Solved: How to Properly Scale Ads with New Creatives

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! That's a really good question, and honestly, it's one of those things that trips a lot of people up. You see so much conflicting advice online, with some people swearing you should never touch a live campaign and others saying to just chuck everything in together. The truth is, there isn't one single "right" answer, it completly depends on what your current campaign is actually doing.

My short answer is that the decision to add, duplicate, or start fresh is less about a rigid rule and more about a diagnosis of your campaign's health. Are you trying to add more fuel to a fire that's already roaring, or are you trying to light a new fire because the old one is sputtering out? Thinking about it that way will make the right choice pretty obvious. I'll walk you through how we think about it for our clients.

We'll need to look at... First, Is Your Campaign Actually Working?

Before you even think about adding a new creative, you have to be brutally honest about how the current one is performing. So many people suffer from "happy ears," seeing a few sales come in and immediately thinking it's time to scale to the moon. But scaling a campaign with weak foundations is the fastest way to burn your cash. You're just amplifying the problems.

When we take on a new client, the first thing we do is a health check. We're not just looking at the top-line metric like ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) or CPA (Cost Per Acquisition). We're looking at the whole picture to understand *why* it's performing the way it is. Are you getting cheap leads that never convert? Is your ad getting ignored? Is the audience getting tired of seeing the same thing?

Here are the kind of questions you need to ask:

• -> Is your ROAS/CPA actually good? You need a clear target. If you're selling a £50 product and your cost per purchase is £45, that might look like a "win," but once you factor in your product costs, shipping, and other overheads, you're likely losing money on every sale. You need to know your numbers. Know your LTV (Lifetime Value) to understand what you can truly afford to spend to acquire a customer.
• -> What's your Click-Through Rate (CTR)? A low CTR (typically below 1% for Meta ads) is a massive red flag. It means your creative and copy aren't grabbing attention or resonating with your audience. The algorithm sees this and will penalise you with higher costs.
• -> What's your Conversion Rate (CVR)? If you're getting lots of clicks but no one is buying or signing up on your landing page, then adding a new ad creative might not be the solution. The problem is likely your website, your offer, or a mismatch between what your ad promises and what the landing page delivers.
• -> How high is the Frequency? If you're showing the same ad to the same people over and over (frequency of 3+ in a short period), their effectiveness will plummet. This is called ad fatigue, and it's a clear sign you need to introduce something new.

To make this easier, I've put together a little interactive calculator. Plug in your campaign's numbers to get a quick diagnosis. It's not a perfect science, but it'll give you a much clearer idea of whether you're in a position to scale or if you need to fix things first.

I'd say you... Add to an Existing Campaign (If It's a Proven Winner)

Alright, let's say you've run the numbers and your campaign is healthy. Your CPA is below target, CTR is solid, and you're getting consistent conversions. Congratulations, you've found something that works. In this situation, your goal is to optimise and iterate, not to reinvent the wheel.

This is the one scenario where I would recommend adding your new creatives directly into the existing, winning ad set.

Why? Because that ad set has gone through the platform's 'learning phase'. The algorithm has already spent your money figuring out which slice of your target audience is most likely to convert. It's found a little pocket of gold. By adding a new creative into this environment, you're giving it a new tool to work with against a proven audience. You're leveraging all that previous spending and learning. It's the most efficient way to test a new creative variation to see if it can outperform your current winner or prevent ad fatigue.

But there's a catch. Sometimes, the algorithm gets lazy. It's already found a 'winner' in your old creative and it might not give your new one a fair shot. It might allocate 95% of the budget to the old ad and let the new one starve. So you can't just set it and forget it. You have to monitor the spend distribution for the first few days. If the new creative isn't getting any love, that's your cue to force the issue. The simplest way is often to duplicate the winning ad set and run only the new creative in the new one, putting it in a head-to-head battle with the old one.

I remember one campaign we worked on for a client selling online courses. It was performing exceptionally well on Meta Ads, generating $115k in revenue in about six weeks. In a situation like that, where the campaign is a clear winner, our primary goal is to maintain that momentum and prevent ad fatigue. Adding fresh creatives directly into the successful ad set is a perfect strategy here, as it allows you to build on the algorithm's learning without disrupting a winning formula.

Here’s a simple flowchart for how we decide what to do when a campaign is already healthy.

You probably should... Use a New Campaign for a Failing One

Now for the more common scenario. What if your campaign is just... meh? Or worse, it's actively losing you money. The CPA is too high, the results are inconsistent, and you feel like you're just gambling. In this case, the absolute worst thing you can do is just add another creative into the mix. That's like trying to fix a car's broken engine by changing the air freshener. You're not addressing the root cause.

If a campaign is underperforming, it's usually for one of two reasons: the creative has burned out, or (more likely) your audience targeting is wrong. Adding a new ad won't fix a bad audience. You're just showing a new ad to the same wrong people.

This is where you need to be more methodical. You need to isolate the variable you're testing. This is why, for a stagnating or failing campaign, I'd almost always recommend using a brand new campaign or, at the very least, a duplicated ad set within your existing testing campaign.

-> Duplicating the Ad Set: This is a good option if you think your audience is correct but your existing creative has just gone stale. You duplicate the ad set, keep the exact same targeting, but turn off the old ads and add only your new ones. This creates a clean A/B test. You can directly compare the perfromance of the new ad set with the old one. If the new one wins, you turn the old one off. Simple.

-> Starting a New Campaign: This is the best approach when you have a completely new idea or angle to test. Maybe you want to test a new offer, or target a completely different set of interests, or try a video ad for the first time. Putting this in a seperate, new campaign gives it its own budget and its own learning process. It doesn't get influenced by the performance of your other campaigns. This is how you find your next big winner. Tbh, this is how all proper testing should be done. We've taken over accounts where the previous agency just had one massive campaign with dozens of ad sets, all competing with each other. It's a mess. We structure things cleanly: seperate campaigns for each stage of the funnel (prospecting, retargeting) and for major strategic tests.

I remember a medical job matching SaaS client who came to us. Their Meta and Google Ads campaigns were struggling, with the cost to acquire a new user hovering around an unsustainable £100. Their old strategy involved simply adding new creatives to underperforming campaigns. We paused their existing setup and launched a new, structured approach. By doing this, we were able to dramatically reduce their cost per user acquisition to just £7. This is a perfect example of why you can't fix a failing campaign by just adding new creatives; sometimes you need a complete reset to test new hypotheses on a clean slate.

You'll need... To Think Bigger Than Just Creatives

Here's the bit that most people miss. The creative is important, of course. It's the first thing people see. But it's only one lever you can pull. A brilliant ad promoting a weak offer to the wrong audience will always fail. True scaling comes from having a system for testing and optimising all three major levers: Audience, Offer, and Creative.

1. Your Audience Strategy

Who are you actually trying to reach? Just boosting a post to "people who like business" is a recipe for disaster. You need to get specific. We build our campaigns based on the marketing funnel. This isn't just jargon; it's a logical way to structure your budget and your messaging.

• Top of Funnel (ToFu): This is your cold audience. People who have never heard of you. Here, you test broad interests, demographics, and lookalike audiences. Your goal is to find new pockets of customers. For an eCommerce store, we might test lookalikes of past purchasers, add-to-carts, and then layer that with relevant interests. For a B2B SaaS client, we might target specific job titles on LinkedIn or interests like "Salesforce" or "HubSpot" on Meta. The majority of your testing budget should be here.
• Middle of Funnel (MoFu): These are people who have shown some interest. They've watched your videos, visited your website, or engaged with your page. You retarget them with different ads, maybe case studies or testimonials, to build trust.
• Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): This is your warmest audience. They've added a product to their cart or visited your pricing page. You hit them with direct, urgent ads. Think "Forgot something?" or "Get 10% off to complete your order." These audiences are small but convert at a very high rate.

Your creative testing needs to align with this structure. A long, educational video might be great for ToFu, but a simple product image with a discount code is better for BoFu. Below is a rough idea of how we might split a client's budget across these funnel stages. The bulk of the money goes to finding new customers.

2. Your Offer is Everything

This is probably the biggest reason campaigns fail. You can have the best ad creative in the world and perfect targeting, but if your offer sucks, nobody will buy. I've seen B2B companies trying to run ads to a "Request a Demo" page. That's a massive commitment for someone who just saw your ad for the first time. It's arrogant. You're asking for their time without giving them any value upfront.

Your offer needs to be irresistible. It needs to solve a small problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole problem.

• For a SaaS product, it's a free trial (no credit card!). Let the product sell itself. We had a SaaS client achieve over 5,000 trial signups at just $7 each by focusing their ads on a powerful free trial offer.
• For an agency or consultant, it's a free audit, a checklist, a calculator, or a short strategy session. You give away expertise to build trust.
• For an eCommerce store, it might be a discount, free shipping, or a free gift with purchase.

Before you spend another pound on ads, look at your offer. Is it genuinely valuable to your ideal customer? Is it low-friction? If not, no amount of creative testing will save you.

This is the main advice I have for you:

So, to bring it all back to your original question, it's not about picking one method and sticking to it. It's about having a flexible but logical system. I've detailed my main recommendations for you in a table below to make it as clear as possible.

Following this framework will stop you from making panicked decisions and move you towards a professional, systematic approach to scaling your ads. It's how we manage accounts for all our clients, from eCommerce brands to B2B software companies, and it ensures we're always building on what works and quickly cutting what doesn't.

This all might seem like a lot to take in, and honestly, it is. The difference between a £100 CPA and a £7 CPA, as we saw with one of our clients, often comes down to this kind of rigorous structure and experience. It's about knowing which levers to pull and when, based on what the data is telling you.

If you feel like you're guessing a bit too much and would like a second pair of expert eyes on your account, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can jump on a call, have a look at your campaigns together, and I can give you some specific, actionable advice based on what I see. It’s often the quickest way to find the biggest opportunities for improvement.

Hope this detailed breakdown helps clear things up for you!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh