Solved: Meta Ads Traffic Drop Despite Consistent Spend

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some initial thoughts on the situation with your Meta ads. What you're describing is actually a really common problem, and it's not a case of Meta just taking your money. It’s a sign that your campaign has hit a predictable wall. The good news is there are a few ways to break through it, but it means moving away from the idea that a good ad can be left untouched forever.

The big myth: "let performing ads run untouched"

Right, let's get this one out of the way first. The idea that a winning ad will just keep winning forever if you don't touch it is one of the biggest misconceptions in paid advertising. It sounds logical, but it ignores two very real things: audience saturation and ad fatigue.

Think about it like this. When you first launched your campaign, Meta's algorithm was brilliant at its job. It went out and found the people in your target audience who were most likely to be interested in your offer. The low-hanging fruit. They clicked, you got good results, and your cost per visitor was low. But that pool of eager people isn't infinite. After a few months of spending $125 a day, you've likely shown your ad to most of them already.

Now, the algorithm has to work harder. It’s trying to find new people in a tapped-out audience, or it’s showing the same ad again and again to people who have already seen it and ignored it. This is ad fatigue. People become blind to your ad. It just becomes part of the furniture in their feed. The result? Your click-through rate drops, and because you're spending the same amount of money, your cost per click (and cost per visitor) inevitably goes up. What you're seeing isn't a glitch or a penalty; it's the natural life cycle of an ad campaign that needs to evolve.

It's not that your ad isn't good anymore. It’s that its time with that specific audience is probably coming to an end. It's a sign that you've successfully exhausted your first pocket of customers and now it's time to get a bit more sophisticated with your strategy to find the next ones.

We'll need to look at your targeting strategy...

So, how do we fix this? The first place to look is your targeting. You've found one audience that works, which is great, but now you need to build on that success by finding more. Most people just throw a few interests into an ad set and hope for the best. A more systematic appraoch usually works better.

I like to structure accounts based on the marketing funnel. This sounds a bit jargony, but it's simple really: you have campaigns for people who've never heard of you (Top of Funnel - ToFu), people who know you but haven't bought (Middle of Funnel - MoFu), and people who are close to buying (Bottom of Funnel - BoFu). Your current campaign is likely a ToFu campaign.

Here’s a typical way I’d prioritise audiences to test, starting from the ones most likely to perform well:

1. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - The Hottest Audience: These are people who have shown clear intent. They've been to your site, they've looked at products, maybe even added something to the cart. These are your retargeting audiences, and they are often the most profitable. If you aren't running retargeting ads, you're leaving money on the table. You should set up campaigns to specifically target:

• -> People who initiated checkout in the last 7-14 days.
• -> People who added to cart in the last 14-30 days.
• -> All website visitors from the last 30-90 days (excluding those who've already converted).

These campaigns don't need a huge budget, but they often deliver the best return on ad spend because you're talking to people who are already warmed up.

2. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Finding New People: This is where you find new customers, and it’s where you need to start experimenting again. Your current successful ad set is one of these. Now it's time to find more. Instead of just relying on interests, you can create much more powerful audiences.

• -> Lookalike Audiences: This is your most powerful tool. You can give Meta a list of your past customers, your email subscribers, or even people who've completed a purchase, and it will go and find millions of other people who share similar characteristics. I’d prioritise them in this order: Lookalike of highest-value customers, lookalike of all customers, lookalike of people who initiated checkout, and so on. You'd be surprised how effective these are. One campaign we worked on for a medical job matching software client is a great example of this. By implementing a more sophisticated targeting strategy, we were able to reduce their cost per user acquisition from a staggering £100 down to just £7. A big part of that success was moving beyond broad initial targeting and building powerful lookalike audiences based on their best existing customers.
• -> Layered Interest Targeting: Instead of just targeting one broad interest, get more specific. For example, if you sell high-end photography gear, don't just target "Photography." Target people who are interested in "Photography" AND specific high-end camera brands (like Leica, Hasselblad) AND pages for professional photography magazines. This narrows the audience to people who are much more likely to be your ideal customer, not just casual hobbyists. The key is to find interests that your ideal customer has, but the general public doesn't.

The goal is to have multiple ToFu ad sets running at any one time, all competing against each other. You keep a small budget on the new tests, and once you find a new winner that beats your old one, you can start shifting more budget to it. This constant cycle of testing is what prevents the stagnation you're seeing now.

I'd say you need to refresh your creative...

Even the best targeting in the world won't work if people are sick of seeing your ad. If you've been running the same ad for several months, it's definately time for a refresh. This doesn't mean your original ad was bad; it just means it's done its job for that initial audience.

You need to build a system for testing new creative. Don't just change the button colour. Test fundamentally different approaches. Here are a few things we do for clients:

• -> Test New Formats: If you've only been running image ads, you have to test video. Even a simple, authentic video shot on a phone can often outperform a slick, professionally produced one. If you're selling a product, a carousel ad showing different features or use cases can be very effective.
• -> Test New Hooks & Angles: Your ad copy is just as important as the visual. Try a completely different opening line. If you've been leading with a feature, try leading with the core problem your product solves. We often use a framework called Problem-Agitate-Solve. For instance, instead of saying "Buy our durable outdoor backpack," you'd say "Tired of cheap backpacks failing on a weekend hike? (Problem) Leaving you stranded with your gear everywhere? (Agitate) Our pack is built for the toughest trails, guaranteed. (Solve)". This speaks to the customer's pain, not just your product's features.
• -> Test Social Proof: One of the most powerful things you can do is use your customers' own words. Turn a glowing review into an image ad. Use a clip from a customer testimonial as a video ad. This kind of user-generated content (UGC) feels authentic and builds trust in a way that polished marketing messages often can't. For instance, several of our software clients have seen incredible results using simple UGC videos, like screen-recorded testimonials from their power users.

The aim isn't to find another single 'perfect ad' to run for months. The aim is to have 2-3 control ads that you know work, and be constantly testing 1-2 new challengers against them with a small part of your budget. When a challenger beats a control, it becomes the new control. This iterative process is how you avoid creative fatigue and keep your campaigns fresh and profitable over the long term.

You probably should look at your numbers differently...

This is a big one. You mentioned your "cost per visitor" is going up. While that's a useful metric, focusing on it too much can be a trap. The real question isn't "How low can my cost per visitor go?" but "How high a cost per visitor can I afford to acquire a profitable customer?". The answer to that lies in a metric that most small businesses dont track: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

LTV tells you the total profit you can expect to make from an average customer over the entire time they do business with you. Once you know this number, it changes everything. Suddenly you're not just trying to get the cheapest clicks; you're able to make strategic decisions about how much you're willing to invest to get a customer.

Here’s a simplified way to calculate it:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): How much does a customer pay you per month on average?
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? (Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold).
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

The formula is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's imagine you run a subscription box service. ARPA is £40/month, your Gross Margin is 60%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month (churn).
LTV = (£40 * 0.60) / 0.05
LTV = £24 / 0.05 = £480

This means every customer you acquire is worth £480 in gross margin to your business. A common rule of thumb is to aim for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you could afford to spend up to £160 (£480 / 3) to acquire a single customer and still have a very healthy, profitable business.

If you know it takes, say, 100 visitors to your website to get one customer (a 1% conversion rate), you can now calculate your maximum affordable cost per visitor:
Max Cost Per Visitor = £160 / 100 = £1.60

Now, your rising cost per visitor doesn't seem so scary, does it? It gives you a ceiling. As long as you're below that £1.60 mark, your advertising is profitable. This math frees you from the tyranny of cheap clicks and allows you to invest in higher-quality traffic that might cost more upfront but ultimately leads to more valuable customers.

My main recommendations for you

I know that's a lot to take in. Running paid ads effectively is more complex than it first appears, especially when you want to scale past the initial easy wins. It becomes less about finding one magic ad and more about building a machine that constantly tests, learns, and optimises.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Implementing all of this takes time and expertise. You're moving from running a simple campaign to managing a proper advertising system. It involves understanding the data, knowing what to test next, and having the creative resources to keep your ads fresh. This is often the point where businesses decide to bring in an expert or an agency. They're not just paying for someone to click buttons in Ads Manager; they're paying for a strategic process that drives sustainable growth and frees them up to focus on the rest of their business.

Hopefully this has given you a much clearer picture of what's happening and a solid plan to move forward. If you'd like to chat through your specific account and have us take a look under the hood, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can review your setup together and give you some more tailored advice.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh