How much should I spend per day on Meta ads for a local newsletter?

Go slower than you want to. My default is $20 to $40 a day, with $50 a day as the ceiling, because slower pacing lets the cost per subscriber settle lower.

What budget do you start a new market with?

• Main campaign: $20 to $25 a day, running the ad I know works.
• Test campaign: $5 to $10 a day for new or random ideas.
• Total: about $25 to $30 a day, which works out to roughly $1,000 a month.

Most publishers in one cohort I worked with spent $25 to $35 a day. For a smaller or rural region I'd start at $20 main plus $5 test and creep up from there.

What happens if you spend more?

"If you spend more than about $50 a day, Facebook is going to start showing your ads all over the place. The more you spend, the worse it gets."

Every local newsletter has a capped audience because of location. Spend too much and Meta saturates it, then starts reaching people who aren't your ideal reader. The difference between $5 and $20 a day shouldn't really matter. Try $100 a day in a local market and you'll run into problems quicker.

My monthly cap per newsletter is about two grand. Realistically, $1,000 to $2,000 a month is what you should spend on Meta. Past that your cost goes so high it doesn't make sense.

Should I spend faster if I have the money?

Probably not. Some of my partners have money and want to go faster. I tell them it's probably better to go a little slower. Faster spend raises the cost per subscriber and tends to buy a worse list.

The trade-off is real: speed to revenue matters if an advertiser is waiting on list size. Name that trade-off out loud before you double the budget.

Can you spend too little?

Yes, in a sneaky way. If you start tiny and it works, you'll want to spend a lot more, and big jumps mess up the system. Start at a budget you'd be happy to hold, then raise it in small steps. I explain the step-up method in how to raise a Meta budget without resetting it.

On the other end, some of my small markets run on a hard $5 a day cap. One small-market brand pulled about 30 subscribers a day on $5, roughly 15 cents each, according to my media buyer.

What growth can a budget like this buy?

In one publisher cohort run by a partner organization, publishers spent about $25 to $35 a day and added roughly 1.5% of their local population in about 10 weeks. One added about 8,000 subscribers in that time. Your market will differ, but it's a sane planning anchor.