Creative Testing Feature for Meta Ads

There’s a new way to test ad creative.

This could be an important addition that I hope will replace many advertisers’ creative testing strategies. Not everyone has it yet, but here’s what you need to know…

How it Works

If you have this, you’ll find a new “Creative Testing” section at the bottom of ad creation iEvent Details.

Here’s how Meta defines it:

Compare up to 5 different versions of your creative in a test that provides delivery to new test ads.

This appears to be worded poorly. From what I can tell, you can generate up to five copies of an original ad and all will be included in the test. So the test itself should actually involve up to six ads.

To confuse things even more, I’ve seen a variation of this that allows you to test up to 10 ads (or maybe 11?).

When you click “Set Up Test,” you’ll be asked to select the number of ads to test, the portion of your budget that you want to dedicate to the test, the number of days you want the test to run, and the metric for comparing performance.

Meta will automatically generate copies of one ad and you’ll need to edit them. You’ll obviously want the copies to be significantly different so that the test is viable.

After the Test

Once the test is completed, you’ll see results in the Experiments section. Meta doesn’t say whether this is a true A/B test that prevents overlap, but I assume it will be since it’s related to Experiments.

Once the test is over, delivery of your ads will go back to normal. It’s not guaranteed that Meta will favor the ad or ads that performed best during your test, but you’ll have that information in your back pocket.

Replace Your Old Testing

I’m a fan of this new feature. It could be a far superior option to running separate test ad sets for individual ads, which is what so many advertisers do. It also won’t hurt overall performance because of this consolidated construction.

Have you tried this new creative testing feature?