Meta Ads

Facebook and Instagram advertising has changed significantly since iOS 14, but it still works — for businesses that have adapted their measurement approach and creative strategy to the current environment. The accounts that are struggling are usually still running the same structure they built in 2020. The accounts that are scaling are the ones that rebuilt attribution, invested in creative testing, and shifted from interest-based targeting to audience signals.

Who this is for

Business owners running Meta ads without a clear picture of what’s converting — the Ads Manager numbers look fine but the leads aren’t showing up in the CRM — have a measurement problem. When reported conversions and actual revenue don’t align, budget decisions are made on fiction. Fixing the attribution chain is the first thing that needs to happen before any other optimisation is meaningful.

Marketing managers who set up campaigns before the iOS 14 changes and haven’t rebuilt their measurement approach since are working with fundamentally unreliable data. Browser-based pixel tracking alone now under-reports conversions significantly. Without Conversions API server-side events alongside the pixel, you’re missing a material portion of your conversion signal — which means Meta’s algorithm is optimising against incomplete information.

DTC and e-commerce brands that have hit a revenue ceiling with interest-based targeting need a structured creative testing programme to break through it. Interest audiences in Meta have been progressively broadened to the point where the differentiation is largely in the creative, not the targeting. Finding what works at scale requires systematic testing, not intuition.

What's included

• Pixel, CAPI & Measurement Audit — Audit of your Meta Pixel implementation, Conversions API setup, event deduplication, and attribution window configuration. Server-side events are now essential to recover the signal lost from browser-based tracking alone.
• Audience Signal Strategy — We build audiences using your customer data — email lists, website visitors, purchaser profiles — rather than interest-based targeting that Meta has progressively broadened. Advantage+ Audience campaigns guided by strong signals consistently outperform manually built interest audiences.
• Creative Strategy & Testing Framework — Structured testing across formats (static, video, carousel, Reels), angles (product benefit, social proof, objection handling), and copy lengths to systematically identify what resonates at each funnel stage.
• Campaign Architecture & Build — Campaign structure designed around your funnel: prospecting for new audiences, retargeting for warm traffic, and retention for existing customers. Budget allocation split across layers based on your objectives and margin.
• Advantage+ Catalogue Sales — For e-commerce clients, we manage Advantage+ Catalogue Sales campaigns with properly structured product sets, dynamic creative, and retargeting exclusions. Feed quality is reviewed at onboarding.
• Monthly Reporting & Optimisation — Spend, reach, frequency, CPM, CPC, CTR, CPL, CPA, ROAS, and purchase value — with commentary on what changed and why, and flags for frequency saturation and creative fatigue.

Our approach

Every new engagement starts with a measurement audit. We verify Pixel events, implement or audit Conversions API, check event match quality scores, and confirm the attribution window aligns with your sales cycle. Campaigns optimised against incomplete data deteriorate over time; this step is not optional.

Strong campaigns need strong audiences. We set up Custom Audiences from your customer lists, website traffic, video viewers, and engagement data — alongside Lookalike audiences built from high-quality seed lists, with exclusions to prevent wasting spend on people who’ve already converted. This audience infrastructure compounds in value over time.

Creative is the primary lever in Meta advertising. We build a testing framework with multiple variants across at least two angles per launch, with defined success metrics and budget allocated to reach statistical significance before drawing conclusions. Winning variants scale; losing variants are replaced with new tests. This is a continuous programme, not a one-off effort.

Weekly optimisation covers creative performance, audience signal quality, frequency management, and bid strategy. For retargeting campaigns, we monitor audience size to ensure there’s enough volume to optimise against. For prospecting, CPM trends serve as a leading indicator of audience exhaustion.

Monthly reporting reconciles Ads Manager data with your CRM or e-commerce platform to account for attribution discrepancies. Meta’s reported conversions and your actual revenue rarely match without reconciliation — the monthly report reflects actual business outcomes, not platform metrics.

What this looks like in practice

A mid-sized e-commerce brand comes in with a profitable-looking ROAS in Ads Manager but flat actual revenue. The audit reveals: Conversions API not implemented (so pixel data is missing roughly 35% of purchase events), a single creative per ad set running for four months, and no prospecting campaigns — only retargeting. Within 60 days of rebuilding measurement, launching a creative testing programme, and adding prospecting campaigns with customer data signals, the account’s attributed conversions align with actual revenue and the prospecting funnel starts delivering incremental new customers.

Common questions

Has iOS 14 permanently damaged Meta advertising?

It changed it significantly but didn’t break it. Conversions API combined with first-party data strategies recover much of the signal lost from browser tracking. The advertisers who adapted — improving creative quality, using customer data for audience signals, and reconciling reported conversions with actual revenue — have continued to scale profitably.

What's the difference between Advantage+ and manual targeting?

Advantage+ Audience lets Meta’s algorithm find your audience based on the signals you provide (customer lists, pixel data, engagement audiences) rather than the interests and demographics you specify. For most accounts, Advantage+ Audience guided by strong signals outperforms manually built audiences — but only when the signal data is high quality.

How much should I spend on Meta Ads?

You need enough spend to generate at least 50 conversion events per ad set per week for Meta’s algorithm to optimise effectively. Below that threshold, manual oversight matters more than automation. We model the minimum effective budget in the strategy phase based on your cost per result and target volume.

Do you work with e-commerce and lead generation?

Yes to both. E-commerce campaigns focus on catalogue ads, purchase events, and ROAS. Lead generation campaigns focus on lead form or landing page conversion events and CPL. The campaign structure and creative strategy differ significantly between the two.

Can you create the ad creative, or do we supply it?

Both options work. We can produce static ad creative in-house and brief video production. We can also work with your existing brand assets. The important thing is having multiple creative variants in rotation — running one or two ads without a testing structure is one of the most common reasons Meta campaigns plateau.

Do you run ads on Instagram separately from Facebook?

Meta campaigns run across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network from a single campaign structure. Placements are set to Advantage+ unless there’s a specific reason to restrict (e.g., Reels-only for a video-first creative strategy). We monitor placement breakdowns to see where spend and results are concentrated.

Ready to talk?

We start every engagement with a free account audit — you’ll know within days what’s working, what’s costing you more than it should, and what a better-structured account would look like.