Running Facebook ads on specific days of the week or month can be an effective strategy to maximize your ad spend and reach your target audience when they are most active. With the ability to set detailed schedules and targeting options, Facebook makes it easy to control exactly when your ads are shown.
Why Run Ads on Certain Days?
There are a few key reasons you may want to run Facebook ads on specific days:
- Match your audience’s usage patterns – People tend to use Facebook more on certain days. Running ads on those high-traffic days can get your ads in front of more of your target audience.
- Timing with events or promotions – You can align your ad schedule with real-world events, launches, sales, etc. to maximize exposure.
- Testing – Try running ads on different days to see if there is a difference in performance and optimize accordingly.
- Budget optimization – Concentrating your daily ad spend into targeted high-performing days can help you get more from your budget.
How to Schedule Facebook Ads on Specific Days
Facebook offers several options for controlling the days and times your ads run. Here are some tips on setting up an ad schedule:
Use the Campaign Budget & Schedule Tool
The easiest way to schedule ads on specific days across an entire campaign is using the Campaign Budget & Schedule tool. Within Ads Manager, edit your campaign and follow these steps:
- Click “Edit Campaign Budget & Schedule” next to the campaign budget.
- Select “Use a custom schedule”
- Use the date picker and toggle the days/times you want your ads to run. You can be very precise and add multiple date ranges.
- Set the start and end dates for your schedule.
- Click “Update Campaign Budget & Schedule”
This will override any existing schedules and make your campaign only run ads during the days and times specified.
Use Ad Set Schedules
For more granular control, you can also set custom schedules at the ad set level. This is good if you want different schedules for separate ad sets within a campaign. Follow these steps:
- Edit the ad set and click “Edit schedule” next to the Schedule section
- Toggle “Use custom schedule”
- Use the date picker to select which days/times to run ads
- Set a start and end date for the schedule
- Click “Update Schedule”
This will override the existing schedule with your new custom schedule for that specific ad set.
Schedule Ads via Rules
Another option is creating rules to automatically start and stop ads on specific days. Under “Rules” in Ads Manager:
- Click + to create a new rule
- Name your rule
- Under “Start ads that meet these conditions” select “Start ads on a schedule”
- Pick your desired days/times
- You can then make a matching rule to stop ads on certain days.
This gives you flexibility to use rules to start and stop ads on various schedules across multiple ad sets.
Use Facebook Business Suite Schedules
Within Facebook Business Suite, you can also create re-usable schedules to apply across ad accounts. Under “Business Tools”:
- Go to “Schedules”
- Click + to create a new schedule
- Name it and pick your days/times
- Save your schedule
You can then go to Ads Manager, click the 3 dots next to a campaign budget or ad set schedule, and select your saved schedule.
Tips for Scheduling Ads
Here are some tips to help you effectively schedule Facebook ads on specific days:
- Analyze when your audience is most active on Facebook and schedule ads for those high-traffic days/times.
- Test sending more budget to better performing days vs. poorer days and see how it impacts results.
- Aim to run new ad creative on weekdays so you can optimize before weekends.
- Make sure your landing page can handle any spikes in traffic from concentrated ad schedules.
- Schedule a few days in advance to account for review times when ads run first time.
- Check your schedules frequently to ensure ads are running as expected.
Day Parting Study
To demonstrate optimizing schedules based on audience patterns, here is an example study testing Facebook ad performance by day and time:
| Day | Time | Impressions | Clicks | CTR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 8 – 11am | 1235 | 58 | 4.7% |
| Monday | 2 – 5pm | 1862 | 77 | 4.1% |
| Tuesday | 8 – 11am | 983 | 24 | 2.4% |
| Tuesday | 2 – 5pm | 2205 | 91 | 4.1% |
| Wednesday | 8 – 11am | 762 | 19 | 2.5% |
| Wednesday | 2 – 5pm | 1736 | 69 | 4.0% |
| Thursday | 8 – 11am | 1129 | 41 | 3.6% |
| Thursday | 2 – 5pm | 1987 | 88 | 4.4% |
| Friday | 8 – 11am | 1618 | 71 | 4.4% |
| Friday | 2 – 5pm | 1407 | 52 | 3.7% |
Looking at the data, we can see that weekdays between 2-5pm consistently generated the most clicks and highest CTR. Fridays 8-11am also performed well.
Based on this, we would likely choose to concentrate more of the ad budget into weekdays during the afternoon hours and Friday mornings. We can use the scheduling tools to target just those high-performing days and times.
Conclusion
Running Facebook ads on specific days and times can be a simple but effective optimization strategy. The key is using Facebook’s detailed scheduling tools to target the days and times when your audience is most active.
Analyze your audience patterns, test different days/times, and schedule your budget around the best performing windows. Coordinating your ad delivery with real-world events and promotions can also boost results.
With the ability to set schedules down to the hour across campaigns, ad sets, and rules, Facebook provides extensive options for day parting your ad budget and fine-tuning it based on performance.