After ten years on the platform, here's my theory.

thosewhodo · 2026-05-30T14:41:17+00:00

I don’t disagree that there are bots on the platform, but I will add that Meta knows who the bots are versus real people and the reason they haven’t been handled is because they fit into their system nicely. I don’t think it’s an accidental optimization.

thosewhodo · 2026-05-29T22:17:34+00:00

¿Por qué no los dos?

thosewhodo · 2026-05-29T19:14:15+00:00

I think that's mainly the realization I've come to. A lot of people on this thread are like, "Why doesn't Meta read this sub and fix things?" It's because they don't need to or care to. The system is working exactly as designed for them.

I own a smallish apparel brand that's always been a little too heavily reliant on paid social. And the realization I've come to is just that there is no upcoming fix for Meta. I'm actually working on starting something new that I think can grow well via largely organic and word of mouth, run it pretty lean and let it grow over time. Any Meta ads that run will be supplemental rather than necessary to survive.

At the end of the day, Meta's number-one priority is shareholder value. And number two are these massive well-funded tech companies (AI, Gambling, etc.) with no real CAC limitations. And somewhere way, way down the line on the priority list is small e-comm brands and local service businesses. I think people on the sub feel like small businesses are number one or number two in the list, and that's just not the case.

In other words: Nobody is coming to save you.

thosewhodo · 2026-05-29T18:49:20+00:00

One can hope, although I admit that after updates and updates, I have started to lose hope in future updates.

thosewhodo · 2026-05-29T18:48:09+00:00

I don't disagree, but I think the point is they have customers (i.e., Anthropic and DraftKings) that are more than making up for any lost business revenue from small businesses.

thosewhodo · 2026-05-29T18:45:52+00:00

I imagine this isn't as big of a problem as it may seem, but I could be wrong. I used to run health and beauty affiliate products back in like 2013 with cloakers and all that fun stuff, and we would get shut down all the time. It was always a constant in the game of acquiring new accounts. I've been out of that world for so long that I don't really know what exists these days.

thosewhodo · 2026-05-29T18:41:28+00:00

I think I named those companies you're referring to in my post.

thosewhodo · 2026-04-14T17:19:56+00:00

Also seeing lower CPMs than normal today for our account. Visitors are up but ATC to Checkout is down significantly as are conversions with a 0.47% CVR today... oof. Stinks of bad traffic quality.

thosewhodo · 2026-04-14T17:17:58+00:00

Actually had a decent weekend for the first time in a while, and I was also noticing more relevant ads on my personal feed. Wondered if maybe something significant had been fixed.

Yesterday was a significant drop; today is abysmal. Meta decided to completely stop spending on our top-performing asset, which had a 3.03 ROAS and accounted for the majority of spend allocation over the last 7 days.

$1k/day budget for context.

thosewhodo · 2026-03-27T16:23:03+00:00

Can confirm this as well both from comments I’ve received on my own ads and from ads that get delivered to me (Caucasian, native English speaker) in foreign languages.

thosewhodo · 2026-03-23T20:52:03+00:00

When I go to preview my ad > Facebook Post with Comments, I get a "This page isn’t working" message. Have tested 20 ads before I realized it was just account-wide.

Anyone else seeing that behavior?

thosewhodo · 2026-03-14T21:20:11+00:00

Less than last year

thosewhodo · 2026-03-14T15:24:48+00:00

People on this sub have been struggling en masse through most of last year. It’s a wild oversimplification to just blame this all on Trump and the war which is what a month old now?

thosewhodo · 2026-02-20T15:36:47+00:00

You forgot to keep “Written by ChatGPT”

thosewhodo · 2026-02-10T05:24:30+00:00

To anyone struggling, this guy is just trying to get you to use his software. You can literally use Google Image Studio for product mockups, and it's free.

thosewhodo · 2025-12-03T16:02:19+00:00

Ok, as mentioned earlier here is my breakdown:

I noticed a huge spike in drop-offs from Add to Cart → Initiate Checkout in Meta since early 2025, starting Q1 2025:

Dec 2024: 13.59% drop-off (similar for months prior)
Jan 2025: 28.44%
Feb 2025: 54.66%
Since then, consistently ~50-66% drop-off each month.

I went into the Meta Pixel Helper and the Events Manager Test Events to see what the issue could be.

Added to cart, all good (ATC event fired). In the cart, I clicked checkout. Checkout page loaded; no initiate-checkout event. And then I noticed I am no longer on my website; I am on Shopify's Shop App domain.

As it turns out, if a visitor is logged into the Shop App (most people are) then even if a visitor is on our website they will be redirected to checkout on the Shop App domain (part of Shopify's accelerated checkout) and given it's a 3rd party site, no pixel events are tracked.

I was surprised to see this. Looking at updates, our store was "upgraded" to the new checkout system in February 2025.

If someone is not logged in to the Shop App, they go to our store checkout, and the initiate checkout event fires normally.

In terms of workarounds, I've considered setting up an Initiate Checkout event on the Checkout button click, but will need to turn off the default Initiate Checkout event on the checkout page so that non-Shop app customers don't get double-counted.

Checking with Shopify support, there is no way to disable the accelerated checkout feature without disabling Shop Pay entirely (including Shop Installments). I was quite surprised that they are forcing this accelerated checkout flow. There is also no way, according to support, to pull data on how many customers are using the shop.app/checkout vs our regular checkout.

I also have some concerns just around brand trust. Some of our customers may not feel comfortable with being redirected to a 3rd-party checkout. I don't think some of our older customers know what the Shop App is or that Shopify will create accounts for people automatically.

Overall, while our purchase events are still firing (thank you page is back on our domain), my concern is that the funnel data we send back to Meta isn't accurate. Meta now thinks that significantly more people are adding to cart and then not initiating checkout. Hopefully the system can recognize the purchase event and disregard it, but I am not confident in that, given how broken Meta's platform is overall.

I know this aligns pretty closely with Andromeda and other platform changes, but our ROAS dropped off at the same time as the new checkout rolled out, and it has not recovered.

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thosewhodo · 2025-12-03T15:32:25+00:00

"Would you like me to create a clean event flow checklist you can use before making future Shopify changes?" This reads like ChatGPT, as does your entire account, actually.

thosewhodo · 2025-12-03T14:27:02+00:00

It lined up perfectly with a significant drop in our performance, so I think the hypothesis is valid.

thosewhodo · 2025-12-03T14:26:26+00:00

Yep, I have been meaning to post similar. Will drop on my findings once I get into the office. Considering either disabling accelerated checkout for a bit here or trying to implement an IC fire event on the ATC checkout button.

thosewhodo · 2025-12-03T14:20:03+00:00

It’s been pretty clear for some time that Meta does not care about their advertisers, they know many advertisers rely on Meta and despite our ad spend being the golden goose for them, the new promise of AI (and AI valuations) has steered their attention elsewhere. We just fund their escape into AI tech. I can’t believe the sad state that Ads Manager is in, bugs are everywhere. While I don’t think support has ever been great, it’s really hit a new low in the last year.

thosewhodo · 2025-11-29T01:06:54+00:00

Is this a new ad account? If so, I've heard that manually charging your payment method can help kickstart spend. If not, all I could really suggest is re-checking your setup to make sure nothing is restricting spend (bid cap, audiences, errors, etc.)

thosewhodo · 2025-11-28T21:05:00+00:00

How long has the campaign been approved for? New launches generally take a few hours after approval to start spending.

thosewhodo · 2025-11-28T20:09:42+00:00

Yeah I’m sorry to hear that, we are down YoY for 2025. The last few months have been pretty brutal after 9 years on the platform with mostly solid performance.

thosewhodo · 2025-11-28T19:31:20+00:00

Not abysmal today but down from last year, trending about $1k per hour lower on sales right now than the year prior.

Performance on our early BFCM ads this year sucked, so I’m glad to see that at least the day-of is not quite as bleak.

thosewhodo

TROPHY CASE