Overview
Meta still offers the cheapest large-scale attention available to most businesses, but it has become considerably harder to run well. iOS privacy changes broke a lot of tracking, Advantage+ moved much of the targeting decision to Meta's algorithm, and creative now does most of the work that manual audience targeting used to do.
We run Meta as a performance channel. That means the tracking has to be right before the spend scales, and the reporting has to tie back to revenue in your own systems, not just to what Ads Manager claims.
Tracking that actually works
This is where most underperforming accounts are losing money, and it is invisible until you look.
- Conversions API server-side alongside the browser pixel, with proper event deduplication. Browser-only tracking now misses a substantial share of conversions, which starves the algorithm of the signal it optimises on.
- Event match quality improved by passing hashed email, phone and location where consent allows — this directly affects attribution accuracy.
- Aggregated Event Measurement configured with events prioritised in the right order.
- Consent handling implemented properly, because compliance and measurement have to coexist.
- Reconciliation against your CRM or store data, so we are optimising to real orders rather than platform-reported ones.
Campaign structure
Meta's algorithm needs volume in a learning phase to work. Accounts split across twenty ad sets never exit learning and never perform. We consolidate.
- Prospecting with broad and Advantage+ audiences, letting the algorithm find buyers while creative does the qualifying.
- Retargeting segmented by intent — viewed product, added to cart, abandoned checkout — with messaging that matches where someone stopped.
- Retention to existing customers for repeat purchase and cross-sell, usually the cheapest revenue in the account.
- Exclusions set so you are not paying to advertise to people who bought yesterday.
Creative, which is the actual targeting
On Meta today, creative is the lever. We run a structured testing programme rather than boosting whatever the marketing team liked most.
- Multiple concepts per campaign, each testing a different angle — problem, proof, offer, objection — not just a different colour.
- Native-feeling formats: UGC-style video, founder and customer voice, before-and-after, and carousels for product ranges.
- Vertical video built for Reels and Stories specifically, not a landscape ad cropped.
- The first three seconds treated as the whole job, because that is where most of the audience is lost.
- A clear testing cadence, with winners scaled and losers cut on evidence rather than opinion.
Landing pages
Ad spend is wasted on a page that loads slowly or asks for too much. We check page speed on mobile, message match between ad and page, form length, and trust signals — and we will tell you when the problem is the page rather than the campaign, even though fixing the campaign would be easier to bill.
Reporting
Reporting is on the numbers that decide whether to spend more: cost per acquisition, return on ad spend, and blended figures across channels. We report what the platform claims and what your own systems show, and we explain the gap rather than quietly picking whichever is more flattering.
What you get
- A tracking audit and Conversions API implementation before any scaling.
- A consolidated campaign structure across prospecting, retargeting and retention.
- A running creative testing programme with documented results.
- Monthly reporting on CPA and ROAS reconciled against your own data.
- A clear recommendation when the constraint is the offer or the landing page, not the ads.
If the Conversions API is not set up properly, you are not optimising a campaign. You are optimising a guess.