This guide will show you how to set up and structure your campaign in Facebook for use with a Single Location Automation flow in WeatherAds. If you don’t yet know which type of automation flow is right for you, read about Single Location vs Multi Location Automation.

A Single Location Automation works with most Facebook campaign objectives, ad formats and placements, including Instagram, messenger and audience network.

Read more about audience weather targeting vs destination weather targeting here

Audience’s Weather

For a Single Location Automation based on the audience’s weather, your ad set should target a single, granular geo (e.g. one county, city, or zip code). Any geo type that is recognized by Facebook is fine. Please note - the larger the region, the less precise your weather targeting will be due to inherent geographical weather variability.

‘Destination’ Weather

For a Single Location Automation based on the weather in a remote location (e.g. a ski resort advertising to feeder markets), there are no restrictions regarding the location targeting settings in Facebook. Broad regions such as countries are fine, as are multiple geos.

Excluded Locations

Excluded locations are compatible with Facebook Single Location Automations.

Single Location Automations are compatible with other audience targeting layers in Facebook (such as age, gender, demographics, interests etc).

In some cases, you may need to create a large number of ad sets to achieve your objectives. For example, If you are planning to use a Single Location Automation for a campaign targeting a large geographical region (e.g. a country or a state), and you wish to automate based on the viewer's weather, then you will need to create multiple ad sets, each one targeting one small sub-region (e.g. a city or county). The good news is that there is a quick and easy way to bulk create multiple ad sets using a CSV upload. Learn how to do this here.

Alternatively, if for whatever reason you do not wish to create a large volume of ad sets, you can instead switch to a Multi-Location Automation flow.

All cost/ bid controls and budget types are compatible with a WeatherAds Single Location Automation. The optimal budget settings for your campaign will depend on the structure of your campaign and on the actions you are automating. For example, if you want to adjust your ad set’s daily budget based on weather, you need to ensure a daily budget has been set at the ad set level. Likewise, if you want to adjust cost control, you will need to ensure this is enabled in Facebook.

​Campaign budget optimization:

With campaign budget optimization, you can set a centralized campaign budget (either daily or lifetime) for all of your ad sets in Facebook. Facebook will automatically distribute the budget to the ad sets that perform better / receive more weather activations.

Given that weather is inherently unpredictable (you don’t know where or when your weather events will happen), CBO can be a good strategy for hedging your bets.

In particular, it can be useful for cases where you have a large number of ad sets, each targeting a single geo, and your goal is to ramp up delivery around key weather moments (e.g. turning on ad sets, or adjusting budgets, bids or spend).

How you set up your campaign for launch will depend on which actions you are automating in WeatherAds. The table below shows the optimum combination of settings to launch with in Facebook, for each action.

Single Location Automations are designed to work more synergistically with Facebook’s delivery algorithm. If the weather is a strong driver of demand for your product or service, a Single Location Automation can help boost performance and drive down costs by targeting the most receptive audience segment at any given time.

Note: A new feature which will enable you to retain Facebook learning will be made available soon.

Once your automation is live, WeatherAds updates your ad set up to every 15 minutes based on latest weather data (the frequency can be adjusted in Step 8 ‘Launch Settings’ of the automation wizard). You can make changes to a live automation (including geo targeting settings), providing they are not linked to your action. That is, if you are increasing daily budget during rainfall, do not manually change your daily budget in Facebook whilst your automation is live. Doing so carries the risk that WeatherAds may overwrite your edits in the next update.

If you need to make major edits or edits relating to your actions in Facebook, please follow these steps:

Please note that WeatherAds and Facebook are two separate platforms, and should be treated as such. Changes made in one will not necessarily be reflected in the other. If your ad set has run its course and you would like to pause or end it, first remove the ad set from your automation (or deactivate the automation), then pause it in Facebook.

Note: WeatherAds can reactivate a paused ad set, if it is part of a live automation.

Similarly, switching off your automation does not deactivate your ad set in Facebook. Make sure to switch both off when your campaign finishes. Please also note that when your automation is switched off in WeatherAds, your campaign settings are not reverted to their original state. The changes made by WeatherAds in the previous update cycle will remain in place. It is the user’s responsibility to ensure their Facebook settings are correct once the automation has been deactivated.

Next: Learn how to create a Single Location Automation for Facebook in WeatherAds