New Ads and the Learning Phase

Do new ads restart the learning phase? Things might be changing.

Let me explain…

Meta’s Official Documentation

In Meta’s Help Center article titled “Significant Edits and the Learning Phase,” Meta explains the changes that will result in restarting learning. Within the list of significant edits, Meta includes this:

“Adding a new ad to your ad set.”

This article has been around for years, so it might be outdated. But I’ve historically cited this article when advertisers ask me which changes will restart the learning phase.

In that article, some changes are less clear. Increasing budget, for example, depends on the size of the increase. But the addition of an ad to an active ad set couldn’t be more clear. That restarts learning.

My Test

I decided to test this recently by publishing a new ad in an active ad set. While I’m sure we’ve all done this many times without giving it a thought, I decided to pay attention this time.

The ad set remained active. The ad, once approved, was immediately active, too.

Is This Good?

Most advertisers will see this as a very good thing, and they have a point. If you’re getting good results, we tend to avoid making changes that will restart learning. That leads to instability and we could screw up performance.

But you could make the argument that restarting learning may be helpful in some cases. If the original learning didn’t consider this ad, will Meta just ignore it without learning again?

For what it’s worth, my new ad fell in the bottom third of impressions after it was published. That may not mean anything though.

This could also be a situation where the the impact of the new ad matters. I added one new ad to an ad set of 22 ads and the ad set remained active. If I added 22 ads to an active ad set that consisted of one ad, would the ad set enter learning? My bet is that it would.

Still, this is yet another example of how the rules around Meta advertising are changing. What was true a few years ago is no longer true now.