Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! It sounds like you're dealing with a really frustrating issue with your Meta ads, and it's one I've seen quite a few times before, especially with newer apparel accounts. Seeing a flash of success with a sale in the first hour only for it all to grind to a halt is a classic sign that the algorithm is working, but your campaign structure is forcing it into a corner.
The good news is that this is almost certainly fixable. It’s not a wierd glitch; it's about understanding how the Meta ad delivery system thinks and giving it the right instructions and structure to work with for sustained growth, not just one-off wins. I'll walk you through my thoughts on what's likely happening and how you can start to build a more stable, scalable system for your brand.
TLDR;
- Your ads die because the algorithm finds the 'lowest-hanging fruit' (e.g., recent website visitors) in the first hour, and then can't find more cheap conversions, so it throttles delivery. This is a structure problem, not a glitch.
- You're likely stuck in the "Learning Phase" forever by launching new ads constantly. The system needs about 50 sales per week per ad set to learn who your customers are. Restarting the ads resets this process to zero every time.
- The most important piece of advice is to stop launching new ads. Instead, build a proper funnel structure with separate campaigns for cold audiences (Top of Funnel) and retargeting (Bottom of Funnel), using the 'Sales' objective only.
- Your focus on first-hour sales is misleading. You need to understand your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) to know what you can truly afford to spend to acquire a customer.
- This letter includes an interactive calculator to help you figure out if your budget is high enough to exit the learning phase, and another one to estimate your brand's LTV.
Why Your Ads Die After an Hour: The 'Quick Win' Trap
First, let's get one thing straight: the Meta algorithm isn't broken. It’s doing exactly what you've (unintentionally) told it to do. When you launch a new ad, the algorithm's first job is to find the cheapest, fastest conversions possible to prove the ad works. For an apparel brand, this "lowest-hanging fruit" is almost always a tiny group of people who are already primed to buy.
Who are they?
- -> People who visited your website in the last 24 hours.
- -> People who abandoned their cart yesterday.
- -> Your most engaged Instagram followers who were just looking at a competitor's site.
The algorithm is brilliant at sniffing out these handful of users. It shows them your ad, one of them converts, and it chalks up a win. The problem is what happens next. That tiny pool of hyper-ready buyers is now exhausted. The algorithm now has to go and find new customers from a colder audience, which is much harder and more expensive. Faced with this harder task, and without a clear structure telling it where to look next, its predictive model panics. It sees the cost to get the *next* conversion will be much higher than the first, so to protect your budget, it dramatically slows down or even stops ad delivery.
You’re essentially seeing the result of a sprint with no marathon planned afterwards. You get a quick burst of speed, but there's no system in place for endurance. Constantly launching a "new ad" just repeats this same ineffective sprint over and over again, burning through your best prospects without ever building momentum.
1. New Ad Launch
You launch a new ad or campaign.
2. Low-Hanging Fruit
Algorithm finds the easiest, cheapest conversions first (e.g., recent site visitors).
3. Quick Sale!
You get a sale within the first few hours. Feels great!
4. Pool Exhausted
The tiny 'hot' audience is used up. Finding new buyers is harder.
5. Delivery Dies
Algorithm predicts higher costs and throttles ad spend to a halt.
You're Stuck in the Learning Phase Nightmare
The second, and probably more critical, issue is something called the "Learning Phase". For Meta's AI to truly understand who your ideal customer is, it needs data. Specifically, it needs to see a pattern of who is converting. The benchmark for this is getting around 50 conversions (sales, in your case) per ad set, per week. Once it hits this threshold, it exits the learning phase, and performance becomes much more stable, predictable, and scalable.
If an ad set doesn't get 50 conversions in a week, it remains in a state of "Learning Limited." Performance will be erratic, costs will fluctuate wildly, and the algorithm will struggle to deliver your ads efficiently. It's essentially guessing, and it hates guessing.
By launching a new ad every time, you are never giving the system a chance to learn. You get one sale, which is 49 short of the goal, and then you hit the reset button. You are permanently trapping yourself in the most inefficient and volatile stage of a campaign's lifecycle. You need to let your ads run, even if they have a slow day, to gather the data needed for long-term success.
Let's see if your budget even gives you a chance to exit this phase. It’s simple maths: if your average cost per purchase is £40, you’d need a weekly budget of at least £2,000 (50 conversions * £40) for each ad set to exit learning. A lot of brands spread their budget too thin across too many ad sets, which is a recipe for failure.
You are unlikely to exit the Learning Phase. Consider increasing your budget or working to lower your cost per sale.
I'd Say You Need a Proper Funnel, Not Just an Ad
The solution to both of these problems is to stop thinking in terms of individual "ads" and start thinking in terms of a "funnel". A marketing funnel is just a way of organising your campaigns to speak to people at different stages of their buying journey. For an apparel brand, it's pretty simple and you can split it into two main campaigns:
1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting Campaign: The only job of this campaign is to find new people who have never heard of your brand before. Here, you'll use interest-based targeting. Think about your ideal customer. What other apparel brands do they like (e.g., Zara, ASOS, & Other Stories)? What magazines or influencers do they follow (e.g., Vogue, Who What Wear, specific fashion bloggers)? What are their hobbies? You group these into themed ad sets and test them against each other. The goal here is to drive new, relevant traffic to your website and populate your retargeting audiences.
2. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Retargeting Campaign: This campaign's job is to convert the people who have already shown interest. It only targets people who have recently visited your site, added a product to their cart, or engaged with your Instagram page. This is likely where your first-hour sale is coming from now, but without a prospecting campaign constantly adding new people to this audience, it quickly runs out of steam. This campaign is your workhorse for driving sales and achieving a high Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Your entire ad account structure should be built around this logic. Building a proper system like this is key to achieving consistent results. For instance, we worked with a women's apparel client and achieved a 691% return on their campaigns. Success like that doesn't come from a single magic ad, but from a sustainable, structured approach. It's a system, not a lottery ticket.
Top of Funnel (ToFu): Prospecting Campaign
Objective: Reach NEW customers.
Audiences: Interests (Competitor brands, magazines, related hobbies), Lookalikes of past purchasers.
Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): Retargeting Campaign
Objective: Convert WARM audiences.
Audiences: Website Visitors (30 days), Add to Carts (14 days), Instagram Engagers (30 days).
We'll Need to Look at Your Offer From a Different Angle
Finally, let's talk about metrics. You're focused on that first-hour sale, which is understandable, but it's causing you to make short-term decisions that hurt long-term growth. The real question isn't "how much did one sale cost me today?" but "how much is a new customer worth to my business over their lifetime?". This is called Customer Lifetime Value, or LTV.
For an apparel brand, a simple LTV calculation might look like this:
LTV = (Average Order Value) x (Purchases Per Year) x (Number of Years as a Customer) x (Gross Margin %)
Let's imagine your average order is £80. A loyal customer buys from you 3 times a year. Your gross margin is 60%. Over two years, that one customer is worth £288 in pure profit (£80 * 3 * 2 * 0.60). Suddenly, paying £40 or even £60 to acquire that customer on the first sale doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like a fantastic investment.
When you know your LTV, you can set a realistic Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) target. A healthy rule of thumb is an LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1. So, with an LTV of £288, you can afford to spend up to £96 to acquire a customer and still have a very profitable business. This knowledge gives you the confidence to invest properly in your campaigns, let them run long enough to exit the learning phase, and build a sustainable business, not just hunt for cheap, one-off sales. It completely changes your perspective on ad peformance.
Suggested Max Acquisition Cost (3:1 LTV:CAC): £48
You'll Need to Shift Your Strategy
So, to bring this all together, the path forward involves a significant shift in your strategy, away from reactive, short-term ad launches and towards a patient, structured, data-driven approach. Your goal is no longer to get one sale today, but to build a machine that reliably brings in profitable customers every day.
This means setting up your campaigns correctly from the start, letting them run long enough to gather meaningful data, understanding your core business metrics to make informed decisions, and having the patience to see the process through. It takes a bit more work up front, but the payoff is the difference between a brand that struggles with unpredictable sales and one that scales consistently.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
| Problem You're Seeing | Likely Underlying Cause | Actionable Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Ads get a sale in the first hour, then traffic dies completely. | The algorithm is exhausting the small, 'low-hanging fruit' (hot retargeting) audience and has no clear instruction on where to find new customers. | Implement a ToFu/BoFu Funnel. Create two separate, long-running campaigns: one for Prospecting (cold interests) and one for Retargeting (website visitors, cart abandoners). |
| Performance is totally inconsistent and unpredictable. | You're constantly launching "new ads," which resets the algorithm's learning each time. You're permanently stuck in the inefficient "Learning Phase." | Stop relaunching ads. Let your new funnel campaigns run for at least a week without changes to allow them to exit the learning phase. Consolidate your budget into fewer ad sets to hit the ~50 conversions/week threshold. |
| Unsure if ad spend is profitable or just burning cash. | Focusing on single-day Cost Per Sale instead of the long-term value of a customer. Making decisions based on incomplete data. | Calculate your LTV. Determine your Customer Lifetime Value to set a realistic Maximum Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Judge campaign success based on ROAS and LTV:CAC ratio over weeks, not hours. |
| Not reaching enough new potential buyers. | Your campaign setup likely isn't structured or funded to prioritise finding new people, and may be using the wrong campaign objective. | Use the 'Sales' Objective for All Campaigns. Ensure your ToFu and BoFu campaigns are optimised for 'Sales' (Conversions). This tells Meta to find people who are likely to actually buy, not just click. |
I know this is a lot to take in, and moving from a simple ad launch to managing a full-funnel system can feel like a big leap. While the principles are straightforward, the day-to-day work of creative testing, audience research, budget management, and data analysis is where the real complexity lies. It’s a full-time job to get it right and keep it optimised.
This is where working with an expert can make a massive difference. We specialise in building and scaling these kinds of advertising systems for eCommerce brands like yours. We've seen these patterns before and know how to navigate them efficiently.
If you'd like, we can offer you a free, no-obligation consultation call. We can take a look at your ad account together, pinpoint exactly what's going on, and map out a tailored strategy for you to achieve consistent, scalable growth. It's often the fastest way to get clarity and see what's truly possible.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
