Bidding and optimization
Split Testing
Auction best practices
The learning phase is a period during which our ad system identifies the best users for a specific campaign target. Throughout this phase, campaign performance may fluctuate as the system explores and adapts to the campaign settings.
Most campaigns and ad groups tend to perform more stably as they gather more results and run for extended periods. Typically, volatility starts to decline after about 25 campaign results or 7 days from when the campaign enters the learning phase.
What will trigger the learning phase status?
Launching a new campaign or ad group
Significant budget change
Significant bid / ROAS target change
Changing campaign bidding strategy
Adjusting targeting settings
Depending on the extent of your change, budget and bid/ROAS target edit can be a triggering condition of the learning phase. For example, when your daily budget change is from $100 to $110, the system can find the additional audience quickly based on your original campaign settings. But if you increase the daily budget from $100 to $300, the system needs to find a large group of new users for you and the campaign will enter the learning phase again.
How can my campaign successfully complete the learning phase?When your campaign is in the learning phase, avoiding the following operations that will influence your learning phase results or prevent your campaign from exiting the learning phase status:
Pausing campaigns / ad groups.
Edits that retriggers the learning phase status.
Unreasonable budget setting or creative volumes.
CPA may fluctuate during the learning phase, but it will become more stable as TikTok collects enough data about your campaign. An oCPM ad group can expect a stable CPA after achieving 50 conversions.
Note: Stability doesn't mean that the cost for each conversion will never fluctuate. If there is a fluctuation in CPA on a day when there are few conversions, you will have an abnormal daily CPA. The CPA will adjust towards your target when new conversions are obtained at a lower cost. If your ad group is generating less than 10 conversions per day, we recommend using a longer period to track CPA. You can use the following timeframe to track CPA:
Daily Conversions | Period to Track CPA |
>10 | Daily |
6 to 10 | 3 Day Average |
<5 | 7 Day Average |
Note: We recommend that you not conduct any adjustment until achieving at least 20 conversions. Any improper adjustment during the learning phase may affect the ability of the system to explore, which could trigger further fluctuations in estimates and CPA.