What's the Best Time to Run Facebook Ads? [Media Buyers' Expert Tips]

May 31, 2024
- Ad Setup

Facebook Ads are an inevitable part of any digital marketing campaign due to their large audience reach at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.

However, defining the right time to promote your product can mean the difference between a high and low-performing campaign.

Although there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the best time to run Facebook Ads, there are some general guidelines to help you make informed decisions about when to run them.

So, let’s explore them!

Behind The Scene: The Facebook Ads Algorithm

If you want to maximize Facebook Ads and reap the benefits fully, you should have at least basic knowledge of the Facebook algorithm.

Facebook has regularly changed its algorithm, and the leverage of AI and machine learning has led to more content personalization based on users' behavior.

Facebook analyzes various data sources, such as:

The ad's defined audience,
Design, and
Past ad engagement rates to establish ad relevancy and possible viewer engagement.

Thus, the algorithm's main goal is to match ads with users likely to engage with your ads and take the desired CTA: clicking, liking, or buying a product or service.

In order to grasp and decide the best time to run Facebook Ads, the first step is to embrace the algorithm and its so-called Learning Phase.

How is The Learning Phase Related to The Best Time to Run Facebook Ads?

The Facebook Ads learning phase is a period of time when the Facebook Ads algorithm learns about the best way to deliver ads to your target audience.

Naturally, it occurs when you create a new ad campaign or make significant changes to an existing campaign.

During the learning phase, the Facebook Ads algorithm analyzes data to optimize ad delivery and reach your campaign's desired outcome, such as:

Conversions,
Clicks, or
Subscriptions.

As it gathers more data, the algorithm will identify the most effective ad placement, creative, ad design, audience, or bidding strategy.

It usually takes around 30-50 conversion actions within 7 days to exit the learning phase.

📌 Note:

It's important to let Facebook's algorithm run its course during this phase without making any significant changes.

Changes during the learning phase will reset the algorithm and may cause inconsistencies in the result.

6 Key Factors To Include to Find The Best Time to Run Facebook Ads

1. Understand Your Target Audience

One of the most critical factors to consider when deciding when to run Facebook Ads is your target audience.

Different demographics and customer personas have varying online behaviors, and understanding these can help you determine the optimal time to display your ads.

For instance, let's say you're targeting young adults aged 18-24.

They are usually most active on Facebook during weekdays, especially in the late afternoons and early evenings.

Thus, running your ads during these times could yield higher engagement and click-through rates, resulting in better ROI.

Alternatively, if your target audience consists of working professionals aged 25-35, the optimal time to run your Facebook Ads might be different.

This demographic will likely be more active on Facebook during their lunch breaks and evenings after work.

Therefore, these times could prove more effective for running ads.

In a nutshell, you should run your Facebook ads during hours when your target audience is most active online.

2. Consider Time Zones

eCommerce and doing online business in general means that the whole world is at your fingertips, with your audience spanning the globe.

Hence, it’s crucial to adjust your ad running, taking the time differences into account.

For example, you wouldn’t run ads in the middle of the night for your target audience, right?

It could lead to a low engagement rate and impact the overall effectiveness of your campaigns.

3. Check Industry-Specific Trends and Customer Behavior

Below, you’ll see the Facebook global engagement chart.

Although it is useful to know the highest and lowest engagement times overall, things aren’t always black or white, or in this case, blue and white.

The peak times will heavily depend on your industry because different audience types are active on different days and times.

For example, eCommerce sees the best engagement on weekends, especially Sundays, evenings, and post-work hours.

Furthermore, you should also pay attention to your industry-specific climate and leverage it for optimal results.

For example, various holiday season ads can be a great time to promote your products that match the occasion.

Thus, it can be a good idea to target season-specific events and take advantage of crowd behavior.

4. Leverage Your Own Facebook Data

By now, it’s pretty clear that there is no universal answer to the best time to run Facebook ads.

Although industry-specific stats can provide a great starting point for "playing” with your ads, your own Facebook data is the best indicator.

In order to utilize your data, Facebook provides tools to optimize and track your ads’ performance.

Facebook Insights

This tool helps you better understand your audience and the performance of your Facebook page.

As such, it provides data on page likes, reach, engagement, impressions, demographics, etc.

Furthermore, it allows you to specify date ranges to view data on page activity, engagement and audience demographics on custom intervals.

Facebook Pixel

Facebook Pixel is a tracking code that enables you to measure and optimize Facebook ad campaigns.

It allows you to add a piece of code to your website to track user behavior, such as conversions, page views, and other important events.

You can optimize Facebook Ads for specific goals, such as conversions or traffic.

Consequently, it learns the patterns and behaviors of the website traffic, allowing you to create retargeting ad campaigns that can drive conversions.

Furthermore, you can also create custom audiences to target previous website visitors, resulting in more narrowed and effective marketing campaigns.

On the downside, understanding and interpreting overall Facebook analytics isn’t a task for the faint-hearted, especially if you are just starting your Facebook ad journey.

💡 ProTip

Did you know that with ADTools, there’s no need to set up your own analytics or try to understand indecipherable tables?

On the contrary, you can access clear, easy-to-understand graphs showing you ad impressions and clicks.

What’s more, not only can you analyze the most important data in real time, but you can also track the progress of your campaign and see how it’s performing.

For example, with Facebook Ads native analytics, you can only check the current or end metrics, not the in-between ones.

5. Choose The Right Facebook Ads Conversion Window

The conversion window is the period of time after someone interacts with your ad and completes a desired action, such as a purchase, for example.

Depending on your ad objectives, you can choose different conversion options, such as adding to a cart or downloading an app.

Facebook offers 4 options:

Default option: 7-day click and 1-day view.

The algorithm will optimize for peopre most likely to convert to your ad within 7 days of clicking or within one day of viewing it.

1-day click & 1-day view
1-day click, and
7-day click.

The key component in choosing the right conversion window is determining your product's purchase cycle.

Is your product something people will quickly, almost impulsively, buy upon seeing your ad? Or is it a product that doesn’t sell immediately after seeing the ad?

For the latter option, choosing a 7-day click and 1-day view conversion window might be better.

Although it isn’t set in stone, a 7-day click and 1-day view option may be a good overall solution because it allows you to get a comprehensive view of immediate actions and delayed conversions.

6. Test, Test, Test

One of the most important elements is to run A/B tests. Thus, you can test:

Different ad formats, visuals, copies, and CTAs to identify the most effective version.
Different audience targeting options or even exclude specific segments to reach an audience that better aligns with your goals.
Ad Relevance to identify any impediments and get insights into what to change.

Testing helps you identify the most effective ad placement, targeting, keywords, timing, and budget.

Although the above elements aren’t directly related to finding the best time to run Facebook Ads, they allow you to build and expand your audience.

Once you’ve got a substantial audience, you can see when they are most active with your ad campaigns.

By most active, we mean when they purchase your products most.

This way, you’ll be able to check if there is a pattern and a specific time when they make purchases and run your ads in that period.

Consequently, these insights allow you to reallocate your budget, leading to more efficient and results-driven marketing.

Now that you’ve got your ad campaign under the belt, the only thing left to do is to schedule it.

💡 ProTip

ADTools enables you to leverage Smart Budget Balancing and maintain control of your ad spend.

This handy feature automatically determines which campaigns should receive less money and which should receive more.

Therefore, you can efficiently distribute your budget between campaigns and platforms to ensure optimal resource utilization.

Moreover, you can also set parameters to stop or start a campaign.

How to Schedule Your Ads on Facebook in 7 Quick Steps?

Scheduling ads on Facebook is fairly easy and straightforward:

Step 1: Create a new ad set or edit an existing ad set.

Step 2: At the ad set level, scroll to the Ad Scheduling section.

Step 3: Tick the “Run ads on a schedule” option

Step 4: Pick the time and days when you want your ad to be displayed based on the person’s time zone.

Step 5: Click “Next” to finish scheduling your ad.

Wrapping It Up

There isn’t a definitive answer as to when is the best time to run Facebook ads.

However, our tips should provide enough information to tackle the key factors that can optimize the timing of ads.

Facebook Ads can be a powerful tool for reaching and engaging with your target audience, but success requires careful planning, execution, and monitoring.

And the tool that can help you do that, along with finding your best time for running ads is ADTools!

How Can ADTools Help You Optimize Running Facebook Ads?

ADTools is an ad management tool that helps eCommerce businesses easily create and run ad campaigns from a single dashboard.

Thus, you get a centralized place from which you can effortlessly manage your campaigns for multiple platforms, such as Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram.

Furthermore, ADTools cover every stage of ad campaigns, from ideation to realization and post-launching.

Create a Campaign

When you want to start a new ad campaign, you just need to enter your landing page, and our tool automatically pulls in information from your website.

Then, we start putting together sample ads.

Although we provide multiple headlines and suggestions, you can manually change the text.

Afterward, you can also add longer headlines and descriptions.

Moreover, you can also add images from our Image Library or upload your own.

Thus, in just a few easy steps, you can preview your ad campaign and how it will appear across multiple platforms.

Monitor Your Campaign

When you start a campaign, we create a series of different ads and check their performance on different websites.

Thus, you can get a clear overview of overall performance.
So, over time, any underperforming ads are canceled, and your budget is redirected toward ads with a higher click-through rate.
Our robust analytics tools will show you real-time metrics and a continuous overview of your ad campaigns.

🔥 With ADTools, you can narrow down your target region to a single postcode and generate campaigns based on your selected, constructed, and filtered creatives and keywords.

🔥 Our tool addresses the whole ad campaign creation process, enabling you to create campaigns that directly target your specific audience.

When you add detailed analytics to the equation, you get a powerful assistant to help you optimize your campaign and identify the best-performing days and times.

Ready to give it a go?

Join ADTools today and start fine-tuning your ad campaigns!