What is dayparting and how to set up dayparting?

Almost every advertiser notices their ads do better on some days during certain times. The obvious question is whether advertisers should only run ads during those times. This is the essence of dayparting.

What is dayparting?

Dayparting is an advertising strategy where you schedule your ads to only run on certain days of the week and certain times of the day when you get the most conversions. Dayparting can help reduce wasted ad spend during times when you get little or no conversions.

The term “dayparting” is a shortened form of “parting the day,” which means dividing or separating the day into chunks.

An example of dayparting is where you would only run ads on weekdays between 4pm to 9pm and Saturdays 10am to 3pm because you notice that’s when most of your conversions occur. So why spend money on ads during times when you’re not likely to get conversions? That’s the allure of the dayparting strategy.

Should I set up dayparting?

As with any strategy, you should test it. The most common pitfall with the dayparting strategy is shortsightedness. While on the surface it may seem like times with low conversions are just wasting your budget, they could serve as valuable impressions for conversions later.

Despite this, the short answer is yes, you should set up dayparting and test it. To determine if dayparting is a worthwhile strategy you should keep moving forward, make sure to not only measure your change in ROAS, but also total conversion volume.

How to set up dayparting on Google ads

1. Open the Google ads campaign you want to set up dayparting on.
2. Select “Ad schedule” in the left sidebar.
3. Click “Edit ad schedule” at the bottom of the page.
4. Create your ad schedule then click the blue “Save” button.

Dayparting is a really easy automation to set up on Google ads. In the example screenshot above, I’m about to set up my ad schedule for Monday-Friday from 4pm to 9pm and on Saturdays from 10am to 3pm.

You can customize the schedule for each individual day and even have more than one open window for the same day.

How to set up dayparting on Facebook ads

There’s two ways you can set up dayparting on Facebook ads.

1. How to set up dayparting on Facebook ads in Ads Manager

1. Open the Facebook ad set you want to set up dayparting on.
2. Edit the ad set and go to the “Budget & Schedule” section.
3. Click “Show more options” at the bottom of the section and check the box “Run ads on a schedule.”
4. Create your ad schedule by marking the boxes on the schedule blue.

2. How to set up dayparting on Facebook ads with automated rules

Facebook automated rules are if-this-then-that “formulas” you can make to automate a part of your Facebook ads management. Unfortunately, we can’t use Facebook’s native automated rules tool to set up dayparting automations, however, you can use Revealbot to do dayparting on Facebook ads, even on campaigns set up on daily budgets, not just lifetime budgets.

Here’s an example of what a dayparting schedule looks like in Revealbot. It consists of 1) the automation conditions and 2) the automation schedule:

Based on the schedule, this automation will check the conditions two times per day once at 8am and once at 11pm. At 8am, the time is not greater than 10pm, but time is less than 9am making the second condition true and will therefore start the paused ad set. At 11pm, the time is greater than 10pm making only the first condition true and will therefore pause the ad set.

Not only can this work on campaigns and ad sets with the typical daily budget instead of lifetime budgets, you can also apply this dayparting schedule to ad sets dynamically instead of individually.

You can try Revealbot and this dayparting strategy for free by clicking the link below:

When creating a Revealbot automation, you have the ability to set the scope of what your automation applies to. So we can set it to apply to any existing ad sets, or ad sets created in the future, with “daypart” in the ad set name, like this:

This makes using Revealbot to set up dayparting for Facebook ads much easier than using Revealbot’s native interface, which requires you to use lifetime budgets and set the schedule on every ad set.

Considerations when setting up dayparting

Although it might seem obvious to only run ads during the days and times where you see the most conversions, there can be instances where setting up dayparting can backfire.

• Dayparting on Facebook ads can restrict Facebook’s machine learning algorithm, which could hinder performance
• Times during low conversions might also have low spend and by implementing dayparting, you could be losing valuable impressions and clicks from your target audience without that much of a cost
• Not everyone clicks or converts on the first impression so limiting your ad placements could end up hurting the conversions you're used to seeing during peak times
• Dayparting will most likely increase your CPM and CPC metrics, and possibly your total Facebook ad costs due to only runnings ads during peak times when your competition might also be running ads

In the end, dayparting could be an extremely effective strategy for Google ads and Facebook ads, but make sure you test and measure results to ensure it’s just your costs that are decreasing and not your overall conversions.