How to Increase the Budget Properly

Every Arbitrager Faces the Challenge of Increasing Budgets

You’ve tested a funnel, everything looks great, ROI is 100+, and as soon as you start increasing the budget, expecting more profit, the funnel starts running at a loss. Sound familiar? Let’s break down why this happens and why funnels burn out after budget increases.

How Facebook Budgets Work

Managing budgets requires careful handling—nobody wants to cancel their pre-ordered McLaren, right? So, before mindlessly increasing budgets by 2x, 5x, or 100x, read this guide to understand how it all works.

Let’s illustrate with an example:

Payout: $20
Approval rate: 20%

Facebook’s Perspective on Budgets

Facebook is highly sensitive to budgets. The more we spend, the more they earn, so they have an incentive for us to scale up. However, that doesn’t stop Facebook from burning our budget inefficiently—misallocating it, sending low-quality traffic, and using poor placements.

Should You Follow Facebook’s Budget Recommendations?

Facebook’s suggestions aren’t necessarily useless, but they shouldn’t be followed blindly. If you’ve been running an ad set for several days and Facebook suggests increasing the budget, don’t rush. First, analyze the ad set. If it's delivering stable leads, then scale the budget in a controlled way.

High ROI vs. High Profit

Here’s the thing: when you increase the budget, ROI drops, but absolute profit rises. Lower budgets yield higher ROI but lower profits. Decide what matters most to you. Most likely, you’re here for profit, so working with larger budgets is the key. Before scaling, ensure you have the necessary funds to sustain your target ad spend.

The Role of Pixel Learning

Another crucial factor is Facebook Pixel. Recently, I tested two campaigns:

One with a small budget ($20 daily) for a week.
Another with a large budget ($300 daily).

Then, I swapped their pixels and launched the campaigns again on duplicate ad sets. Surprisingly, the previously high-budget pixel didn’t perform well with the smaller budget, and vice versa. This taught me that pixel learning should be gradual—avoid sudden budget jumps.

Best practice: Use one pixel per GEO and offer.

Personal Accounts vs. Business Manager (BM) Pixels

There are two main types of pixels (excluding eternal pixels, which I don’t use).

Personal Account Pixel: Works on a single ad account.
BM Pixel: Can be shared across multiple accounts.

I prefer different pixels for different ad accounts. Sometimes, I share BM pixels across accounts, ensuring similar budgets to maintain stability.

How I Manage Pixels

I don’t overcomplicate things—just keep budgets consistent for each pixel. For example:

If a pixel has grown from $20 to $300, I keep using budgets above $200.
For new ad accounts with lower budgets, I use a fresh pixel and gradually scale it up.

Scaling by Increasing Budgets

Launch Structures

Different media buyers use various launch structures: 1-3-1, 1-5-1, or even 1-10-1. Let’s analyze the 1-1-1 structure for simplicity—you can apply the same logic to other structures.

We start with one campaign, one ad set, and one ad. Budgets can be set at the campaign level or ad set level.

Campaign-level budgeting: If you set a $300 budget across three ad sets, Facebook splits it evenly ($100 per ad set).
Ad set-level budgeting: Provides better control, preventing unpredictable budget shifts when duplicating or pausing ad sets.

Scaling Strategies

Once we launch with 1-1-1, collect initial leads, and feel ready to invest more, we need to analyze performance first. Ideally, an ad set should show stable results for 5-7 days before scaling. Ensure you have ROI buffer before increasing budgets.

ROI Buffer

Example: If initial ROI is 100%, you can afford to sacrifice 30-50% ROI to scale volume. Smaller budgets allow for more aggressive increases, whereas larger budgets require gradual scaling.

Example: Doubling a $20 daily budget to $40 won’t cause major issues. However, jumping from $200 to $400 may disrupt optimization, forcing you to revert or wait for re-optimization.

Three Budget Scaling Methods

I recommend testing these methods on different ad sets:

Gradual Scaling: Increase 10-20% daily.
Aggressive Scaling: Increase 15% every 2 hours.
Adaptive Scaling: Adjust dynamically based on performance.

I personally prefer adaptive scaling—monitoring performance and increasing the budget when the ad set is performing well. If leads are coming in at a good price, increase by 1.5x, then switch to 20% daily increases.

Pro Tip: Not all funnels perform well at high budgets. You must find the optimal balance between volume and ROI.

Scaling Case Studies

Case Study 1:

Scaled an ad set to $3,000 in spend within a single campaign using adaptive scaling.

Case Study 2:

Doubled the budget from $20 to $50.
Increased daily by 10-20% until reaching $100 per day.

Final Thoughts

I believe adaptive scaling is the best approach. However, the 10-20% daily increase method remains popular.

Through multiple trials, I found that doubling a budget from $20 to $50 worked well for strong funnels, but failed for weak ones.

The key to effective Facebook scaling is a strong funnel and a solid initial ROI. Nail those two factors, and scaling will be much easier.

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