CBO or ABO: how to distribute budget in Meta Ads in the era of Advantage+ and Andromeda

CBO or ABO in Meta Ads: we break down the difference between both approaches, when to use ABO for testing, and when CBO works better for scaling Facebook Ads with Advantage+ and Andromeda.

Дата обновления: 12/10/2019

Publication date: 24/08/2026

Author: Profit Rental

Reading time: 6 min

Introduction

Almost everyone who runs advertising in Meta Ads eventually faces the same question: what should you choose — CBO or ABO?
Some teams gradually move most of their campaigns to CBO and trust Meta’s algorithms with budget distribution. Others still use ABO, especially when they need strict control over tests and want to guarantee spend for every creative or audience.

Over the past few years, Meta has significantly strengthened automation across its advertising system: fewer manual settings, more decisions made by the algorithm. So today, the question is not really “What is better — CBO or ABO?”, but rather “At which stage of media buying does each approach provide more control and better results?”

We broke down the mechanics together with Ivan, Lead of FB at Profit Rental, and collected practical recommendations based on experience launching and scaling campaigns.

What are CBO and ABO in Meta Ads?

The main difference between CBO and ABO is where the advertising budget is set and who decides how it is distributed.

CBO — campaign-level budget
CBO stands for Campaign Budget Optimization. In Meta’s current terminology, this approach is more often called Advantage+ campaign budget.
The principle remains the same: the budget is set at the campaign level, and Meta automatically distributes it between ad sets.
For example, let’s say there are three ad sets inside one campaign. If the budget is set at the campaign level, Meta decides how much money each ad set receives. At the same time, budget distribution is not always based only on the final conversion cost.

Ivan, Lead of FB:
Meta will give more budget to the ad set it considers the strongest. This is not necessarily determined only by the conversion cost. It looks at its own signals: clickability, engagement with the ad, video completion rate, and other indicators.

In other words, with CBO, the media buyer gives Meta more freedom: the system decides where it is more effective to allocate budget at a specific moment.

ABO — ad set-level budget
ABO stands for Ad Set Budget Optimization. It is not a separate branded Meta term, but rather a working name for the approach where the budget is set manually at the level of each ad set.
In Meta’s documentation, this format is described as ad set budget: the budget is set not for the entire campaign, but separately for each ad set.

For example, if you have three ad sets and each one has a $100 budget, you control in advance how much spend each of them will receive.
This is especially important during testing, when the goal is not to immediately find one winning campaign, but to collect data on all elements of the test.

With CBO, Meta can quickly choose one ad set and direct most of the budget there. The others may receive too little spend to draw a meaningful conclusion.

With ABO, control stays with the media buyer. Meta can partially redistribute delivery within the selected settings, but the level of control is still much higher than with CBO.

CBO and ABO

Why Meta is moving more and more toward CBO

A few years ago, media buyers could manually manage many audiences, interests, age groups, and separate ad sets. Today, Meta’s logic is gradually changing.

The direction is clear: less manual micromanagement, more automation.
Meta is developing Advantage+, broad targeting, automatic budget distribution, and other tools that allow the algorithm to make more decisions independently. Meta Blueprint has a separate section about automated Meta Advantage+ tools, where Meta describes these solutions as a way to simplify advertisers’ work and reduce the number of manual actions.

Andromeda also fits into this trend — a new generation of Meta’s advertising ML system. In its engineering blog, Meta describes Andromeda as an ads retrieval system that helps process more ad signals, creatives, and delivery options at the stage of selecting ads for users: Meta Andromeda.

Ivan, Lead of FB:
Meta is basically saying: do not configure too much, use CBO, Advantage+, give the system more data and budget — and over time the algorithm will learn how to distribute traffic by itself.

You can argue whether CBO objectively always works better, or whether Meta is simply building its advertising ecosystem around automation. But in practice, large campaigns are increasingly scaled through CBO.

And it makes sense: the more volume, data, and creatives the system receives, the more opportunities the algorithm has to find working combinations on its own.

When it is better to use ABO

Despite Meta’s move toward automation, ABO is not disappearing.
Its main strength is control over the test.

Imagine that a team has prepared five new creatives. If they are immediately launched in CBO, Meta can choose one or two variants within the first hours and direct most of the budget there.

The others will receive only a minimal number of impressions. As a result, the creatives were technically tested, but the team will not have enough data for a proper comparison.

ABO solves this problem. If each element receives its own budget, each one is guaranteed to get spend.

ABO makes sense when you need to:
— test new creatives;
— compare different audiences or segments;
— test different offers or approaches;
— guarantee budget for each variant;
— work with a fixed small budget.

Ivan, Lead of FB:
The point of a test is for every element we are checking to receive spend. With CBO, this may not happen: Meta will determine the winner itself. If we really need to test everything, I would use ABO.

At the same time, there is no universal minimum budget per ad set. The amount you should allocate to a test depends on the team’s total budget, vertical, target action cost, and the economics of a specific funnel.

Do not look for a magic point to end the test
One common mistake is trying to define a universal number of days or events after which a test is considered complete.
It is more useful to define the test budget in advance. If the team is ready to spend a certain amount to check a hypothesis, that amount should become the benchmark.

After that, the team decides what to do next:
— turn off the funnel;
— continue testing;
— move the winners into a separate campaign for scaling.

Also, an ABO campaign does not necessarily have to be physically switched into CBO. In practice, the test campaign is often left as is or turned off, while the winning elements are launched in a new CBO campaign.

When CBO wins

If ABO is convenient for controlled tests, then CBO’s main field is scaling.
When the team already understands which creatives and funnels can bring results, there is less need to manually distribute every dollar between ad sets.
On the contrary, it becomes more useful to give Meta space for optimization.

Ivan, Lead of FB:
If we are talking about scaling a campaign, in general, I recommend CBO. Meta now works better with a simpler structure and a larger number of truly different creatives.

A strong structure can even look like this:
1 campaign → 1 ad set → many ads

For example, instead of ten almost identical ad sets, the team leaves one or several truly different segments and uploads many different creative approaches inside.

If there are several ad sets, there should be a clear difference between them: for example, different audiences, GEOs, or fundamentally different buying scenarios.
Meta then handles the further budget distribution.

CBO is a long-term story
Another important feature of CBO: it should not be evaluated only by the result of the first day.
A campaign can start with poor performance and then gradually optimize.

Ivan, Lead of FB:
CBO is definitely a long-term campaign. During the first few days, it can show really bad results. At the same time, after a month, the result can be better than it was two weeks earlier. So CBO should be evaluated over a longer time frame. If the economics allow it, it is better to look not at one or two separate days, but at the dynamics over a week and beyond.

CBO and ABO: comparison

Main mistakes when working with CBO

Budget is too small
If there are many ads inside the campaign, but the daily budget is not enough, a large part of the creatives simply will not receive enough impressions.
This is not a universal Meta rule or a mandatory standard, but rather a working logic: the more creatives you upload into CBO, the more budget the system needs to deliver them properly.

Too many ad sets
After Meta’s algorithm updates, there is less and less sense in splitting almost identical audiences into dozens of ad sets.
If there is no fundamental difference between ad sets, this fragmentation can only make the campaign more complicated.

Conclusions are made too early
CBO may not show an ideal result immediately.
If you turn off the campaign after one or two bad days, the algorithm simply does not get enough time to optimize.

Not enough new creatives
Today, work with Meta is shifting more and more from manual targeting toward creatives.
Meta separately develops Advantage+ Creative tools and AI solutions for advertising, and in its official blog, Meta explains how AI helps advertisers create creative variations faster and improve campaign performance: How AI is powering marketing success and business growth.
Launching one batch of ads and changing nothing for a month is a weak strategy.

Ivan, Lead of FB:
If we are talking about CBO and Advantage+, I would recommend uploading new creatives consistently. Every week, proportionally to spend. New ads should appear constantly.

At the same time, adding new creatives does not mean that the entire campaign should be rebuilt every day.
On the contrary, it is better not to touch the basic structure too often and to let the algorithm distribute the budget by itself.

Main mistakes when working with ABO

ABO has a different problem: control can easily turn into excessive micromanagement.

Holding the test for too long
If the purpose of ABO is to test a hypothesis, there is no point in endlessly keeping the same budget across all ad sets after the team has already collected the necessary data.
ABO should help make a decision, not turn into a permanent structure simply because it feels familiar.

Not letting the winner scale
At the testing stage, equal budgets make sense.
But after an obvious winner appears, artificially keeping it at the same level as weaker variants may become inefficient.
At this stage, it is more logical to move from control to scaling.

Using ABO out of habit
Some teams still build campaigns using structures that worked several years ago: many ad sets, detailed segmentation, and constant manual budget management.
But Meta’s advertising system has changed significantly.
What used to be standard five years ago is not necessarily the best way to buy traffic today.

ABO for testing, CBO for scaling: recommendations from Profit Rental

If we reduce the whole discussion to a simple working scheme, it looks like this:
ABO → controlled test.
CBO → scaling working funnels.

But this does not mean there is one universal template for every account.
Funnels, budgets, verticals, and teams differ. What works perfectly in one campaign can behave differently in another.

Ivan, Lead of FB:
In general, I recommend CBO when we are talking about scaling. ABO is for tests. And the main thing is not to make decisions about CBO too quickly. It is better to reduce the budget, let the campaign get some spend, and look at the results at least over a week, not one or two days.

The second important part is constant work with creatives.
Meta’s algorithms are taking over more and more of the work that used to be done by a targeting specialist: choosing the audience, distributing the budget, finding users, and optimizing delivery.

After the development of Advantage+ and the emergence of Andromeda, this trend has become even more visible: the system is increasingly focused on automatically finding the best combinations instead of manually controlling every element of the campaign.
That is why the role of the media buyer is gradually shifting.

Their task is no longer to endlessly move settings inside the ad account, but to:
— find working creative approaches;
— regularly give the algorithm new ads;
— correctly define the test budget;
— understand campaign economics;
— decide when to stop a funnel and when to give it more time and budget.

This is becoming one of the key skills when working with Meta Ads today.

CBO or ABO: what should you choose in the end?

There is no point in looking for one mode that will be better in every situation.

If it is important for every element to receive budget and go through a full test, ABO gives more control.
If you already have working creatives and the goal is to increase volume while allowing Meta to distribute the budget itself, it is more logical to look toward CBO.

And the further Meta moves toward Advantage+, Andromeda, and automation, the less sense there is in trying to manually control every element of media buying.
The main thing is not to interfere with the algorithm where it can do the work on its own, and to keep control where it is really needed.

Today, CBO, Advantage+, and Andromeda are moving in the same direction: Meta is gradually shifting more decisions from the media buyer to algorithmic optimization.

This does not mean that manual work disappears completely. The specialist’s role is shifting toward strategy, creatives, economic analysis, and scaling decisions.

CBO and ABO: what to choose

Facebook Ads agency accounts for launching and scaling

The choice between CBO and ABO affects how Meta distributes budget. But campaign structure is only one part of the result.
Stable work also requires the right advertising infrastructure: accounts, top-ups, replacements, and support that can quickly step in if something goes wrong.

At Profit Rental, you can get Facebook Ads agency accounts with a ready-to-use setup for launch:
— Business Manager + Fan Page + social profile + ad accounts;
— accounts with a credit line;
— fast top-ups;
— transfer of funds in case of a block;
— fast account replacement so campaigns do not stand idle;
— support from a team with traffic buying experience;
— help with setup, launch, and technical issues;
— individual terms for teams with large volumes.

As a result, the media buyer can focus on what really affects performance: testing creatives, finding working funnels, and scaling CBO campaigns, while leaving account operations to Profit Rental.

To learn the terms and get a Facebook agency account, message the Profit Rental bot.

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