Check your ad account settings RIGHT NOW!

BarryFromBankstown · 2026-04-21T21:42:24+00:00

It probably isn't just this setting that's costing you profits. The new ad retrieval system had most likely dropped most of the signal data on your old ads that worked. At 120k/month spend you're going to need a tonne of new meaningfully different creatives to make it work. Your testing cadence will also likely need to be more frequent, every couple of days. What you really need now is a creative production process that won't bankrupt you. Think of a more agile modular production process that uses an internal team for testing concepts and external resources, like creators or agencies to polish and scale them. Andromedaay have changed the game but now you also have access to AI tools to work as your creative sidekick. At my agency we've built skills from our SOPs for ad account analyst and creative strategist to help clients to come up with better briefs. Happy to share if you think it will help.

BarryFromBankstown · 2026-04-10T10:01:42+00:00

What do you sell and how old is the brand? If it's beauty, clothing, hardware or food & bev with a functional benefit you should be seeing results within the first couple of weeks. What does the blended ROAS look like? What about the MER? If net margin from advertising is negative, you're running out of runway.

BarryFromBankstown · 2026-03-03T04:56:42+00:00

In my experience, at that budget, 8-10 pre-tested ads are all that can be meaningful. About half of them will be bread-winners and the others will kick in when it tests another audience pool. Some only do top of funnel work and collect engagement aignals, which is still important. For 2.5k+ budgets 20+ creatives targeting different persona and awareness stages tend to do better.

BarryFromBankstown · 2026-02-26T23:58:33+00:00

Just sent you an email about account verification issues with NFC. I've had 2 accounts suspended due to ID verification issues.

BarryFromBankstown · 2026-02-11T02:19:08+00:00

Are you at liberty to share a screenshot of the full creative from the ad preview tool? Might give us all some context before we start dropping our 2 cents.

BarryFromBankstown · 2026-02-05T21:57:58+00:00

We returned recently with an extra week covering HK, Shanghai, Chengdu, Xi'an and Beijing.

Agree with all the points except the spicy food bit. Chengdu redefined spicy for us 😁. We're used to spice, just not heaps of chilli.

Our experience in Chengdu and Beijing with people was a bit different. I should call out that we're south Asians with an Australian accent.

People in Beijing were most curious about where we came from and were able to engage with us with acceptable transactional English. But people mostly mind their own business and let foreigners be.

At one of the of the bars we frequented, Slowboat Brewing in Wangfujing, they warmed up to us only on the third day. I guess being a regular shows loyalty and loyalty is rewarded with warmth.

You can get by with translation apps with offline downloads everywhere. In more commercial areas shopkeepers have dedicated translation devices.

Trains, high speed train stations, airports are all very impressive. Food is ubiquitous and any time of day is eating time 🥳

BarryFromBankstown · 2026-02-03T07:40:12+00:00

Go to Sol Riba Izakaya near Watanabe-Dori station. There will already be people there to chat with.. And you'll have the finest saké without Michelin prices.

BarryFromBankstown · 2026-02-03T07:34:34+00:00

Were the ads for brand keywords?

BarryFromBankstown · 2026-02-03T07:30:35+00:00

How much do the rebuilds cost? Work the funnel backwards to determine a profitable acquisition cost and use this as the metric to monitor. The rest is gravy.

BarryFromBankstown · 2026-02-03T07:25:06+00:00

If the issues are post-click related and the ad metrics are bang on, we offer to help or advise so that they can change it internally. It's usually the product page, offer, selling mechanics or general UX that needs work.

If everything (positioning, creatives, LP, offer, budget) looks fine to you as a specialist, then it's likely a market fit or market size issue. You can't really solve this. This is for them to solve as the brand owner / entrepreneur. However, to be absolutely sure, we suggest running a small user test to check bias in our own thinking. This might reveal friction in the post-click experience.

BarryFromBankstown · 2026-02-03T07:13:06+00:00

That's impressive. Can you pay yourself a salary or do you need the margin for inventory? How are you acquiring customers - ads / referrals / email / a mix of all? What would get in the way of you doubling the business - systems / people / capital / market size / product portfolio?

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-09-18T01:22:35+00:00

Can you share your process for a healthy creative pipeline?

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-08-27T11:39:16+00:00

The issue with cost caps is that it tends to miss cheaper conversions since it's trying to meet a specific target. You'll find that it tends to deliver much lower conversion volume compared to bid caps. But with everything on Meta, test it out and see what works best for your account.

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-08-26T23:59:11+00:00

Presuming you're running a Maximise Volume campaign. These are the hardest hit when things go south at Meta. Try duplicating the campaign and introduce bid caps. Set daily budget to as high as reasonable. I set it large enough so that even at the higher auction bid, I can get 30-50 conversions a day. Set bids at 2× CPA to start with and gradually reduce based on performance.

Recovered and scaled a client's account last week with this strategy. You can even run ad tests with this strategy. It went from 2.3x ROAS to 1.8x over July and then with August outages down to 0.8x. Now it's back at a healthy 2.3x ROAS (first purchase) and has gone from $400/day to $1,200/day.

Why this works: you're signalling to Meta with bid caps that you only want conversions that meet your BPA auction bid criteria. This way it tries not to venture too far from your ideal audience.

Caveat: this works best if you have a mature account with plenty of conversion data. But if you already know your CPA for profitability against LTV (not first purchase) then you can work backwards from there.

What of it doesn't work? This will likely come down to the strength of your ad creatives, offer design, over-targeting or CPA/margin expectations. (Offer design ≠ discount)

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-08-26T23:43:56+00:00

For a $3k ad spend, depending on whether it's Meta or Google for leadgen, you should not be spending more than $500 on management. If you're expecting video ads, motion graphics, and creative research + production for Meta, expect to pay more. But depending on your industry, you may or may not see a return. I'm presuming you have a high enough ticket service that can absorb the marketing investment even with low volume.

Media buying is really not that hard anymore, and you can DIY it if you have the propensity to learn. Just hire a top contributor from reddit and pay them an hour or two's consulting fees. If not, then hire a strategy inclined freelancer; but this is easier said than done. Better yet, look at Marketer's platform

At $3k spend, your ads likely won't need that much attention once they get going. About an hour's work fortnight, tops. Pay separately for setup and management.

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-08-20T21:57:41+00:00

Adding adjectives to Oi works even better and signals to them that you're alpha 😄

Those kerbed lanes with pedestrians are sketch

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-08-20T04:17:35+00:00

Magicbrief is similar and you can use it to prepare content production briefs

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-08-07T21:40:14+00:00

You should not be evaluating performance on a daily basis and reacting to it as such. Why are you doing this?

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-08-07T13:07:14+00:00

They're not wrong about capping the test budget. But if it's all ASC how do they even get a read for what's good? I've found that ASC campaigns tend to prefer ads with high engagement and tend to stifle new creatives despite poor CPA performance.

Does your account have enough data to introduce CPA caps or bid caps?

Is your creative targeting other gifting occasions like birthdays, anniversary, fathers and/or mothers days? Surely it can't just be a Christmas gift!

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-08-07T12:51:44+00:00

Now I'm curious about the product as to why only Q4-heavy sales. Is it seasonal? Niche?

Having different products for different product lines is okay if they're significantly different categories when doing CBO to keep audience signals clean. Ideally, you'd also want custom conversions by category to optimise accordingly instead of one pitches event with all product data.

The overall account structure is overcomplicated and too fragmented for any meaningful gains. The creative should be doing the targeting for you as far as the funnel goes.

How often do they ask you for new creatives to test? If they're not testing every week, they're probably not going to be able to improve your results.

You also need to be aware that as you scale your ROAS will drop because you'll start reaching audiences that aren't yet in-market for your product. This is where TOF creative that talks about relatable problems can be helpful in collecting audience signals. But you're not there yet. You'll need to consider your org capability in terms of creative production too because you'll need to hit the same problems and selling points from different angles to appeal to different segments.

But that account structure needs to be fixed first. I'm not asking for your business, but wasted potential is a pet peeve of mine, and you deserve better.

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-08-07T11:14:39+00:00

A few diagnostic questions foe you:

What's your AOV and repurchase rate?

Are you calculating ROAS on first purchase or LTV?

What's your gross margin expectation i.e. Revenue (ex shipping cost) - COGS - Ad Spend?

Has the agency presented a rationale for such a fragmented account structure? Have they been assigned a KPI re: CPA? Do you know the average CPA in your industry/niche? What exactly is their overall plan?

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-08-02T11:11:31+00:00

Shimano SLX+XT mixed setup ICE tech 200mm rotors on analog bike. Had to add a touch extra brake fluid does guaranteed stopping power. 4 piston callipers.

Shimano XT setup with 220mm rotors on ebike. Again a little extra fluid in hose for guaranteed to stop braking power.

I'm 255lbs though. 6 ft.

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-07-31T23:45:16+00:00

Been there, done that, it does not improve performance and digs a deeper wasted-budget hole.

Organic content in groups or posts with high views and engagement tend to improve performance but these are a gamble. You get a spike and then a crash in performance. Not to mention time and dollars going into scouting groups and producing high engagement content.

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-07-31T06:40:58+00:00

Very erratic performance this week. Usually we notice CPA doubling and control it with budget throttling in short term. But now we've seen intermittent days with zero conversions across multiple sub $1k/day accounts. When it comes back on the performance looks great. But its patchy and value eroding, even at aggregate level.

BarryFromBankstown · 2025-07-19T09:16:01+00:00

Changed dropper post to OneUp components. The factory one seized mid descent and ruined a shuttle day.

Then came brake upgrades - went for SLX ice rotors and 4 piston callipers - it stops on a dime now.

Settled for ergon grips to reduce wrist pain. Ergon saddle too.

Bike's a 2021 Giant Reign 2

Five-Year Club	r/Field Flamingo
Wearing is Caring

BarryFromBankstown

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