The importance of the learning phase

As we have previously talked about , as an advertiser, you might wonder: how does Facebook decide which ads to show, to whom and when? What can I do to make sure I reach the right people to achieve my goals efficiently?

That's where Facebook's ad delivery system comes in. The ad delivery system determines which ads are shown to which people and when. It uses multiple factors-such as leveraging signals and your inputs like budgets and audiences-to make these determinations, but, at its core, Facebook's ad delivery system aims to maximize value for you and your community alike.

In order for the ad delivery system to properly work, your ads go through what we call the learning phase.

During the learning phase, the delivery system is exploring the best way to deliver your ad set-actively trying different audiences, placements and more, within the bounds of your campaign settings. The learning phase occurs when you create a new ad set or make a significant editto an existing ad or ad set. The following are considered significant edits:

• Any change to targeting
• Any change to ad creative
• Any change to optimization event
• Adding a new ad to your ad set
• Pausing your ad set for 7 days or longer (the ad set reenters the learning phase once you unpause the ad set)
• Changing bid strategy

Ad sets exit the learning phase as soon as their performance stabilizes. Typically, performance stabilizes after an ad set receives around 50 optimization events within a 7-day period, maximum. An optimization event is the number of times your ads achieved the outcome your ad set is currently optimized for, based on your chosen conversion window. For example, you can choose awareness as your campaign objective, but choose to optimize for link clicks within an ad set. It's important that you choose your bid strategywith the optimization event in mind. This will help our system learn how to show ads to the people most likely to get you the outcome you're optimizing for within the selected conversion window. In Ads Manager, the Delivery column reads "Learning" when an ad set is in the learning phase.

The learning phase may cause your campaign to pace slower than expected at first, but overall it will lead to better results for you and your community.

To learn more about Facebook's advertising system, download our new guide for advanced advertising, read our blog post on how to let Facebook ads work for you, or contact our teamfor more information.