Meta Business Help Centre

About bid strategies

Your bid strategy choice tells us how to bid for you in ad auctions. The right bid strategy can help you get measurable business outcomes, such as increased total sales, customers or brand reach. When you decide on a bid strategy, it's important to identify how you measure success for your business. Then choose the option that matches your business goals.

We offer three types of bidding: spend-based, goal-based and manual.

Spend-based bidding

Focus on spending your full budget and getting the most results or value possible.

Highest volume: Maximise delivery and conversions that you can get from your budget. For example, an event planner may use highest volume to get as many people as possible to attend an upcoming music festival, where cost per attendance doesn't matter.
Highest value: Spend your budget and focus on highest value purchases. For example, a florist may use highest value to sell as many bouquets as possible, while focusing on selling more expensive bouquets to maximise value.

Goal-based bidding

Set a cost or value that you want to achieve.

Cost per result goal: Strive to keep costs around the cost amount regardless of market conditions. For example, a retailer optimising for purchases may set their cost amount to a cost per purchase that will keep them profitable on average. Note: Adherence to cost per result goal limits is not guaranteed.
ROAS goal (return on ad spend): Aim to keep return on ad spend around an average amount over the course of your campaign. For example, if you want your budget of USD 100 to produce around USD 110 in purchases (or a 110% return), you'd set your ROAS control at 1.100. Note: Adherence to ROAS amount is not guaranteed.

Manual bidding

Control how much you can bid across ad auctions.

Bid cap: Set the maximum bid across auctions, rather than allow Facebook to bid dynamically based on your cost or value goals. Bid cap is meant for advertisers who have a strong understanding of predicted conversion rates and can calculate the right bid.

Frequently asked questions

When should I use cost per result goal vs bid cap?

Cost per result goal reflects the cost of results that you see in reporting. It uses machine learning to dynamically bid as high as needed to maximise results, while keeping costs around the cost amount that you provide. Bid cap reflects how much you're willing to pay for a desired action. It doesn't reflect the actual cost that you end up paying for that action. In other words, bid cap tells us the maximum amount that you're bidding across auctions. It doesn't cap the cost per action that you see in reporting.

What bid value should I set?

There are three key factors to consider: your chosen bid strategy and optimisation goal, conversion window and the historical performance of your campaign. For example, if you're using cost per result goal and are optimising for conversions: For your selected attribution setting (one or seven days), you can calculate the cost control based on conversions during that time frame. To maximise delivery, set your bid amounts at the highest amount that you're willing to pay.

Will I increase my cost efficiency by bidding lower for high-performing audiences who are more likely to convert?

It's best to set bid values (for example, your cost result goal) as high as you're willing to pay for high-performing audiences. If you lower your bid, you restrict opportunities and can miss the chance to convert more people. Typically, we recommend setting the maximum cost (or lowest ROAS) that you can tolerate. Higher bid values can help reach your intended audience and ensure that you're maximising your return on investment.

When would bid or budget changes cause the learning phase to retrigger?

When you change your bid strategy, conversion pixel, placements, targeting, image, text or click-through URL, we reset learnings for that specific ad. The same applies when you change your bid and budget amounts, depending on how large that change is and whether it shifts delivery to different types of people. Learn more about significant edits and learning phase.

Where can I see my bidding and optimisation results?

We recommend that you refer to the bidding and optimisation reporting preset in Meta Ads Manager.

What bid strategy should I use to control cost within a Meta Advantage campaign budget campaign?

Our recommendation is the same for both Meta Advantage campaign budget (previously known as campaign budget optimisation) and non-Advantage campaign budget campaigns. We recommend cost per result goal if you want to keep your cost per action (CPA) at or below an average, amount regardless of market conditions.

Can I mix bid strategies across Advantage campaign budget ad sets?

Advantage campaign budget automatically manages your campaign budget across ad sets to get you the overall best results. As campaigns are set with one goal in mind, Advantage campaign budget doesn't enable different bid strategies within a single campaign. If you want to use another bid strategy, we recommend evaluating what campaign goal you have and setting up a campaign specific to that goal. For example, if your goal is to maximise the ROAS of your purchases, you can set up a new campaign with the highest value bid strategy.