11 Jan 2025

Global decline in Facebook advertising results: why and how?

Facebook/News

decline in results from facebook marketing ads

Digital marketing is not for the faint of heart. The latest changes experienced by marketers around the world prove it. 🌍 Experts from Bulgaria, the US, the Philippines, Italy, the UAE, India, Brazil and many other countries complain that since the beginning of September they have seen a sharp decline in Facebook advertising results.

Repeatedly tested and successful advertising strategies for Facebook marketing suddenly stop working for no apparent reason.

⬇️ But the decline in Facebook advertising results unfortunately cannot go unnoticed:

drastically reducing the return on investment (ROI);
more than doubling the cost per order and for acquiring new customers;
zero logged orders from Facebook marketing as a channel;
some new campaigns that don't even begin to spend their allocated budget.

And other not-so-pleasant scenarios for Facebook marketers.

✅ At ADvantage, we haven't experienced these "hits", but we try to be as helpful as possible for those of you who do Facebook advertising yourself. That's why we decided to seek out information on what's happening so you can stay up to date with the news and make the best decisions.

Meta has been silent, but we dug into the treasure trove of Reddit, where users from around the world share what difficulties their businesses are going through. Some are relaying what their Meta Reps - the Meta reps that every advertiser who spends more than $100,000 a month on Facebook advertising has contact with - are telling them.

Why are my Facebook ad results dropping?

There are three reasons and for now we will treat them as hypotheses until we get an official announcement from Meta.

💡There are new changes in the Meta algorithm.

That's true, but whether anything broke because of them is unclear. Meta is rolling out an update at the end of August, and its launch date coincides with the beginning of the suffering for Facebook marketers. The changes cover various features such as:

integration of analytics platforms (e.g. Google Analytics);
setting to focus on overlay conversions, that is, conversions that wouldn't have happened if the user hadn't seen your Facebook ad;
Conversion value rules - you'll be able to assign different values to specific audiences or conversions to prioritize those that bring you more revenue.

💡There is a bug in the system somewhere.

Users report that whenever there has been a crash in one of Meta's products, their scores go down. You can track the status of Meta's tools here.

💡The drop in Facebook ad results has a connection to the US election - for some advertisers.

Yes, we know what you are going to say. The US is not the whole world and not everyone is excited about the Trump-Kamala Harris debate.

Here we are more interested in the match between Grishaw and Djokovic and the musical taste of the latter. How might the US election affect your Facebook advertising?

If you are selling products or services to a local audience based in Bulgaria it probably won't affect you. But on a global level, anything related to the US election is top news and is causing fluctuations in Facebook ad results for advertisers even outside the US.

If you are selling to a global market and your audience is global, then unfortunately it doesn't matter where you are. What's happening in the US and the huge advertising budgets are competing with your content for the top positions in the news feed of users around the world. And successfully at that.

What can be done for your Facebook marketing and advertising campaigns?

Hold on tight.

Don't stop the campaigns, test different audiences, but you can reduce the budget a bit to limit losses.