Advertisers Lose Money Because Meta Auction Bids Rise
15 posts across 3 communities in the last 60 days; 87% from r/FacebookAds.
“I have learned not to panic when a Meta campaign suddenly spends without converting. One weak day does not always mean the campaign is broken. Conversion delays, normal demand fluctuations and a small sample can make the dashboard look worse than the actual situation. The…”
“My new scaling campaign is doing extremely well - 62 conversions at $7.67 CPA. My only concern, as I consider scaling, is the fact that I accidentally set the bid strategy to Maximum Value, not Maximum Volume. Should I duplicate, change bid, then increase budget, or should I…”
“I’ve been running Meta ads for a little over a year, so I’m still learning. I’ve never really used cost caps before because my daily spend never reached a point where I felt I needed them. Before this whole shitshow started in mid-August, I was spending around $350/day. Since…”
Facebook advertisers report increased costs and instability in their campaigns, specifically due to the platform's auction system. The cost caps and bid caps features are confusing, and average CPAs are forcing higher bids to compete.
SOURCES (18)
“My new scaling campaign is doing extremely well - 62 conversions at $7.67 CPA. My only concern, as I consider scaling, is the fact that I accidentally set the bid strategy to Maximum Value, not Maximum Volume. Should I duplicate, change bid, then increase budget,…”
“I’ve been running Meta ads for a little over a year, so I’m still learning. I’ve never really used cost caps before because my daily spend never reached a point where I felt I needed them. Before this whole shitshow started in mid-August, I was spending around $350/day. Since then, I’ve gradually scaled back to about $180/day, and I’m barely breaking even. There have been a few good days here and there, followed by a string of bad ones. Just enough to keep giving us hope 😅 With BFCM approaching”
“Has anyone here tested different bid cap values on otherwise identical ad sets? What other " small " technical changes made a drastic difference without touching creative, audience, budget or placements? Thanks. submitted by /u/MrBPT [link] [comments]”
“Since last weekend, this lousy platform has stopped burning through the budget; spend is barely moving. Meanwhile, prices have skyrocketed. Campaigns that had been running for months are completely thrown off track and aren't recovering. Across every niche, the traffic is just garbage. submitted by /u/Crazy_Web511 [link] [comments]”
“I got a bid cap campaign running with a 65 usd bid. Today it has so far spent up to 250 usd with 1 sale, then just now a second one came in. But usually it would slowly spend less and less up to around 100 usd total for the day when it has no sales or 1 sale. If a second or more sales would come in, it would start spending more. But today it went up to 250 without any sign of slowing down. The day still has 5 hours left and it doesn't look like it's slowing down anytime soon. I lowered t”
“I have learned not to panic when a Meta campaign suddenly spends without converting. One weak day does not always mean the campaign is broken. Conversion delays, normal demand fluctuations and a small sample can make the dashboard look worse than the actual situation. The expensive mistake is changing the budget, targeting and creative at the same time, then having no idea which action helped or hurt. I start by checking whether the tracking event still fires correctly. Then I test the landing p”
“Does anyone still use cost caps, bid caps with any success? Asking because meta is a shitshow right now for me and curious to try these options... submitted by /u/Bear-Bacon [link] [comments]”
“I recently had several small budget advertising campaigns become unstable at almost the same time. They had never generated a huge number of conversions, but the cost per lead was usually predictable. Then the CPA started climbing, daily conversions became inconsistent and some campaigns spent most of their budgets without producing a qualified inquiry. My first reaction was to blame the advertising platform. Nothing obvious had changed in the ads, landing pages or budgets, so an algorithm adjus”
“I’ve been running ad sets with Bid Cap since last year, and I’ve noticed that the system doesn't work the way Meta claims it does. Basically, Meta states that every auction has pre-set values per impression, and to show ads to those prospects, you need to place the highest bid at that moment to reach those users. Bid Cap, then, is supposed to act as a control for these bids. This implies that if you have a $10 product and set a $5 bid cap, your ad might never run, since securing $5 auction”
“Here is that chart, where you can see the CPCs for limited by budget versus not limited by budget and how they changed after the August 17th update: submitted by /u/Pr3miere0cean [link] [comments]”
“Hi All I am spending around 350 per day across campaigns Country1: AUS CBO hero winner ( I have 1 adset with 15 angles meta spends only on 1 since day1)-60$ Cbo secondary winners with 3 adsets as each of them are different products -30 Tried to add these into hero winners into the same adset and different adset with its budget but meta doesn’t care Abo with different testing adset each with 1 or 2 ads I have products which gets sales but not consistent like here winner each adset with its own bu”
“So, maybe a silly question but I'm being genuine. For example, say, your campaign did not finish spending it's budget, often I'd complain, but in a way should I be grateful and take it as "You were going to lose money today if it wasn't on, it saved you" ? That's what I mean by asking if it's accurate. Or, it doesn't spend because meta is stupid and there was no magical predictions going on behind the scenes... It's just that I see a lot of complaining a”
“My US CBO campaign has performed well over the last 30 days: Spend: $24,024 Purchases: 743 CPA: $32.33 ROAS: 2.24 CTR: 7.56% Budget is currently $780/day , Purchase optimized, Lowest Cost, no bid cap. Now suddenly the campaign has almost stopped spending even though everything shows ACTIVE and there is plenty of budget remaining. My historically winning ad is also ACTIVE but getting almost zero impressions. Other campaigns in the same ad account are spending normally. I also have a few other US”
“Maybe I'm just a noob but I don't get this. See screenshot below. Competition says low, but the bid ranges are very high, why? Does this mean someone is spending $1,000 for a single click? I set a $65 per day budget and got no impressions after 7 days. How much would I need to set it at to get impressions and clicks? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. https://preview.redd.it/9ux0i4672ykh1.png?width=718&format=png&auto=webp&s=4fa363fda06818623a41acd10a8b2636b4a8478b ”
“i created a campaign for my ₹498 digital product a few days ago using a 1-1-3 cbo campaign, and i got one winning ad with 20 sales. my current numbers: product price: ₹498 cost per purchase: ₹200 daily budget: ₹998 winning ad: 20 sales now i want to scale the campaign, and i'm wondering what would be the best approach. my plan is to create a new cbo campaign using the winning ad image and either: set a cost per result goal of ₹300 create a bid cap campaign with a ₹300 bid cap i'm plannin”
“My campaigns perform very well until around 3 PM, when sales drop to almost zero. On some days, it starts around 1 PM, on others around 3 PM or 4 PM. I even thought it could be the auction becoming more expensive during peak hours, but the CPM remains the same. CPC and the conversion rate on the website drop. The performance decline continues until the end of the day, and the following morning, performance returns to normal until the afternoon comes around again. As I mentioned, the CPM remains”
“A lot of people keep asking what Cost Caps and Bid Caps really are and how they work. I already posted about how to use them. This is about what they actually are — because this is where your money goes. First, understand how Meta works. Your CPA is basically the amount you’re willing to bid to win the auction for people with high purchase intent, against your competitors. If your average CPA is $50, that’s roughly the bid you need on average to win. This also explains a lot of Meta’s instabilit”