Live Edit Mode: best practice

Live Edit Mode lets you change a campaign that's already running, straight from your project's Campaigns tab, without going into each platform's own ads manager. This guide covers how to make changes that help your campaigns rather than set them back.

What you can change

• Budgets for each platform.
• Budget between platforms, for campaigns created from the same brief.
• End dates.
• Pause and resume a whole platform, an ad set or ad group, or an individual ad.
• Replace ads with new versions.
• Add new ad sets and ads, on platforms that allow it.
• Move a campaign to a different project.

Snifferdog warns you before you publish if a change is likely to reset a campaign's learning, or isn't possible because of a platform's own rules, such as a minimum daily spend.

The golden rule: give it time to learn

Every platform spends the first part of a campaign learning who responds to your ads. Big changes can send a campaign back to the start of that process, which usually means higher costs for a while. See The learning phase explained.

1. Wait about a week before your first change. Unless something is clearly wrong, such as a typo or the wrong landing page, let a new campaign settle first.
2. Judge on a full week, not a day. Results swing from day to day. A week smooths out quiet days and weekends.
3. Check your figures are current. Analytics shows results up to the end of yesterday. See How syncing works.
4. Take the warnings seriously. If Snifferdog says a change is likely to reset learning, think about whether it can wait, or whether a smaller change would do.

Changing budgets

• Go gradually. Small, steady increases keep a campaign stable. A common rule of thumb is no more than about 20% at a time. TikTok publishes its own limits: up to 40% per change while a campaign is learning and 30% once it has finished.
• Space changes out. Leave at least two days between budget changes, so you can see the effect of one before making the next.
• Cutting is safer than raising. Reducing a budget rarely causes problems. Large increases are what tend to push campaigns back into learning.
• Mind the minimums. Some platforms won't accept a daily budget below a set amount. TikTok, for example, needs at least £50 a day. Snifferdog will tell you if a change falls below a platform's minimum. See TikTok minimum spend and your budget.

Moving budget between platforms

Under Budgets by Brief on the Campaigns tab, you can move daily budget from one of a brief's campaigns to another, for example from Meta to Google Ads. Live budgets are read from each platform, so you're always working from what's actually set.

• Only campaigns created from the same brief can share budget. Campaigns that aren't linked to a brief are listed separately and can't take part.
• Moving money changes two campaigns at once, so both may need time to adjust. Move modest amounts and wait to see the effect.
• Before moving budget because one platform looks cheaper, compare like with like. Platforms count conversions differently, so a neutral source such as Google Analytics or your own sales figures is a fairer test.

Moving a campaign to another project

You can move a campaign into a different project, for example to keep all of a client's work in one place. This only changes how it's organised in Snifferdog. Nothing changes on the ad platform, and the campaign keeps running as before.

Changing dates

Extending an end date is the gentlest change you can make, as the campaign simply carries on. Bringing an end date forward means the campaign has less time to spend its budget, so check the daily budget still makes sense. Once a campaign's end date has passed, it can't be changed.

Pausing and resuming

You can pause a whole platform, a single ad set or ad group, or one ad. Pausing and resuming apply straight away: they're confirmed by the platform immediately and don't wait for you to publish.

Pausing is the safest way to stop something that isn't working, but pausing and restarting repeatedly can slow a campaign's learning. Pause the smallest thing that solves the problem: one weak ad rather than its whole ad set.

Changing ads

To change an ad's text, use Replace. This creates a new version of the ad, and the old one keeps running until you pause it.

• Let the new ad get going first. New ads are reviewed by the platform before they show, so keep the old one running until the replacement is approved and delivering, then pause the old one.
• A replacement starts fresh. It won't carry over the old ad's results. If an ad is performing well, think twice before replacing it.

Adding ad sets and ads

On platforms that allow it, you can add new ad sets (ad groups) and ads to a live campaign. Snifferdog will tell you if a platform doesn't allow it.

• New ad sets and ads start learning from scratch, and are reviewed by the platform before they show.
• A new ad set shares the campaign's budget, so the existing ones will get less. Add them one at a time and give each a week before judging it.
• Adding a fresh ad to an existing ad set is a gentle way to fight creative fatigue. See How ad platforms choose which of your ads to show.

What's locked while live

A campaign's objective, conversion action, bid strategy and targeting can't be changed in Live Edit Mode once it's running, because changing them restarts what the platform has learned. You'll see these under Locked while live.

If you need to change one of them, create a new campaign from a brief with the settings you want and launch it. Once the new campaign is delivering, pause the old one.

Good habits

• One change at a time. If you change budget and ads together, you won't know which one made the difference.
• Batch your edits. Make all the changes you need, check them, then publish them together, rather than lots of small changes in quick succession. See Why we limit how many requests you can make.
• Make changes in one place. If you also edit the same campaign in a platform's own ads manager, the two sets of changes can overwrite each other.
• Check the change history. Every live change is listed on the campaign, newest first, with whether the platform confirmed or refused it.
• Pause rather than panic. If something looks badly wrong, pausing is quick and easy to undo. See Pausing or changing a live campaign.