What to do When Facebook Ads Stop Working

Ever since Apple released the iOS 14 update in 2021, Facebook ads have been suffering.

We’ll say it again. SUFFERING.

And unlike Mark Zucks typical plan of attack when Facebooks performance is threatened (cough, cough, throwing money at the problem, cough, cough, acquiring Instagram and Whatsapp) Apple is too big of a behemoth for his money to make go away.

Thanks to that update, more than 92% of users have opted out of app tracking which has rendered the Facebook Pixel, Meta’s star tool in gathering user data, virtually useless. As a result, ROAS (return on ad spend) has plummeted and customer acquisition is more difficult to capture than ever.

So what’s an eCommerce brand to do?

Since you clearly can’t get Facebook to start tracking all these people again, or convince Tim Apple to drop the protections on all iPhones, we’ve tapped digital marketing experts, Cobble Hill Digital, to share insights on how to maximize and diversify your advertising dollars.

First, you need to answer these 2 questions:

1. Has your total ROAS (ad attributed revenue/ad spend) changed in the last 6 months vs the previous year?

2. How is your Facebook/Instagram ROAS doing, compared to other channels you might be using, such as Google, YouTube, etc?

If the dollars you are spending on Facebook ads are not performing well, then you should be changing where you allocate those dollars.

Below are 4 smart ways to do this reallocation, complete with memes.

4 Ways to Reallocate Poor Performing Facebook Ad Dollars

1. Create more of your own media. In other words, try to generate organic traffic for your website, whether through social media or through a blog.

2. Re-arrange your media budget by sending more dollars to your top performing channels. For example, you can move some of your advertising budget away from Facebook and towards Pinterest ads.

3. Try something new. Take 10%-20% of your media budget and put some ads on TikTok. Or use zip codes to target people in your area with Spotify or YouTube.

4. Start using 1st party data gathering services: email/lead ads, or create Klaviyo flows.

In addition to the 4 points above, you should also consider changing your measurement strategy to something that is more platform agnostic, and not so focused on Facebook or Facebook/Google. We’ve heard great things about Northbeam or Triple Whale. These tools will give you a better view of how all of your ad channels are performing and delivering sales.

Last, but not least, once you have implemented some/all of these changes, then for the love of ZUCK, please don’t look at your metrics every day and obsess over them. Wait at least one month, and then have a look – that way you can get a clear picture of how the changes have been working over time.

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