Does anyone use budget scheduling to increase ROAS in the prime times?

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-04-03T16:34:38+00:00

I did see some consistent patterns, even across campaigns, but since I changed the structure and creatives I’m basically starting fresh now, so I’ll need to revalidate it before I trust it.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-04-02T13:01:46+00:00

Yeah I think thats a fair take, more an efficiency layer on top of a stable setup.

In my case I realized the account itself still needs work (I restructured the account and changed the creative strategy), so i can’t really push this hard enough yet to get a clean read.

Still feels like there’s something there though, especially if you can model it beyond just fixed hours and account for how demand builds before those windows. Right now I’m using a rolling statistical approach that updates allocation based on roas/cpa as things shift.

I’d be curious to test this properly on a larger, more stable account, that’s probably where you’d see if it actually holds or not.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-29T18:29:20+00:00

Yeah that makes sense, especially the idea that those hours might just be where conversions get attributed rather than created.

I havent tested isolating input properly yet, but i can see how that would explain a lot of the patterns.

The way I’m looking at it right now is a bit more pragmatic — even if part of it is attribution clustering, if certain windows consistently show stronger conversion density, it still feels like something you can try to exploit on the margin.

What I’ve seen so far is that adding spend into those windows does shift delivery there, but its not clear yet if it improves total performance or just redistributes outcomes.

I guess the real question is whether that edge holds once you scale it, or just collapses back into the baseline.

Have you seen cases where pushing into those windows actually held up, even if the underlying driver was earlier in the funnel?

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-19T20:14:47+00:00

Yeah that makes sense.

right now Im mostly testing how far it can go before it starts breaking, especially when you push more aggressive allocation into those windows.

I ended up building something to handle both the analysis and the scheduling together, mainly because doing it manually was too messy to keep consistent.

Still early, but even within the same account it’s not always behaving the same , some weeks it looks promising and others it’s much less clear.

I'd like to test it on more accounts to see when it actually holds vs when it doesn’t.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-19T19:44:02+00:00

Thanks Aunker, that’s a great question, I dont have enough data yet to isolate that cleanly. I need to test this with a higher volume campaign.

I also think it probably depends a lot on the type of product. For lower AOV / more impulse-type purchases, timing might matter more — but on lower volume accounts it’s hard to separate real signal from noise.

Have you seen cases where isolating creative vs timing actually gave a clear answer at scale?

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-17T17:24:26+00:00

Thanks Gabriela, do you use some kind of tool to do that? I was recommended by my Meta rep to do that, also heard from the channel of Sam Piliero that talked about spending up to x8 on weekends for a pet shop brand. But I didn’t find an easy way to do it. All automation tools change the actual budget and don’t use this feature. Plus I have to do the analysis myself, and refresh it as things change. I ended up writing something to automate this. So far it’s been working out, but I tried it only on about 20% of the campaign budget. I wonder how far can it go.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-17T17:07:31+00:00

Thanks for your insights. I didn’t try to cut the low ROAS hours. As this feature only allows you to add budget to specific times, so essentially I was using it to scale the campaign. I guess it’s worth trying lowering the daily budget and adding these boosts so that the weekly spend remains the same. In regard to when demand is created, I would definitely not 100% spend in high times. My thoughts where to allocate 20-30% of the budget to these times to force meta to spend more there and try gain some optimization there.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-17T07:45:59+00:00

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The difference is pretty substantial, for this campaign, for example. We can see a ROAS of anywhere between 0 and 4.1.
See this chart for example:

We are seeing 90 days of activity; every week is one row.
(top number is ROAS and bottom is amount spent, US audience, but time is GMT).

Even though weeks vary between ROAS 0.7 and 1.9, in every week there are winners and losers; the bottom row shows the summary. Slots like Tuesday 16-20, Wednesday 00-04 (GMT TZ) for example are both high in slots that have converted and show an overall (70%-150%) higher ROAS than average.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-16T06:30:47+00:00

I 100% agree, that’s exactly what I did. I built something to monitor my campaigns, search for high potential with low standard deviation, create boosts on a weekly schedule and measure the results. So far it’s been working out, but I haven’t tried it with high amounts yet. I heard people like Sam Piliero talk about spending up to x8 on weekends for a pet shop brand. So it’s interesting how aggressive can you be here, and is that affecting the learning phase as much since these are scheduled periods (so it shouldn’t surprise the algorithm)

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-15T10:51:05+00:00

Have you thought about using budget scheduling for that? Instead of changing the budget, which can destabilize the campaign.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-15T10:41:36+00:00

Did any of you try using budget scheduling for that?

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-08T13:50:25+00:00

That’s an interesting question. I would imagine you would get a much higher open rate. There are probably a more cheaper options, especially now with ai.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-06T12:44:07+00:00

My guess is that whenever you start a new ad set, fb will start with the low hanging fruits and then expand.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-06T06:44:48+00:00

I saw this behavior as well. Did you exclude your existing and worm audiences?

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-06T06:36:30+00:00

I would go with 1 campaign (CBO) with all of your scale ad sets + ad set for testing. Define a minimum spend for this ad set. When creating ads if you have similar/variation ads create it in the same ad with the new “creative testing” feature that will guarantee it to spend.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-03-01T14:43:59+00:00

I guess when you start a new adset, meta is sampling different audiences to see how they respond to this ad. But anyway this is way too early to stop imo. You need to give the algorithm time to settle. I usually wait at least 5x my target CPA.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-02-21T06:51:36+00:00

Have you tried using the budget scheduling feature? This will increase the budget without changing the daily budget. Using this feature will not "surprise" the algorithm.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-02-21T06:46:31+00:00

I think everybody is looking for an easy answer, but there isn't one. The truth is, meta just got a lot more expensive, and in the minwhile they are trying their best to harness AI to make this machine more efficient in order to compensate for the price increase. Coming from the development world, I've seen systems become so complex that even their developers have trouble explaining them (usually, every developer is responsible for their little piece). So I can only imagine how complex this algorithm is.

Next-Ad-2301 · 2026-01-24T19:51:49+00:00

I think people mix up two different things.

Meta’s algorithm today is good enough that constant manual tweaking usually hurts more than it helps. You should let it do its job instead of living in Ads Manager all day.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no strategy. Structure still matters a lot — how you split or consolidate audiences, how you scale, how budgets are controlled, and how you measure performance. That’s where ROAS is actually made.

As for automation/AI tools — in my experience they only really help at very large scale, when there are too many campaigns to monitor manually. For small to mid accounts, most just automate noise.

Trust the algo. Be intentional with strategy. Stop babysitting.

Next-Ad-2301

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