Hey all. Running a small Meta campaign and I'm at the point where I need outside eyes before I burn more budget. Hoping someone here has seen this pattern before.
The setup (kept short)
Selling a $29.99 digital info-product with $47 upsell. Targeting Canada + Ireland broad, €10/day, Sales objective. Pixel verified, funnel tested, domain verified. Launched with a Meta strategist's help.
One static image creative ("From Panic → Flow" split-screen) + one video. Killed the video Day 1 because it never got distribution (€191 CPM on Ireland, no learning happening).
Day 1 was honestly great
CTR 3.08% on the image, CPM €37, 8 landing page views, 3 InitiateCheckouts (all from Canada at €4.62 each), 42.8% LPV→IC rate. No sales yet but the funnel was clearly working on cold traffic.
Then Sunday happened
CPM jumped to €74. CTR stayed at 3.09% (so creative still resonating), but only 5 LPV and 0 IC. I thought "Sunday effect, fine, Monday will normalize."
Monday is somehow worse
By 3pm Monday: CPM €80, CTR collapsed to 1.64%, 1 click in 61 impressions, 0 IC. Frequency actually went DOWN to 1.39 — so Meta is hunting for new audiences, but apparently more expensive and less qualified ones.
Cumulative after €36 spent: 0 sales, only the original 3 IC from Day 1.
What I think might be happening
Either €10/day is just too low for two premium markets (algorithm can't exit Learning, so it's serving expensive scraps), or my qualified audience pool got tapped out fast and Meta is now spending in adjacent pools that don't convert.
What I've ruled out
Tracking is clean (Purchase event fires, IC events fire, all dedup correctly). Landing converts (42.8% LPV→IC is good). Domain verified, dataset category set to none, no policy issues.
What I'm considering
- Pause and refresh creative
- Pause and drop Ireland, concentrate on Canada
- Pause and scale to €20-25/day to give Meta enough volume
- Switch objective to InitiateCheckout since I can barely generate Purchase signals at this volume
Has anyone seen this exact "great Day 1, falling-off-a-cliff Day 2-3" pattern at sub-€15/day budgets? Is this just sub-threshold campaigns being sub-threshold, or is there something specific I should investigate?
Happy to share screenshots in DMs or comments. Thanks in advance.