The best time to run ads on each platform (with UK data)

Ad scheduling (dayparting) is one of the easiest ways to improve ROAS — and one of the most overlooked. If 70% of your conversions happen between 9am and 5pm on weekdays, running ads at 2am on Saturday is wasting money. Here's what the UK data shows.

Google Ads: weekday mornings win

UK search intent peaks Monday–Thursday, 9am–12pm. People search for business solutions in the morning, product research midday, and price comparisons in the evening. Weekend search volume drops 30–50% for B2B. For B2C e-commerce, Sunday evenings (6pm–9pm) see a significant spike in purchase intent.

Meta Ads: evenings and weekends

Meta engagement in the UK peaks 12pm–2pm (lunch break) and 7pm–10pm (evening scrolling). Weekends outperform weekdays for B2C — Saturday and Sunday afternoons are prime time. For B2B, weekday mornings (8am–10am) outperform. Reduce bids by 40–50% between 11pm and 6am across the board.

TikTok: late evening dominates

TikTok's peak UK engagement is 7pm–11pm, with a secondary spike at 12pm–1pm. Weekend evenings are the highest engagement windows. TikTok's algorithm favours fresh content, so launching new ads in the evening when engagement peaks can accelerate the learning phase.

LinkedIn: business hours only

LinkedIn is simple — run ads Tuesday–Thursday, 8am–5pm. Monday mornings are spent catching up on email, Friday afternoons are dead, and weekends are a complete waste. LinkedIn's premium CPCs make dayparting essential — running outside business hours is literally burning budget.

How to implement ad scheduling

In Google Ads: campaign settings → ad schedule → add bid adjustments. In Meta: use lifetime budgets with dayparting (only available for certain campaign types). Start by reducing off-hours bids by 30%, then adjust based on results. Always review your conversion data by hour and day before making changes — assumptions kill budgets.

AdPulse shows conversion performance by day and time across every platform, so you can see your real peak windows — not just industry averages. Start free.