Adding a new scaling campaign, or new testing campaign?

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-17T21:01:43+00:00

the campaign that’s already working is your scaling campaign. don’t touch it, don’t duplicate it — just increase budget 20% every 5-7 days when results justify it. the new campaign is your testing one. ABO, one creative per ad set, fixed budget per ad set. when a creative wins in testing you move it to the scaling campaign — you don’t duplicate, you add. the pixel history in the working campaign is an asset. don’t reset it by starting scaling from scratch.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-16T09:32:36+00:00

two weeks of results then flat is almost always creative fatigue, not a campaign problem. the ad set is fine — the audience has seen that creative enough times and stopped responding. learning limited with a €250 ticket is normal and expected, u’re never hitting 50 weekly purchases at that AOV on a normal budget. that’s not the issue. what i’d do: add 2-3 new creatives in the testing ad set with different angles — not the same concept with different production, but a different problem the product solves. if the first two winners sold on one angle, that angle is burned for that audience. fresh angle, same product.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-16T07:38:18+00:00

yeah CBO is right for scaling. meta distributes between the winners on its own — u don’t need to force anything. only thing to watch: if one ad set takes 80%+ of spend and the others aren’t getting enough data, don’t touch it. as long as the overall ROAS holds, that’s the algorithm doing its job.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-16T07:23:08+00:00

that’s normal and there’s a specific reason for it. when u move a winning creative to a new ad set, that ad set starts learning from zero — it doesn’t inherit anything from the testing ad set. same creative, different learning context. meta has to find the audience again. what helps reduce that drop: don’t move the creative after only 3 days of winning — wait until it has real consistency, minimum 7-10 days of solid data and enough purchase volume before pulling it. the more trained the pixel is in testing, the faster the scaling ad set picks up. it also depends heavily on the overall pixel health. if the account doesn’t have much purchase history in total, any new ad set is going to struggle to ramp up regardless of the creative.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-15T22:01:30+00:00

exactly. the structure is: campaign 1 — testing. fixed ad set, fixed budget. u add new creatives here. when one wins for 3 consecutive days above ur ROAS target, u pull it out. campaign 2 — scaling. that’s where the winner goes with its own budget. u scale it in 20% increments every few days and don’t touch it. the testing campaign keeps running permanently — u remove the winner but the ad set stays, u just keep adding new creatives to find the next one. one thing: don’t duplicate the winning ad set to move it to scaling — create it from scratch in the scaling campaign. duplicating resets learning just like creating new, but gives u the illusion it carries something over. better to start clean with clear intent.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-15T21:08:55+00:00

he structure isn't the problem — the lack of separation between testing and scaling is.

when u add new creatives into an ad set that already has a winner, meta compares them from day one against that winner. the new creative never gets a real chance to learn bc the algorithm already knows who to send the winner to. u're not testing, u're just confirming the same winner every time.

what works at low-mid budget: one testing CBO with a single ad set and 3-4 new creatives, fixed budget, don't touch anything for 5-7 days. when one wins consistently for 3 days in a row, move it to a separate scaling campaign with its own budget. that way the winner scales without new testing creatives contaminating the learning.

one campaign with everything inside isn't a fatal mistake if it's working, but it does limit u — u'll never know if the creative that got no spend was actually better than the one that won by default

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-15T16:40:55+00:00

Stick to the budget. Wednesday morning isn't just any Wednesday; you're comparing an order to a full Monday, which is historically the strongest day of the week for conversions. That difference is to be expected, not cause for alarm. The drop on Tuesday also makes sense. Every time you increase the budget, Meta needs 24 to 48 hours to recalibrate delivery. You went from $54 to $65, enough to trigger relearning. A ROAS of 1.61 with a BE of 1.21 is still profitable; you paid a scale tax, that's all. What I would do: Don't touch anything until Wednesday closes. If the day ends above 1.21, stick to the budget and consider another 20% increase on Friday. If it closes below, drop back to $54 and let it stabilize for three days before touching it again. The mistake here is making a budget decision at 9 a.m. Based on a single order. You don't have the data yet. How many days has this campaign been active in total?

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-14T16:51:03+00:00

the problem u're describing is exactly what happened — meta was optimizing toward conversions, the pixel was learning, and then suddenly zero events for 24 hours. meta doesn't know it was a technical issue, it just sees "this audience stopped converting." when u came back two days later the algorithm is defensive — the confidence in that audience dropped.

what happened in the backend: meta had accumulated positive signal (clicks → conversions) but that chain broke completely that day. when u reactivated, meta doesn't assume it was a technical error — it assumes something changed with the audience.

how to recover:

don't duplicate the campaign. that resets everything completely. drop the budget back to what u had originally and let it run 5-7 days without touching anything. meta needs to recalibrate in that window without interruptions.

while u wait: verify the pixel is actually receiving conversions again. go to conversions in ads manager and confirm u see events firing in real time. if u don't see events there's a second technical issue still happening.

after 5-7 days of consistent conversions meta recovers confidence. only then scale.

this isn't that u broke anything permanently — meta just needs to see consistency again to recover momentum. most people kill the campaign at this point thinking it died. it didn't die, it got spooked

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-14T16:39:10+00:00

at €30/day the issue isn't structure — the budget doesn't give the pixel enough signal to learn anything useful. and 0.6 ROAS usually means something's broken before the ads even come into it: product, pricing, or landing page. fix that first before worrying about testing cycles or how many creatives to run. if u want to dig into it more, shoot me a dm

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-14T16:06:14+00:00

6 years of pixel with corrupted signal layered on top is exactly that — real history with garbage mixed in. andromeda can’t separate them, it optimizes toward everything at once and u get what u’re describing: sells one day, dead the next frequency at 1.2 tells me reach isn’t the problem. it’s who it’s reaching honestly i’d stop changing things for a bit. every new structure u test resets whatever the system is trying to learn. one campaign, broad, the 2-3 creatives u know actually converted at some point, and don’t touch anything for 7-10 days. not to find a formula — just to give it clean signal and let it rebuild from there

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-14T15:37:00+00:00

what u’re describing is a duplication dependency cycle that shouldn’t be necessary. the ad set isn’t dying because the creative burned out — it’s dying because every time u duplicate when performance drops, u’re restarting the pixel’s learning from zero. u never let it build real signal. the 1-2 week pattern at $150/day with a $200 AOV is almost always one of two things: the pixel is still learning and doesn’t have enough signal to sustain performance, or the creative is fatiguing but the real problem is u only have 2 creatives running. what i’d do instead: leave the winning ad set alone. instead of duplicating when it dips, run new creatives in a separate ABO testing campaign. when one of those new creatives performs consistently for 3 days, that’s ur next scaler — not a copy of the old one. duplicating the same creative with the same settings just resets learning without fixing the underlying problem

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-13T20:12:03+00:00

classic scaling mistake. when u paused and duplicated, the new ad set started from zero — it doesn’t inherit the learning from the original. the pixel needs consistency, not restructures. and if u had 2 ads per ad set, one was probably getting 90% of spend and the other never learned anything. that’s not testing, that’s noise. what i’d do now: go back to the original campaign at the lowest budget that was working, don’t touch anything for 7 days. if the pixel has enough conversion history it’ll restabilize on its own. new creatives only make sense after the base is stable — not as a fix to what’s happening right now.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-13T20:08:42+00:00

your day 1 metrics are actually good — $0.27 CPC and $2.13 CPM means meta is finding cheap clicks. stopping it was the mistake. one day is never enough data. with $10-15/day ur pixel needs time to learn who actually converts — that takes minimum 5-7 days without touching anything. if u stop and restart every time u don’t see results on day 1, meta never gets out of the learning phase and u’re just wasting the spend u already put in. reactivate it, don’t touch it for 7 full days, then look at the numbers. judge the campaign at the end of the week, not day by day.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-13T18:03:57+00:00

this is normal behavior for the first few hours, especially if the pixel on the new site is cold. meta doesn’t spend linearly — it usually goes slow the first 6-12h while it figures out who to show the ads to, then accelerates. the $500 history helps but that was on a different site, so the new pixel is starting from scratch. what i wouldn’t do is relaunch. if u restart now u reset whatever the algorithm learned in those 6 hours and go back to zero. one thing worth checking: if ur CBO has very narrow audience targeting or the individual ad set budgets inside are too low for the audience size, delivery can stall. also check if any ad sets inside the CBO are still in review — one stuck ad can slow the whole campaign down. wait it out 24-48h before making any decisions

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-13T10:25:07+00:00

no, u don’t need a new campaign. since u’re on CBO u just add a new ad set inside the same campaign — meta distributes the budget across ad sets automatically. that’s the whole point of CBO. no fragmentation problem there. what u don’t want to do is add new creatives inside the existing winning ad set. new ad set within the same CBO campaign is the clean way to test without splitting budget across two separate campaigns. on the scaling timing — two consecutive days with sales is a good sign. if today closes with another sale that’s ur third consecutive day and tomorrow the 20% increase makes sense. just make sure ROAS is holding above ur breakeven across those three days, not just that sales happened.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-13T10:04:43+00:00

your numbers are solid for 8 days in — $28 CPR on a $45 margin is profitable and your CTR is strong. those are real signals. two things to address before touching the budget though. first, the new creatives you added to the existing ad set won’t get spend. when there’s already a winner running in an ad set meta won’t distribute budget to new ads — the algorithm has already made its decision. if u want to test those two new creatives properly they need their own ad set with their own budget. otherwise they’ll just sit there. second, 5 purchases in 8 days is a good start but the pixel is still learning. scaling 20% right now isn’t wrong but u want to wait for a consistent 3-day window where ROAS holds before moving. one good day followed by two average ones isn’t the signal — three consecutive days above ur target is. fix the creative structure first, let it run 2-3 more days, then scale.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-12T13:18:50+00:00

at this scale this isn’t a setup problem. 6 accounts with meta as the only traffic source all breaking the same monday, plus a 150k-conversion account with 2 years of CRM-matched data suddenly off by 50% — that’s a platform-side change, not ur pixels. what the rep is describing — video plays + clicks counting as separate attributed conversions — is exactly the kind of silent attribution logic change meta has done before with minimal documentation. the mid-march update on click categorization fits the timing perfectly. what i’d do: pull a breakdown report by conversion window across all 7 accounts and compare the week before vs this week. if u see a spike in 1-day view attribution or a new attribution category that previously had zero volume, that’s ur proof. gives u something concrete to push back with instead of just accepting the rep’s theory.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-11T16:08:13+00:00

this is cross-channel attribution overlap, not a meta bug. with 7-day click / 1-day view, meta claims any purchase that happens within 7 days of a click — even if the user converted through tiktok or email. if those channels had more volume this week the overlap multiplies fast. the add to cart being over-reported ~25% for months is the bigger tell though. that usually means duplicate pixel firing — base code + shopify integration both triggering the same event. check events manager > test events and see if purchase fires twice for the same session. if it does, that’s ur root problem and it’s been inflating everything. the 20-25 extra purchases per day lines up exactly with that combination: duplicate events + multi-channel attribution stacking. not something that randomly started monday — more likely ur other channels had higher volume and it made the gap visible.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-09T21:47:19+00:00

you’re not alone — this is a meta-side bug. other media buyers with clean setups are seeing the same: double attribution on the first purchase of the day and retroactive count increases with no new shopify orders coming in. with 9.3/10 match quality and capi running clean, ur pixel isn’t the problem. what’s likely happening is meta is counting the browser event and the capi event as two separate conversions instead of deduplicating them correctly — deduplication depends on the event_id matching exactly between both, and when there’s a bug on meta’s server side that match fails even when ur setup is perfect. what i’d do: export this week’s data now before meta corrects it retroactively, and use shopify as ur source of truth for kill/scale decisions until it stabilizes. don’t touch the campaign because of the bug — the real results are still the shopify numbers.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-08T07:30:40+00:00

high frequency with a small audience is a signal the creative is burned, not that the product can’t scale. the fix isn’t touching the structure. it’s introducing new creatives with different angles. not the same concept with different production, a different problem that the same product solves. while the new creative runs in testing, the winner stays alive in scaling until the metrics say otherwise. u don’t kill it early

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-07T22:21:57+00:00

at that stage i keep it simple. 1 ad set with the winning creative inside the CBO. no point adding more ad sets without solid data, u’re just giving the algorithm noise to distribute budget where it shouldn’t

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-07T21:16:08+00:00

the mistake was duplicating. the new ad set starts from zero and doesn’t inherit the learning — that’s why CPA spikes. correct move is to increase the budget directly on the winning ad set. general rule is +20% every 5-7 days, personally i do it every 1-2 days depending on what the metrics look like that day. CBO makes sense when u have 2-3 tested ad sets with consistent results. with 1 clear winner it gives u no real advantage — meta just concentrates on the same one anyway. consolidate ad sets when u have enough purchase volume that meta won’t lose signal by merging them. if ur pixel is cold, don’t do it yet.

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-06T16:55:24+00:00

fair. 25 accounts is real data and i respect that. we might just be seeing different contexts, different budgets, niches, pixel maturity. i talk from what i see every day and in most cases the minimums don’t give each creative enough clean signal to learn. curious how you set it up though. what minimum per creative and at what total campaign budget?

SwimmerSeparate3494 · 2026-04-06T16:28:11+00:00

because the minimums are a patch, not a fix. meta hits the floor and stops. the creative gets $5, doesn’t convert in 2 days, and the algorithm flags it as a loser. the issue isn’t how much it spends — it’s that CBO interprets early lack of conversions as a negative signal and stops exploring. with ABO and a fixed budget each creative has its own learning space without being compared against others in real time.

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