Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out about your Facebook campaign troubles. It's a really common situation to be in, so don't worry. You had something that was working, tried to optimise it, and then it all just stopped. It’s incredibly frustrating.
The issue almost certainly isn't with the interests themselves, but with how you've structured the campaign and how Facebook's algorithm needs to work. Splitting your ad sets so granularly has likely starved them of the budget and data they need to function. I'll walk you through why this happens and what you can do about it.
TLDR;
- Your campaign stalled because splitting one ad set into 20+ starved each new ad set of budget, trapping them in the "learning phase" where Facebook won't spend money.
- Single-interest ad sets are often a myth. Bundling 3-5 related interests per ad set is usually more effective and gives the algorithm more room to find customers.
- A 1% CTR isn't always a disaster, especially if your cost per lead was good. The most important metric is what you pay for a result, not the click-through rate.
- The biggest lever for improving CTR is usually your ad creative (the image/video and copy), not just the targeting.
- I've included an interactive calculator below to help you estimate what a realistic Cost Per Lead (CPL) might look like, so you can better judge your campaign performance.
We'll need to look at why your campaign stalled...
The first thing to understand is Facebook's "learning phase". When you launch a new ad set, the algorithm needs to figure out who the best people are to show your ad to in order to get you the result you want (in your case, leads). To do this, it needs data. A lot of it. The general rule of thumb is that an ad set needs to get around 50 conversions within a 7-day period to exit the learning phase.
If it doesn't get enough conversions, it gets stuck in "Learning Limited" and performance becomes unstable, or as you've seen, it just stops spending money altogether. The algorithm basically says, "I don't have enough data to do my job properly, so I'm not going to waste your money."
Think about what happened here. You had one ad set with 20+ interests that was working and generating hundreds of leads. Let's say it had a budget of £100 per day. It was getting more than enough conversions to keep the algorithm happy. When you split that into 20 seperate ad sets, you also split the budget. Now each ad set might only have £5 per day. At that level of spend, it's almost impossible for any single ad set to get 50 leads in a week. They never get enough data, so the algorithm throttles the spend right down to zero. You've accidentally created a "death spiral" for your ad sets.
Split Budget
Budget is fragmented across too many ad sets.
Low Spend Per Ad Set
Each ad set has too little budget to gather data.
No Conversions
Not enough spend to generate the required 50 conversions/week.
Stuck in "Learning"
Algorithm can't optimise and throttles delivery.
Campaign Stalls
Spend drops to near zero. No leads.
I'd say you should rethink your audience strategy...
The idea of testing one interest per ad set to find "winners" is a bit of an old-school tactic that doesn't work as well as it used to. The Facebook algorithm is much smarter now. Giving it a larger, but still relevant, audience to work with often produces better and more stable results. By bundling interests, you give the algorithm the flexibility to find pockets of high-performing users that you might never discover on your own.
Instead of single interests, I'd recommend grouping them into themes. Let's say your selling a project management tool. Instead of one ad set for "Asana", one for "Trello", and one for "Project Management", you could create one thematic ad set that includes all of them. This gives the algorithm a much bigger pool to play in, while keeping the audience highly relevant.
A good way to structure your audiences is by thinking about the marketing funnel. This is a framework we use for pretty much every account, from eCommerce to B2B software.
1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Cold Audiences: These are people who have never heard of you. This is where your interest-based targeting lives. I'd create 2-3 ad sets here, each with a distinct 'theme' of 3-5 related interests.
2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - Warm Audiences: These are people who have engaged with you but haven't converted yet. Think website visitors, people who watched a percentage of your videos, or engaged with your Facebook/Instagram page. You retarget them here.
3. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Hot Audiences: These are people who got very close to converting. They added a product to their cart, or initiated checkout, but didn't finish. You hit them with specific ads to get them over the line.
For your situation, you need to fix your ToFu campaigns. My advice would be to go back to a structure closer to what was working before. Pause all your single-interest ad sets. Create 3-4 new ad sets within your campaign. In each one, put a bundle of related interests. Give each of these ad sets a meaningful budget, enough that it has a realistic chance of hitting 50 leads in a week, and let them run.
Top of Funnel (ToFu)
Audience: People who don't know you.
Targeting: Broad audiences, interest bundles, lookalikes.
Middle of Funnel (MoFu)
Audience: People aware of you.
Targeting: Website visitors, video viewers, page engagers.
Bottom of Funnel (BoFu)
Audience: People close to converting.
Targeting: Added to cart, initiated checkout.
You probably should focus on creative, not just targeting...
You mentioned your original goal was to improve a 1% CTR. While granular targeting seems like the logical way to do this, in my experience, the ad creative itself has a much bigger impact. Your ad—the image or video, the headline, and the text—is what actually stops someone from scrolling and makes them click.
Before you even launched this test, did you ask if the 1% CTR was really a problem? You were getting hundreds of leads daily. What was your cost per lead (CPL)? If you were paying, say, £5 for a lead and that was profitable for you, then a 1% CTR isn't really a problem that needs solving. It's easy to get obsessed with vanity metrics like CTR, but the only thing that truly matters is your return on investment.
If your CPL was too high, then testing new creative would be my first port of call. Instead of 20 ad sets with one creative, you'd get far better results from having 2-3 ad sets (with your bundled interests) and testing 3-4 completely different creatives inside each one. This lets the algorithm find the best combination of audience *and* message.
Try testing things like:
- A static image vs. a short video.
- A headline that asks a question vs. one that states a benefit.
- Ad copy that focuses on the problem your leads have (Problem-Agitate-Solve) vs. copy that shows them a better future (Before-After-Bridge).
- Using user-generated content (UGC) or testimonials if you have them. We've had several SaaS clients see really good results with UGC videos.
This approach gives you way more levers to pull to improve performance than just tinkering with interests. I've seen campaigns where a simple change in the headline has doubled the CTR and halved the CPL overnight.
You'll need to understand your numbers properly...
To know whether your campaign is truly working, you need to know what a "good" cost per result is. This varies wildly depending on your industry, your offer, and who you're targeting. Someone selling a £10,000 service can afford to pay a lot more for a lead than someone selling a £20 eBook.
The cost is basically a function of two things: how much you pay for a click (CPC), and what percentage of those clicks turn into leads (Landing Page Conversion Rate). In developed countries like the UK or US, you might pay £0.50 - £1.50 for a click. A decent landing page might convert 10-30% of that traffic. In developing countries, the clicks are cheaper (£0.10 - £0.50), but the quality and conversion rate can be lower.
This means your CPL in a developed country could be anywhere from £1.60 (£0.50 CPC / 30% CVR) to £15 (£1.50 CPC / 10% CVR). That's a huge range, and it shows why just chasing a low CTR is often the wrong approach. You could have a low CTR but a high landing page conversion rate, leading to a great CPL.
I've built a simple calculator for you below to play around with these numbers. Adjust the sliders to see how CPC and your conversion rate affect your potential cost per lead. It should give you a better feel for what's realistic and help you set better targets for your campaigns.
This is the main advice I have for you:
Getting paid ads right involves a lot of testing and a deep understanding of how the platforms actually work, not just what the gurus say on YouTube. Your situation is a classic example of a well-intentioned optimisation that went wrong because it fought against the algorithm instead of working with it. Here’s a summary of what I’d suggest you do next.
| Area | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign Structure | Pause all single-interest ad sets. Revert to a structure with fewer ad sets (e.g., 2-4 for cold traffic). | Consolidates your budget to ensure each ad set has enough spend to exit the learning phase and perform optimally. |
| Audience Strategy | Bundle 3-5 related interests into thematic ad sets. Don't use single-interest ad sets for now. | Gives the algorithm a larger, more flexible audience to find conversions in, which often leads to better and more stable results. |
| Budget Allocation | Ensure each active ad set has a daily budget that gives it a chance to get ~7-8 leads per day (to hit 50/week). | This is the critical threshold to get out of the "Learning" phase. Without sufficient budget, your ad sets will always struggle. |
| Optimisation Focus | Switch your focus from improving CTR to improving your Cost Per Lead (CPL). If CPL is good, your good to go. | CTR is a secondary metric. A profitable CPL is what actually grows a business. Don't optimise for the wrong goal. |
| Creative Testing | Within your new bundled ad sets, test 2-3 different ad creatives (image/video/copy). | Creative is the biggest lever for improving both CTR and CPL. This is where your focus for optimisation should be. |
Implementing this structure should get your campaign spending again and, more importantly, put you on the right path to scaling profitably. It moves the focus from chasing vanity metrics to a robust testing methodology that works with the algorithm.
As you can see, there's a lot of nuance to this. We've seen hundreds of ad accounts and this kind of issue is one of the most common reasons businesses fail to get results. They get stuck tweaking the wrong things, burn through cash, and conclude that "Facebook Ads don't work". In reality, they just need a more experienced hand on the wheel.
I remember one campaign we worked on for an eCommerce store launch where we generated 1,500 leads at just $0.29 each. Getting to numbers like that isn't about finding a single 'magic' interest; it's about a methodical process of structuring, testing, and optimising based on years of experience.
If you'd like to have an expert pair of eyes look over your setup and give you a tailored strategy, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can jump on a call, review your account together, and give you a clear roadmap for what to do next. It might be the most valuable 20 minutes you spend on your marketing this year.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
