CBO

CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization) puts the budget on the campaign and lets Meta decide, in real time, which ad sets get the spend based on live performance. The alternative is ABO, where you fund each ad set by hand. On modern Meta, structure is not the lever that wins iGaming — the creative, the offer and the funnel are — so CBO mostly exists to give the algorithm room to do its job.

Our default test is CBO 1-3-3: one campaign, three ad sets, three creatives each, one hypothesis per ad set, with a standard launch around CBO $500 and a Cost Cap of $200-250. The common mistake is opening a fresh CBO campaign on a huge budget, because Meta reads early spend capacity and hands you a pricier auction. Start measured and pour budget in only once an ad set catches the spark-up.

Stop rules we set per GEO before launch, as working defaults that each GEO moves: CTR under 0.80% means stop after 400 to 1000 impressions (a healthy CTR starts at 0.80%, with 1 to 1.5% as the optimum). An ad set that spends 20% of the CPA target with no install, or 70% of it with no deposit, gets stopped. For the first 5 to 10 hours we change nothing while CTR holds above 0.50% and leads keep appearing, so ad sets that have not caught the spark get time to find their audience before any decision.