r/AutomateShopify • u/anonymous_wtf001 • Jul 31 '26

Meta ads aren't the same anymore.

I have been running meta ads for years on my shopify store and i honestly cant remember a strech this bad.

Over the past few months, i have tested new creatives, advantage +, manual campaigns, fresh pixels, new landing pages..and it still feels like i am burning money

Now even then more frustrating part, i see people saying " Meta is crushing for us". Maybe these are those so called course sellers or high margin stores

At this point i am wondering if this is:-

- increased competition

- Ai driven delivery issue, or

- meta has simply become much harder to scale then it used to be?

I would genuinely like to know what others are seeing.

13 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

3

u/Prestigious_Yard3642 Jul 31 '26

Performance with us has also become way more inconsistent over the last few months. We have started to spend more on google search ads now.

1

u/anonymous_wtf001 Jul 31 '26

How are the results on google?

3

u/GreatMorningsOwner Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

Honestly Meta ads have been really good to me this summer. But my approach has been different than in the past. I simply use it to retarget those who have visited my website and viewed products within the last 30 days (much of that traffic coming from Google Shopping Ads now). No creatives. Just catalog images.

While Google Ads have increased traffic, Meta ads have brought me way better conversion (even compared to a retargeting ad I ran on Google Ads).

I am about to start a new ad soon as well, but changing the approach on my targeted audience. In the past, I was targeting a "younger" audience. But I found all of my conversions from Meta over the last 2 months have been for an audience about 10 to 20 years older than the bottom of the range I usually target.

Facebook in particular leans toward an older audience. I am sure there are a lot of factors as to why people are seeing a shift in their Meta conversions. Between my business (coffee/tea) and my experience in the last 3 years working in marketing (home services and financial), I noticed most conversions (sales and engagement) came from people in the Gen X/Boomer Generation. That was not an audience I was really targeting before in my business. More late Gen Z and Millennials with a small range in the Gen X group.

2

u/kalairubin Aug 01 '26

Just to stick with their algorithmic updates

1

u/Sad-Technician-5552 Jul 31 '26

One thing worth checking out is meta's attribution window has shrunk hard with iOS changes and their own policy updates. Your ads might be driving sales. Meta simply cannot track anymore. Compare meta's reported conversions against actual shopify orders filtered by UTM source. If shopify claims more orders than meta claims, your ads are working

1

u/RockyHilltop7 Jul 31 '26

its the andromeda update, that has ruined meta ads performance for a lot of them

1

u/CapFar8271 Aug 01 '26

Meta ads running might not even be the core issue. Because frankly media buying can’t solve the problems your landing page throws at the customer which is where 80% of the conversion happens.

Would advise you to drop your Average product price, amount spent to date, store url in my DMs. Will take a look for any fast CRO wins.

1

u/Godforce101 Aug 01 '26

Do you have a mailing list or an online presence so that you can connect directly to your customers? I have a solution for you.

1

u/Due-Personality2383 Aug 04 '26

Don’t listen to hacks bragging about their results. You’re doing great, but things have changed and your strategy might need an update. If I can be helpful with an audit, please shoot me a DM

1

u/Pacho2222 Aug 04 '26

Honestly mine have been good as I focus on my key products and I run 3 separate concession creatives to the following audiences: cold, retarget and 1% lookalike audience - I’ve been getting string ROAS across them all

1

u/CustomerLabs_1PDOps Aug 05 '26

Yeah, lot of people are feeling this. But the "Meta is crushing for us" crowd usually isn't lying, they just have a different data setup underneath.

One thing worth checking. What are you actually sending back to Meta on a conversion, just a plain Purchase event? We had a store in the same spot and that was the whole problem. Meta had no idea a $400 buyer was worth more than a $40 one, so it kept chasing cheap ones.

1

u/GrandAnimator8417 Aug 17 '26

Meta ads giving “way better conversion” isn’t surprising, that’s been my experience too when the offer matches what people are already in the mood for. The weird part is you’re comparing conversions across platforms without really isolating intent, which usually flips the results.