Hi everyone, for context I am a PPC consultant with 5 years experience running e-commerce brands mainly, I understand the Paid Media channel as a whole, I understand how the channel is supposed to work but I've not really run any Paid Social campaigns by myself from scratch.
A friend asked me to help him with his small business selling premium iPhone cases. He is a videographer/editor in his day to day, he produces good quality creatives but he doesn't have many variations yet, which is the downside here.
This is new ads account, running on a low budget, (€15/day).
Campaign 1 (which he paused and set up initially) - Single broad ad set, 4 creatives (2 static + 2 reels) competing in the same ad set. Meta immediately put 94% of budget into one static image and starved the other 3 (2 reels got €0.70 and €0.16 total spend). Got 1 purchase at a high CPA, but got a purchase within 2 days. CTR 1.76%, CPC €0.21. Despite the poor structure, engagement metrics were quite solid for a start. The budget for this was lower than €10/day.
Campaign 2 (current, "restructured" - he set it up after and paused the initial campaign after 4 days) - Started with 3 ad sets (broad, interest, retargeting), mixed reels and statics in each ad set despite naming them separately, advantage+ placements inconsistent across ad sets. Budget set at ad set level - €15/day split between the 3, not equally.
After an audit - I paused 2 ad sets, fixed UTMs, excluded Audience Network, excluded past purchasers. Now running 1 broad ad set, 2 ads (1 static + 1 reel), put back the budget of €15/day into the only running ad set. 0 purchases so far, worse CTR and CPC than campaign 1 despite the "cleaner" structure. This has now been running for 4 days with the new structure.
The main issue I have is that every time the static and reel are in the same ad set, Meta picks the static within hours and the reel gets nothing. The reel's limited data actually looks better (2.3% CTR vs 1.1%) but it's only had €0.85 of spend so statistically useless.
Also - I know it's a very low budget, very short running period of the ads til now, and I am fully aware of the limitations of data, strategy, buget - but I am just trying to understand why the first campaign had better results overall despite the same static being pushed in the first campaign as well. Is my approach ok, should I split it differently, what should I do?
My questions, just for my understanding:
- Should I just split them into separate ad sets (static only / reel only) even at this small budget? Or is that pointless at €15/day total in a small geo?
- Campaign 1 had better engagement metrics despite worse structure - is that just fresh account / no audience fatigue, or am I missing something?
Any experience with small budget accounts in smaller European markets appreciated. Any questions and opinions here, please ask away - I am really trying to learn!