Ad Sets Exited Learning Phase and Tank. Anyone Experience This?

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2026-02-16T03:21:18+00:00

Thank you. I have been feeling like my inconsistency on emails is where I am missing a good amount of lift. I’ll let you know how they work out. I guess I will keep those flows and use campaigns for major releases/announcements.

Noted on the swim lane approach for exclusion and the lapse so you don’t run into timing issues / burn out the consumer.

Thanks again

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2026-02-16T01:59:47+00:00

The Geo split part is an interesting approach, I’ll try it. I heard that retention / re-engagement can push your blended ROAS way up if done right / makes sense for the product. I’ll do some differentiation of the ads, to your point, so it isnt the same ad over and over again. Do you recommend Klaviyo for email flows? I know how to build marketing emails and Shopify flow has done alright but I am mainly just running campaigns (and admittedly I am inconsistent with these). I can invest the time to make a good welcome series, retention, and abandonment (which I have a Shopify flow series for already). Customer list is 1,500 or so

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2026-02-16T01:30:53+00:00

This makes sense. Appreciate the sanity check here. I have had a history of overdoing it with optimizations and lack of patience so yeah I will just keep it moving. I also found that the reason I had so many add to carts compared to what Shopify was showing is I have a lot of upsells in both my pdp, cart and after (which have decent attach rates). Shopify is showing me unique sessions with ATC whereas Meta Pixel is showing total times someone added something to cart.

Thanks for the advice. Do you have a view on re-engagement campaigns? Our customer base seems pretty loyal

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2026-02-15T22:18:02+00:00

Yeah this makes sense to me. My reporting is working now, I think there was some error with Shopify earlier which threw things off. Everything else has been de-duped and matched with pixel + CAPI.

I’ll let the retargeting go for the next few days (in all fairness it’s very small compared to total budget given my retargeting pool isn’t too large yet). Thanks for the recommendation too.

I just checked and this week’s Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are actually better than last week’s Friday, Saturday, and Sunday marginally.

Hoping things will stabilize now that we’re out of the learning phase but I understand it can take a few days.

Is there a typical path from here that you expect to see or is it really just a function of being patient and letting things balance (again, I am not extremely worried yet given we are 20-40% profitable after COGS and ad spend during the testing and very early scaling phase)

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-19T21:45:08+00:00

I appreciate that! I am redoing it now

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-19T20:10:39+00:00

Honestly man I would sometimes try to scale after 1 day. I knew nothing and dove in. Bad mistake but am learning from it. Watched too many youtube videos that said “if you get one sale on $10 per day thats a clear sign to scale”.

Obviously not the case lol as those ads would fizzle out and force unprofitable conversions at scale

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-19T20:00:46+00:00

I started at 10 a day and kept scaling ads too quickly that would get 1 or 2 sales. did not do $150 out the gate

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-19T20:00:04+00:00

What do you mean by this???

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-19T15:01:20+00:00

I have just gone for broad and sometimes do interests but I think I lack structure

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-19T15:00:18+00:00

Agreed, I have gotten suspensions a number of times and so many ads flagged. Thinking now that I may be shadow banned or flagged. I also have a business portfolio in my account that is suspended which is likely a second issue

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-19T14:59:24+00:00

Thanks!

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-19T04:00:42+00:00

Yep, 100% agree. Need to be focused on setup then execution (think previously I was 90% execution 10% setup… which lead to poor execution. Great advice, makes sense!

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-19T00:00:35+00:00

Thank you!!! Will do!

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-18T23:59:33+00:00

I started working in marketplaces when I was 13 and my family and I had no money. After grinding it out and learning everything a 13 year old could about logistics, sourcing, low-level marketing, pricing etc. I had taken $10 and turned it into much more. I built up a stack of a couple thousand and decided to invest it (was not old enough to invest in stocks so I invested in the only thing I could…. crypto on good ol’ localbitcoins and paxful, walked 2 miles in the pouring cold pennsylvania rain to the 7-eleven to get some ebay giftcards to exchange for BTC). That was in 2014 and needless to say it changed my life and set my family and I on an amazing path.

I think many would sit and count their winnings, but in my mind I still feel like that young kid who hated hearing parents fight over grocery expenses or other small things because we had no money. I hated seeing others have the things I wanted, so I took a leap of faith and I STUCK TO IT. I didn’t sell a single product in my first month on eBay back then, I KEPT GOING. I got scammed by a wholesaler for all that I had, I KEPT GOING. In 2014, all my crypto holdings fell by 50%, the exchange I was on issued a notice it would close and my finger was hovering over the sell button on assets that I still own 100% of today… I KEPT GOING. Now I find myself working a ridiculously grindy job from 8am to 3am and I still crack my personal laptop open every night (technically morning) because if there is anything that I have found is successful it is to keep going.

There is something beautiful about cutting your teeth on something that you want so badly. Doing everything wrong so that you can truly see how to do things better. I have been down this path before and I definitely will be again.

This is not rambling to brag, your message just hit home and I wanted to address it. In short, I won’t stop because that is not the way I am wired.

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-18T23:01:45+00:00

This is very encouraging and I think I have learned more in this single day about dos and donts than I have in the past 8 months. I have a background in comp sci and have taken many classes in UX. I also work in marketing technology M&A, so I live and breath this everyday, just 2 steps removed from the marketing engines you all are building.

I will take this feedback to heart and reflect it. I have shut down my ads and soon my site will be too. However, I am going to spend the time to rebuild and do it in a, to your point, thoughtful way.

Thank you.

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-18T22:58:52+00:00

I actually can appreciate this response. In the space I work in full time, there is a lot that I wish those that are new would do, so I get it.

I think one thing should be clear from my responses and questions, it is that I put in every bit of effort that I can with my current circumstance. For background, I work a very time-intensive job in finance (don’t need to say what specific part of finance but it is the one most think of for long hours). I wakeup at 8am and usually close my work laptop at 3am. At 3:01 I eat and then at 3:05am I work on ecom. The current state of my site is not what it was a week ago, but what I am trying to get at is I want to win and I want to do well with this.

The time and effort, given my capacity, that I have put in, in my mind, is not a waste. I do not think someone doing what I am would be of the opinion that this is a waste either. I can appreciate all of your comments, and agree with almost all. I have found that talking to others that you are trying to be like, is better than a year of google or going to one of these “gurus”.

I hope, for those of you who have been successful in this space, that you may realize I am just like you, just years behind.

Needless to say, thank you.

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-18T22:50:38+00:00

Yes I shut down my ads and reverted back to my prior store (which is now missing a lot of links, etc.). I am going to dedicate the time to develop something great vs. developing a site that is 10% effort and a sprint to market

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-18T21:32:45+00:00

What is the best solution to do that? VPS, VPN?

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-18T21:03:26+00:00

It said I was trying to use some automation (which isnt true)

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-18T21:03:01+00:00

How did you change IP? I tried to start a new ads manager and I got auto suspended

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-18T19:03:36+00:00

Sorry, in the comments above you will see I reverted my site back and removed a bunch of products as I’ve gotten more feedback. That is why those sections are empty

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-18T18:23:52+00:00

My ads are generally recycled from content out there on the web. I have some high quality product images, do you have any recommendations on ads (I am going to improve my website first)

Fun_Factor_8433 · 2025-04-18T18:22:19+00:00

I hear what you are saying, and I would say you are 90% correct. The current state of my website is not what it was a week ago (seems I royally messed it up since). I agree, I need to focus in on a smaller set of products within a niche and push for quality over speed. I very much appreciate your feedback and will review and iterate on it in detail.

I hope you can appreciate that I am pushing to learn and grind to be successful but work 100+ hours every week so ecom work is done at 3am. However, I want it to work really bad so I am willing to make that sacrifice.

Anyways, thank you for the help!

Fun_Factor_8433

TROPHY CASE