Many advertisers express concern that running multiple ads or ad sets targeting the same audience could cause internal competition and potentially drive up costs of their own advertising efforts. Given the recurring nature of these concerns, I decided to write this post to clarify what Meta’s official documentation explains about this issue, commonly referred to as auction overlap. Let’s explore what Facebook itself has to say about how ads compete in auctions and what this actually means for your advertising strategy.
When two or more ads from your Page enter the same ad auction, we choose the ad with the highest total value to compete in the auction. As a result, the other ads from your Page are not considered in this auction. This ensures that your ads will not bid against one another.
Since auction overlap prevents ads from entering auctions, auction overlap can prevent an ad set from spending its full budget or achieving enough results to exit the learning phase.
https://www.facebook.com/business/help/537699989762051?id=561906377587030
What it means:
Your ads don’t bid against each other. When you run multiple ads or ad sets targeting the same audience on Meta, the delivery system picks the ad that is most likely to perform well in the auction, based on a variety of factors. This means your ads won’t compete against each other and you don’t have to worry about increased costs due to your own ads outbidding each other.
However, your ads will compete for your budget. Whether you have multiple ads within the same ad set or multiple ad sets within the same campaign, there are instances where one ad or ad set may monopolise the budget, at the expense of others. This might actually be beneficial if Facebook’s algorithms are effectively identifying and prioritising the ad that performs the best, as it means your budget is being spent on the most effective content. However, if you’re concerned that a potentially successful ad isn’t getting the exposure it deserves, you might want to rethink your campaign structure. This could involve opting out of campaign budget optimisation or separating your ads into different ad sets. To truly gauge the performance of your ads against each other, consider implementing A/B testing, which allows for a more controlled and equitable comparison of each ad’s effectiveness.consider using AB testing.
