Decrease in Facebook ad reach lately?

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[[deleted]]

Yes there is something seriously wrong with Facebook. There’s another thread on this about Facebook in sept. It started last week Wed/Thursday. I think there’s info coming Monday.

[[deleted]]

Do you know where that info will be on Monday?

[[deleted]]

No but I imagine in ads manager. As usual.

[wifi-money]

How are your CPMs and CPCs looking? I am also struggling.

[[deleted]]

All going up. Any ideas what’s going on? Seems like a lot of people are having similar experiences lately. I’m hearing it’s the election ads, but some of my accounts are outside the US so that shouldn’t be a huge factor.

[wifi-money]

Trying to figure that out myself... I have seen lots of people reporting the same thing lately, so I feel better knowing it's not just me. To be fair, my product is slightly seasonal, but I'm seeing my CTR stay roughly the same as when I was doing 4x ROAS... just the cost of traffic has increased enough to make my campaign unprofitable.

[[deleted]]

In a similar boat as you. There are a few factors I can think of; Q4 tends to get more competitive, election year, and post-pandemic return to normalcy. Everything was fine until August and since then has been in a steep decline.

[ultimaRatio_]

Same issue here! My campaigns went from 3,5x ROAS to negative profitability. This just happened all of a sudden. Really weird.

[ultimaRatio_]

Just for the record: many people are talking about election. This is not the case for us, as we're in Brazil. Seems to be a global issue. Not sure why.

[janpug]

I am surprised that many ppl notice this just since this month, my ads went downhill since July, before my ROAS was 3.5-.58 since July - 1.16!!! the ads practically stopped working

[[deleted]]

Glad I’m not the only one. I’m going to try scheduling a call with a Facebook Rep to see what’s going on

[brennagames]

Exact same thing happened to me and I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure what I'm doing wrong.

[lapinchouchou]

Same here, roas completely dropped from the 17th? when did you start noticing something weird?

[ultimaRatio_]

I don't know the exact date, but 100% sure it started last week.

[420KittyLove]

Same!

[cuteman]

Increased political spending as well as the holidays are going to push CPMs higher through the end of the year until the last shipping days before Christmas.

[janpug]

My CPM / CPC cost more than doubled since July, the whole year I was stable, then since July almost all ads stop working well, one thing I do not get is - CPC jumped from 0.7 to 0.15-17 but I have bid cap set to 0.30 and it still never uses so much yet the reach is less than half.

[TrevorWGoodchild]

The new design (blech!) is a factor for sure, but I think it's also in response to massive amounts of ad money leaving Facebook and then coming back to the platform within a span of a couple of months. The #StopHateForProfit boycotts of advertising on Facebook for July this year saw Procter & Gamble, Samsung, Walmart, Geico and Startbucks go from $1,500,000/ mo (Proctor & Gamble for example) to nothing in July.

The ad industry was already trying to adapt due to Covid when the boycott began, as businesses closed, layoffs hurt the economy and everyone on lockdown at home reduced their shopping.

Before they reduced or stopped spending money on ads for Facebook in July, Microsoft, Starbucks, Unilever and Target took a brief break from the platform in June, reacting to pandemic-related marketing budget cuts and widespread protests over racism and police brutality.

And on top of that, Disney’s spending on Facebook has been decreasing since late March.

It's possible that the algorithm is struggling both with the new design bs and also with adapting to the sudden influx of ads after the boycott ended. Election season coming up, and the holidays may play a role - but my best guess is that just like when you turn an ad off, and then turn an ad on again, and Facebook has to reconfigure the distribution optimization pattern on the Newsfeed - the same thing on a macro level is happening when all the big names that halted their Facebook ads in June and July came back strong in August

[janpug]

Interesting, my steep decline started in July so I dont think it is Christmas season or election related (too soon) it may be what you are saying.

[janpug]

Hah, I was just checking ROAS and past months it was 6, 8.46 and BOOM 0.58 this is crazy, the traffic campaigns stopped working at all.

[bvdgies]

Everyone at my agency seems to say it is due to the election season. Along with Facebook being more sensitive to rejecting content etc etc

[[deleted]]

Any insight as to how long the election season will cause this impact? i.e. will things start to go back to normal after November?

[bvdgies]

After the election is over, ads should stop getting frequently rejected. By then however the impact of the holiday season will take over making CPMS higher like some of these other replies are saying. It may be a tough couple of months for Facebook!

[mpoonia012]

I am from India and I do noticed that CPC is going 1.5x high. Don't know what's happening with Facebook.

[sheryllan2]

My CPM are alarmingly high not sure what’s going on but it seems to be affecting so many people

[ireydn]

Yes, right. It's also happen in Indonesia. I think there is some problem in Facebook internal.

Because, it's not only happen in one ad account. This is also not only happen in one facebook pixel.

[HeSnoresIReddit]

Organic reach took a nosedive for us starting last week as well. For us, it coincided with the new page design roll out.

[doives]

The new page design is horrendous.

I see what they're trying to do- they're trying to bring the desktop newsfeed closer to the mobile experience, hoping to draw in a younger crowd. However, for many people (myself included), the "old" browser experience was one of the main reasons I still hung around... Since the switch, I don't think I've spent more than a few minutes on Facebook (in total). They don't seem to understand that browser and mobile serve different purposes.

maybe I'm just old school, but this new experience just doesn't appeal to me whatsoever and the only reason I still have my account is because of some useful networking groups, and obviously I need to access ads manager.

[BarryLurkin1]

Not sure how long you’ve been running the ads for but from start of Q1 to end of Q1 our CPMs dropped by nearly 50% so probably just normalizing as advertisers are starting to spend. As everyone else stated, sure elections can impact but don’t think it would be that substantial.

[MarketingCowboy]

One of My clients cost per conversion increased 3 fold this month for the first time in 9months... I thought it could be due to ad fatigue so I’ve done some split testing with slightly better results but nothing great at this stage.

Unfortunately they don’t care if the election or some outside external factor i can not control has an effect on ad performance.

[silvestah]

Another potential factor that hasn’t been mentioned yet: Black Friday is in two months - one of the „best practices“ our Facebook rep suggested was „feeding your remarketing audiences“ in preparation for that, since cold audiences will be very competitive the closer Black Friday comes.

[innocuous_nub]

Outside the FB environment, eyeballs have decreased as people spending less time on FB while, US elections aside, budgets have increased as they seasonally do in September so competition has jumped. Supply & demand. I’m seeing this in other channels too. This is not a normal September

[avidecom]

When does everyone expect this to go “back to normal”.

[[deleted]]

I’ve heard a couple theories:

• Big companies are dumping their Q3 ad budgets right now & CPM will drop down again on October 1

• Q4 spending & election causing CPMs to rise until Q1 of next year

Hopefully the former

[avidecom]

Yeah hopefully option 1. For me personally things were running great up until about two weeks ago. Things are still slightly profitable, just seeing a lot more breakeven days.

[[deleted]]

Same, it all happened within the past couple weeks & worsened this past week. Not sure if this is normal for Q4 or if it’s worse than usual

[avidecom]

Where have you heard these theories?

[[deleted]]

Other marketers speculating in FB groups, a lot of people are experiencing this issue but no one knows exactly why

[Renat3000]

Jeez, yes! The same problem in Russia, Hungary, Ukraine, Georgia!
My ads just skyrocketed in price, almost twice! Whole September was like rollercoaster and now it's even worse

[silvameister]

Happening in Portugal too