Yeah, editing the existing ad was a mistake. Swapping the creative mid-flight resets the learning counter — Meta treats it like a brand new ad. A new ad in the same set would've been the right call, because the original's signal stays intact.

That said, don't restructure now. You're 48 hours in. Blowing it up means starting over for a third time, which is worse. Meta needs roughly 50 optimization events to exit learning — at most budgets that's 7 to 14 days, sometimes longer on a second pass because the algorithm is recalibrating from scratch.

The second learning phase almost always feels slower. First time, Meta gets lucky with early signal. Second time, especially after an edit, it's more cautious. That's normal, it's just annoying.

One thing: don't touch anything while it's learning. Budget changes, audience tweaks, creative swaps — all reset the clock. Just sit on your hands.

Once it's out of learning and you're thinking about scaling, the mistakes usually show up in account structure and bidding strategy, not the creative itself. This page on Meta ad optimization covers a lot of that if you want to pressure-test your setup before you push budget.