How To Scale Facebook Ads: Top Strategies You Should Try

Scaling Facebook ads sounds simple: it means just raising the budget, right? Not quite. Real scaling takes more than just spending more — it takes strategy.

In this article, we’ll break down how to scale your Facebook ads the right way.  You’ll learn the two main types of scaling, the strategies top advertisers use to grow fast without hurting their ROAS, and how to keep results stable as your budget increases.

By the end, you’ll have your Facebook ad scaling playbook to boost your ROAS and keep your performance steady as your budget grows.

What does scaling mean in advertising? 

At its core, scaling just means expanding your ads to reach more people and drive more conversions or sales. If your Facebook ads are performing well and you’re getting a high ROAS while keeping your CPA at optimal levels, it makes sense to get them in front of more potential customers, right? 

That’s what Facebook ad scaling is. But here’s the catch — scaling isn’t just about spending more. If you don’t do it right, your results can tank. Facebook’s algorithms don’t work like that. If you don’t scale your ads strategically, you might end up driving your CPA higher and seeing your ROAS drop.

That’s why knowing how to scale matters just as much as deciding when to scale. When done right, scaling helps you:

1. Reach more potential customers before your competitors do,
2. Figure out what’s working by testing your ads with a bigger audience and collecting performance data,
3. Increase your sales without spending more per customer.

But if you scale the wrong way, you might run into:

• Higher CPAs because you’ve already reached your best audience, 
• Overlapping audiences when duplicating your top-performing ads, 
• Algorithm disruption from rapid budget increases.

So, how do you scale the right way? 

First, you need to understand the two key ad scaling approaches: vertical scaling and horizontal scaling. Let’s break them down and see how they work.

Horizontal vs. vertical scaling: which is right for you? 

Horizontal scaling is all about reaching new people by duplicating or creating new ad sets to reach fresh audiences. Instead of just increasing your budget on one campaign or ad set, you take what’s already working and duplicate it or create new ad sets and target new audience segments. 

For example, let’s say you’re running Facebook ads for your online store and one ad set performs well with an audience with specific characteristics. You're getting consistent sales at a solid cost per purchase, and the budget on this ad set is already optimized. Instead of increasing your budget further, you can duplicate this ad set and target a lookalike audience – people similar to the original audience. 

The good thing about this approach is that you can scale fast without changing your budget. 

But if you’re not careful, your ads might start competing against each other (which is called audience or auction overlap), which can drive up ad costs. That’s why you have to make sure that each new ad set targets a different audience if you’re keeping everything else (like the ad copy and landing page) the same.  

Vertical scaling is more straightforward — you raise your budget on a winning campaign or ad set to reach more of the same audience. But it comes with a risk if done too fast.

For example, you’re running an ad set that’s driving sales at a $10 CPA, and your daily budget is $100. Instead of creating new audiences, you increase your budget so the same ad reaches more of the same people. 

The long-standing rule for increasing ad budgets is doing it slowly — usually by no more than 10-20% at a time. That’s because Facebook’s algorithm doesn’t always like sudden budget changes, which is why you have to do it gradually while monitoring performance to avoid messing up your results or getting back to the learning phase. 

Facebook’s algorithm has evolved and now allows for bigger budget increases than before, but it mostly works if you have a smaller budget. If you spend $50 daily on an ad set, raising the budget to $100 isn’t such a dramatic increase as if you’re doubling your budget from $1000 to $2000. 

To put it simply, you can be a bit more liberal with your budget increases, but be mindful of how significant they are based not on the percentage of increase but on the overall sum of money you spend.

To play it safe, stick with the classic strategy: raise your budget by a small amount every few days and track the results. If they’re looking good, keep raising the budget to achieve a higher ROAS. 

As you can see, both vertical and horizontal scaling strategies are useful and have their value. But which type of scaling should you focus on? 

It depends on your goals and where you are in your Facebook ads journey. Let's check some simple rules for making the right choice. 

Choose horizontal scaling if:

• You want to find new customers because your current audience is limited;
• Your audience is small, or your ads are showing too often (ad fatigue is kicking in);
• Your best-performing ad is working in one location, and you want to expand internationally. 

Choose vertical scaling if:

• You’ve got an ad that’s working really well and bringing in sales, and now you want more people to see it;
• You’re not short on audience, just budget — and you want to get better results without changing too much;
• You’re testing different ads, and one is clearly doing way better than the others.

Most advertisers use both strategies: they’re scaling vertically to maximize the impact of their best ads while using horizontal scaling to keep finding new audience segments that might be profitable. Now, let's review these strategies in more detail. 

How to scale Facebook ads horizontally 

#1. Duplicate existing ad sets 

If you’ve got ad sets that are working and want to show them to a new audience, the first step in horizontal scaling is to make a copy of them.

There are two main situations when you want to duplicate specific ad sets: 

1. These ad sets are performing well for a specific audience (or a broad audience), and you’d like to see if they will generate good results with other segments; 
2. These ad sets aren’t performing well, but you think they potentially could if you target another audience. 

Basically, you can duplicate both successful and unsuccessful ad sets. In any case, running them for a new audience might give you new opportunities to grow and get better results. 

Manually duplicating each ad set can take ages, especially if you're managing many campaigns at once. To make it simpler, you can use ConvertBomb’s automated rules.

For example, you could set a rule to automatically duplicate ad sets that are performing well. Let’s say you’ve got an ad set that’s bringing in purchases for less than $20 CPA and has a CTR above 3%. You can set a rule to duplicate that ad and test it with a lookalike audience to see if it works even better.

Automated rule for duplicating Facebook ad sets with high CTR and a good cost per purchase

You can also create rules to duplicate underperforming ad sets. If an ad set has spent more than $500 but isn’t hitting your goal for conversions or cost per purchase, try copying it and changing the targeting instead of stopping it completely.

Automated rule for duplicating Facebook ad sets with high cost per purchase and high ad spend

If you automate the process of duplicating your ads, you can scale them a lot faster. And most importantly, you can make sure your budget goes toward the ads that have the most potential – we’ll cover how to do it when we get to the vertical scaling. 

#2. Create new ad sets with fresh ad creatives

While duplicating your ad sets and targeting new audiences is a great horizontal scaling tactic, there’s a limit to how far that can take you. Even top-performing ads get old, and that’s when ad fatigue starts creeping in and your CPA starts to rise. 

To avoid that, you should not just duplicate existing ad sets but also create brand-new ad sets with new creatives. 

New creatives give your ads a fresh feel, which helps fight ad fatigue. One strategy you can take here is to create ad sets with new, funnel-specific creatives:

• Top of the funnel (cold audience): start with something easy, like a short video that explains what you offer. Even if they don’t take action, you can retarget them later based on how much they watched; 
• Middle of the funnel (warmed-up audience): these people already showed some interest — maybe they watched your video or visited your site. Show them ads with reviews, FAQs, or anything that builds trust and helps them move closer to buying; 
• Bottom of the funnel (warm audience): these are people who added items to the cart or visited recently. This is where you give them a reason to come back, like a discount or free shipping; 
• Existing customers: if you sell something people usually reorder, run ads just for them. Suggest new products or remind them it’s time to restock.

Creating new ad sets with fresh creatives helps keep your ads from getting stale. When your ads match what stage someone’s at in the buying journey, they tend to work better — and that makes scaling a lot easier.

But you have to remember about the learning phase here. It usually takes about 50 conversions for Facebook to fully learn how to deliver and optimize your ads for the best results. If your daily budget is too low, your ad set might not reach those 50 conversions fast enough. 

Here’s a quick formula to figure out the budget you need: (Your average cost per purchase × 50) ÷ your conversion window. So, if your cost per purchase is around $30 and your conversion window is 7 days, you’ll get a daily budget of $214. 

Check out our article about the Facebook ads learning phase for more tips.  

#3. Change your targeting 

One of the best ways to scale your Facebook ads is by adjusting who you’re targeting — and that means doing two things:

1. Finding new people to show your ads to, 
2. Getting smarter about how you retarget the ones who already showed interest.

Let’s walk through how to do both.

Go broader to find new buyers

If your current targeting is super specific (like when you’re stacking interest groups and demographic filters), you can broaden it to scale your ads. 

Why? Broad targeting works well because Meta’s AI can find the people who are most likely to buy from you. Right now, the best way to do this is by using Advantage+ tools like Advantage+ targeting. Advantage+ targeting lets Facebook show your ads to more people outside your chosen audience, but only if it thinks that’ll get you better results.

In most cases, you can still set simple limits like age, gender, or country, or give Facebook a rough concept of your potential customers. But the fewer restrictions you add, the more freedom the algorithm has to find buyers. This kind of broad targeting often gives you better ROAS and lower costs, especially if you’re focused on getting sales. That’s something you want to try for scaling your Facebook ads. 

There are several Meta Advantage+ targeting features you can try to expand your audience

If you want to get even broader, choose Advantage+ placements as well: Meta’s algorithms will automatically show your ads where they’ll likely perform well. It also works as a vertical scaling since Facebook will send more budget to the placements that are performing best.

The more flexibility you give Meta’s system, the better your ads can work for you and the easier it is to scale them. And don’t worry — you can always test Advantage+ options against your manual setups and let the metrics decide if that’s the right choice for you. 

For a more detailed breakdown of these features, check out our article on Meta Advantage+ tools. 

Use larger or new lookalike audiences

Lookalike audiences are another great method of horizontal scaling and finding new, potentially profitable audience segments. If you don’t want to go fully broad, lookalikes let you expand your targeting without breaking off completely from your original audience. 

When it comes to lookalike percentages, don’t limit yourself to 1% lookalikes only: yes, 1% makes your lookalike as similar to your seed audience as possible, but there are more opportunities to try. If you’ve been using a tight 1% lookalike, try expanding to 3% or 5% and higher. You’ll reach a much bigger group while still targeting people who behave like your customers, even if not as similar to them as possible. 

There are two ways to use these lookalikes:

1. Target them in duplicated ad sets that are already working, 
2. Use them in new ad sets with fresh creative for a whole new spin. 

If you’re open to selling internationally or you already ship globally, take advantage of global lookalike audiences. Use your existing pixel or customer data to build a lookalike that spans multiple countries. 

If you want to keep your lookalikes as close to the people you’re already targeting as possible, try value-based lookalikes – these let you reach people similar to your existing customers. 

But don’t forget about expanding them. To scale your Facebook ads further and reach more people, use lookalikes based on actions higher up the funnel: your email list, blog subscribers, add-to-cart events, or website visitors.

Segment your retargeting audiences 

Scaling doesn’t always mean finding new people. A lot of growth comes from people who already know your brand but need another nudge.

If you’re running one big retargeting campaign or ad set for website visitors or another single group of people, you can break your warm audience into smaller segments. 

You can split your warm audience by intent:

• Video viewers — people who watched 25%, 50%, or 75% of your videos; 
• Page clickers — people who clicked an ad but didn’t buy (in the last 30, 60, or 180 days); 
• Website visitors — audience segments based on recency: 7, 30, or 60 days; 
• Add to cart / Initiate checkout — these are high-intent users who are close to buying.

Pro tip: assign a separate budget to each segment so you can see who performs best, then double down on the top performers. You can use the Advantage Campaign budget to spend more automatically.

If a certain audience segment delivers top-notch ROAS, you might even want to run a dedicated campaign just for them.

Higher-funnel retargeting matters too: think video views, product page visits, and more. These audiences are usually easier and cheaper to target, and they help you build interest before you ask for the sale. As you scale your campaign, these segments will naturally grow, so it's worth investing in them early. 

And remember: you can test these new audiences using both duplicated ad sets and fresh ad sets with new creatives. Sometimes just switching up the audience (even if you’re using the same ad) can give your ad performance a lift.

How to scale Facebook ads vertically by increasing the budget 

As mentioned earlier, increasing the budget is the main way to scale your Facebook ads vertically — without creating new ad sets or targeting new audiences. But simply increasing your budget doesn’t guarantee better results. If you scale a wrong ad set or do it too fast, your costs could skyrocket while Facebook’s algorithm struggles to adjust. 

First of all, don’t scale just for the sake of it. Use these steps to determine if an ad set or campaign is ready for vertical scaling:

1. Check performance — if the ad set or campaign is generating sales with a good CPA, it’s a candidate for scaling; 
2. Check for growth potential — make sure that an ad set/campaign has room to grow without wasting money. If ad fatigue is high and you’ve exhausted the existing audience (e.g., if it’s too narrow), it might not be viable for vertical scaling; 
3. Check for consistency — don’t scale if the ad’s performance is inconsistent.

If you're unsure, start by duplicating the ad set or campaign and testing it with a larger budget. If the results are good, continue scaling; if not, keep running the original ad set with the same budget.

If you're confident that an ad set or campaign is worth scaling, the next step is to increase the budget. Let’s look at two possible scaling scenarios here: one using automated rules and one – Advantage Campaign budget. 

#1. Scale with automated rules 

For example, let’s say you’re running a sales campaign for your online store with a pretty good cost per purchase, and you’d like to scale it further. 

You can set an automated rule to raise the campaign budget by 5% daily as long as the cost per purchase stays optimal.

Automated rule for increasing campaign budget 

Using a percentage is better than a fixed amount because it adjusts based on your current ad spend rather than an arbitrary value. Also, increasing your daily budget by 5% or less gives Facebook time to adjust without messing up performance.

Here are the two main conditions of this rule: 

1. The cost per purchase should be less than $25, 
2. AND lifetime Impressions should be higher than 10,000. 

For the 1st condition, choose a specific timeframe (e.g., last 7 days) to check the metric — this way, you’ll be looking at recent results only. If you choose lifetime here, you’ll get an average that might not tell the whole story. A campaign that started strong but has been performing poorly recently may seem promising, but it’s not ideal for scaling.

The 2nd condition makes sure you're only scaling campaigns that are consistently effective. If you only focus on cost per purchase, you might scale new campaigns or ad sets that performed well initially but aren't sustainable in the long term. You need some time to check their performance, hence the condition with impressions. You can change the metric to the amount you’ve already spent on the campaign, ROAS, or something else that makes sense in your case. 

If you don’t want your budget to keep increasing without limits, set a maximum budget cap to make sure you never spend more than you can afford even when scaling. 

#2. Scale with Advantage Campaign Budget 

With Advantage Campaign Budget, you can automatically scale specific ad sets — Facebook will allocate more budget to those with the best performance.

For example, let’s say you’re running a campaign with 3 ad sets. If one of them starts getting a lower cost per purchase or a higher ROAS, Facebook will spend more on that one ad set and less on others. You don’t have to tweak anything — everything happens on its own.

The main drawback of the Advantage campaign budget is that you have less control. Sure, Facebook will automatically shift your budget toward better-performing ad sets. But sometimes, it’ll still spend money on an underperforming one for a while before adjusting. That’s why you might also want to use automated rules to make sure Facebook doesn’t do anything you don’t want. 

Here, you can use a rule for pausing low-performing ad sets. This will act as a safety net, stopping wasted spend before it snowballs. It's especially useful when you're scaling the overall campaign budget and spending more per day.

If an ad set’s cost per purchase goes above $40 (with the ideal cost per purchase being $20) and it’s spent over $100, you can pause it

On the other hand, you can use automated rules to go further and raise the budget for a well-performing campaign. This helps you scale your campaign fast, but only when it’s called for. This rule adds more fuel only when performance is consistently strong. Giving your campaign more budget lets Advantage Campaign Budget push even more to the best ad sets and keep that momentum going.

If your campaign's ROAS was more than 4.0 with a cost per purchase under $20 over the past 7 days, you can increase your budget by 20%

Basically, you can let Advantage Campaign Budget handle most of the work, but use automated rules to fine-tune your scaling. They’ll protect your budget and make sure you’re spending more only when it makes sense.  

For more examples of automated rules you can use for scaling your ads, check out our articles on how to reduce Facebook ad costs and optimize ad budget automatically.

Key scaling rules to remember

The key to scaling your Facebook ads strategically is not to just spend more for the sake of it. Whether you're scaling vertically (increasing budgets) or horizontally (expanding audiences), here’s how to do it without hurting your results:

1. Know when to scale vertically or horizontally

Not sure if you should raise your budget or try new audiences? Here’s a quick way to decide: 

• Go vertical (raise your budget) when your current ads are working well. If your ROAS is steady and people are still buying, you can safely spend more to get more results from the same audience.
• Go horizontal (test new audiences, placements, creatives, etc.) when your performance starts to slow down. If your cost per purchase goes up or ROAS drops, your audience might be getting tired of your ads. That’s a good time to try something new. 

Before you even think about scaling, make sure your ads are performing at a solid baseline. If you’re not there yet, start with the basics — our guide on optimizing Facebook ads covers exactly what you need to fix first.

If you decide to scale and the results drop, don’t panic. Instead of stopping your campaign, test a new audience or duplicate your best ad set into a fresh campaign. Tools like Meta Advantage+ can help you scale to wider audiences with less guesswork. 

Remember that you don’t have to pick just one method. In fact, combining both often works best. For example, you can increase the budget on a top-performing ad set, duplicate it, and run it again for a different audience. 

Using both vertical and horizontal scaling helps you grow faster without burning out your ads or wasting your budget. 

2. Start slow and let the algorithms catch up 

If your campaign is running well at $50/day, don’t immediately jump to $500. That kind of leap can throw Meta’s algorithm off. Big jumps can also push your ad sets back into the learning phase, where the algorithm has to recalibrate. That often means higher costs and less consistent results.

Instead, raise your budget by a small percentage every few days (or every other day) to give the system time to adjust, especially if you’re spending at higher volumes. Think of it like climbing a ladder. Skip too many steps, and you’ll fall. But scale gradually, and you give the algorithm time to adapt while keeping your cost per purchase steady.

3. Automate what you can 

Manually checking your ads every day and tweaking budgets can be difficult. That’s where automated rules come in — they help you scale more efficiently without constant micromanaging.

Here are a few automated rules worth using:

1. Auto-increase budgets when performance is strong (for example, if ROAS stays high for several days in a row). This keeps the momentum going without you needing to monitor the account 24/7; 
2. Pause ad sets or stop budget increases if performance dips, like if your cost per purchase rises too much or ROAS drops. This prevents you from spending too much on a campaign that’s slowing down; 
3. Duplicate top-performing ad sets to test them in new campaigns or with fresh audiences. This lets you scale proven winners without risking the results of your original campaign.

These rules are especially helpful when you’re using Advantage Campaign Budget — automation gives you guardrails so the algorithm doesn’t take your budget in the wrong direction. Also, with automated rules, it’s easy to set budget caps. They let you only spend a specific amount of money when you’re scaling — you get an additional layer of control, especially when performance starts to shift. 

Note: keep an eye on how rules affect performance and be ready to change or turn them off when they’re no longer needed. 

4. Refresh your creatives as you scale

More budget means more attention to your ads, but you don’t want to run into high ad fatigue. That’s why you should rotate fresh, high-quality ad creatives regularly. 

Try regularly testing new:

• Hooks and headlines,
• Product visuals or videos,
• Offers (free shipping, bundles, urgency, etc.),
• Ad formats (Reels,  Stories, carousels, videos, etc.).

So don’t just scale your budget or keep duplicating ad sets — scale your creative strategy too. Watch your ad frequency: if it hits 2.0 or higher and performance dips, it’s time for something new. Try updating creatives every 1-2 weeks, depending on spend and audience size.

As a rule of thumb, consistently test 10-15 fresh creatives and rotate your top performers.

Final thoughts

Scaling Facebook ads isn’t just about increasing budgets — it’s a strategy. It’s knowing when to spend more, how to protect your budget, and what creative or targeting move will actually help you grow without wrecking efficiency.

You need structure, clear goals, and automation to handle the small tasks. Tools like ConvertBomb can help you scale faster without constantly micromanaging every ad set or ad, but you also need the patience to test, monitor performance closely, and keep tweaking along the way.

Now that you’ve got the Facebook ad scaling playbook, it’s time to put it into action. With the right mix of strategy, automation, and flexibility, you won’t just spend more — you’ll actually make more, getting higher ROAS and lower CPA in the process.