This guide is intended to be a helpful starting point, not a rulebook. Every account is different, and what works best will depend on your goals, budget, and audience. Use this as a reference to inform your decisions, not as a strict prescription.
How long should you test an ad?
As a general guide, running a creative test for at least 5–7 days before drawing any conclusions tends to give the most reliable signal. Tests that run for only 1–2 days are often too noisy to be meaningful - delivery hasn't had time to stabilise and the data can be misleading. More info here.
💡 Think of early results as directional, not definitive. Give your ads time to breathe before making changes.
How much budget should you allocate to testing?
A common starting point is to set aside 10–20% of your monthly ad spend for creative testing. From there, you can calculate a rough daily testing budget using this formula:
Daily testing budget ≈ (10–20% of monthly spend) ÷ 30
A few guardrails worth keeping in mind:
Avoid spreading less than $10–$15 per day across multiple creatives — the signal will be too thin.
Per-creative budgets should scale with your overall spend level.
💡 These are rough benchmarks to guide planning conversations, not hard rules. Your results may vary based on your vertical, audience size, and campaign structure.
Spend-tier reference guide
The table below gives a rough sense of how testing budgets, creative volumes, and minimum live ads might scale across different spend levels. These are directional examples only.
Monthly Spend | Testing Budget | Creatives to Test | Budget Per Creative | Min. Ads Live |
Under $1k/mo | 10–15% | 4–6 | $20–$40 | 12+ |
$1k–$5k/mo | 10–20% | 6–10 | $50–$100 | 20+ |
$5k–$20k/mo | 15–20% | 10–15 | $100–$300 | 30+ |
$20k+/mo | 20%+ | 15–20+ | $300–$500+ | 40–50+ |
Publishing Cuttable ads to Meta
When publishing ads from Cuttable, you have two options: add them to an existing Meta campaign, or create a new one. Both are fully supported.
Add to an existing campaign if…
You want to keep your current targeting and campaign settings intact.
You're testing Cuttable ads alongside your existing creative.
You have an established campaign structure that's already performing well.
Create a new campaign if…
You want to run a clean A/B test to measure Cuttable's impact in isolation.
You'd like to use Meta's Advantage+ campaigns (note: this requires a minimum budget of $1,000 over 2 weeks).
You want separate budget control for Cuttable-created ads.
You're launching a new creative strategy from scratch.
💡When you publish from Cuttable, all existing Meta campaigns and ad sets are automatically pulled in. No changes are made until you explicitly choose to publish into a selected campaign.
Recommended testing approach
When getting started, a good approach is to duplicate an existing campaign using Meta's A/B test tool. This helps ensure fair delivery between your test and control groups, isolates the impact of Cuttable-created ads, and avoids bias from uneven delivery or learning phases.
💡 This is the approach we'd generally suggest, but feel free to adapt it based on what makes sense for your account and goals.
Need more info? 👉 Watch the webinar here
We teamed up with Datasauce, a performance marketing agency, to bring you a practical, no-fluff session on getting the most out of Meta advertising.
In the session, we covered:
How to keep your Meta account clean (including pixel set up)
Structuring your campaigns
Tiered budget frameworks
How to feed Meta's algorithm
Live answers to the most common questions (spend, ad fatigue, learning phase, and more)
All guidance in this document is directional and intended to support planning. Results will vary based on account structure, vertical, and spend. Reach out to your Cuttable account manager if you have any questions.