Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your question. It's a good one, and something a lot of people get wrong, especially with the way Meta's platform keeps changing.
You're asking about the optimal number of ads to run at £50/day. The short, and brutally honest, answer is that asking for a specific number is the wrong way to think about it. It’s a bit like asking a mechanic how many tools they need to fix a car without telling them what's wrong with it. The real issue isn't the *quantity* of ads, but the *quality of your testing methodology*. You're right to be worried about spreading the budget too thin – that's the single biggest mistake people make on smaller budgets. They create a dozen ads, the algorithm gets confused, and the budget gets vaporised with nothing to show for it.
Instead of chasing a magic number, what you need is a robust framework for figuring out what creative actually works, even on a tight budget. Let's walk through how we'd approach this.
TLDR;
- Stop looking for a 'magic number' of ads to run. The right question is "how do I test creative effectively on my budget?".
- With a £50/day budget, you should start with just 2-3 ads per ad set within 2 ad sets maximum. This concentrates your budget enough to get meaningful data.
- Your entire advertising strategy must be built around your Ideal Customer Profile's (ICP's) most urgent, expensive "nightmare" – not their demographics. Generic ads for generic audiences always fail.
- Use a methodical testing structure. Test one variable at a time: start with the ad 'hook' or angle, then test visuals, then body copy. Don't test everything at once.
- This article contains an interactive calculator to help you understand the real-world constraints of your budget and how long it actually takes to test a single ad creative properly.
We'll need to look at your ICP's nightmare, not their demographics...
Before you even think about writing an ad, you have to get this bit right, or nothing else matters. Most businesses describe their customers with useless demographic data. "Companies in the tech sector, 50-200 employees, UK based." This tells you absolutely nothing of value and is a recipe for creating bland, generic ads that get ignored.
You need to stop defining your customer by who they are and start defining them by their most urgent, expensive, career-threatening problem. What is the specific nightmare that keeps them awake at 3 AM? Your product or service is the solution to that nightmare. Your ads are the signal that you understand it better than anyone else.
For example, we worked with a B2B SaaS client in the medical recruitment space. Their old ads targeted "HR Managers in Hospitals." They were getting a CPA of around £100, which was unsustainable. The problem? "HR Manager" is a demographic. Their *nightmare* was "spending weeks sifting through hundreds of unqualified doctor applications for a single niche vacancy, while the department bleeds money and patient care is at risk."
Once we understood the nightmare, the ads wrote themselves. We shifted the messaging from "Find doctors faster" to "Stop wasting time on the wrong candidates. Fill critical roles with pre-vetted specialists in days, not months." This simple change, rooted in their true pain point, helped us reduce their CPA from £100 down to just £7. That's the power of understanding the nightmare.
So, the first step is to map this out. Forget ad numbers for a second and focus on the core message.
I'd say you need a structured approach to testing, not just more ads...
Once you've nailed the nightmare, you can start building your creative. But don't just throw random ideas at the wall. You need a system. With a £50/day budget, you can't afford to test ten different variables at once. You must be disciplined and test one thing at a time.
Here’s a simple hierarchy for testing:
- The Angle/Hook: This is the most important part. It’s the core idea of your ad, based on the customer's nightmare. You should develop 2-3 distinct angles to test against each other. For the eCommerce owner, your angles could be:
- Angle 1 (Fear): "Your ROAS is dropping. Here's the likely culprit."
- Angle 2 (Aspiration): "The simple creative shift that took one of our women's apparel clients to a 691% return."
- Angle 3 (Contrarian): "Stop split testing. Meta's algorithm wants you to do this instead."
- The Visual: This is the image or video. Once you have an idea of which angle is resonating (based on early data), you test different visuals *for that winning angle*. Could be a static image vs. a UGC-style video vs. an animated graphic.
- The Body Copy: This is the least important part of the initial test. Most people don't read it until the hook and visual have already grabbed them. Test this last.
On a £50/day budget, you can realistically only test one of these categories at a time. I'd recomend starting with the Angle/Hook. This means you’ll create 2-3 ads that are identical *except* for the headline or the first line of text. Same image, same body copy, same CTA. This isolates the hook as the only variable, so you can be confident that any difference in performance is down to that change.
Here’s what a structured first test might look like. Let's assume you've identified your two most promising angles.
| Campaign Element | Ad Set 1: Testing Angle A ("Fear") | Ad Set 2: Testing Angle B ("Aspiration") |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | £25/day (ABO) | £25/day (ABO) |
| Audience | Your single best audience (e.g., Lookalike of Purchasers) | Same audience. Do not change this. |
| Ad 1 | Hook: "Your ROAS is dropping..." Visual: Image A Body: Copy Version 1 |
Hook: "The simple shift for 691% return..." Visual: Image A Body: Copy Version 1 |
| Ad 2 | Hook: "Your ROAS is dropping..." Visual: Video B Body: Copy Version 1 |
Hook: "The simple shift for 691% return..." Visual: Video B Body: Copy Version 1 |
In this setup, you are running a total of 4 ads across two ad sets. Each ad set has a £25 budget. This is the absolute maximum I would recomend at your budget. You are testing two angles against each other, and within each angle, you're testing two different visuals. This structure gives the algorithm enough budget per ad set to actually find conversions and gives you clean data on which angle performs better.
You probably should understand your budget's limitations...
It's vital to have realistic expectations about what a £50/day budget can achieve. Paid advertising is a game of data. To make good decisions, you need enough data, and data costs money. If your target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) for a sale is £50, then your daily budget will, on average, get you one sale per day. That's not enough data to know if an ad is a winner or a loser in a single day. You might need to run it for a week or more to get a clear picture.
This is where most people get impatient. They turn off an ad after two days because it hasn't performed, but in reality, it never had enough budget to even get out of the 'learning phase'.
I've built a simple calculator for you below. Play around with it. Input your daily ad spend and your target CPA. It will show you how many days it will realistically take to get enough data to make a decision on a *single* ad, and how many ads you can realistically test at the same time. This should make the budget constraints very clear.
You'll need to think beyond the ad creative...
This is a bitter pill to swallow for many, but the best ad creative in the world can't save a bad offer. You could have a video that gets a million views, but if your landing page is confusing, your product is overpriced, or your offer isn't compelling, you won't make any sales. Campaigns often fail not because of the ads, but because of what happens *after* the click.
The most common point of failure I see is the offer itself. Too many businesses use a high-friction Call to Action like "Request a Demo" or "Book a Call." This is a huge ask for someone who has just seen your ad for the first time. It screams "I'm going to sell to you," and it provides zero immediate value to the prospect.
A much better approach is to offer something of genuine value for free, that solves a small piece of their nightmare right away. This builds trust and makes them *want* to learn more.
- For a SaaS company: A free trial (no credit card) is the gold standard. Let the product do the selling. We had a SaaS client generate over 1,500 trials this way.
- For a service business: A free, automated tool. An SEO agency could offer a free site audit. A financial consultant could offer a free cash flow projection template.
- For an eCommerce store: A compelling discount is a start, but something like a free "Style Guide" or "Recipe Book" download in exchange for an email can build a long-term asset. I remember one eCommerce client who launched their store and got 1500 leads at just $0.29 each by offering a valuable piece of content first.
If your ads are getting clicks but no conversions, the first place to look isn't your ad creative – it's your offer and your landing page. You need to make the next step as easy, valuable, and frictionless as possible for your potential customer.
This is the main advice I have for you:
So, to bring it all together, forget the question of "how many ads." Instead, adopt a more strategic, methodical process. It might feel slower at first, but it will save you a lot of wasted money and get you to a profitable result much faster. I've detailed the main recomendations for you below:
| Step | Action to Take | Why It's Important |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Define the Nightmare | Map out your ideal customer's single most urgent and expensive problem. Write it down in a single sentence. | This is the foundation of all effective ad creative. It ensures your message resonates on an emotional level instead of just being noise. |
| 2. Structure Your Test | Set up an ABO campaign with 2 ad sets, each with a £25 budget. In each ad set, place 2-3 ads that test a single variable (e.g., the hook). | This concentrates your limited budget, prevents the algorithm from getting confused, and gives you clean, unambiguous data on what works. |
| 3. Be Patient With Data | Use the calculator above to set realistic expectations. Don't turn off an ad until it has spent at least 1.5x your target CPA without a conversion. | Making decisions too early on too little data is the fastest way to kill potentially winning ads. You must give them a fair chance to perform. |
| 4. Review Your Offer | Analyse what happens after the click. Is your offer high-value and low-friction? Does your landing page clearly communicate the solution to the nightmare? | No amount of brilliant ad creative can fix a broken funnel or a weak offer. This is often the real reason campaigns fail, not the ad setup. |
Executing this properly takes discipline and experience, especially when it comes to interpreting the data and deciding what to test next. It's a continuous cycle of hypothesising, testing, learning, and iterating. This is precisely where expert help can make a huge differance, accelerating the learning curve and avoiding costly mistakes along the way.
If you'd like to go over your specific situation in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can look at your account and strategy together. It's a good way to get a second pair of expert eyes on things and come away with some actionable advice.
Hope that helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
