Tip: Facebook Ad Set Start Time

When is the best time to launch a new Facebook Ad?

As a best practice, right after midnight for the time zone the Facebook ad account is on. This will allow the ad set to pace evenly throughout the day.

Is there a more efficient way to launch and hit the ground running? 

If you want to give each of your ad sets the best chance possible of succeeding, getting off on the right foot by selecting the start time will do just that. 

Facebook has an ad scheduling feature located inside Ad Manager at the ad set level that will let you set the delivery start time on your ad sets. You have the ability to also set a begin and end date, and choose the specific hours of delivery.

For most advertisers the highest performing subset of their audience is not online between Midnight - 4:00am. Try starting your ad sets at 4:00am, 5:00am or even 6:00am as opposed to the more common practice start time of midnight.

There is an advantage to launching your ad sets early in the morning hours. Doing this can help the campaign get a “running start” so to speak. This method will give you a burst of traffic initially, and can also help yield higher click through rates when done properly which will lower your cost per action. Facebook rewards higher performing campaigns by expanding the ad sets reach and lowing the CPM. All of this basically means that your return on ad spend just got a little bit better. 

Offsetting your start time like this can help your campaigns yield a higher CTR initially than if you were to launch at midnight. You will also save a bit of money because the quality of the audience who is online. Facebook will also push your initial ad spend a bit quicker to the very active morning audience on Facebook. 

After 8:00am, you’re just about 1/3 through the day and your traffic could cost you approximately 33% more per click, so try to avoid starting an ad set too late in to the day. As an example, if you start your ad set at noon, there is a very good chance your cost may double.

Pro Tip: When selecting a start time, do not go too much later then 8:00am as you need to give Facebook time to launch your ad into the auction and then post your ad. This means that sometimes the actual posting time can vary between 1 minute to several hours. Setting a start time past 8:00am can sometimes delay the delivery time to later in the day.