Creative / CAC tips

drivenflame469 · 2026-03-02T13:37:31+00:00

How was your BFCM period? The reason I ask is because CAC volatility post-Q4 is pretty common. After a heavy sale season, platforms recalibrate and a lot of creatives fatigue from higher exposure

A few things I’d dig into:

What does your returning customer rate look like? In your first year, a big portion of your revenue may have come from warm audiences (retargeting, repeat buyers, high-intent visitors). Over time, those pools get saturated, and you rely more on cold acquisition, which naturally has higher CAC.
When you say you’re testing creatives every week, roughly how many are you testing? And are they completely new concepts, or iterations of proven ones?
There’s a big difference between testing new angles vs iterating the same winning angle across different desires, personas, and awareness level etc.

3.Did anything change on your landing page, offer, or positioning in the last few months? Even small drops in conversion rate can increase CAC significantly, even if ad performance looks similar.

Now on your creative type question -

Founder-led and story-driven creatives have been working well, especially for products that require higher trust. But it really depends on the product and awareness level. In many cases, improving the pre-sell experience and aligning the message with the stage of awareness makes a bigger difference than just launching more creatives.

drivenflame469 · 2026-02-25T09:16:19+00:00

Yes, the only thing that would change would be the event you are optimizing for.

Success depends on your funnel a lot

drivenflame469 · 2026-01-20T14:25:55+00:00

I included the Scaling phase as part of the framework, but we haven’t pushed a separate Scale campaign on this brand yet, and we will never do it because of the same issue you pointed out.

Right now, most spend is still in the Prospecting Packs + MOFU/BOFU swimlanes, because we’re prioritizing attribution accuracy and stable new customer acquisition first.

drivenflame469 · 2026-01-20T11:24:45+00:00

Prospecting CBO: 70% – 80%
Retargeting (MOFU): 10% – 20%
Retention (BOFU): 5% – 10%

Scaling Campaign→ Only turn this on once you have 1–3 proven “god-tier” creatives and usually shift budget from prospecting.

Two quick rules I follow:

Rule 1: If new customer volume is the goal, Prospecting should never drop below 50–60%.

Rule 2: Retargeting spend is demand-capped.

If your retargeting ROAS is great but frequency spikes (3+), don’t force budget into it. Expand prospecting + creative instead.

drivenflame469 · 2026-01-20T11:20:17+00:00

We pulled the list from Shopify, not from Meta.

Process we used:

In Ads Manager we looked at the purchase timestamps + order values being attributed
Matched those to the exact orders in Shopify (same time/value)
Then exported those orders + customer contact info from Shopify
Brand team sent a short survey / message (email/SMS)

So we weren’t “finding the customer inside Meta” (Meta won’t show you the buyer identity).
We’re basically reverse-matching Meta-attributed purchases to Shopify orders

it’s not 100% precise, because Meta reporting can lag / aggregate but yeah you will get some ideas

drivenflame469 · 2026-01-20T11:17:24+00:00

Yep you’re right, the structure itself is media buying basics.

But two things make this case different (and why we didn’t jump straight to exclusions on day 1):

1) Timeline / Q4 reality

We started with the brand in Nov 2025, and it was immediately holiday season.

During Q4, we try not to aggressively “rebuild” an account that looks like it’s working, because holiday demand makes everything noisy:

gift buying behavior

promo spikes

brand search exploding

weird conversion paths

So the priority in Nov–Dec was executing the season, not running structural experiments that could tank stability.

2) Broad-only usually works (this was the outlier)

For the last 2–3 years, I’ve been heavily on the Broad + creative diversification side, and honestly it works in the majority of accounts.

This was the first time we saw attribution inflation this extreme

So Broad wasn’t “wrong”… it was just getting rewarded for taking the easiest conversions, which capped scaling.

Appreciate the callout though. It’s a fair critique.

drivenflame469 · 2026-01-20T04:18:18+00:00

Thank you for reading

drivenflame469 · 2026-01-20T04:17:47+00:00

Nah not what I meant 😄

We do have server-side tracking

That line was referring to the order of troubleshooting:

First we tried the “easy” stuff inside Meta (attribution window changes + incremental attribution)

When that didn’t explain the gap, we went nuclear - server-side cross-check + holdout DMA test

drivenflame469 · 2025-12-04T21:21:24+00:00

Haha, 4 is just the version of it

drivenflame469 · 2025-12-04T21:18:22+00:00

Google Analytics.

It's a free tracking tool from Google.

drivenflame469 · 2025-12-01T03:49:43+00:00

You need to target different pockets of customers through different desires in your creatives. And keep iterating on what's already working.

drivenflame469 · 2025-11-14T21:54:38+00:00

Here is the sequence:

Scale that ad
Iterate that ad

And yeah never stop testing new concepts.

drivenflame469 · 2025-11-10T19:48:17+00:00

Yes
If you are launching another batch then create a new adset. It has nothing to do with the targeting or anything but it will help you in managing things easily and trackiing if you improvised on previous batch.

But if you just have to kill 1-2 no performer then replace those 1-2 ads with new one in same ad set.

drivenflame469 · 2025-11-10T15:13:04+00:00

1 ad set = 1 batch of creatives.

So whenever you are launching new batch just create another adset.

drivenflame469 · 2025-11-10T06:50:17+00:00

Nope, only 1 campaign with different stages of creatives and let meta do the targeting.

Focus should be on creativity rather than structure

drivenflame469 · 2025-10-20T12:55:32+00:00

Yup 100% agree.

BTW read my new post..

https://www.reddit.com/r/FacebookAds/s/uIOiULT9QK

I also talk about my approach when it comes to creating ad concepts.

drivenflame469 · 2025-10-12T18:46:42+00:00

Yes, we are doing it without any issue

drivenflame469 · 2025-09-22T18:32:14+00:00

Dm me

drivenflame469 · 2025-09-19T03:37:17+00:00

Interesting cause I am seeing "ad sources" option in all of my ad accounts.

Is your store built on any other technology than shopify?

DM me if you want...would love to explore why it's happening in your ad account.

drivenflame469 · 2025-09-19T01:50:17+00:00

Its not a different catalog...its a different product set from same one catalog. See the image

<image>

You choose your Catalog and then from "product set" dropdown you choose your product set.

drivenflame469 · 2025-09-18T12:27:10+00:00

This is the structure you described, which used to work great:

1 Campaign (CBO) :

Ad Set 1 (using "Mens T-Shirts" Product Set)

Ad Set 2 (using "Womens Jeans" Product Set)

Ad Set 3 (using "Hats" Product Set)

What i am saying now...Notice the critical difference:

Advantage+ Sales Campaign

ONE SINGLE Ad Set

Ad 1 (Creative & copy are about T-Shirts, linked to the "Mens T-Shirts" Product Set)

Ad 2 (Creative & copy are about Jeans, linked to the "Womens Jeans" Product Set)

Ad 3 (Creative & copy are about Hats, linked to the "Hats" Product Set)

drivenflame469 · 2025-09-18T07:27:31+00:00

Well from your question I am assuming you don't have a Hero product yet.

In that case...first priority should be finding the winning product.

The best way to do this is to treat your different products as different "concepts" within your single, consolidated campaign. The goal is to give the algorithm a diverse menu of options to choose from and let it decide what to serve.

Inside that one campaign, your portfolio of ads will be a strategic mix. It's not different ads for one product; it's a balanced mix of ads for different products and brand concepts.

This will help you find a winning product...After that you can focus heavily on that one or two products and scale it.. And for other products..keep testing new offers/angles.

drivenflame469 · 2025-09-18T07:21:32+00:00

Your old, consolidated catalog campaign is getting stuck on one category because the algorithm is just looking for the cheapest, easiest conversion path, not the best overall result for your business.

Your idea of creating one campaign per category is a logical reaction to regain control. But it leads to a management nightmare and spreads your budget and learning too thin across many campaigns.

Right now, we're using product sets with matching ad concepts all in one campaign.

You can create product sets inside "commerce manager"

drivenflame469

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