u/Bubbly_Setting_4217

Who else had a Saturday and Sunday, reminding them of the old days. Nearly 300 orders per day, healthy revenue, and a 4+ return on ad spend. It was grinding, looking good, then 10pm rolled around, flatlined. It's like our ads turned off at 10pm. Monday all day, 1.8 ROI, still hasn't recovered.

Now, to be fair, we did go over our budget quite a bit Sunday, but I'm good with that, Meta. Spend your butt off if it's getting a return. But that's not why it shut off.

And it hasn't really turned back on again either, it's Tuesday at 4pm.

After two phenomenal ad only days (no emails), we get the polar opposite, at the stroke of "midnight". As if the week officially resets and everything starts over learning again. It's like a light switch, a cliff.

These are impossible scenarios in a platform that is functioning. For 12.5 years we never saw a drop off from Sunday to Monday. Maybe 30 orders or so. But not in ad performance metrics. Not until about 18 months ago, Monday's became a nightmare.

For data sake, we are EST in Cleveland. We spend 3K a day on our ads. We are a 14 year brand, solid product, in demand, and when the algo works, our problem is keeping up with demand. But anymore, it's the algo that's not working.

Why does it reset into Monday? What causes it? Does anyone else see it?

Remember when I posted about trying ABO segmented by product specifics in ad sets? I recall hearing that’s not how to roll.

That ad has been crushing it now for 10 days.

Each ad set spends 200-300 bucks and has exited learning in 12 hours, consistently bringing in orders even through disruptions.

That combined with one bid capped CBO of winners, they are now my best two.

I will say, the CBO only spends on one ad in the group. Once that product is OOS, that campaign is dead. That’s the problem with CBO.

Well, we are back again.

From a 14 year record setting performance day yesterday with our ads. A day that had me wondering "how". Over 300 orders, low CPM, low CPA, bid caps spot on, and high ROAS.

Then midnight hits. A new week starts. And we haven't gotten an order now in 7 hours. Before you "experts" start your "meta has it's ups and downs, nonsense". No, meta doesn't have ups and downs. When the system is working as it should, Meta is consistent, predictable, and a stable revenue stream, daily, for 14 years.

So what happens at Midnight?

It's statistically impossible for us to have record orders and performance then at the stroke of 12:00am it all go away. It's impossible for a brand of our level, at our spend, with our history, to go 7 hours without an order from ads. Heck, it's impossible for us to go ONE HOUR without an order from ads.

The only explanation is some sort of algorithm reset. I don't even think it's an outage anymore. Yes it's an "outage" in the sense our ads aren't performing, but it's deeper.

What would cause a brand to shut off 3-4 days of momentum at midnight to start a new week, every week, like clockwork? It's too consistent to be random.

Let me help you with what it's not. It's not creative, ad fatigue, hooks, angles, CTA, offers, so don't waste your time there.

And of course, suddenly these unrelated ads show up. I'm talking every other post. Before you say "you own an ecom business they aren't unrelated". Yes, they are. The only time I see these is parallel with ad performance tanking. Otherwise it's Boston Whaler, Southshore Marine, Yee Yee Apparel, Patriot Crew, Chevy Silverado, etc.

Our event manager last night said we had no purchase events in the last 30 days so we couldn't set up new ads optimizing for purchase. Impossible, because we average 150 orders a day (used to be 250 a month ago).

Now our deduplication coverage which was 99% for all of Q1, has dropped to 44% for page view and 49% for purchase and event manager is throwing error flags everywhere.

This is catastrophic for a multi million dollar brand who runs well oiled and has for 14 years. These errors and bugs in Meta have absolutely crushed our business to the point where I don't even know how to fix it anymore.

We use Elevar as our CAPI and it's showing that side as the issue.

Elevar says everything looks perfect on their end, which is impossible because Meta is throwing errors everywhere as of midnight last night.

This may be the end.

The marina opened today, finally after a long winter, and all I wanted to do was just go fishing with my dad and get the Whaler ready for summer. Now I have to stress about this garbage with a company like Elevar that only responds through tickets in a different time zone.

Based on what I've read, heard, and spoken with folks about, I think Meta is having issues with the attribution side of things after the 3/17 (ish) rollout. Believe me, I'm not technical, I'm an "eye test" kinda guy. I see things two ways, it either works or it doesn't. There is no gray area when you own a brand like us operators.

Here is what I've noticed. The ads for us that have fallen the hardest are the ones where they had massive engagement. Comments, likes, shares, all of that. We are a brand after all. We have a rich history for 14 years. We are established, we are national. One ad set alone gets 50 conversions a week, much less the multitude of campaigns we run at any given moment.

With that said, it's not possible for a brand at our level to simply "fall". Good product, solid brand, we do it right. That' why we are still here and have outlasted every copy cat that's tried to be us.

My point is, the most "brand" healthy ads seem to be the ones that have dropped from a 4 ROI down to under 1 on any given day now. Why is that?

What I think has happened is that engage through change they made has created a disconnect which in the end, the algorithm struggles to "go find more" simply because it's weighted different now in attribution. Brands that are real brands, seem to be struggling a lot now since mid march.

Our carousel catalog ads, still remain strong. But the engagement in those is low, those are quick impulse buys. Clear action, clear buyer.

Adding a layer to that, the products that have a CLEAR audience, they seem to be doing better now. For example, we sell US made blank tees. Those were on fire until 3/17, then they died completely. Again, impossible.

Shirts that have a distinct audience, they still move, but the ads are smaller and it takes more of them to make up the volume of the evergreen style ad we ran for blanks.

So sorry for the rambling. Here is what I'm going to do.

Build out a campaign with VERY CLEAR ad sets as to who these are intended for.

Campaign - Men's Shirt

Ad Set 1 - (Broad Adv Off). Example shirt - Don't Tread On Me. Give it 2 ads. One video of me walking wearing the shirt with music. Second an image with text. Primary text aligned with who I think the audience is. Give it 150 bucks.

Ad Set 2 - (Broad Adv Off). Example Shirt - Women's 250th Anniversary. Give it two ads, images. one lifestyle, one with text laying flat on a background. Same thing with spend.

Ad Set 3 - You can see where I'm going here.

Instead of giving it one campaign, with one ad set, CBO, and layer in 15 ads. Let each ad set have a very specific job. Within that ad set, it will learn that customer because there is nothing to confuse it with (Don't Tread shirt and Blanks in one campaign).

I say this because the buyer of ad set 1 is very different than the buyer of ad set 2 and so on.

The algo is having trouble pinpointing so we have to do the legwork until it's fixed.

My thoughts on you guys still struggling regardless of set up? If you're running a very niche brand, you're going to struggle. Your ads are so dependent on Meta hitting the right person, when it's off, it's catastrophic for you.

With our brand being more "generic", if our ads are shown to cat people who sew as a hobby, we don't shut down, our ROI just drops. If you are a dog brand, that crushes you.

If you have a way to get more generic, I'd advise it. More products, more variation, more offering.

Sorry for the long one but I really typed this, I'm not AI and refuse to be lazy like that.

It's gotten so bad, the agency guys are even admitting I've been right all along!

After a raging Sunday that brought us back to the old days, the bottom has fallen out Monday at about 11am eastern.

Our new customer rate has fallen like a cliff at 11am and has remained non existent for nearly 8 hours now. This is a new record worst.

At one point this morning, we were actually UP from our solid day yesterday but we all know they weren't going to let us have that one for long.

I haven't seen many irrelevant ads yet, but the impossible new customer rate flat at zero given our brand strength and ad spend, full blown issues at Meta today.

Or is it.

I'm trying to understand why, like clockwork, everything falls apart on Monday. Before the "experts" chime in (lol), no, it's not buying habits, no it's not the economy. Something is wrong with meta that never used to exist pre 2024. Mondays were no different than Fridays back in the glory days, and people don't just overnight decide not to shop on Monday, so what? It's almost like our accounts reset learning every Sunday at midnight.

For a while, Feb / March, our performance was able to withstand the Monday abyss, but something happened on 3/17 that completely changed things. Our account struggles to get new ads over 1.5 ROAS and the only thing performing are old ads that we still have on.

I've noticed spending is super slow today, like an account that spends 3K minimum a day is sitting at 1100 in spend for today at 7pm. I'm sure meta will take it, somehow, by midnight.

Again... Impossible results being made possible by Meta. An 8 figure 14 year national brand with property, buildings, employees... being turned back into a hobby, by Meta....