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Setting Up & Running a Multivariate Experiment

MVT With Facebook Ads
Marpipe

Now that you've built and downloaded your multivariate creative suite using the Ad Builder, its time to put your creative to work! Running your experiment live in your favorite ad network does not just mean creating all the ads and turning them on, you need to build your test using the correct experimental structure. This guide outlines how to set up and launch a multivariate creative experiment using Facebook Ads.

01 Campaign Set Up

Open your Facebook Ad Account and create a new campaign for this experiment. You can use whatever naming convention you'd like for the campaign names, but we suggest using the experiment name that you created in the Ad Builder. 

In this example, our experiment name is "Cycle 01", so that is what we've named our campaign. Make sure to select the objective that applies to your KPI and do not select Campaign Budget Optimization - the multivariate experiment will use Ad Set Budgets. Lastly, ad your test budget as the spending limit within the campaign.

02 Creating Ad Sets

Within your new campaign, create one ad set for each audience that you will be targeting. In this example, we are only targeting one audience, so we created one ad set and added the audience criteria to it. If you are targeting more than one audience, follow this guide for each audience.

Duplicate the ad set until you have the same number of ad sets as you have ad variants. It's important to make sure every ad is in its own ad set within the campaign and each ad set has an equal daily budget - this is how you assure that every ad spends an equal amount, which in turn gives your creative components equal spend (compared to the other components in their group).

For simplicity, including the ad names in the name of each ad set will help you avoid putting the same ad into two ad sets. The best way to do this is by copying and pasting your ad names into the ad sets. If you'd like to add your audience name into the ad sets, follow the same naming convention as that of the ads - Audience(audiencename).

Once you've named all of your ad sets to reflect the ad that will be made within each one, you can select all of them together to batch edit their targeting, placements, budgets etc. Make sure to keep all of the settings within your ad sets exactly the same.

03 Ad Creation

The final step in setting up your multivariate campaign is making an ad within each ad set. The most efficient way to create all of your ads is to first, batch upload all of the ads into your Facebook Asset Library.

Next, go back to your Ad Account and create an ad within one of the ad sets that you've made - use the same ad name from your ad set name to keep things consistent. While making your ad you'll need to select your Facebook & Instagram pages, add your creative, write your ad text, write your headline, add a URL, and edit any other settings within the ad that you need to.

After you've created one ad, simply duplicate it into all of the other ad sets. Now, every ad set should have one ad in it and all you need to do is change the ad name and image. Make sure not to change anything within the ads besides the actual creative.

A quick way to change your ad names is by going to the Ad Sets tab and opening each ad set, then copying and pasting the name of the ad set into the ad name. After that, just edit each ad and make sure the image for that name is correct.

04 Experiment Launch

At this point, your test campaign is all set up and almost ready to launch. When all of your ads are approved by Facebook - usually within 24 hours of you creating them - turn your campaign on!

Note: Marpipe will soon be including automatic uploading within the platform, you won't have to manually create your experiment campaigns like this in the future!

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How to Run a Multivariate Test

The Beginner's Guide

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Tiffany Johnson Headshot

How to Run a Multivariate Test
The Beginner's Guide

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