Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out regarding your campaigns. It's a really common and frustrating problem when the numbers on the dashboard just don't feel real. I've got some thoughts on why this is happening, and tbh it's probably not just Meta "inflating" things for the sake of it. It's more likely a deeper issue with how the campaigns are set up and what you're telling the algorithm to do. The good news is we can definitely get this sorted, but duplicating the campaign and just changing the attribution window is probably just a sticking plaster on a much bigger wound.
Let's get into it.
We'll need to look at why you're paying Facebook to find non-customers...
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about how these platforms work, something most people don't quite get. When you set your campaign objective to "Conversions," especially with a big budget and potentially broad targeting, you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and slightly lazy, command: "Find me conversions for the lowest possible price to make my numbers look good."
The algorithm, being the efficient machine that it is, does exactly what you asked. It scours your audience to find the path of least resistance. What does that path look like? It looks like users who are already part of your warm audience, people who have maybe been on your site before, people who are already primed to buy from you or a competitor. It finds people who were likely going to convert anyway, shoves an ad in front of them without them even needing to click, and then when they eventually buy within the attribution window, Meta takes the credit. This is your view-through conversion problem in a nutshell.
You're essentially paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the audience that is cheapest to get a "conversion" from. And who are these people? They are the ones least likely to click, least likely to properly engage, because their attention is cheap. They scroll past. They don't interact. But because they look like other converters, the system counts it as a win. Your "conversion" campaign is behaving like a badly run "Brand Awareness" campaign. You're actively paying to find an audience that doesn't properly engage with your ads, which is why your new tests are even worse at 60% view-throughs - the algorithm is getting better and better at finding these cheap, low-engagement conversions.
This is a strategic flaw, not just a tactical reporting issue. The goal isn't just to change the reporting window to hide the problem; it's to force the algorithm to find you new customers who are so compelled by your advertising that they have no choice but to stop, click, and engage. The best form of brand awareness for a business like yours isn't a passive view; it's a competitor's customer clicking your ad, switching to your product, and becoming a profitable long-term asset. That only happens through proper conversion, driven by a click.
I'd say your targeting is probably the main culprit...
So, how do we stop feeding the machine junk food and start giving it the instructions it needs to find real customers? It all starts with targeting. Your problem sounds exactly like what happens when targeting is too broad or too generic. You have to get way more specific and intentional.
Forget the sterile demographic profiles. "Men aged 25-45 who like 'online shopping'" is useless. It tells you nothing of value and leads to the generic ads that cause this exact view-through issue. You need to stop targeting demographics and start targeting a nightmare. What is the specific, urgent, expensive problem that your product solves? Your ideal customer isn't a person; it's a person in a specific problem state.
Once you've isolated that nightmare, you can find them. Where do they hang out online? What niche podcasts do they listen to? What industry newsletters do they actually open? What specific software or tools do they already pay for? This is the intelligence that forms your targeting. Do they follow specific influencers in your niche? Are they members of certain highly-specific Facebook groups? This work is hard, but it's the foundation. Without it, you're just burning cash.
I see so many accounts where people just test audiences that have no real alignment with their conversion goals. You need to prioritise. The further down the funnel an audience is, the better it will perform. For an account with your level of spend and data, you should have a very structured approach. I usually structure campaigns like this:
| Funnel Stage | Audience Type | Example Audiences (for an eCommerce Store) |
|---|---|---|
| ToFu (Top of Funnel - Prospecting) | Cold Audiences |
1. Detailed Targeting: Based on 'nightmare' research - competitor pages, niche magazines, related software users. 2. High-Quality Lookalikes: LAL of purchasers, LAL of top 25% LTV customers, LAL of Add to Cart events. |
| MoFu (Middle of Funnel - Consideration) | Warm Audiences | Retargeting video viewers (50%+), social media engagers, all website visitors. (Excluding recent purchasers and cart abandoners). |
| BoFu (Bottom of Funnel - Conversion) | Hot Audiences | Retargeting Add to Carts, Initiated Checkouts, Viewed Content/Product pages. (Usually a 7-14 day window). |
You run separate campaigns for each stage. This structure forces the algorithm to find different types of people for different goals. Your ToFu campaign is for finding new blood. Your MoFu/BoFu campaigns are for converting the interest you've already generated. This stops the algorithm from just picking the low-hanging fruit (view-throughs on warm traffic) to meet its conversion goal. You have to test, test, test within this structure. Turn off audiences that don't perform. If an audience has spent 2-3x your target CPA without a click-based conversion, it's probably not a winner.
I remember one client we worked with, a women's apparel brand, had this exact problem. Their ads were getting conversions, but the ROAS was stagnant and view-throughs were high. We rebuilt their account into this ToFu/MoFu/BoFu structure, got hyper-specific with the detailed targeting (targeting followers of niche fashion bloggers instead of just "fashion"), and saw their ROAS jump to 691%. It works.
You probably should give your creative a massive overhaul...
Even with perfect targeting, if your ad creative is boring, it's just digital wallpaper. It gets scrolled past. That's a 'view'. To fix your problem, you need ads that stop the scroll and demand a click. The ad itself needs to do the pre-qualifying for you.
Your ad needs to speak directly to the 'nightmare' we just talked about. I find two frameworks work incredibly well for this.
1. Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS): You don't just state the problem, you twist the knife a little before offering the solution.
2. Before-After-Bridge (BAB): You paint a picture of their current frustrating reality, show them the dream destination, and position your product as the bridge to get there.
Let's imagine you sell a high-ticket B2B software. Here's how that looks in practice:
| The Old Way (Gets Views) | The Better Way (Gets Clicks) |
|---|---|
|
Headline: Project Management Software Body: Our platform helps teams collaborate and deliver projects on time. Increase your productivity. Request a demo today. (This is generic, speaks to no one, and will be ignored by anyone who isn't already actively searching for a solution. It generates cheap views and maybe some view-throughs from people who were already going to look for a PM tool.) |
Headline: Another project deadline missed? Body (using PAS): Your team is drowning in spreadsheets and endless email chains (Problem). Every Monday morning meeting feels like a firefighting exercise, and your best clients are getting frustrated (Agitate). Our platform gives your entire team a single source of truth, automating status updates and making deadlines unmissable. Get your free trial and get your weekends back (Solve). (This is specific, emotional, and calls out the exact pain. Someone feeling that pain is almost forced to click to learn more. This is how you generate click-through conversions.) |
You have to test multiple angles like this. One angle might speak to the manager's pain of reporting to their boss, another to the team member's pain of tedious admin work. We've seen incredible results by switching from standard image ads to things like user-generated content (UGC) videos. I remember one medical job matching SaaS client whose CPA was stuck at around £100. The ads were professional but sterile. We switched to a campaign structure like the one above and tested a series of simple, authentic-looking UGC videos from actual nurses talking about their frustrations. The CPA dropped from £100 to just £7. That's the power of creative that actually connects with the audience's reality.
You'll need a better way to think about your numbers...
Right, so we've looked at giving the algorithm better instructions through targeting and creative. The final piece of the puzzle is to stop obsessing about the wrong metric. The real question isn't "why are my view-throughs so high?" but "how much can I actually afford to pay for a real, high-quality customer?"
The answer is in a simple calculation most businesses never do: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Knowing this number changes everything. It frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap leads and allows you to grow aggressively and intelligently.
Here’s the basic maths:
1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What does an average customer pay you per month/year? Let's say it's $100/month.
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that? After cost of goods, etc. Let's say it's 75%.
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? Let's say it's 5%.
The LTV formula is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
Let's plug in the numbers:
| LTV Calculation Example | |
|---|---|
| LTV | = ($100 * 0.75) / 0.05 |
| LTV | = $75 / 0.05 |
| LTV | = $1,500 |
In this example, each new customer is worth $1,500 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to $500 to acquire a single customer and still run a very profitable business. Suddenly, that $50 CPA you were worried about looks like a bargain, provided it's a real customer and not an inflated view-through.
This is the metric that should guide your ad spend. The high view-through rate isn't just a reporting annoyance; it's a symptom that the algorithm is bringing you low-intent, low-quality users because you've implicitly told it to find the cheapest 'conversions' possible. These are likely your low-LTV customers, or not customers at all. By focusing on LTV, you can confidently tell the algorithm to go find you better, more expensive-to-acquire customers, because you know the maths works out in the long run. You can aim for a higher CPA to get out of the bargain bin of users that Meta is currently serving you.
So what should you actually do right now?
This is all a bit much to take in, I know. It's a fundamental shift from just tweaking campaigns to thinking like a proper growth strategist. Based on everything, here is the main advice I have for you, broken down into a plan you can actually implement.
| Step | Action | Why It Works |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Stop The Bleeding (Short-Term Fix) | Go ahead and duplicate your best-performing campaign and set the attribution to 7-day click only. Reduce spend on the old campaign. | This is the sticking plaster you were thinking about. It will immediately give you a clearer picture of direct-response performance and force the algorithm to prioritise clicks. But this is not the long-term solution. |
| 2. Rebuild Your Targeting Strategy | Pause your new tests. Build out new, separate campaigns for ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu stages. Start your ToFu prospecting with 3-5 highly specific 'nightmare-based' detailed targeting audiences. | This forces the algorithm out of its lazy habits. It has to work harder to find new, cold users who respond to your specific messaging, rather than just getting cheap conversions from warm audiences. |
| 3. Relaunch With 'Click-Worthy' Creative | Within your new ToFu campaign, test 3 completely new ad concepts. Use the PAS or BAB frameworks. Make one of them a simple, authentic-looking UGC-style video. Call out the problem in the first 3 seconds. | This is the most direct way to combat view-throughs. An ad that hits a nerve and presents a clear solution creates an irresistible urge to click, not just scroll past. It self-selects an engaged audience. |
| 4. Rethink Your Financial Goal | Take an hour and do a serious LTV calculation for your business. Based on that, determine your maximum allowable CAC (usually LTV / 3). Set this as your new North Star metric. | This changes your entire mindset from "how cheap can I get a conversion?" to "how much can I invest to get a valuable customer?". It allows you to target better, more expensive audiences with confidence. |
| 5. Optimise Your Offer & Landing Page | Review the first thing a user sees after they click. Is the promise of the ad paid off instantly? Is your offer compelling? Is it a generic 'Shop Now' or something that provides real, immediate value? | You're about to start paying for higher-quality clicks. You can't afford to waste them on a confusing or low-value landing page. The entire funnel must be aligned to convert that hard-won click. |
Implementing all this is a significant piece of work, especially when you're spending $3,500 a day. Getting it wrong could be very expensive. But getting it right is the difference between an ad account that looks okay on a spreadsheet and a business that is genuinely scaling with profitable, high-quality customers.
The pattern you're seeing is something we see all the time. The difference between a campaign that feels like it's working and one that is actually a powerful engine for growth is this kind of strategic depth. We've taken on many accounts, from subscription boxes where we hit 1000% ROAS to software companies where we took the CPL down to $22 for B2B decision-makers, by applying these exact principles.
It’s about understanding the machine, understanding the customer, and making them work together. If you’d like to have a proper look at your account together, we offer a free, no-obligation strategy session where we can audit your campaigns and help build out a more concrete version of this plan for your specific business.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
