Facebook Reverses Campaign Budget Optimization Shift [Update]
In a move that surprised many this week, Facebook announced that advertisers will no longer be locked into Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO).
The move reverses a major change made last September that effectively removed control of ad spend at the ad-group level that forced advertisers to rely on Facebook’s smart optimization feature (CBO) to decide budgets at the campaign level.
“While our internal data supports the efficiency of CBO, especially on evergreen campaigns, having the ability to be able to allocate at the ad set level gives us added flexibility within a budget strategy to drive the best results for clients.”
— Katy Lucey, Director of Paid Social at Tinuiti
What’s Happening?
All Facebook advertiser accounts that were a part of the mandatory migration to Campaign Budget Optimization last September can now set ad budgets again.
The move reverses a major shift that changed the number of control advertisers had over ad budgets and opens up more flexibility for marketers to optimize ad spend.
What Are the Reasons Behind the Change?
According to a Facebook spokesperson, the reversal was a decision to “provide advertisers flexibility for their buying strategies to best meet their goals.”
Facebook stipulates that while CBO does provide performance and value improvements for a majority of scenarios, there are some in which having greater control over delivery (Facebook used creatives and audiences as an example here) can provide more efficiency.
Campaign Budget Optimization Remains a Best Practice for Many Campaigns
Facebook’s spokesperson emphasizes that Campaign Budget Optimization remains the most effective feature for optimizing budget and performance for a great majority of advertiser campaigns.
“Campaign budget optimization (CBO) remains a simpler, more efficient way to set up your budget, manage, and maximize value from your campaigns. We still recommend adopting CBO in the majority of cases, as it gives our delivery system more flexibility to automatically and continuously distribute your budget in real-time to your top-performing ad sets. Overall, we have seen advertisers benefit from (1) lower costs per results for their campaigns, (2) better budget utilization, and (3) automation freeing up time to focus on other business needs.”
There are no performance issues with CBO according to Facebook, the change is simply an adjustment on policy enforcement to give advertisers more flexibility.
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