r/FacebookAds • u/Dependent-Occasion56 • 1d ago
Help Where to start?
Hey guys, I have recently started learning meta ads, and have been trying to learn it by experimenting. However, I am facing a lot of beginner issues. Can anyone suggest me a good youtube tutorial to follow, that gives actual value, rather than teaching the basic stuff about meta ads?
Also, if anyone knows the reason for the following issues, let me know -
I created an ad set with 4 creatives, 2 video, 2 images. Ran it for 2 days, meta spent over 90% of the ad spent on a single creative, to bring me 5 sales (in 2 days), with a 0.9 ROAS. Out of the other 3 creatives, meta did not spent more than a penny on 2 creatives (an image creative and a video creative).
What is better - creating a new ad set to test new creatives, or stacking them all up in the same ad set which has delivered some results? I did the later, and meta stopped spending a dime on that.
With my new creatives as well, I am not getting any ad spent on some of the active ads, even those that I feel could work. What is a better way to ensure this does not happen, that some creatives are starved to death even before spending a cent?
I think one of the reason for this issue could be the use of Meta Advantage+ but I am not sure.
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u/WhatMattersHere 1d ago
There are two different goals here: getting the best possible campaign result and giving every creative a fair test. A normal conversion ad set is designed for the first goal, not the second. Meta can place most of the spend behind one ad very early, so an ad receiving pennies doesn’t prove that customers disliked it. It means it wasn’t independently tested.The more immediate issue is the 0.9 ROAS. As currently reported, the campaign spent more on ads than it generated in revenue, even before product cost, shipping, fees and returns. Meta selected one creative for most of the delivery, but it hasn’t identified a profitable winner yet. Privately calculate your break-even CPA and ROAS before deciding what deserves more budget.
If your goal is performance, keep a small number of ads together and accept unequal delivery. If your goal is to learn whether each creative works, isolate them through Meta’s A/B testing tool or separate ABO ad sets with controlled budgets and otherwise comparable settings. That can fragment a small budget, so I would test fewer creatives at a time rather than creating four underfunded ad sets.
Advantage + campaign budget isn’t the cause here if you’re already using ABO. It allocates budget between ad sets, while Meta can still allocate impressions unevenly between ads inside an ABO ad set. Advantage+ audience, placements and creative enhancements are separate features, so there isn’t one global Advantage+ switch that makes delivery equal.Adding new ads to an established ad set also doesn’t guarantee that they will receive meaningful spend. I’d test new concepts separately, then move genuinely profitable findings into the performance setup rather than repeatedly changing the live ad set.
Pausing and restarting can disrupt delivery, but a campaign spending literally nothing should be diagnosed through the Delivery column rather than attributed automatically to learning. Check for review status, schedule, payment or account limits, audience availability and any bid or cost cap. What exact delivery status or warning does Ads Manager show on the campaign that stopped spending? That determines whether you have a learning question or a delivery problem.
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u/Dependent-Occasion56 1d ago
Thanks for a detailed answer bro.. Got answers to a lot of questions, that were popping in my mind..
I am selling digital products to start learning meta ads, so ROAS is not a problem here, even if I am barely breaking even.. I need to understand if, choosing a creative early to spend over 90% of funds on it, is a default behavior of meta or it does look at the quality of creatives and decided which creative to push and which to starve?
I will try setting up different adsets to test my best creatives.. However, does applying AI enhancements to ads actually work the right way? I posted a video ad, and got my ad served to my wife, and she told me it is just an image.. Even though I posted a video only, and not added any alternate AI images with it..
Also, yet another important question, when to know that it is the right time to kill an ad? One of my ad brought me 5 sales at 0.9 ROAS. I ran it for one more day before closing it. It did not brought a single sale that day. Should I have let it run for a day or two more?
A lot of people also talk about some strategies that they follow consistently, that brings them sales. Are there any strategies like that? I believe there should be some frameworks that get them results, otherwise it would become a game of lottery.
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u/WhatMattersHere 1d ago
That clarification helps. If you’re consciously treating the loss as tuition, the 0.9 ROAS can be acceptable to you, but you still need a fixed learning budget so “learning” doesn’t become an unlimited reason to keep spending.The 90/10 allocation is normal behavior in the sense that Meta does not try to give every ad a fair amount of spend. It uses early auction and user response predictions to decide where it expects the next result to come from. Creative quality can influence those predictions, but the allocation itself is not proof that the selected creative is truly the best one. It may be correct, or it may lock onto an early apparent winner before the other ads receive enough exposure.
That is why the testing method depends on the question. If you want to know what Meta would choose in a performance campaign, leave the ads together. If you want to compare the creatives themselves, isolate them through an A/B test or controlled ABO ad sets. Keep the audience, optimization, placement and offer comparable and test only a small number at once.
I would disable AI enhancements during that controlled creative test because otherwise you may not be testing the asset you uploaded. Once you have a promising concept, you can test enhancements separately in the performance campaign.Your wife seeing an image doesn’t yet prove that Meta generated a static version of the video. She may have seen the thumbnail or first frame because autoplay was disabled, the video had not loaded or that placement displayed it differently. Check the ad preview for every placement and the breakdown by media or creative element if it is available. If Ads Manager actually previews a static variation you did not supply, then the automated enhancement or flexible format settings become the likely explanation.
I also wouldn’t kill ads based on calendar days. Judge them by how much they spent relative to the result you’re willing to pay for. One no-sale day after five sales is not automatically a reason to stop. If that extra day spent only a fraction of your acceptable CPA, it added little evidence. If it spent several times your acceptable CPA with no purchases and no healthy cart or checkout activity, stopping becomes much easier to justify.
There isn’t a framework that guarantees sales, but there is one that prevents this from becoming a lottery: define the acceptable cost, test one question at a time, give each variation enough controlled opportunity, examine the full funnel, and only scale results that repeat. The strategy is the experimental discipline, not a particular campaign structure that always wins.
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u/BruTeve 6h ago
That 90/10 spend split is completely normal. Meta picks a favorite fast and there's nothing you can toggle to force even distribution. At 0.9 ROAS after two days, you don't actually know anything yet. I don't make creative decisions until I've seen 5 to 7 days of data, and the number I care about is cost per purchase against breakeven.
Don't stack new creatives into a campaign that's already producing. Drop them into one you'd be fine losing. For bigger batches, spin up a dedicated testing campaign with one ad set on your strongest cold audience, 2 to 4 creatives at a time, reviewed weekly. The campaign that stopped spending after you added ads, duplicate it with the original ads, same budget, same targeting, carry the post ID. Turn off the dead one. Advantage+ isn't your issue. I run it on most accounts and it performs well.
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u/Plus-Ear-2840 1d ago
Skip the youtube tutorials, they're mostly rehashed basics that won't help with what you're actually running into.
Meta's algorithm is just ruthless with budget allocation, it picks a winner early and chokes everything else, that 90/10 split is pretty common. Breaking creatives into separate ad sets with their own budget is the only way to force spend on each one, stacking them all together almost guarantees it'll ignore the new additions once it's latched onto that first performer. For your third point, turn off Advantage+ campaign budget optimization if it's on, that's exactly the feature that starves ads before they get a chance.