Solved: Facebook Ads Conversion Rate Dropped to 0% Overnight

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. I saw your post and wanted to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance. It's a hugely frustrating situation, and one that pretty much anyone who's spent enough money on Meta ads has experienced in some form or another. That feeling when you see a campaign performing beautifully and then just fall off a cliff for no apparent reason is one of the worst parts of this job. But dont despair, there's usually a logical, if not immediately obvious, explination.

You asked if it'll just reset at midnight. The answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no. The algorithm might just find its footing again the next day, or this could be a sign of a deeper issue with the campaign's structure that needs addressing. Relying on it to fix itself is a bit of a gamble. So, what I want to do is walk you through how I would diagnose and then fix this, not just for today, but to make your campaigns more stable and reliable in the long run.

We'll need to look at what's really going on...

First off, your feeling that "Facebook decided to target the wrong people all of a sudden" isn't actually that far from the truth, but maybe not in the way you think. Meta's algorithm is designed to find pockets of users within your target audience that are most likely to convert. It's brilliant when it works. What often happens, especially with a fresh or well-performing campaign, is that the algorithm finds a really juicy, high-intent pocket of people and burns through them very quickly. You get a great morning run with lots of sales.

But once that specific pocket is exhausted, the algorithm has to go looking again. It starts showing your ads to slightly different, less-receptive people within your broader targeting parameters. The result? Your conversion rate plummets. Your visitors, adds to cart, and checkouts dry up, just like you saw. It's not that the platform is maliciously unreliable; it's that it saturated a micro-audience and is now in a less efficient 'discovery' phase again. A single day can have multiple of these cycles.

So the immediate diagnostic steps are to look at your metrics in Ads Manager and break them down by time of day if you can.

-> Look at the funnel metrics: You said you had fewer visitors and fewer adds to cart. This is the classic symptom. But what about the ratios? Did your Click-Through Rate (CTR) drop significantly after 1pm? Did your Cost Per Click (CPC) shoot up? If your CTR dropped and CPC rose, it's a clear sign the audience it was showing ads to in the afternoon was far less interested than the morning audience. The ad creative wasn't resonating with them.

-> Check for technical faults: This is a basic one, but you'd be suprised how often it's the culprit. Did something on your website break? Was there an issue with your payment processor specifically in Italy? Do a test purchase yourself to make sure everything is running smoothly. A broken checkout is the fastest way to get zero conversions.

Diagnosing the 'what' is useful, but the real solution isn't about fixing one bad day. It's about building a campaign structure that is more resilient to these daily fluctuations. A well-structured account can weather these storms because it's not reliant on one single audience pocket. This brings me to the most important bit of advice I can give you.

I'd say you need a more robust audience strategy...

When I audit new client accounts, the most common issue I see is a flat, unstructured approach to audiences. Often, people are running one campaign with a few interest-based ad sets and hoping for the best. This is fragile. When that one audience goes cold, your whole operation stalls. You need to structure your account to match the customer journey.

Think of it in three stages: cold, warm, and hot traffic. In paid ads, we sometimes call this Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu). You should have seperate campaigns for each, because you need to speak to these people differently.

1. Cold Traffic (ToFu - Prospecting):
This is for people who have never heard of you. Your goal here is to find new potential customers. Your problem right now sounds like it's happening at this stage. To make this stage more stable, you need to be constantly testing new audiences.

-> Detailed Targeting: These are your interests, behaviours, and demographics. Don't just pick one or two broad interests. I see people selling, say, eCommerce software and their only interest target is "Amazon". That's way too broad. It includes millions of shoppers for every one store owner. You need to get specific. Think about what pages, tools, or figures only your ideal customer would be interested in. Group related interests into themed ad sets and test them against each other. For an Italian eCommerce store, you might test interests related to competing local brands, specific fashion magazines in Italy, or influencers popular with your target demographic.

-> Lookalike Audiences (LALs): Once you have enough data (you need at least 100 people from a specific country to create an audience, but more is much better), these are your best friends for prospecting. But you have to build them from the right source. A lookalike of "all website visitors" is okay, but a lookalike of "purchasers" is gold dust. They are built from people who have already completed the exact action you want more of. I'd prioritise them in this order, from best to worst source:

• Lookalike of your highest value customers
• Lookalike of all previous purchasers
• Lookalike of people who initiated checkout
• Lookalike of people who added to cart
• Lookalike of all website visitors

Start with a 1% lookalike in Italy, then test 1-2%, 2-5% etc. as you scale. The smaller the percentage, the more closely it resembles your source audience.

2. Warm & Hot Traffic (MoFu/BoFu - Retargeting):
This is your safety net and your money-maker. These are people who have already shown some interest but didn't buy. You said you got fewer adds to cart and checkouts – a solid retargeting campaign is designed specifically to bring those people back. It's shocking how many advertisers either don't do this, or just lump all "website visitors in 30 days" into one bucket. You need to be more granular.

You should have seperate ad sets (or even campaigns, budget permitting) for different levels of intent:

• Hot (BoFu): People who Added to Cart or Initiated Checkout in the last 7-14 days (but didn't purchase). These people are on the verge of buying. Show them an ad that overcomes a final objection. Maybe offer a small discount, remind them of your fast shipping, or show them a customer testimonial. The message is "Come back and finish your order!"
• Warm (MoFu): People who Viewed a Product or visited your website in the last 30 days (excluding the hot audience). They were interested but got distracted. Remind them of the products they looked at using a Dynamic Product Ad (DPA) carousel. The message is "Still thinking about this?"
• Engagers: People who have watched your videos or engaged with your Facebook/Instagram page. This is a broader warm audience but can still be very effective.

Building this kind of structure means that when your prospecting campaign has a bad afternoon, your retargeting campaigns are still there, working away to convert the warm traffic you generated in the morning. It makes your results far more stable and predictable. I remember one client selling subscription boxes; by implementing a strong, multi-layered retargeting funnel on Meta Ads, we were able to achieve a consistent 1000% return on ad spend, smoothing out the daily performance dips.

Here’s how that structure might look in your Ads Manager:

You probably should be more systematic with your ads...

Getting the audience structure right is the main part of the battle. But the audiences won't perform if the advert you're showing them isn't right for them, or if they've just gotten bored of it. This is called ad fatigue, and it's very real. The ad that was working great in the morning might have stopped being effective once Meta started showing it to a new group of people in the afternoon.

You can't just rely on one winning ad. You need a system for testing and rotating your creatives.

-> Test Different Angles: For any product, you can talk about it in multiple ways. Is it about quality? Affordability? The status it gives you? The problem it solves? Create 2-3 completely different ad concepts, each with different copy and a different image or video, and test them against each other in your prospecting campaign. For example:

• Ad 1 (Quality Angle): Image of the product up close, highlighting the materials. Copy talks about craftsmanship.
• Ad 2 (Social Proof Angle): A carousel of customer photos and reviews. Copy focuses on what other people are saying.
• Ad 3 (Offer Angle): A simple graphic announcing a special offer (e.g., "Buy 2, Get 1 Free"). Copy is direct and urges action.

-> Test Different Formats: Don't just use static images. Test them against carousels, and definitly test them against video. Video doesn't have to be a big professional production. Sometimes a simple user-generated style video shot on a phone can outperform a slick studio ad because it feels more authentic. I remember one campaign for a women's apparel brand where we achieved a 691% return on Meta and Pinterest Ads, and a huge part of that success came from testing authentic-looking customer photos against their professional model shots. The authentic ones won by a landslide.

The key is to have these tests running constantly, even when things are going well. That way, when one ad starts to fatigue, you already have the next winner identified and ready to go. This prevents those sudden, wierd drop-offs.

You'll need to analyse your on-site experience, too...

Finally, we can't ignore what happens after the click. An ad campaign doesn't end on Facebook; it ends on your website. Your website's performance is just as much a part of the campaign's success as your targeting or your ad creative. The user mentioned fewer adds to cart and checkouts, which points to a potential issue on the site itself.

I would do a full walk-through of your user journey:

-> The Landing/Product Page: When someone clicks your ad, where do they land? Is the product they see the same one from the ad? Are the photos high-quality and persuasive? Do you have clear, compelling product descriptions? Is the price clear? Is there a strong call-to-action button? Crucially for a new store, do you have trust signals? Things like customer reviews, trust badges (secure payment logos etc), and clear contact information can make a huge difference to your conversion rate. Without these, people feel uncomfortable and won't risk putting in their credit card details.

-> The Checkout Process: How many steps does it take to buy something? Is it complicated? Do you force people to create an account? Any little bit of friction here will cause people to abandon their cart. I remember working with a cleaning products company where we helped them increase revenue by 190% on Meta Ads, and one of the biggest changes we made wasn't to the ads, but to their website, simplifying the checkout from three pages down to one. The impact was immediate.

A sudden drop in performance, as I mentioned, can be a technical glitch. Double-check that your site is loading quickly and that all buttons are working. Sometimes a small update to a Shopify app or a website plugin can break things without you realising.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in, especially when you're just trying to figure out why one day went wrong. But the path to more stable, scalable results lies in building this kind of robust system. Here is a table summarising my main recommendations for you to implement.

Putting all this into practice takes time and experience. While the principles are straightforward, interpreting the data correctly, knowing which new audiences to test, writing compelling copy, and optimising the whole system is a full-time job. It’s not just about setting up an ad and hoping for the best; it's about a continuous process of testing, learning, and optimising.

This is where getting some expert help can make a huge difference. An experienced eye can spot opportunities you might miss and help you avoid costly mistakes. We can help implement this entire process for you, taking the guesswork out of it and ensuring your budget is spent as effectively as possible to grow your business.

If you'd like, I'd be happy to offer you a free initial consultation. We could hop on a call, and I could take a direct look at your ad account and website to give you some more specific, personalised recommendations. There's no obligation at all, of course, but it could be a very helpful next step for you.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh