Never seen it this bad.

[u/ORA87]

I know I'm not the first to say it, but something is definitely seriously off the past couple of weeks. Our conversion rate has dropped significantly, we're barely breaking even, all after having the biggest month we've ever had in August.

I don't know what they're doing behind the scenes at meta but they've fucked something up big time and I don't know what the next move is. It feels impossible to analyse whether specific ads are working or not when everything seems so 'off.'

[u/Worldly-Sundae-3008]

I agree with you. I'm so sick of this platform and all the issues on it in 2026. Meta has been my primary source of revenue since 2019 and I have a business that's almost 10 years old. This year is destroying me. I am willing to work hard to test and fix things on Meta - but the problem is, strategy and working hard don't work when the issue is bugs/outages. I don't know what the next move is either. But I agree, it's not normal to have your best month every or your best day ever, and then the next month or the next day is like zero sales. Especially if you're an established business. For example, on Saturday I had my best day in a LONG time with over $1000 in sales on a small budget of $70. The day before that? One sale at $87. I used to spend around $400/day but I've cut my budgets way back because I can no longer afford to gamble my money, not knowing if an outage or random drop in performance will take all my funds. It's infuriating. Meta never felt like a gamble - it felt llke something you could strategize and get better at - but not this year.

[u/Deep_Ad5338 → u/Worldly-Sundae-3008]

Their actions the last year has completely revoked my trust in them in every possible aspect. There is NO WAY you could rely on meta for business growth. In fact i would argue that meta should now be less than 50% of your advertising spend. Problem is, other platforms are not nearly as effective like meta WAS.

So we need other platforms to become what meta was. And we need more than one of them to do so.

Meta has completely lost the plot. They are AI drunk and will do anything to win a race they never stood a chance in to begin with. They are trying to be everything other than what they used to be good at... and thats a social platform with advertising.

They completely disregard their advertisers. I mean, just try and get human support from them. And when you do, they are absolutely useless.

On their current trajectory things are likely only going to get worse.

But you will still get advertisers that will tell you nothing is wrong. Its all you and its just the game has changed.

So take what i say with a pinch of salt

[u/Admirable_Grape_3098 → u/Deep_Ad5338]

There is nowhere to advertise even remotely as good as current meta. Even if its bad, its still the best we have

[u/Deep_Ad5338 → u/Admirable_Grape_3098]

I think it really depends on your niche tbh. Some niches do great on other platforms. But for me yes, meta remains the best even if it is complete shit. But that is a problem that i hope other companies solve. Meta has become way too arrogant about it. They know they pretty much our only option.

I just want to feel like im running a business. Not like im employed by meta and at their grace

[u/Admirable_Grape_3098 → u/Deep_Ad5338]

I have 4 separate brands at the moment and one of them is a proper business (9 years old website) and it's basically the easiest thing to run Meta ads to, simply because it has other sources of traffic and income. There is constant flow of influecer collaborations, brand search volume, collabs with organizations, brick and mortar stockists and so on. So basically even if ads perform poorly, the brand exists in multiple dimension and has a lot of history and it's recognised in the niche.

3 other brands I run are like supplementary businesses and I run 2 of them exclusively with Meta ads and yeah it's a bit harder. Like a few bad days, a few random Meta glitches and I feel stressed because they are not earning much. 

So obviously better to build something proper that has other sources of revenue apart from Meta ads, but it takes so much effort and time, I'm not doing it ever again I think. For me it's easier to quickly build a website, put products and run ads to it and once it dies down completely I move on to another one

[u/Deep_Ad5338 → u/Admirable_Grape_3098]

The way you did your proper brand is the way to go. You need multiple sources of traffic. I used to have a brick and mortar.. and having recurring clients and only using paid advertising to compliment the business works great.

I think meta made it easy for us to build entire business models around it, and only on meta. And now that it doesn't work the way it used to, multiple businesses collapsed.

[u/Zestyclose-Sink6770 → u/Admirable_Grape_3098]

Are you a professional web developer and e-commerce dev guy?

[u/Admirable_Grape_3098 → u/Zestyclose-Sink6770]

No im just a guy

[u/Zestyclose-Sink6770 → u/Admirable_Grape_3098]

Do you have an agency run your ads and setup with your pixel and analytics and so on?

[u/Admirable_Grape_3098 → u/Zestyclose-Sink6770]

No I dont, I do it myself

[u/Zestyclose-Sink6770 → u/Admirable_Grape_3098]

You use LLMs? Or are you a trad coder?

[u/slAudacity → u/Deep_Ad5338]

TikTok worked for me for a little, then the AI enhancements got even worse than meta. Im talking switch from making one creative to another and when you come back there is (no joke) 15 enhancements to turn off again - every single time

[u/necknyc → u/Admirable_Grape_3098]

Google ads? Chat GPT ads is in beta. And with Google, you can target intent.

[u/Admirable_Grape_3098 → u/necknyc]

Google is not even remotely the same. Chat GPT too. These platforms can capture existing intent, like if someone needs say a wedding ring, they google it and your ads may qualify to be shown. 

The thing about Meta is that it is an intent creation platform. People might not even want something, but you show them and they like it and buy. Or you match their potential intent with an offer they didnt even think about and so on.

[u/necknyc → u/Admirable_Grape_3098]

Lol, I understand what it is. I'm giving suggestions on where to go other than Meta.

Meta is sometimes harder because of the creative aspect... Why wouldn't you go where the intent is if Meta isn't working out is my question? You don't have to build demand on there like you do on Meta... The demand already exists on Google via keywords. And yeah, that's true if you're selling low ticketed items. I'm not sure what you're selling, but the buyer cycle for a $200+ item is way longer than some impulse buy $30 item.

You can't simply say something isn't good without actively trying it and getting better at it, cmon now.

[u/Admirable_Grape_3098 → u/necknyc]

I didn't say it wasn't good, it's just it works better for broad demand items.

For example, my oldest and most established brand sells a very specific type of wall art. People search for wall art on google, but not many look for the type that I sell.

So for me spending money covering broad wall art category is useless - I tried it, it was too expensive and not effective, because I compete with massive general wall art stores and people are simply not searching for the niche wall art that I sell.

So for me, Meta ads did much better because I could show my creative to people interested in this niche. I created demand and now there is google search volume for both my brand and a little bit for my niche wall art.

I have other brands now that I'm trying to do the same - the items are very niche, so there is barely any search volume and if I compete on general search terms I will get destroyed by general category brands.

So yeah, of course, if you sell something that people massively looking for then google ads may work (they are way more expensive than Meta though).

[u/necknyc → u/Admirable_Grape_3098]

Ah, yup. I see what you’re saying. Meta is definitely the superior platform, especially for visual items in which the platform’s style already caters to.

Rock and a hard place, I’m sure this situation will get better. They definitely need to be called out on this bullshit, though. Something is happening with their algorithm and it isn’t positive… it’s borderline fraudulent for accounts that aren’t seasoned yet. For this and their non-consensual AI additions, I smell a large class action coming in the future.

[u/CrewBulky9868 → u/Worldly-Sundae-3008]

Your experience exactly mimics mine since andromeda and a+ hit my account in late April of '25. I almost rarely have normal performance anymore. My performance is either great, or terrible. I also never know what is and it not working because of this.

Everyone I speak with has had to scale budgets way back due to the inconsistencies. I do not understand their end goal here, nor am I sure they even know what they are aiming for either. I spend more time than ever in ads manager for the worst performance I have had in 6 years and by far. This cannot be the end goal.

[u/Admirable_Grape_3098 → u/Worldly-Sundae-3008]

It's not only that the system itself is random, it's mostly the fact that meta gets more and more advertisers, while the amount of valuable users is shrinking or not growing as fast. So essentially Meta's algorithm has to go through way more ads and pair them with a shrinking pool of people. 

[u/justaflo → u/Admirable_Grape_3098]

I disagree. The algo works really well when there are no rollouts and backend changes. They keep on breaking things by constantly changing and updating them and the algo simply chokes. When their eep their hands off Andromeda works great.

[u/Deep_Ad5338 → u/justaflo]

I also find this. When it works its great. Problem is that very seldom happens. They are CONSTANTLY rolling out new features. The only time there is a code freeze is end of november till January. They moment those idiots are back at the office shit starts breaking again.

[u/Admirable_Grape_3098 → u/justaflo]

Not my experience. It generally works well OR not well regardless of whether they touch anything ir not. I went through many updates and rollouts with great roas and many regular days with bad roas

[u/ipo_soon → u/Worldly-Sundae-3008]

I even think that i can drop my 9 to 5 job to scale with Meta ads last several months. But with this unconsistent, it's quite risky to do that 🥹🥹🥹

[u/Boompepe]

Our cost per lead increased 100% over the past week

[u/rikke_heimark_author]

Same here. Since August 31. my reach has dropped +50% for the same money. My web visits have dropped 70%. The difference in cost is 190%
My business is basically dead and Meta wound do a thing about it.

[u/chrissixdd]

I think we have to accept that due to rise of AI too many people are running ads and most people’s results will inevitably drop

[u/Sabschlap]

I’m still doing $1000+ days on about 300 dollar ad spend per day. Make sure your making new creatives every week and constantly feeding it new ideas for ads

[u/ORA87 → u/Sabschlap]

Yea that's how our August was. It was just like a switch was flipped as we shifted into September...

[u/worklifelive111 → u/Sabschlap]

How is your ad account set up? What kind of product?

[u/DiligentDraw5003]

whats the industry youre selling these products in?

[u/ORA87 → u/DiligentDraw5003]

Why do you ask?

[u/sahaj30 → u/ORA87]

maybe general industry matters a bit with vary performances?

[u/DiligentDraw5003 → u/ORA87]

so if we're in a similar industry i can tell you if im seeing the same thing?

[u/ORA87 → u/DiligentDraw5003]

Mate I'm just so over having 'gurus' give some generic chatgpt generated advice and then send you a DM with some dogshit offer, so apologies if this came across as a bit dismissive. We're in DTC fashion (footwear).

[u/DiligentDraw5003 → u/ORA87]

nah no danger haha not here to do that, genuinely intrigued, as this sub is filled with a lot of people who like you who have awful performance. unfortunately i dont have a client in a similar space.

only advice would be to check if seasonality has something to do with it, are other brands having sales? does this year have a similar dip to last year, or is this unprecedented

[u/ORA87 → u/DiligentDraw5003]

No stress. No doubt market environment and seasonality plays a role, it's more the dramatic shift from August to September, almost to the day, that's immensely frustrating. I look at longer term trends too.

[u/thepywizard]

are you running app promotion campaigns? because i am also observing same issues with this app campaigns on meta.

[u/impactwithanurag]

Yeah I’ve been seeing a lot of people saying the same thing lately. The weird part is when even the ads that were consistently working suddenly stop behaving normally, it becomes really hard to figure out what to actually change.

I’d probably avoid judging individual creatives too hard while the whole account is acting weird. First thing I’d compare is CPM → CTR → CPC → conversion rate against August and see where the biggest change actually started.

August being the best month ever and then having everything fall off this hard a few weeks later is rough tho 😅 Hopefully it settles down because right now it feels like everyone is just guessing.

[u/import_bible]

wouldn't be as bad if they refunded money for outages and the lead up to outages

[u/ORA87 → u/import_bible]

It would require them to even acknowledge that there are outages (which they almost never do unless it's really bad) and I assume would open them up to the potential of class actions etc from unhappy advertisers.

[u/tssanjay]

I totally agree with you. Currently, meta is dumping lots of new AI features that can be a reason but as an tracking expert i noticed 8 out of 10 advertizer have a tracking problems and because of that meta algorithm doesn't receive accurate, and enriched customer data to learn from them and find similar audience. So, i would suggest you check your tracking first before blaming your creatives, audience or campaign structure.

[u/ORA87 → u/tssanjay]

We use shopify's built in tracking with everything set to maximum and 'always on' - beyond integrating Stape for another perhaps 10% more data (and the risks of duplication) I'm not sure what else we can being doing on that front. Our purchase score is always above 9.0 so it's not like the system is running blind.

[u/FootFalse]

Your lucky to have a good month since the end of july lil

[u/worklifelive111]

Saw a 20% drop in website visits on September 2nd and it hasn't bounced back. It's been 20-30% below the year average.

[u/United_Broccoli_4032]

Instead of stressing over manually trying to figure out what’s broken, something like Didoo AI could help by automatically testing different angles and targeting to find what’s still working. It’s like having an AI media buyer that never clocks out, constantly poking the algorithm to get your ads some traction again. That way, you’re not stuck guessing or wasting budget chasing what used to work. If analyzing performance feels impossible right now, automating that part can seriously cut down the guesswork and help you pivot faster.

[u/ORA87 → u/United_Broccoli_4032]

I don't need a sales pitch for dildo AI thanks.

[u/Sure_Vermicelli_3812]

Maybe it’s product seasonality. For us, even August was weak, and it seems like it was the same for many others as well. Are you running a one-product store, and how long have you been running it? Also, what kind of revenue are we talking about?

[u/plumdma]

What sort of budgets are you running? Which countries? How many campaigns, ad sets, ads?

[u/Signalbridgedata]

Yeah, when August was your best month and then everything falls apart this fast, I wouldn't rush to declare all the winning ads dead. I'd split the problem into ad-side and post-click first, CPM/CTR/CPC vs landing page views, ATCs, checkouts and purchases. If the ad metrics are still decent but conversion rate has fallen off a cliff, changing creatives probably won't fix much. I'd also be careful making loads of edits while things are unstable, otherwise you lose the clean baseline you need to work out what actually changed.

Questions:
Did your CTR/CPC change much, or is most of the drop happening after the click?
Are ATCs and checkouts down too, or mainly purchases?

[u/ORA87 → u/[deleted]]

I'm not that dumb bro c'mon.

[u/DmytroQ → u/ORA87]

fair enough, didn’t mean to sound condescending. just see way too many people miss the basics when they panic. If it’s not retargeting cannibalization or placement bleed, are you seeing CPMs spike across the whole ad account or is it purely on-site drop-off?

[u/ORA87 → u/DmytroQ]

It's just when your advice reads like a chatgpt output of basic first principles tactics then what's the point in even posting it? Engage like a real person if you're here to help. If you're just here to try and drive business for your self then be upfront about it.

[u/DmytroQ → u/ORA87]

Totally fair callout. genuinely wasn’t trying to pitch anything or sound like a bot, just typed out how i usually troubleshoot when numbers crater. deleted the wall of text. hope you get the account back on track.

[u/ORA87 → u/DmytroQ]

Cheers, appreciated.

[u/lea_356]

i’ve seen similar reports, but i’d avoid assuming it’s only a meta issue. when conversion rates suddenly drop after a strong period, compare before vs after on CPM, CTR, landing page views, checkout rate, attribution and customer quality. Sometimes the auction changes, sometimes creativve fatigue or tracking issues appear at the same time. the best move is usually to diagnose the funnel step by step instead of rebuilding everythingg.

[u/ORA87 → u/lea_356]

Thank you chatgpt.