Solved: One Adset With 3 Ads or 3 Adsets With 1 Ad Each?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I've had a look at your situation with the clothing brand launch. It’s a common crossroads to be at, deciding on the best way to structure your first campaigns. The truth is, the choice between one adset or three is only a small piece of the puzzle. The real issue, and where most new brands burn through their budget with little to show for it, is starting with the wrong strategy altogether.

I’m happy to give you some initial thoughts based on my experience launching and scaling eCommerce brands. Some of this might go against what you've read on blogs or in forums, but it's what we've seen work time and time again. Let’s get your first drop sold out.

We'll need to look at your campaign objective first...

Okay, let's be brutally honest. That traffic campaign you’re running to "warm up" the account? You need to turn it off. Right now. It’s not just ineffective; it's actively harming your chances of success.

Think of the Facebook (Meta) algorithm as a very powerful, very literal-minded employee. When you set your campaign objective to "Traffic," you are giving it a single, simple command: "Go and find me the cheapest possible clicks, from anyone, anywhere, who has a habit of clicking on things."

And the algorythm does exactly that. It scours its billions of users to find the people who are least in demand – the ones who browse endlessly but rarely buy. Their attention is cheap because no other advertiser who actually wants to sell something is competing for them. You are paying Meta to find you an audience of non-customers. It’s the single biggest mistake new advertisers make.

The whole idea of "warming up a pixel" with junk data is a myth. You don’t warm up a pixel with junk data. You warm it up by giving it the signals you actually want it to find more of. From day one, you need to tell the algorithm your real goal. For a clothing brand, your goal is not traffic. It's not sign-ups. It's sales. Cold, hard cash in the bank.

So, your primary campaign objective must be Conversions, and the conversion event you optimise for should be Purchase.

I can already hear the objection: "But my pixel is brand new! It has no purchase data!" That's fine. The algorithm is much smarter than people give it credit for. It knows the patterns of its billions of users. By optimising for Purchases, you are telling it to start looking for users who have a history of buying clothes, who have recently bought from similar brands, and who exhibit the behaviours of an online shopper. It will start with a broad net and then, as the first few sales come in, it will rapidly learn and narrow its focus. You have to feed it the right data from the very start.

If after a few days you have zero purchases and your costs are spiraling, you can consider moving down the funnel to optimise for Initiate Checkout or Add to Cart as a temporary measure. But this is a fallback, not a starting point. Your goal is to sell clothes, so you need to tell Facebook to find you people who buy clothes. It’s that simple.

I'd say you need a proper campaign structure...

Now we can get to your original question: 1 adset with 3 ads, or 3 adsets with 1 ad each. With a daily budget of $150, the answer is almost always to consolidate your budget to give the algorithm more room to work its magic.

Therefore, you want 1 adset with 3 (or more) ads inside it. This is far more efficient. When you split your budget across three seperate adsets, you're forcing Facebook to spend $50 on each, regardless of whether one ad is a clear winner. If Ad A in Adset 1 is brilliant and Ads B and C in their own adsets are duds, you're still wasting $100 a day on the duds. By putting all three ads in one adset, the algorithm will quickly identify that Ad A is the winner and start allocating the majority of the $150 budget towards it automatically. You find your winning creative faster and waste less money.

However, we can take this a step further. A single adset is a start, but a proper funnel structure is what sets you up for scalable growth. For an eCommerce brand, even at launch, you should think in terms of two main audiences: people who have never heard of you (prospecting) and people who have shown some interest but haven't bought yet (retargeting).

With your $150/day budget, I’d suggest a simple two-campaign setup. We run dozens of campaigns for eCommerce clients, from women's apparel to subscription boxes, and a variation of this structure is always the foundation.

Here’s what it would look like:

A few points on this:

-> We use Campaign Budget Optimisation (CBO). This means you set the budget at the campaign level ($120 and $30) and let Facebook decide which ad set inside the campaign is performing best. It’s the same logic as putting all your ads in one adset, but applied at the next level up. It’s more efficient.

-> The bulk of your budget goes to prospecting because at the start, you need to find new customers.

-> The small retargeting budget is crucial. This is where you convert people who are on the fence. It's often your most profitable campaign, like we saw with one women's apparel client where we drove a 691% return.

This structure gives you a solid foundation to test audiences (in the prospecting campaign) and creatives, while ensuring you're not letting interested visitors slip through the cracks.

You probably should focus on who you're talking to...

The success of that prospecting campaign depends entirely on the interests you choose. And this is where we need to stop thinking about demographics and start thinking about nightmares.

Forget "males aged 18-24 who like clothing". That describes millions of people and tells you nothing. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state, an identity, a tribe. What is the 'nightmare' or 'dream' your clothing brand solves? It's not 'I have nothing to wear'. It's 'Everything on the high street is boring and I feel generic' or 'I want to signal I'm part of this specific subculture'.

You need to become an expert in their world. What competitor brands do they buy? What magazines or blogs do they read? What influencers do they follow? What music do they listen to? What do they do at the weekend? Answering these questions is the blueprint for your targeting.

Let's pretend you're launching a high-quality, minimalist streetwear brand. Your ICP isn't just a 'young man'. It's a guy who is sick of loud, disposable fast-fashion logos. He wants something that looks premium, is versatile, and subtly signals he has good taste. He values quality over quantity.

Now, let's translate that into Meta interests. Don't just target "Streetwear". That's too broad. Layer and get specific.

See the difference? Each of these ad sets targets a specific angle of your ICP's life. By testing them against each other, you'll quickly learn which 'tribe' responds best to your brand. This is how you find pockets of customers your lazy competitors have missed.

You'll need a message they can't ignore...

Once you have the right structure and the right audience, you need to hit them with the right message. Your 3-5 ads inside each adset can't just be pretty pictures. They need to solve a problem.

For fashion, we use a variation of the Before-After-Bridge framework.

Before: The pain they're in now. Feeling uninspired by their wardrobe. Seeing everyone in the same Zara jacket.
After: The dream state. Feeling unique and confident. Getting compliments on their outfit. Owning a piece they'll love for years.
Bridge: Your product is the bridge that gets them from Before to After.

So, an ad doesn't say "Shop our new T-shirts." It says something like:

Headline: Tired of Fast-Fashion?
Body: You know the feeling. A wardrobe full of clothes, but nothing feels like 'you'. It's all mass-produced, and falls apart after three washes. Our [Product Name] is different. Designed in the UK and built from premium heavyweight cotton, it's the antidote to throwaway fashion. Limited first drop of 100 pieces available now. Be one of the few.

This copy speaks directly to the 'nightmare' of the ICP we defined earlier. It's not just selling a t-shirt; it's selling an identity and a solution to a real frustration. And you MUST test different formats. Don't just run static images.

You have to know your numbers...

Finally, none of this matters if you don't know what you can afford to pay for a customer. The question isn't "how cheap can my ads be?" but "how much can I afford to spend to acquire a valuable customer?" The answer is in your Lifetime Value (LTV).

Let's do some rough maths for your brand. This is the kind of calculation that separates amateur stores from real businesses.

-> Average Order Value (AOV): Let's say you sell a hoodie for $80.
-> Gross Margin %: After the cost of the blank hoodie, printing, etc., let's say your margin is 60%. (This is your profit before ad spend).
-> Purchases Per Year: A loyal customer might buy from you 2 times a year.
-> Customer Lifetime (Years): Let's assume you keep a customer for 2 years.

LTV Calculation: (AOV * Gross Margin) * Purchases Per Year * Customer Lifetime (Years)
LTV = ($80 * 0.60) * 2 * 2 = $192

This means, over two years, each customer you acquire is worth about $192 in gross profit to your business. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to $64 ($192 / 3) to acquire a single new customer and still have a very profitable business. Suddenly, a $40 or $50 Cost Per Purchase from your ads doesn't look so scary, does it? It looks like a great investment.

This number, your target CAC, is your north star. When you're looking at your ad performance, you measure it against this. Is an ad set bringing in customers for less than $64? Great, scale it up. Is it costing you $90 per customer? Kill it. This is how you make objective, data-driven decisions instead of guessing.

This is the main advice I have for you:

This is a lot to take in, I know. Launching a brand is tough, and getting paid ads right from the start is definately not easy. Here is a summary of my main recommendations for you to implement before your launch.

Following this plan will put you miles ahead of most other brands launching on Facebook. But, as you can see, it's a lot of work. Setting it up is one thing; managing it daily, analysing the data, killing losing ads, creating new creative, and scaling winners is a full-time job.

This is where expert help can make all the difference. An experienced eye can help you avoid the common pitfalls, interpret the data correctly, and accelerate your growth far faster than you could on your own. We do this all day, every day, for brands just like yours.

If you’d like to have a chat and walk through this in more detail for your specific brand, we offer a free, no-obligation initial strategy consultation. We could audit your setup and give you a clear roadmap for your launch and beyond.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh