About the Learning Phase
When a user takes action from an ad, Reddit gets better at predicting the ad’s best-performing audiences, placements, and assets. The learning phase is the initial calibration period where Reddit’s delivery system still has a lot to learn. Once the learning phase is complete, campaigns typically see lower costs and fewer performance fluctuations.
New ad groups take around 20 optimization events to exit the learning phase, but the exact number depends on your advertising history, audience, and ad performance. See which events your objective is optimized for.
For conversions, catalog sales, and app install objectives, the ad group’s status on the dashboard appears as Learning during this phase. If an ad group doesn’t exit this phase after seven days, the status changes to Learning Limited. When this happens, review your setup and follow our best practices to help improve performance.
Campaigns with campaign budget optimization (CBO) enabled learn at the campaign level, so their learning status is shown at the campaign level. CBO is in beta. For more details, contact your Reddit Ads expert.
How edits impact learning
Modifying an active campaign can partially or fully restart the learning phase. Generally, the more an edit affects your audience, bidding, or creatives, the more new learning is required.
These edits may extend or restart learning:
- Bid and budget changes of more than 20%
- Bid strategy updates
- Targeting updates
- Placement changes
- Creative changes
- Pausing ads for seven days or more
Best practices
- Set your budget to achieve at least 20 optimization events. It typically takes around 20 events to exit the learning phase, so larger budgets tend to receive more conversions after the delivery system has calibrated.
- Avoid frequent or early edits. Results may fluctuate during learning as delivery optimizes. Wait until the phase ends before editing, and group changes where possible.
- Use campaign budget optimization. CBO campaigns learn at the campaign level, and non-CBO campaigns learn at the ad group level.
- Reduce restrictive targeting and campaign settings. Campaigns consider a wide range of factors—including some that can’t be manually excluded—to efficiently reduce delivery to audiences unlikely to convert. Broadening targeting and using multiple placements may increase conversions and help campaigns exit the learning phase sooner.
- Consolidate similar campaigns. Combining similar campaigns into a single campaign helps aggregate learnings and optimizations in one place, increasing efficiency and reducing time spent in the learning phase. For campaigns with CBO disabled, consolidate similar ad groups instead to achieve the same benefits.
- Don’t turn off underperforming assets. Reddit automatically reduces delivery of poor performing assets, only showing them when they are expected to outperform other assets for a given impression.
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