How to Use the Facebook Split Testing Feature for Ads

How to Use the Facebook Split Testing Feature for Ads

Author: Jacob Baadsgaard / Source: socialmediaexaminer.com Do you want to improve your Facebook ad performance? Looking to simplify your F

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Do you want to improve your Facebook ad performance?

Looking to simplify your Facebook ad split testing?

Facebook’s new split testing feature helps you identify which delivery settings, audiences, and ad placements give you the best results.

In this article, you’ll discover how to set up split tests to improve the performance of your Facebook campaigns.

How to Use the Facebook Split Testing Feature for Ads by Jacob Baadsgaard on Social Media Examiner.
How to Use the Facebook Split Testing Feature for Ads by Jacob Baadsgaard on Social Media Examiner.

About Split Testing

If you’ve been advertising on Facebook for a while, you know it’s important to split test your ads and posts to analyze which ads deliver the best results for your business.

Unfortunately, split testing can only teach you so much. If you split test two different types of ads and they both do poorly, do you just have two bad ads? Are you targeting the wrong audience? Are your bids too low? The list of potential questions goes on and on.

Split testing can teach you a lot about your ads, but it doesn’t teach you anything about your overall marketing strategy. To learn about that, you need to test the who, where, and how of your campaign settings.

Until now, there hasn’t been a great way to test these aspects of your Facebook ad campaigns. However, with Facebook’s new split testing feature, you can optimize your audiences, delivery settings, and placements to maximize your return on ad spend. Here’s how to get started.

#1: Create a New Campaign

To set up your split test, head over to your Ads Manager account and create a new campaign.

To set up your split test, start by creating a new Facebook campaign.
To set up your split test, start by creating a new Facebook campaign.

Next, you’ll need to pick the objective for your campaign. If you’re trying to drive conversions, for example, click Conversions. Note that you can run a split test only with the Traffic, App Installs, Lead Generation, and Conversions objectives.

Select your marketing objective for your campaign.
Select the marketing objective for your campaign.

Next, give your campaign a name and select the Create Split Test box. Then click Continue.

Check the box to create a split test for your Facebook campaign.
Check the box to create a split test for your Facebook campaign.

#2: Choose Which Variable to Test

Now select the variable you want to test. Facebook gives you three options to choose from: Delivery Optimization, Audience, and Placement.

Select which variable to test in your Facebook campaign.
Select which variable to test in your Facebook campaign.

Once you select a variable to experiment with, you need to decide what you want to test in that variable. Let’s look at your options for each variable.

Delivery Optimization

A delivery optimization split test lets you test different delivery options and bids. So if you want to know whether optimizing for link clicks or conversions delivers better results, this is the test for you. Similarly, you can try bidding different amounts for each ad set and see which performs best.

With a Facebook delivery optimization test, you can test different delivery options and bids.
With a Facebook delivery optimization test, you can test different delivery options and bids.

Remember, Facebook uses a different pricing model for different delivery options. Optimizing for link clicks uses a cost-per-click model. Daily reach, impressions, and conversions use a cost-per-impression model.

Generally speaking, you want to keep delivery optimization tests as simple as possible. After all, if you test optimizing for impressions at a CPM of $50 against optimizing for conversions at a CPM of $500, and conversions delivers better results, you won’t really know which change made the difference.

Audience

An audience split test lets you compare two saved audiences. To set up this test, all you have to do is pick your audiences.

Pick two saved audiences for your Facebook audience split test.
Pick two saved audiences for your Facebook audience split test.

Before this update, you could test your audiences by showing the same ads to different audiences using different ad sets. However, that approach created a lot of internal competition.

Why? Because typically there’s some overlap between audiences. If you target your ads to different audiences that include the same users, and one…

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