Stopping an ad too early throws away one that might have worked. Leaving a bad ad running throws away your budget. Most owners do one or the other because they have no rule to go by. Here is a simple set of rules you can decide on before the ad starts.
Decide what success looks like before you start
You cannot judge an ad without a target. Before it runs, write down one figure: the most you are willing to pay for one sale, or for one enquiry. That figure comes from your own profit, not from what anyone else pays.
With that written down, the question stops being a feeling. The ad is either under your limit or over it.
Give it a fair chance first
A new ad needs a little time. In the first day or two it is shown to a small number of people, and the results jump around. Judging it after a few hours is like judging a shop by its first ten minutes of opening.
Let it run for a few days and reach a reasonable number of people before you decide, unless it is clearly spending with nothing at all coming back.
Signs it is time to pause
After a fair run, these are the signs that an ad is not earning its keep:
- Each sale or enquiry costs more than the limit you set.
- Plenty of people see the ad but almost nobody taps on it, which means the picture or words are not catching the right people.
- People tap on it but nobody buys or messages, which points to the page they land on, the price, or the wrong audience.
- It worked at first and has slowly got more expensive, which often means the same people have now seen it too many times.
Pause, change one thing, try again
Pausing is not failing. It stops the spending while you fix the cause. Change one thing, such as the picture, the first line or the audience, and run it again. If you change everything at once you will never know what made the difference.
The real problem is that nobody is watching
Most wasted ad money is not lost to a bad ad. It is lost in the days between the ad going wrong and the owner noticing. You have a business to run and cannot check a screen every hour. Whatever you use, make sure something or someone is checking your ads often, with your limit in mind.