Common Meta Ad Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
What does it take to run successful ads on Meta platforms? Well, here's what not to do. If you find this interesting, read up on our Meta Ads service next.
NARROW AUDIENCE TARGETING
Meta's detailed targeting options allow you to specify who your ads are served to based on things like their age, gender, interests, job, or location. This ensures your ads reach the most relevant audience; but be careful you don’t go overboard by narrowing your reach too much.
In the past, Meta targeting was all about ‘stacked’ interests, which meant adding as many demographics and/or behaviours to the list as you wanted. Today, less seems to be more. Overloading your Ad Set with too many targeting criteria can actually limit your results.
DO THIS INSTEAD: Cap the detailed parameters at around four interests, behaviours or job titles in total. This provides enough direction around who you want to reach, while giving Meta a larger pool of people to learn from and the freedom to optimise delivery based on this data.
FAILING TO CONSOLIDATE AUDIENCES
Meta Ad campaigns are structured using Ad Sets. Each Ad Set contains a series of ads that share the same targeting. Overcomplicating the structure of your Ad Sets can give Meta less opportunity to push money towards what’s actually working.
The important thing is that two Ad Sets shouldn’t be targeting the same audiences for the same purpose. This fragments your data and can spread your budget thin for no reason.
OUR TIP: Separate audiences and messaging into different Ad Sets if there’s a strategic reason to, but avoid unnecessary fragmentation. Group similar audiences and ad objectives together, concentrating your budget into fewer Ad Sets rather than splitting it into overlapping ones.
LACK OF CREATIVE DIVERSITY
Meta is all about testing, testing, testing. Failing to experiment with multiple ad variations can limit your ability to learn what resonates with your audience. Without a diverse creative mix, you're putting all your eggs in one basket. You’re also guessing at what will work, since you haven’t done any real experimentation.
BEST PRACTICE: Run a range of ads with different formats, hooks, messaging, CTAs, and ad copy. For most of our clients, this is 8O% video and 2O% static. Of those ads, each one features different product photos, video editing styles, or text overlays. Analyse the data to understand which ads yield the best performance, and then double down on new variations of your winners to swap with the lower performers.
MAKING CHANGES TOO FAST OR TOO FREQUENTLY
Big changes can disrupt delivery while Meta adjusts. This is important when it comes to budgets. If a campaign is performing well and you want to scale it, avoid making one huge budget increase overnight.
The same principle applies to creative. If you have several ads running, avoid switching them all off and replacing them with a completely new batch on the same day. Ideally, you can keep proven performers running while introducing new creative alongside them to swap out a poor performer or fatiguing ad.
Finally, try not to make several major changes at the same time. If you increase the budget, replace the creative and adjust the targeting all on Tuesday, then performance changes on Wednesday, it becomes much harder to understand why. For any successful experiment, you need to isolate the variables.
THE DO’S: Stagger your optimisations. Scale budgets incrementally by 1O-2O% every few days. Rotate creative in phases rather than replacing everything at once, and allow some space between major changes so you can see how each adjustment affects performance.
IGNORING THE IMPORTANCE OF LANDING PAGES
Your lead or sales ad might be generating clicks, but if the landing page experience is poor, it won’t matter how engaging the creative is. A slow, non-mobile-friendly, or irrelevant landing page can drastically reduce ad conversion rates.
DON’T FORGET: Make sure your landing pages are aligned with the message and objective of your ad. The page should load quickly, be visually appealing, and offer a clear path for visitors to take action. Test your landing pages for performance across various devices and browsers; most ad audiences are using mobile devices.
OVERLOOKING AUDIENCE FREQUENCY
Frequency refers to the number of times an individual sees your ad. If your ad frequency is high, it means the same people keep seeing the same ads. This results in ad fatigue, the phenomenon where you see decreased engagement and a higher cost per conversion.
RULE OF THUMB: Keep frequency under three for a top of funnel campaign targeting brand new audiences. For retargeting campaigns it can be a bit higher. If your frequency is getting too high, consider refreshing your creative or adjusting your audience settings to broaden parameters.
Sometimes, a high frequency isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If the reach and conversions keep increasing day to day, it’s ok to keep the ads running as usual. As soon as the reach and conversions start decreasing, it’s time to make some changes.
REACTING TO EVERY DAILY FLUCTUATION
Meta Ads performance naturally moves around from day to day. One slow day doesn’t mean an ad has stopped working, just as one great day doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve found your next winner.
Attribution also means the results you see today aren’t always final. Someone might click an ad today and purchase several days later, with that conversion subsequently attributed back to the ad at a delay. Reporting can therefore continue to update after the initial interaction, particularly when you’re looking at very recent data.
INSIDE SCOOP: We generally assess performance using rolling 7-day snapshots, especially as Meta defaults to a 7-day attribution window. Get into the habit of comparing your latest week against the previous week before looking at monthly averages or daily shifts. Look for sustained changes in metrics to identify the real pattern of results.
NOT KNOWING WHAT TO LOOK FOR
So you’ve set up a campaign — now what? Meta Ads require ongoing monitoring and optimisation, but knowing what that means isn’t always straightforward.
While there’s no single formula that applies to every account, there are key metrics and patterns to consistently look for when assessing performance.
Note that this will depend on your campaign objective. An e-commerce campaign focused on purchases will be assessed differently to a traffic campaign optimised for landing page views, for example.
KEEP TRACK OF:
RETURN ON AD SPEND (ROAS): For e-commerce campaigns, ROAS tells you how much revenue your ads are generating for every dollar spent. A ROAS of 4 is a common benchmark, which means that for every $1 spent on advertising, $4 in purchase value was attributed to your ads. Athough what constitutes a profitable ROAS will ultimately depend on your margins, average order value and other business costs.
COST PER RESULT: How much are you paying for the action your campaign is designed to generate? This could be your cost per purchase, lead, enquiry or another conversion. Rather than looking at this number in isolation, compare it against what that result is actually worth to your business.
CLICK-THROUGH RATE (CTR): CTR gives you an indication of how effectively your ads are getting people to take the next step. If ads aren’t converting, this is the first thing to check — low CTR can point to issues with the creative, while high CTR means a bottleneck may be occurring after the ad is viewed.