. How much did you test?" Kind of race that is not so meaningful because those numbers alone don't matter if your success rate is very low. I would more look at your cost per successful creative that is beating the BAU ads performance. And it doesn't matter if you test 20 versus 200. Of course, okay, 20 versus 200 might matter, but it doesn't matter if you're testing a very high amount of creatives with a little success.
Alper TanerIt matters more you test less amount of creatives, stronger hypotheses, stronger investment from an analyzing and hypothesizing way with a higher success rate than what matters more than just the total number of creatives that you are testing. I see potential issues when the creative amount is on the higher end, because then the mindset is like, "Hey, look, I just have to test these. Let's just move on." And then having less emphasis on why it …
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More from this episode
- When an ad wins, change one thing at a time to learn why before making moreExpert says it creates more winners; seen a concept's third variant win after two flopped
- Plot each ad's total spend against its cost per result to see when to stopBad ads are often clear by ~$500; one account burned ~$90K on a $100+ CPI ad
- When one ad eats 90% of an ad set's budget, give the other ads their own ad setOther ads often 'bloom' once the dominant ad is removed
- Keep the US out of campaigns with smaller countries; group countries by cost or value
- When a new ad keeps overspending its budget at the same cost, raise it fast5x campaign budget in two weeks with falling cost per purchase
- Set a $1M daily budget on Meta, but cap total spend and bids to control itMore high-quality traffic at stable cost for some accounts; others got no or runaway delivery
- Bid differently by placement or age group when their results differ by 20%+
- Tell Meta a trial start is a trial, not a purchaseCost per trial down ~35% with the same ads and campaigns
- Use MMP data to compare ads, but switch channels off to see what they really add
- Check which competitor ads have the most versions and longest runs in Meta's ad library
Tags: meta, creative-testing, creative-volume, success-rate