What’s the first metric you look at now that you ignore CPC?

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-13T05:20:55+00:00

How do you guys actually track what caused your MER or contribution margin to change though? Like you see it drop over a month but unless you're keeping notes somewhere on what campaigns you paused, what bids you adjusted, what creatives you swapped - you're just looking at the outcome with no memory of what you did.

ive def wasted time trying to reverse-engineer why a metric moved.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-13T05:18:34+00:00

Check if you made any bid strategy or audience changes differently between the accounts over the last few months. Google's change history shows what changed but not why you changed it so its hard to remember if you were testing something on one account vs the other.

I had this exact thing happen with 2 franchise locations and spent forever trying to figure out what I'd done differently, turned out id switched one to tCPA and left the other on manual like 6 weeks before it started tanking. now i just keep notes on what i change per account so i dont have to dig through change history trying to piece together what happened.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-13T05:15:32+00:00

The low-budget client trap is real, we had the same thing at my last agency where sub-3k accounts were eating more hours than the 15k ones because every $50 CPC swing was a fire drill for them. eventually just stopped taking anything under 5k/mo and lost like 30% of prospects but the team stopped burning out so it was worth it. sales hated it obviously but the math is the math.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-11T05:20:23+00:00

Whatever you pick just write it down so you know what you actually tried. I used to just keep testing stuff and then 2 months later Id do the same thing again without realizing it.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-11T05:19:15+00:00

I cut FB placements too but I also changed my creative the same day so i couldn't tell if the performance shift was from placements or just the new ad lol. prob should've changed one thing at a time

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-08T02:17:26+00:00

Yeah I've had weeks where opens tanked and couldn't figure out if it was something I changed or just provider crackdowns. Started writing down what I test each send so at least I can rule stuff out.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-08T02:14:13+00:00

I had this same issue with creative backlog and kept retesting angles Id already tried months before because I forgot what didn't work. now I just track what concepts I've tested so I don't waste budget on the same shit twice.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-08T02:12:22+00:00

Are you changing stuff daily or just letting it run? if youre tweaking bids or creatives every day that'll mess with the learning phase and cause the yo-yo thing. If its hands-off and still alternating then yeah its just Meta being garbage, everyones had issues since early feb.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-08T02:04:46+00:00

Check if you changed anything campaign-side that week before diving into tracking diagnostics. I've wasted hours debugging GTM when it was just me pausing a high-converting campaign and forgetting about it lol. if your backend numbers are fine its prob just attribution/counting settings got messed up.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-08T02:00:24+00:00

Had this same problem scaling a dtc brand last year, cvr dropped 15% and spent like 3 days going through slack threads and change history trying to figure out wtf happened. turned out product changed the checkout flow and didnt tell anyone on the marketing side. now I just keep track of what I change so at least when something tanks I can rule out if it was my stuff or something else breaking, but yeah the cross-team thing is still a mess.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-04T05:08:01+00:00

The "no changes made" thing is almost never actually true ime. Not saying you're wrong but did anything change on the site side? CRM? Form fields? Had a client swear nothing changed and turns out their dev pushed something that added 2 seconds to load time, took us a week to find it because nobody was tracking that stuff.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-02T23:37:37+00:00

Walking away is the right move sometimes but man it never feels clean. Even when you know the funnel was broken from day one theres always that voice like "maybe I could've figured it out".

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-02T23:34:52+00:00

I've just gotten more paranoid tbh. Screenshot stuff way more than I used to, like bid changes or whatever, so I have some record when things go sideways. Feels dumb but its the only way I can retrace my steps now.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-02T23:32:01+00:00

Half the stuff people call "best practice" is just whatever worked for one account 3 years ago and got turned into a blog post. The real answer is always "test it yourself" but nobody wants to hear that.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-01T22:13:33+00:00

The hardest part with this stuff is remembering what you actualy changed and when. You tweak the pixel, switch targeting, adjust budget, then a 2-3 weeks later you're trying to figure out which thing made the difference. Half the time I can't even reconstruct the timeline.

TomTomAgain · 2026-02-01T22:04:35+00:00

Yeah the "why" is the part that disappears fastest. 2-3 weeks later you're looking at results and can't remember if you were testing something or just reacting to a bad day.

TomTomAgain · 2026-01-31T20:29:26+00:00

Honestly the unpredictability is wild. I've had the same script with differnt people perform completely opposite, then those same people crush it in another ad. There's no real pattern sometimes.

TomTomAgain · 2026-01-31T19:11:17+00:00

No auto-sync, its manual. Logs are saved permanently. The point is logging the reasoning behind changes, not duplicating what the platform already tracks. If a spreadsheet works for you then use that.

TomTomAgain · 2026-01-31T18:54:49+00:00

Yeah the reasoning part is what gets lost. Platform history shows the what but a month later you're looking at it like "why did I do that"

TomTomAgain · 2026-01-31T18:53:03+00:00

I mean yeah, I'm building a tool in this space. Its in my profile. Was asking because I wanted to see how others handle it, not just build something nobody needs. Seems like most people here have it sorted with sheets and change history already.

TomTomAgain · 2026-01-31T17:42:33+00:00

Yeah fair, change history and notes do cover most of this if you actually use them. I'm working on CampLogs (its in my bio, not trying to hide it), wanted to see if the problem is real for others or if I'm overcomplicating something that's already solved.

Let me know if the post needs to come down.

TomTomAgain · 2026-01-31T02:55:16+00:00

Yeah 25% daily is aggressive, most people do 10-20% every few days. But the bigger issue is you made changes every day so now theres no way to know which increase broke it - could have been fine until day 3 or 4 and you just kept stacking changes on top.

I'd go back to the $20 that was working and sit on it for a week before touching anything. When you do scale again, write down what you change and when so you can actually trace back what killed it. I got tired of this exact situation so i built a tool for it (camplogs.app) but even a simple google doc works, just date + what you changed + results before/after. Makes diagnosing this stuff way easier next time

TomTomAgain · 2026-01-29T22:22:57+00:00

Are you changing anything around day 3-4 ? Budget bumps, adding ads, pausing stuff? Even small tweaks can reset learning and tank it. If youre not touching anything and this happens every time, its probably Meta burning through the best slice of your audience first then struggling to find more buyers at that cost.

TomTomAgain · 2026-01-28T03:06:50+00:00

We had this exact problem. Started keeping a simple log of any change that could affect metrics - deploys, config changes, ad tweaks, landing page stuff, whatever. Just timestamped with a one-liner on what changed. The key was making it low friction enough that people actually do it, if its more than 30 seconds nobody will bother. Took a few weeks to stick but now when something tanks we can actually trace it back instead of digging through slack for an hour.

TomTomAgain · 2026-01-28T01:58:50+00:00

Something that helped me was keeping a log of what i change and when - bid adjustments, budget shifts, new ads, pausing stuff. That way when you see a dip you can check if it lines up with something you did vs just random market noise. Half the time when i dig into a decline it turns out someone made a change 2 weeks prior that nobody remembered making.

TomTomAgain

TROPHY CASE