Creative Testing
Creative testing is the structured process of launching new ad angles and creatives with a fixed budget and judging them against a target cost per result, to find the ads worth scaling.
How do you structure a creative test?
The structure I use is one testing campaign with one angle per ad set on broad targeting. The angle is the idea being tested; the ads inside the ad set are different executions of it. If you're spending $600 a day with a $300 scaling campaign already running, that leaves $300 for testing: three angles at $100 a day each.
When do you judge a test?
Let each ad set spend three times your target cost per qualified call before you look at it, then measure against the target with a 20% grace range. If your target is $100 per qualified call, let the ad set spend $300 first. That one rule is most of the optimization game, because it stops you killing an ad set on noise before it has had a fair chance to find its audience.
For a brand-new account, commit at least $1,400 over 14 days before deciding anything, holding a cost per booked call target loosely around $200 to $300 while the algorithm learns.
How many creatives do you need?
More than most businesses make. At scale, I hold clients to 20 to 30 net new ad creatives every week as the minimum. Volume is a speed advantage: a competitor launching 50 ads in a week gets the same learning you'd get from 10 ads a week, just five weeks sooner.
FAQ
Should I test formats or angles first?
Angles. No format takes a business from zero to $100,000 a month on its own; a new angle that speaks to a different buyer can.