How to Schedule Ads on Facebook

Scheduling your Facebook ads gives you precise control over exactly when people see them, a simple power that can dramatically improve your budget and results. It's the difference between showing your ad at 3 AM to random night owls versus perfectly timing it to appear during your ideal customer's lunch break. This guide will walk you through not only how to set up an ad schedule step-by-step but also the strategies behind choosing the right times to maximize your return on ad spend.

Why Bother Scheduling Facebook Ads? More Control, Better Results.

Hitting the "publish" button and letting Meta's algorithm run wild can work sometimes, but it’s often an inefficient use of your budget. By setting a specific schedule, known as "dayparting," you take back control and can tailor your campaigns to your audience's behavior. Here's why that matters.

1. Reach Your Audience When They're Most Engaged

Your ideal customer has a daily routine. They aren’t glued to their phones 24/7. Ad scheduling allows you to concentrate your budget on the peak hours when your audience is most likely to be scrolling, clicking, and converting. For example, if you sell workout apparel, you might get better results by running ads in the early morning before work and in the evening when people are planning their next gym session, rather than spending money during the midday work slump.

2. Optimize and Pace Your Ad Spend

Without a schedule, Facebook might spend a significant portion of your daily budget in the early hours of the morning (typically after midnight) on lower-quality traffic. This can leave you with little to no budget left for prime time. By scheduling your ads, you ensure your money is only spent during the hours you've identified as most valuable, preventing wasteful spending and improving the overall quality of your leads and sales.

3. Align Ads with Time-Sensitive Promotions

Scheduling is essential for campaigns tied to specific events or offers. Imagine you’re running a flash sale that starts Friday at 9 AM and ends Sunday at midnight. You can set your ads to turn on automatically at the exact moment the sale begins and switch them off the second it ends. This creates a sense of urgency and ensures your ad spend is perfectly synced with your promotion, without you needing to manually toggle your campaigns on and off.

4. Manage International Campaigns Efficiently

If your audience is spread across different time zones, ad scheduling is a lifesaver. You can set up your ad set schedule based on your target audience's local time, allowing you to reach people in London during their evening commute and people in New York during theirs, all from a single dashboard. This eliminates the need to stay up late or wake up early to manage campaigns for different regions.

The Key Prerequisite: You Must Use a Lifetime Budget

Before you can access the ad scheduling feature, there's one critical setting you need to enable: a Lifetime Budget. This is the non-negotiable entry ticket to dayparting on Facebook.

Here’s why:

• A Daily Budget tells Facebook to spend a certain amount per day, and its algorithm focuses on getting the best results within that 24-hour window, automatically pacing the spend. You can set a start and end date for the campaign, but not specific hours within a day.
• A Lifetime Budget tells Facebook the total amount you are willing to spend over the entire duration of the campaign. This gives the algorithm more flexibility and unlocks the "Ad Scheduling" feature, which lets you specify the exact days and hours you want your ads to run.

If you get to the ad scheduling step and find the option greyed out, nine times out of ten it's because you've selected a Daily Budget. Just switch it to Lifetime, and you'll be good to go.

How to Schedule Ads on Facebook: A Step-by-Step Guide

Ready to set up your first scheduled ad campaign? The process is straightforward once you know where to look. We'll walk through it inside Facebook Ads Manager.

Step 1: Create Your Campaign

Start by heading into your Facebook Ads Manager and clicking the green "+ Create" button. Select the campaign objective that aligns with your goal, whether it’s Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, or Sales. Give your campaign a clear name and click "Continue."

Step 2: Navigate to the Ad Set Level

The campaign level is for setting your overall objective. The ad level is for your creative. All the magic of budgeting, audience targeting, placements, and - most importantly - scheduling happens at the Ad Set level. After creating your campaign, navigate to the ad set section.

Step 3: Set Your Lifetime Budget

Scroll down to the "Budget & Schedule" section. Here you will find the most important setting for this process:

• Click on the dropdown menu that defaults to "Daily Budget."
• Select "Lifetime Budget" from the options.
• Enter the total amount you want to spend for the entire duration of the campaign.
• Set the "Start Date" and "End Date" for your campaign.

Step 4: Enable the Ad Scheduling Option

Once you’ve set a Lifetime Budget, the Ad Scheduling section will become available. It's often hidden by default.

• Find the "Ad Scheduling" title (it might be grey).
• Click on "Edit" next to it.
• Check the box that says "Run ads on a schedule."

This will reveal a new interactive grid that lets you select your ad delivery times.

Step 5: Choose Your Time Slots

You’ll now see a "Timetable" grid with the days of the week on the left and a 24-hour timeline across the top. Each box represents one hour.

• You can click and drag your mouse across specific boxes to select the hours you want your ads to run.
• Selected boxes will turn blue, indicating that your ads will be active during that time.
• Unselected (white) boxes are times your ads will be paused.
• You can select individual hours or entire days quickly. Click a day's name (e.g., "Monday") to select all 24 hours, or click "Every Day" to schedule for all hours of the week.

Quick Tip: The scheduler operates using the time zone set for your ad account. To avoid confusion, confirm your account's time zone by going to Ads Manager Settings > Ad Account Settings > Time Zone. All your schedules will run based on this setting, not your audience’s local time.

Step 6: Complete and Publish Your Ad

Once your schedule is set, proceed with the rest of the ad set creation process. This includes defining your target audience, choosing your placements (e.g., Facebook Feed, Instagram Stories), and finally, designing your ad creative - your copy, headline, image, or video.

After you’ve finalized everything, click the "Publish" button. Once Facebook approves your ad, it will only run during the hours you selected.

Best Practices for Facebook Ad Scheduling

Simply knowing how to set a schedule is only half the battle. Using it strategically is what drives results. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind.

1. Use Your Insights to Find Peak Hours

Don't just guess your audience's active times. Use data. If you have a business page with an established audience, go to your Meta Business Suite > Insights > Audience. Here, you can find data showing which days and hours your followers are most active online. This is an excellent starting point for your schedule.

2. Let New Campaigns Run 24/7 First

If you’re launching a brand new campaign or targeting a new audience, consider letting it run 24/7 for a few days with a lifetime budget. After you’ve gathered some initial data, go into your Ads Manager reports and use the "Breakdown" menu. Select "By Time" > "Time of Day (Ad Account Time Zone)." This report will show you which hours are driving the lowest cost per result, giving you concrete data to build a smart schedule around.

3. Give the Algorithm Enough Time to Work

While scheduling gives you control, you don't want to be too restrictive. Facebook's algorithm needs time and flexibility to find the best people within your target audience. If you only schedule your ads to run for one or two hours a day, the system may struggle to exit the "Learning Phase," and performance could suffer. Start with broader time blocks (e.g., 8 AM - 10 PM) and narrow them down as you analyze performance data.

4. Test Different Schedules

There is no magic schedule that works for every business. The schedule that works for a B2B SaaS company (likely weekdays) will be very different from the one for a local restaurant (weekends and evenings). The best way to find what works for you is to test. Create two identical ad sets - with the same audience and creative - but set them to run on different schedules. Let them run for a week, then compare the results to see which schedule delivered a better return.

Final Thoughts

Scheduling Facebook ads is a simple yet powerful technique for getting more out of your marketing budget. By moving from a "set it and forget it" approach to a more intentional, time-based strategy, you can align your campaigns with real customer behavior and make every ad dollar work harder.

Controlling your ad schedule is just one piece of the puzzle. The most successful brands coordinate their entire content strategy, ensuring their organic posts and their paid ads work together. As marketers ourselves, that's exactly why we built Postbase. We realized that while Ads Manager gives you deep control over paid campaigns, managing your daily organic content across Instagram, TikTok, and more can feel chaotic. We provide a simple, visual calendar to plan and schedule all your organic content - especially modern formats like Reels and Shorts - so you can get a bird's-eye view of your entire social media presence in one place.