A/B Testing is an important part of optimizing your ad performance. There are a few different ways to set up an A/B testing within Facebook Ads Manager.
There are a few different ways to create an A/B test in your account:
- From the Ads Manager Toolbar
- By duplicating a campaign, ad set, or ad
- When creating a new ad campaign
- Directly from the Experiments tool
- From a common scenarios prompt
We’ll go through how to create an A/B testing from each of the available options below.
Ads Manager Toolbar
You can create an A/B test directly from the Ads Manager Toolbar which uses an existing campaign as a template for your test. Select the campaign you want to test and then choose the A/B Test button from the toolbar.
You’ll then select an available variable from the screen that you want to test.
Once you select the variable you want to test, you’ll be directed to the Experiments section of the interface to set up your test.
In this example below, we’re able to choose a new image to test against the original.
Once you have set the parameter for the test, hit Create Test and Facebook will publish your test.
Duplicating Campaigns, Ad Sets or Ads
Another way you can create A/B testing in Facebook Ads Manager is by duplicating an existing campaign, ad set, or ad.
Duplicating a campaign lets you compare it by changing one or more variables to determine a winning strategy. Duplicating an ad set or ad lets you choose a variable and the interface guide you through the kinds of changes you can make.
Any edits you make to existing campaigns, ad sets, and ads will be compared with the original. Once you publish the duplicate, you can start your test in Experiments.
New Campaign Creation
You can choose to A/B test when creating a new ad campaign in guided creation or quick creation. This option is useful when you want to conveniently test a variable while creating a new ad campaign.
You’ll select the variable you want to test from the dropdown. Options include Creative, Delivery Optimization, Audience, and Placement. You’ll then finish creating your ad campaign in Ads Manager with additional choice for your chosen variable.
If you choose an audience, delivery optimization, or placement test variable, you’ll be prompted during the ad set creation step to configure your Version A and Version B audiences or placements.
If you choose a creative test variable, you’ll be prompted during the ad creation step to configure your Version A and Version B creative.
It’s important to note that any campaign created using this method will only run for the duration of your A/B test which is 4 days by default. A/B tests can be scheduled to run up to 30 days.
Directly from the Experiments Tool
In Experiments, you can create or duplicate ad campaigns to compare and determine a winning strategy. Test and Learn is useful when you want the flexibility of fine-tuning your ad campaigns before starting your test, or when you want to use several existing ad campaigns for your test.
From the Experiments page, find A/B Test and click Get Started. Choose how you want to create your A/B test. You can use two or more existing ad campaigns or duplicate an existing ad campaign.
If you choose to duplicate an existing ad campaign, you’ll be redirected to finish creating the duplicate campaign in Ads Manager before continuing in Experiments. If you’re using existing ad campaigns for your A/B test, you can choose up to 5 to compare in your A/B test.
Schedule the start and end dates for your test and choose how you’d like to determine a winner. You can choose a single cost per result metric to determine a winner, or add a holdout and compare each A/B test’s cost per conversion lift to determine a winner.
Common Scenarios Prompt
Sometimes Facebook will suggest you run an A/B test to try a new business strategy or if they think your current ad might benefit from a test. For example, when editing your ad in Ads Manager, you may see a prompt to try testing several images to see which one performs best for your campaign.
If the prompt appears in Ads Manager, you can start the test by clicking Run an A/B Test and following the instructions that appear.
As you can see, there are many ways to go about creating an A/B testing in your Facebook Ads account. All A/B tests use the same underlying technology to compare a different creative, audience or placement and determine a winner and your test results will be available in Test and Learn once the test is finished.
Have you created A/B testing in your Facebook Ads account? If so, let us know which method you prefer in the comments below.
