3 Reasons to Stop Pausing Your Paid Social Campaigns on the Weekend

You have likely heard recommendations about the “best times” to run paid social advertising campaigns, but what about the best times to pause them? There is a common belief that marketers should pause an active ad campaign over the weekend, especially on platforms like LinkedIn, as that is users are not as active online compared to during the week. And while starting and pausing largely comes down to a variety of factors, we’re here to tell you that pausing a paid social ad campaign over the weekend, just to start it back up again on Monday, is not always an optimal move to make, even if you’re running B2B campaigns.

If you are a frequent campaign pauser, this article will outline three reasons why it is almost always best to keep your ad campaign running.

Reason #1: Missing out on an active audience

No matter what platform your ad campaign runs on, the audience that you are trying to target will be active on the weekend. For instance, LinkedIn estimates that 51% of B2B decision-makers spend time researching products over the weekend, which helps illustrate just how important it is that there is content available to consume – preferably your content.

By pausing your campaign over the weekend, you can be missing out on an active audience that use the weekend to engage and connect with others on social platforms.

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Reason #2: It’s back to the drawing board

Every time you pause an ad campaign, there’s a possibility it will go back to the learning phase when you restart it. Throughout the week, your campaign collects valuable data that it needs to optimize. However, when you pause it over the weekend, it often wipes that data and resets itself the following week. Even if the campaign does not enter “learning phase” when you resume it, it might take some time to get fully optimized again – time that could be negatively affecting its performance.

For many reasons, this is not an ideal situation, and you want to be able to have an optimized campaign based on the great deal of information it has already gathered. It’s best not to interfere with the process.

Reason #3: You only spend money when needed

If you are concerned that your campaign is costing you money by running at times you think your target audience is inactive – no need to worry. By implementing a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression for your ad campaign, you can rest assured that you only need to spend when someone views or clicks on your ad.

Your campaign will only show to people who are interested (or who you have set as the target audience), so even the night-owls over the weekend can engage with your ads and it can be just as valuable as the engagement throughout the week. Remember though, in order for this to work, your campaign needs the data it “learned” as it ran throughout the week to know who it should show to – pausing it and starting it again will interfere with this process.

All in all, we recommend avoiding multiple stops and starts when advertising on social media platforms. Just keep those ad campaigns running!

paid campaigns social campaigns social media advertising

WRITTEN BY

Alexandra Few

Alexandra is a Content Producer at Reshift Media. Her work in our social team includes creating and designing content for social media, as well as researching and developing blog posts, landing pages, and other forms of web content for several brands. She has completed certifications in digital marketing, professional writing, and digital strategy and communications management, and she has published work on topics that range from franchising and social media to music and wellness.