Change to Ad Set Spending Limits

Meta made what seems to be a strange update to ad set spending limits.

Let me explain…

Averages

When you use Advantage+ Campaign Budget (formerly CBO), your campaign budget will be spent optimally between ad sets.

But Meta has always allowed advertisers to set an ad set spending limit. This allowed you to set a minimum or maximum per ad set.

But Meta is changing this to an “Average ad set spending limit.”

It’s no longer a hard cap. When you set a maximum now, Meta won’t spend more than that per day on average.

But Why?

If this sounds familiar, it’s how daily budgets work.

But it doesn’t make sense for ad set spending limits. Let me explain…

For daily budgets, Meta can spend more or less on a given day to take advantage of opportunities. But you’ll spend the same over a week. Averages make sense there because it’s all about getting the most out of your budget.

But you’re setting a line when it comes to ad set spending limits. You could have used CBO without ad set spending limits to let Meta spend your budget optimally. That could mean most of your budget in one ad set and very little in another.

But you used ad set spending limits instead of ad set budgets for a reason. You’re telling Meta to spend whatever on a given ad set as long as it’s not more or less than a defined amount. If you set a maximum, you’d be fine with Meta spending way less. You just don’t want it to be more.

An average suggests that you want Meta to stay at or around that limit. But that’s not at all why the limit was set. It’s more of a barrier to add a small amount of control to how your campaign budget is distributed.

Ad Set Budgets

This change means ad set spending limits are blending awfully closely into ad set budgets. How is this any different than ad set budgets? At this point, why wouldn’t you just turn off CBO and use ad set budgets instead?

Maybe I’m missing something. It’s possible that this will be executed differently than it sounds.

What do you think?