r/AdvertisingFails

I recently started testing OpenAI Ads for one of my campaigns and still very early in the learning phase. Setup was pretty straightforward, but I’m curious about real-world performance from others here.
So far I’m treating it as an experiment, but would love to hear if anyone has seen meaningful results or if it’s still too early.

Ran a clean 8-week experiment recently: a custom stock-aware DCO setup vs. Meta's AdvantagePlus, 50/50 budget split, same period, first-time buyers as the primary KPI (not platform CTR). Sharing the lessons because most "DCO vs AP+" threads here are vibes, and a few of these cost us real money to learn.


**1. DCO has a learning curve — and AdvantagePlus will beat it at first.** For roughly the first two weeks our DCO was 
*more expensive*
 per purchase while it built its model. Meta's mature algo led early. If you kill a DCO test in week 2, you'll "prove" it doesn't work. Ours crossed over around week 3 and led most weeks after.


**2. Stock-aware is the cheapest win.** Syncing creative to live inventory so you stop serving ads for sold-out products (and sold-out 
*sizes*
, in fashion) recovered budget immediately. If you do nothing else, do this.


**3. Don't auto-replace your CTR winners.** Our worst performance drops came from swapping out a winning ad because its product went low-stock. Replacing a double-digit-CTR ad mid-flight tanked results. Protect winners; rotate the losers.


**4. Re-rendering helps in some categories and hurts in others.** Clean-rotating catalogs (apparel/tops, smaller sizes) responded well to frequent creative re-renders. Fragmented-stock categories (footwear) got 
*worse*
 with frequent swaps. Segment before you generalize.


**5. Measure with a holdout, not before/after.** A 50/50 split against your current setup, same budget and window, is the only way to know it's incremental and not just seasonality. And measure the real business metric (first-time buyers / new customers), not CTR.


Curious what others have seen — does your DCO beat AdvantagePlus once it's past the learning phase, or does AP+ stay ahead for you?