Facebook pulls back on Campaign Budget Optimization mandate

In a reversal, Facebook will no longer require advertisers to use its Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) feature in campaigns. Advertisers will have the choice to either have budgets managed at the campaign or ad set level.

Advertiser choice. “To provide advertisers with flexibility and choice in their buying strategies, we have decided not to pursue a mandatory migration for Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO),” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to Search Engine Land Monday. “While we still believe CBO provides performance and value gains, we will move to offering CBO as an option and not as a requirement.”

Facebook had initially planned to move all campaigns to CBO-only by last September but has been pushing off the switch. With CBO, Facebook’s algorithm automatically optimizes budget allocation across the ads sets in a campaign.

Why we care. Many advertisers have pushed back against the change, saying they often see better results when they can set and control budgets at the ad set level. For months, advertisers have been testing CBO with mixed results.

Facebook obviously heard advertisers when they said they weren’t happy with the mandate, and has now abandoned it altogether. As the company spokesperson notes, though, Facebook still believes in the efficacy of CBO and its algorithm’s ability to maximize performance results. It’s just going to stop forcing the issue, for now.

The decision comes as advertisers have been pulling back spend during the coronavirus crisis, but this decision is unrelated, we’re told, and it’s permanent.

This story first appeared on Search Engine Land.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.