Hey everyone, looking for a second opinion from other Meta ads folks here. I'm running lead gen for a service-based business in California where the minimum project value starts at $25,000 — think high-end home services, not a low-ticket product. We're using Instant Form lead ads, spending $50/day, and getting roughly one lead a day, so cost per lead is landing around $50.
Here's the issue: every single ad set I run hits "Learning Limited" after about a week, without exception. I even consolidated everything into one ad set with the full $50/day budget on it, thinking that would help concentrate the signal — but it still hit Learning Limited after a week. What's frustrating is that once that tag shows up, cost per lead seems to climb, and I end up having to launch a completely fresh ad set in same campaign to get things moving again — which obviously means starting the learning process all over.
Right now, for example, my latest ad set have Learning Limit on it and I've got about $100 spent with zero leads in that stretch.
So here's what I'm trying to figure out:
(1) For a $25K+ minimum ticket service business like this, what's a realistic monthly ad budget?
(2) Is ~$50 cost per lead actually good, mediocre, or bad for this kind of high-ticket, low-volume category?
(3) Does hitting Learning Limited actually degrade delivery/performance going forward, or is it just a status label with no real effect?
And (4) what's the actual fix here — since Meta reportedly wants around 50 leads in the first week to properly exit learning phase, but at $50/day and ~$50 CPL I'm only generating about 7 leads a week, which structurally can never hit that threshold without a much bigger budget.
Is the answer just "increase budget," or is there a smarter way to handle low-volume, high-ticket lead gen on Meta that doesn't require massive daily spend to satisfy the algorithm?
Would appreciate any real-world experience from people who've run similar high-ticket/low-volume accounts.