I removed Meta’s top-spending ads from a campaign. To be precise, I duplicated the campaign without those ads and ran it in parallel.
The algorithm would not stop scaling them, regardless of creative quality.
Our tROAS campaign had 5 ads eating 27% of budget, and none of them were reaching our 30% D0 ROAS target.
The setup
- Duplicated the tROAS campaign: same geo, same optimization goal, same total budget
- Removed the top spenders, the 5 ads Meta kept scaling despite low D0
- Ran both for 30 days, $18.3K on the original against $17.5K on the test
- Compared what each algorithm chose to scale
The question: would the algorithm find better D0 performers if its favorites were not available?
What each algorithm chose
Top five ads by spend in each campaign. iOS subscription app, Meta tROAS, 30 days, names randomized. The dashed line is the 30% D0 target.
The original campaign’s top five landed between 14% and 24%, so not one of them reached target. The test campaign’s top five ran from 23% to 38%, and three cleared it.
The test won 4 of the 5 weeks. More usefully, the algorithm found 6 new creatives above target that never got a chance in the original campaign.
The algorithm has favorites
And its favorites are not always your best performers on D0. Removing them forced it to explore, and exploring found better options.
If you try this, keep the budgets equal. If the test campaign spends less, you cannot tell whether the improvement came from the creative mix or from the spend level.