When it comes to marketing on Facebook, there’s you and the platform.

If you want every ad campaign to end successfully, you should learn really well how to work with Facebook Business Manager and its multiple tools. Not to mention that you should constantly practice running your ads.

When you launch your first ad campaign, you establish a connection between yourself and the Facebook platform. The better you become at using the platform and launching ads, the stronger the connection becomes and the better the platform understands what exactly you want to achieve.

This process is what the Facebook team calls the Facebook learning phase.

What Is the Facebook Learning Phase?

The Facebook learning phase is the period from the moment you launch ads or ad sets till the moment you stop them, during which the Facebook ad delivery system uses machine learning to optimize ad delivery and bring maximum value to you as the advertiser.

Every time you create a new Facebook ad or ad set, the learning phase starts.

Each time Facebook delivers an ad, the system becomes more competent at finding the best audiences and delivery times as well as using the best placements and ad creatives.

And every time you make significant changes to an ad or an ad set you’ve already launched, the learning phase resets. Significant changes include:

• Any edits to ad creatives
• Any edits to targeting settings
• Changes to a bidding strategy
• Any edits to optimization events
• Creating a new ad in an existing ad set
• Pausing an ad set for seven days or longer

After you make any of these significant changes to Facebook ads, the learning phase progress will go back to square one along with your:

• Bid control
• Cost control
• Return on ad spend (ROAS) control amount
• Ad set spending limit
• Budget amount

Additionally, keep in mind that:

• Creating a new ad set in an existing campaign with campaign budget optimization doesn’t reset the learning phase for Facebook ads in the rest of this campaign’s ad sets
• Making significant changes to an ad set doesn’t reset the learning phase for other ad sets within the same ad campaign
• Redistributing your budget as part of campaign budget optimization doesn’t reset the learning phase for ad sets within this ad campaign

When ad set performance stabilizes, the learning phase ends. According to Facebook, this usually happens when an ad set gets around 50 optimization events within seven days.

If an ad set doesn’t manage to get enough optimization events or the delivery system notifies you that it won’t get enough optimization events in the future, the ad set receives the Learning Limited status.

What Is Learning Limited?

In relation to Facebook ads, Learning Limited is a metric used in Facebook Ads Manager to show ad sets that haven’t managed to collect the number of conversions recommended for exiting the Facebook learning phase.

How can you avoid Learning Limited in Facebook ads and exit the learning phase with stable ad performance?

How to Get the Most Out of the Facebook Learning Phase

Here are a few recommendations that will help Facebook machine learning ensure the best delivery for your ads.

Don’t Make Changes Before the Learning Phase Ends

The Facebook campaign learning phase brooks no interference. If you want your campaigns to exit the learning phase successfully, don’t edit your original settings. Choose settings very carefully and check them twice before launching your campaign. Even slight edits to your ad sets and ads may restart the machine learning process.

Run Fewer Ad Sets at Once

When running Facebook ads during the learning phase, creating too many ad sets is the wrong way to go because it will decrease the ad delivery frequency. As a result, only a few ad sets will leave the learning phase. Plus, you’ll waste your budget.

Instead of launching many ad sets, Facebook recommends consolidating ad set delivery in order to consolidate the learning process for the system. Here are two examples.

If you want to test ad placements, pick the automated placements mode and customize your ad creatives.

If you want to test target audiences, take advantage of Level, Time, Demographics, Delivery, and Actions breakdowns in the Ads Reporting tool. You’ll find it inside the Business Manager.

Don’t Constrain Yourself, But Keep Everything Balanced

When it comes to optimizing Facebook ads, the learning phase can teach you (while you teach the platform) how to find the golden middle and how to not go too far with your campaign settings.

Allocate budgets that are adequate to the size of your audiences. Target bigger audiences that include enough people and consequently bring more conversions. Optimize your ads for conversion events that happen frequently.

Test Different Settings and Content All the Time

Active learning for Facebook ads will guarantee stable performance in the long run. Even after you learn how to manage your ads and ad sets to exit the learning phase, keep experimenting with ad content, targeting techniques, and other settings to advance the delivery of your Facebook ads.

Exit the Learning Phase Successfully with AI-Made Video Ads

The learning phase for ads on Facebook and its services is a crucial step in any successful marketing strategy. Now that you have enough information on how to optimize your ad delivery, keep in mind that you can also optimize the production of video ads.

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