Solved: Should I Use Advantage Campaign Budget with Two Ad Sets?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. I saw your question about setting up your leads campaign and was happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience running these sorts of campaigns for clients. It's good that you're thinking about the long-term structure from the get-go; getting the setup right now will save you a lot of headaches down the line.

You've got a decent budget to start with, and wanting to run the campaign indefinitely is the right mindset for building something that consistently brings in leads. The question of Advantage Campaign Budget (what we used to just call CBO) versus Ad Set Budget (ABO) is a common one, and the right answer really depends on what you're trying to acheive with your testing.

So, I've put together some more detailed thoughts for you below. It goes a bit beyond just the CBO question, because honestly, that's just one piece of a much bigger puzzle when it comes to running a succesful, scalable lead generation machine on Meta.

I'd say you need to decide on your testing objective...

Alright, so the core of your question: CBO or ABO? Let's break it down in a practical way. There’s no single ‘best’ answer, it’s about using the right tool for the job.

Advantage Campaign Budget (CBO):
When you turn this on, you're basically handing the keys to Meta. You set one overall budget at the campaign level (e.g., $100/day for your whole campaign), and Meta's algorithm decides how to split that money between your different ad sets. It will automatically prioitise the ad set that it thinks will get you the most leads for the lowest cost. So if ad set A is getting leads for $5 and ad set B is getting them for $8, Meta will start funnelling more and more of the budget into ad set A.

This is brilliant for efficiency and scaling, especially for a long-term campaign like yours. Once you have a few audiences that you know work, you can chuck them into a CBO campaign and let the algorithm do the heavy lifting of optimising your spend day-to-day. It’s designed to maximise your results for your budget. For a campaign you want to run "forever", this is usually the end goal.

Ad Set Budget (ABO):
With this approach, you are in complete control. You set a specific budget for each ad set (like you're doing now: $30/day for ad set A and $30/day for ad set B). Meta has to spend that amount on that specific ad set, regardless of whether another ad set is performing better. It gives you very predictable spend.

This is much better for pure testing and data gathering. For instance, you mentioned you have two different audiences and two different products. If you need to know how *each* of those combinations performs independently, ABO is the way to go initially. It forces an equal spend, so you can get a clean read on the performance of each audience without one starving the other of budget. This is particularly important if one audience is naturally much smaller or more expensive to reach than the other. For example, a small, highly targeted retargeting audience versus a massive, broad interest-based audience. CBO would likely ignore the small retargeting audience, even if it has a much higher conversion rate, because it's chasing cheap clicks in the big audience.

So, what should you do?
Given you want to run this forever, I’d suggest a two-phase approach.

-> Phase 1: Testing (ABO). Stick with your current setup for a bit. Run the two ad sets on seperate ABO budgets. Your goal here is to establish a baseline. How does audience A with product A perform? What's the CPL? How does audience B with product B perform? Let them run until you have enough data to make a call (I'd say at least 1-2 weeks or until each ad set has spent at least 3x your target CPL). This gives you a true picture of each audience's potential.

-> Phase 2: Scaling (CBO). Once you've identified that both audiences are viable (or you've found a few more winning audiences to test), you can then move them into a single CBO campaign. This is where you switch your focus from *testing* to *efficiency*. You tell Meta, "Here's my $3000/month, go find me the cheapest possible leads from this pool of good audiences." The algorithm will then dynamically allocate your budget to get you the best overall result.

This structure allows you to have control when you need it (testing) and efficiency when you're ready to scale. It’s a method we’ve used across loads of campaigns, from B2B software to eCommerce. It just works.

We'll need to look at your campaign structure for the long term...

Since your ambition is a long-term, scalable campaign, thinking just about one campaign is a bit limiting. To do this properly, you should really structure your entire ad account around the customer journey. We call this a full-funnel approach.

Most people just lump all their audiences into one campaign. This can get messy, and it doesn't let you talk to people differently based on how familiar they are with your business. Someone who has never heard of you needs a different message than someone who was just on your website an hour ago. That's why we always seperate campaigns into different stages of the funnel.

Here’s a simple but powerful way to structure your account:

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting Campaign (CBO)
This is for reaching new people who have never interacted with you before. This is where your current ad sets (your two different audiences) would live. The goal is to introduce your brand and generate initial interest.
-> Audiences: Detailed targeting (interests, behaviours), and once you have data, Lookalike audiences.
-> Budgeting: CBO is perfect here. You can put 3, 4, 5 different interest-based or Lookalike ad sets in here and let Meta figure out which cold audience is responding best.

2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu) / Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Retargeting Campaign (ABO or CBO)
This is for re-engaging people who have already shown some interest. These are your warmest, and often most valuable, audiences.
-> Audiences: Website visitors, people who engaged with your Facebook/Instagram page, video viewers, people who started filling out your lead form but didn't finish.
-> Budgeting: You can use ABO here to ensure you're always spending a certain amount to retarget these valuable users. Or, if your retargeting audiences are large enough, you could use CBO and have different ad sets for different levels of intent (e.g., one ad set for all website visitors, another for people who visited the lead form page specifically).

Here’s what that might look like as a basic structure. I've seen this sort of organisation make a massive difference. I remember one campaign we worked on for a medical job matching SaaS client, just reorganising their account into a proper funnel structure was a huge part of how we reduced their cost per user from £100 down to just £7.

By splitting your campaigns like this, you get much cleaner data, you can tailor your messaging, and you prevent your prospecting and retargeting efforts from stepping on each other's toes. This is how you build a campaign that can genuinely run "forever".

You probably should think about your audience selection...

You mentioned targeting different audiences, which is exactly the right thing to do. But the *quality* of those audiences is everything. A lot of people get this wrong. They pick really broad interests and wonder why they're getting poor quality leads.

The key is to think about what interests contain a high concentration of your ideal customer, and a low concentration of everyone else. For example, if you're selling project management software, targeting the interest "Small Business Owners" is way too broad. It includes everyone from cafe owners to freelance writers. But targeting interests like "Asana", "Trello", or "Project Management Institute" is much more specific. The people in those audiences are far more likely to be the person you're looking for.

So when you're building your ToFu ad sets, really dig deep. Think about:

-> Tools they use: What other software or products does your ideal customer use?
-> Influencers they follow: Are there key figures or experts in your niche?
-> Magazines/Blogs they read: What publications do they consume?
-> Events they attend: Are there industry conferences or events?

Layering interests can help too, but be careful not to make the audience too small. For example, "People who like Trello AND are Business Page Admins".

Once you start getting leads, your audience strategy evolves. This is where Lookalike audiences become your most powerful tool. As soon as you have at least 100 leads, you can create a Lookalike audience. Meta will analyse the ~100+ people who converted and then go and find millions of other people who share similar characteristics. It’s incredibly powerful.

But don't just stop at a Lookalike of all leads. You can get more sophisticated. The further down the funnel you go for your source audience, the better the Lookalike will be. Here's the order of priority I'd usually test them in:

1. Lookalike of your Highest Value Customers (if you can upload a customer list)
2. Lookalike of All Customers
3. Lookalike of Leads (your current objective)
4. Lookalike of people who visited your lead form confirmation page
5. Lookalike of All Website Visitors

Continuously testing new audiences is the engine of a long-term campaign. Your initial audiences will eventually fatigue, so you always need to be feeding the machine with new, high-potential audiences to test. This structured approach to audience testing is what keeps performance consistent over months and years.

You'll need a clear way to measure success...

You're running a leads campaign, but what's a "good" cost per lead? Without knowing this, it's impossible to know if your campaign is actually working or not. The answer, frustratingly, is "it depends". It depends on your industry, your country, and what you're offering.

However, we can make some educated guesses based on experience. For a general lead or signup in a developed country (like the US, UK, Canada), you can expect your Cost Per Click (CPC) to be somewhere in the £0.50 - £1.50 range. A decent landing page should convert somewhere between 10% and 30% of that traffic into a lead.

Let's do the maths on that:

As you can see, the range is huge. Your actual CPL will likely fall somewhere in between. We’ve seen B2B decision makers for software get leads for as low as $22 on LinkedIn, and a B2B software client get 4,622 Registrations at $2.38 Cost Per Registration on Meta. The key is to establish *your* baseline and then work to improve it.

With your $3000/month budget (which is around $100/day), if your CPL is, say, $10, you can expect to generate around 300 leads per month. Is that enough for you? If your CPL is $5, you get 600 leads. Knowing these numbers is vital for planning and for judging if the campaign is a success.

The other thing to remember is that not all leads are created equal. An ultra-cheap lead from a broad audience might never turn into a customer, while a more expensive lead from a hyper-targeted audience might close at a much higher rate. Don't just chase the lowest CPL; track what happens to the leads after you get them. The ultimate goal is paying customers, not just email addresses.

This is the main advice I have for you:

There's a lot to take in here, I know. It's more than a simple "yes" or "no" on the Advantage Campaign Budget button. To get the kind of long-term, scalable results you're after, you need a more holistic system. Here's a summary of my main recommendations for you to implement.

Putting a system like this in place is really the difference between just "running ads" and building a predictable growth engine for your business. It takes more work upfront, but it pays off massively in the long run.

Of course, this is just the strategic framework. The real magic, and the hard work, comes in the day-to-day management: writing compelling ad copy, designing visuals that stop the scroll, analysing the data to spot what's working and what isn't, and constantly testing new things. It's a full-time job in itself, and it's what we do all day, every day for our clients.

Getting this right can be the difference between a campaign that just about breaks even and one that transforms your business. That's where having a professional consultancy with years of experience can make a huge difference. We can provide insights you might not have thought of and take over the entire implementation and optimisation process for you, making sure every pound you spend is working as hard as it possibly can.

Hope this detailed breakdown has been helpful for you. If you'd like to chat through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a free initial consultation where we can review your plans and give you some more tailored advice. Feel free to get in touch if that's something you'd be interested in.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh