Should you run ads in English or local language

You have a Facebook ad that prints money in the UK, and now the plan is to take it across the channel: Germany, France, the Netherlands, maybe the Nordics. The budget owner asks the obvious question. Do we just run the English winner everywhere, or do we pay to translate all of it first? The honest answer annoys both camps, because it isn't one rule for the whole rollout.

I ran paid acquisition at up to €150k a month across more than one market, and "ship the English version, it's fine" cost me money more than once. So did the opposite, translating into a market that would have clicked English just fine and watching the test budget evaporate across too many ad sets.

Short answer: Translate by default. In almost every market an ad in the local language earns attention an English one doesn't, because people read their own language as "for me" and skim the rest. Run English only where proficiency is high and the landing page is English too. Make the call market by market.

The takeaways

• Local language is the default that wins: most buyers prefer their own language even when they read English fine, so English-only is a choice you should be able to defend.
• The cost of translating is rarely the translation fee. It is the test budget, multiplied: every extra language is another ad set you have to fund to roughly 30 to 50 conversions before its CPA means anything.
• English carries in four cases: high-proficiency markets, audiences who work in English (B2B, tech), short brand-led hooks, and any market where the landing page is English anyway.

Should you translate your ads or run them in English?

Translate, unless you can name a reason not to. The version that wins in most markets is the local language, because people give an ad in their own language a half-second more attention before they decide it isn't for them. An English ad in a non-English feed reads as "general," gets filed as less relevant, and gets skimmed. That tax is invisible in your reporting: you just see a softer CTR and a higher CPM and blame the creative.

That puts the burden of proof on English. The folklore that "everyone speaks English now" is true and beside the point. Reading English and choosing to buy in it are two different things. Survey work on this is consistent: most online buyers prefer to buy in their own language even when they read English without trouble. Comprehension gets you understood. The local language gets you chosen.

When does an English ad carry?

In four situations, and they are worth knowing because they save real money. High-proficiency markets (the Netherlands, the Nordics) where English barely reads as foreign. Audiences who already work in English, like B2B software or developer tools, where a translated ad can read stiffer than the original. Short, brand-led hooks with almost no copy to translate. And any market where the landing page and product are English-only: translating the ad just to drop the click onto an English page buys you an annoyed visitor and a wasted CPC.

This per-country call is exactly what I built English-proficiency scoring for in Adscalr. It rates proficiency by country and advises when English creative is likely to carry versus when local language is required. It stays advisory: the tool makes the case, you make the call. The point is to replace a blanket rule with a market-by-market judgment.

What makes translating a budget decision?

Because every language you add is another full test to fund. Each localized variant is its own ad set, and it needs roughly 30 to 50 conversions before its CPA is trustworthy, the same threshold I walk through in how much to spend testing Facebook ads. Split a fixed test budget across five languages and none of them reaches a verdict. You end up with five blurry reads instead of two clear ones.

That reframes the whole question. The translator's invoice is the cheap part. The expensive part is the test budget, multiplied by your language count, plus a separate fatigue cycle to watch in each market. Five languages is five times the creative to refresh when it wears out. Fund fewer markets properly before you fund more markets thinly.

How do you roll out across markets without starving each test?

Sequence the rollout, don't spray it. Prove the offer and the creative in one or two anchor markets first, ideally one English and one translated, so you know whether the angle or the language is doing the work. Only then translate the proven winner into the next tier. Translating a loser into five languages just buys five copies of the same failure.

When you do expand, give each new market its own budget line and its own pacing. This is the same allocation discipline as deciding which platforms deserve the spend: a fixed budget spread too thin tests nothing. Add a market once the previous tier has earned it, one tier at a time.

Where the language call fits your budget plan

The English-or-translate question is one line in a larger one: which markets, on which platforms, deserve money at all. That is the part of Adscalr I lean on most. It builds 3 to 5 prioritized campaign plans from your real 12-week performance, splits spend across Meta, TikTok and Google from per-platform scores, and layers the English-proficiency advice on top so the language call is grounded in the same data as the budget call. If deciding per market instead of by blanket rule matches how you want to plan spend, the budget-intelligence page shows how those plans get built.