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Marketing Academy · Field Work●Paid Ads
All projects·From: Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram)
CoreSimulation· 35 minutes

The Learning Phase Test: Surviving the First 9 Days of a New Ad Set

Chewy

Objective: Make the day-by-day reaction calls a Meta Ads manager faces in the first 9 days of a new ad set's learning phase, and see how panic edits, creative starvation, and scaling decisions each play out.

You're running Meta Ads for Chewy's new autoship subscription push, with a $50/day budget on a single ad set targeting pet owners.

Get the ad set through its learning phase without resetting it, fix a creative-starvation problem along the way, and scale responsibly once it exits.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Meta Ads Manager
FreeRun the live ad set and read learning phase status

The learning phase indicator and conversion count are only visible here

The process

Simulation

Day 2, first dashboard check

Day 2 of the campaign

You launched the ad set two days ago. Cost per lead looks alarming compared to the $27.66 industry average cited in the lesson.

Sample output
Ad Set: Autoship Prospecting · Day 2 of learning phase

  Spend   $94.00
  Leads   1
  Cost per lead   $94.00
  Conversions toward learning phase exit   1 of 50 needed
Spend to date:$94.00 of $350 (week budget)
Budget remaining:$256.00

One lead at $94 cost after two days, far above benchmark. Do you pause and rework the ad set now?

Run this for real insteadOptional

The simulation above is a complete project on its own, free, no account or spend required. This is only for learners who want to test the same decisions against a real live account.

Minimum spend:$50/day for at least 9 days
Minimum duration:9 days
Setup steps
  1. Launch one ad set with 3-5 creative variations from day one if possible
  2. Install the Meta Pixel before spending anything
  3. Set a calendar reminder not to open Ads Manager with editing intent before day 7
Check-in schedule: Day 2 (observe only), day 5 (creative check only), day 7-9 (learning phase exit review)

Final deliverable

A written log of the three decisions made across the simulation, each citing the dashboard number that drove it and the exact lesson passage that justified it.

See a reference example
Sample output
Firstcry, autoship prospecting ad set decision log (excerpt)

Day 2: Left the ad set untouched despite a $91 cost per lead; only 1 of 50 needed conversions logged.
Day 5: Added 2 new creative variations alongside the existing single ad rather than replacing it.
Day 9: Increased daily budget by 20% to $48/day after the ad set cleared 54 conversions in 7 days.

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

  • Never pauses or heavily edits the ad set inside the first 7 days
  • Adds creative variations without removing the ad set's only existing ad
  • Scales budget incrementally rather than in a large jump after learning phase exit