Helping E-Commerce Brands Scale on Facebook with creative & conversion-driven strategies.

Founder of the Nomad Project, a performance marketing agency, emphasizing in paid media performance through Facebook and Google ads. My journey includes years of deep-rooted experience in e-commerce, notably leading the growth trajectory of Loop Club, culminating in its successful acquisition.

Here's how you can prevent your new ads from getting zero spend in your scaling campaign.

You test 4 concepts. All 4 win. You move them to your scaling campaign/ad set.

But only 1 gets spend. The other 3 sit there at $10-20/day doing nothing.

Sound familiar?

Here's what's actually happening.

Meta picked its favorite and is ignoring the rest. But those 3 ads are proven winners from testing. Meta just hasn't figured that out yet in this campaign.

Most media buyers kill those ads after a week. Don't.

What I do instead:

→ I have an extra ad set in my scaling campaign just for new graduates that aren't getting spend
→ I set a min spend limit at 2-3x my average CPA
→ This forces Meta to actually spend on them
Now those ads get a fair shot.

Meta has to give them enough budget to prove themselves.

Once they start generating purchases or picking up engagement, Meta starts pushing real spend their way.

Without this you're waiting for Meta to eventually discover ads it already decided to ignore.

That can take a month.
Or never happen at all.

Force the audition.

Ben Radack

Media buyer & creative strategist - I help brands lower their CPA with Facebook ads

How I identify ad fatigue.

There's no single metric for it. Some media buyers say frequency but that's not always related.

Here's what I actually look at:

→ First, CPA. Are any ads consistently running above target? Not one bad day. Consistently.

→ Then I check where that ad sits in the ad set regarding spend. The top spending ad usually has a higher CPA because it's bringing people into the funnel. That one gets a longer leash.

→ Then I look at a combination of link CTR and add to cart rate. These two together tell the real story. If both are dropping over time, the ad is fatiguing. People are seeing it too much and it's not landing anymore.

→ I also watch checkout to purchase rate. If people are getting all the way to checkout but not buying, that's a different problem. But if this drops alongside CTR and ATC rate, the whole funnel is cooling off.

The key is looking at these together not in isolation. 

An ad might have a bad CPA day but if CTR and ATC rate are still strong, it's probably fine. Just a slow day.

The hardest skill in media buying is doing nothing.

Your CPA spikes on a Tuesday and every instinct tells you to change something.

Pause an ad. Adjust a budget. Change the structure.

But most of the time the best move is to wait.

→ Bad days happen. One bad day isn't a trend.
→ Meta fluctuates. The algorithm has good days and bad days just like you.
→ Reacting too fast resets learnings and makes things worse.

The media buyers who struggle the most are the ones who can't sit on their hands. They optimize themselves into a hole.

Check your attribution settings. It might be costing you.

Look at the difference between "cost per purchase" and "cost per purchase 7 day click" on the same ad sets.

→ Ad set 1: $44 CPA vs $89 on 7 day click
→ Ad set 2: $46 CPA vs $108 on 7 day click
→ Ad set 3: $47 CPA vs $55 on 7 day click
→ Ad set 4: $138 CPA vs $276 on 7 day click

Default attribution includes view-through conversions. Someone sees your ad, doesn't click, buys later through an email or Google search - Meta takes credit for it.

7 day click only counts people who actually clicked your ad and purchased within 7 days.

That's the real number.

Ad set 3 looks almost the same on both.

That's a real performer. The ad is actually driving purchases.

Ad set 4 doubles from $138 to $276. That means half its "conversions" came from people who never clicked.

Meta is taking credit for sales it didn't drive.

If you're making optimization decisions on default attribution you might be scaling ads that aren't actually working and killing ads that are.

Add 7 day click columns to your setup. Just select the "columns" dropdown and click "attribution settings."

Make your decisions on that number. Thank me later.

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Jennifer .

We removed a 10% discount and our CPA went up 85% overnight.

Most people would panic and put the offer back on. We didn't.

Here's what actually happens when you change an offer.

Everyone currently in your funnel saw the old price. They've been considering the purchase for 24-48 hours. Now they come back and the price is higher. So they don't buy.

That's what I refer to as a funnel flush problem.

Here's what I did to get things back under control:

→ Turned off the top spending ads. Yes, our original top performers.
→ This forces Meta to reset. The old funnel needs to cycle out.
→ Gave it 3 days to optimize and find new people who never saw the original offer.

Slowly purchases start rolling in again. These are people who only know the current price.

No comparison. No sticker shock.

CPA came back down.

The mistake most founders make is reacting to the first 48 hours after an offer change.

That data isn't real. It's the old funnel dying.

Let it flush. Give Meta time. Then decide what to do.

The ad account structure behind a $450k/mo spend. Full breakdown.

Here's what we're running right now and why everything has its place.

Campaigns:

→ CBO for scaling proven winners
→ ABO for creative testing
→ CBO for whitelisting/partnership ads (separate so we can track creator performance)
→ ABO for landing page tests using Meta's Experiment tool

Four campaigns. Each one has a specific job. Nothing overlaps.

Creative volume to sustain that spend:

→ 100-150 ads tested per month
→ Up to 2 variations per concept/angle
→ 25% static images
→ 75% videos (street interviews, podcast, product reviews etc)

You need this volume at this spend level... some brands go far beyond that.

Creative fatigues fast when you're pushing this much budget. If you're not feeding the account new ads weekly it will hit a wall.

Landing page / offer testing:
→ 2 new landing pages per month
→ Mix of sales pages with different offers and listicle style pages (best of, 5 reasons why, etc.)
→ Running through Meta's Experiment tool for clean A/B data

This structure isn't for every account. But at $450k/mo this is what it takes to keep things going.

Stop spending all your time in Ads Manager.

→ Study your client's product
→ Read their customer reviews
→ Understand their margins
→ Know their email strategy
→ Look at their landing pages on mobile

The media buyers who only know how to push buttons in Ads Manager are the ones who get replaced.

The ones who understand the full business are the ones who become irreplaceable.

Ads Manager is maybe 30% of the job. The other 70% is everything around it.

Stop making decisions on averages. Use daily breakdowns instead! Here's why...

A 7 day average can and will lie to you.

One day with a couple high AOV purchases sends your ROAS up and suddenly the whole week looks great.

Or one terrible day drags your average down and a perfectly good ad looks like a loser.

Averages hide what's really happening.

What I do instead:

→ Select the ad you're analyzing
→ Go to filter (top left) and select "filter only selected row"
→ Set the date range to last 7 day
→ Click into the breakdowns and select "day"

Now I can see exactly what happened each day.

What I'm looking for:

→ 3+ consecutive good days? That ad is working. Scale it.
→ 3+ consecutive bad days? That ad is done. Kill it.
→ 2 great days and 5 bad ones? That average might look okay but the ad isn't consistent. Those 2 good days were probably a fluke or an email send inflating the numbers.

The daily breakdown also catches things you'd miss with averages:

→ An ad that was failing all week but started working yesterday. The average still looks bad but the trend is turning. Don't kill it yet.
→ An ad that crushed it early in the week but died 3 days ago. The average still looks decent but it's already over.

Consistency over 3+ days is what I'm looking for.

Not averages. Not single day spikes.

Daily breakdowns tell you the real story. Averages tell you a summary that's probably wrong.

This is your monthly reminder that you can save your dead ads with a Zombie Campaign.

Here's how it works:

→ Launch a CBO with a cost cap set 30%+ below your average CPA 
→ Duplicate all your failed tests into one ad set 

The low cost cap means Meta will only spend when it can find a cheap conversion. 

Some of those "failed" ads didn't fail because they were bad. They failed because they never got enough spend or didn't get enough time to optimize.

At a low cost cap, Meta cherry picks the cheapest opportunities. 

Every 2 weeks to a month:

→ Launch a new ad set with your latest batch of failed tests 
→ Set a min spend limit on it so Meta doesn't completely ignore the new ads 
→ Let the older ad sets run without touching them

You'll be surprised how many "dead" ads come back to life in this campaign. It won't be all of them. But even pulling 2-3 winners out of the graveyard is free money you would've left on the table.

Open your account right now and do this.

→ Sort all your ads by spend
→ Set your time frame to 14 days
→ Look at the bottom - the ads that have been running the longest but spent the least

Meta decided it didn't like them. But Meta isn't always right.

→ Duplicate those ads into a new ad set
→ Fresh start
→ Let them run

You'll find new winners this way. I've seen ads that got $10 of spend in 2 weeks turn into top performers when they got a second chance in a new ad set.

You're basically betting that Meta made the wrong spend allocation decision.

And it does. More often than you'd think.

Takes 2 minutes. Try it.

You can test and scale your ads in one CBO. Here's how I structure it.

Two types of ad sets inside one campaign

1. The scaling ad set (your proven winners):

→ Cost cap set at 20%ish below your average CPA - keeps things profitable
→ Min spend limit to force Meta to focus most of the budget here
→ These are ads that already proved themselves. You want the bulk of spend going here.
→ Adjust the min spend as needed based on how the campaign is performing

2. Testing ad sets (new creative batches):

→ One new ad set for every large batch of creatives you want to test (not testing ad set per concept)
→ Min spend limit so Meta doesn't starve them
→ Max spend limit so they can't blow through budget on unproven ads
→ High cost cap - you need these to actually spend so you can collect data. A tight cost cap on fresh ads prevents meta from giving them a shot

As ads prove themselves in the testing ad sets, duplicate them into the scaling ad set.

That's the whole system.

→ Testing ad sets feed winners into the scaling ad set
→ Scaling ad set runs your proven ads at a profitable CPA
→ One CBO handles everything

This strategy is great for brands that may not have the budget for separate testing campaigns, and allows you to test and scale in the same place.

Yes you'll miss out on potential winners with large batch tests, but you'll also find ads quickly and keep things consolidated.

Your best performing ad might be your worst ad.

Meta is really good at finding people who are already ready to buy. These people will convert on a mid ad. It doesn't need to be great. They were already going to buy.

So you look at the data and think the ad is crushing it. But it's not the ad. It's the audience.

Try scaling it. CPA spikes. It falls apart. Because it was never a good ad. It was just shown to easy buyers.

I've seen so many accounts get stuck here. Ads that perform well but only to warm audiences. Can't scale. Can't grow.

The fix:

→ Make ads for people who don't know you yet
→ Test against cold audiences
→ If someone who has never heard of you stops scrolling, that's a scalable ad

An ad that converts warm traffic is easy. An ad that creates new demand is where the real money is.

I have a client that only runs ads through non-brand Facebook pages. And it's crushing.

No ads from the brand page at all. Everything comes from pages we created.

Here's how to set this up:

→ Create Facebook pages for your content creators (with their permission)
→ You can also create tastemaker pages based on your niche (think "Pro Sleep Tips" or "Daily Wellness Hacks")
→ Warm them up for a month. Post content etc
→ Run them in a warmup campaign at under $100/day just to build some history
→ After a month, graduate them to your testing campaign and run your top performing creative from these pages

People trust a person or a niche page way more than a brand they've never heard of.

Same ad, different page, different results.

Try it.

Batch testing 50 ads works like carving a marble block.

Here's how.

You launch 50 ads in one ad set. Meta immediately picks 1-2 to spend on. The other 48 get barely anything.

Most people stop here. They judge the 48 as losers and move on.

I don't.

→ Take the 48 ads that didn't get spend
→ Put them in a new ad set
→ Let Meta pick its favorites again
→ Pull the winners
→ Repeat with whatever's left

Each round you're chipping away at the block. Finding winners that Meta missed the first time.

Here's why this works.

I'm somewhere in the middle on trusting Meta. It's good at finding winners. When it picks 1-2 ads out of 50, those are usually solid. So the first round works in your favor.

But Meta also misses things. It makes a quick decision early on and ignores the rest. Doesn't mean those ads are bad. It means they never got a shot.

By retesting the leftovers in a fresh ad set, you're forcing Meta to look again with fresh eyes. And every round you find 1-2 more winners it would have never discovered.

→ Round 1: 50 ads, find 2 winners
→ Round 2: 48 ads, find 2 more
→ Round 3: 46 ads, find 1-2 more

You keep carving until there's nothing left worth testing.

This isn't for everyday testing. It's for when you need to find winners fast and you've got a big batch of creative to get through.

I scale my whitelisting ads in their own campaign. Here's the setup.

New whitelisting tests go in my creative testing ABO like everything else. Nothing special here.

When one wins, it gets duplicated into a dedicated whitelisting CBO.

The structure:

→ One ad set per page 
→ Never combine different pages in the same ad set 
→ This way I can see exactly which creators are performing and which aren't 
→ Min spend limits on newer creator ad sets so Meta actually gives them a chance to prove themselves

That's it.

Your ad is saying too much.

I see this all the time. Brands try to pack every selling point into one ad.

"Boosts energy. Improves focus. Supports gut health. Reduces stress. Enhances mood."

Nobody reads that. Their brain checks out after the second benefit. Too many choices, too much to process.

They scroll.

What works better:

→ "Finally, energy that lasts all day"

That's it. One promise. One reason to care. The brain makes a quick yes or no decision and moves on.

But here's where most brands miss the opportunity.

Each of those benefits is its own ad. Its own angle. Its own audience.

→ The person who wants energy is not the same person who wants gut health
→ The person who wants focus is not the same person who wants stress relief

So instead of one ad trying to convince everyone, make 4-5 ads that each nail one specific benefit.

→ Energy angle for the tired parent
→ Focus angle for the busy professional
→ Gut health angle for the wellness person
→ Stress angle for the burned out worker

More angles. More pockets of your audience. Better performance.

Less is more in the ad. More is more in the account.

Your scaling campaign should never depend on one ad set.

I see this all the time. One ad set eating 80% of the budget. Everything looks great until those ads fatigue. Then the whole account crashes overnight because there's nothing behind it.

Here's how I prevent this:

→ Every month I launch a new ad set in my scaling CBO with that month's proven winners
→ Each ad set gets a min spend limit so Meta is forced to distribute budget across all of them
→ No single ad set is ever responsible for the majority of total spend

So when an ad set starts losing steam:

→ It's only 20-30% of your budget, not everything
→ The other ad sets are already scaled and pick up the slack
→ Performance dips instead of crashes

As older ad sets fatigue I turn them off. New ones are already running behind them.

Think of it like a rotation. You're always building the next wave of winners while the current ones are still performing. By the time they die, the replacements are already warmed up and spending.

Your account should be able to lose its top ad set tomorrow and keep moving. If it can't, you've got a structure problem.

You can save your ad account by batch testing your ads.

When your account is struggling and nothing is working, stop running clean one-variable tests. You don't have time for that right now.

Instead:

→ Take 30-40 ads
→ Split them across 3-4 ad sets in one ABO
→ Let Meta sort through them

Right now your only goal should be to find winners fast and this is the quickest way to do that.

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