You're Probably Optimizing for the Wrong Thing

While its not the most common mistake it is by far the most costly. Its optimizing for anything other than purchases. If your campaign objective isn’t set to "Sales" and your ad sets aren’t optimizing for "Purchase," you’re asking Meta to deliver the wrong outcome. And it will.

A "traffic" campaign brings you clicks. An "add-to-cart" campaign brings you abandoned carts. An "awareness" campaign gets views. But rarely, sales. Meta delivers exactly what you tell it to. No more, no less.

What to Do:

• Always use Sales as your campaign objective

• Always optimize for Purchase at the ad set level

• Ignore advice about "warming up the funnel"

Stop Over-Targeting. Your Creative Does the Targeting Now

Still building lookalike audiences? Layering interest groups? That’s an outdated playbook.

Today, Meta’s algorithm is more effective than any human at finding your customer. The best-performing brands use Advantage+ Audience. No interests. No lookalikes. No targeting rules. Just broad reach and smart creative.

If your clothing brand sells vintage band tees, and you write an ad that speaks directly to old-school punk fans, Meta will find them. Make an ad that appeals to people who collect vinyl, Meta will serve it to that crowd.
Your creative is what defines who sees your ad. The copy, the visuals, the tone. That’s your new targeting. And Meta is incredibly good at using it

What to Do:

• Use Advantage+ Audience

• Let your creative shape the audience

• Test personas and angles in the ad itself, not in ad set settings

You Don’t Need Separate Retargeting Campaigns Anymore

We used to build out every part of the customer journey:

• Top of Funnel (TOF) for awareness

• Middle of Funnel (MOF) for consideration

• Bottom of Funnel (BOF) for conversion

  Each with separate exclusions, budgets, rules.
  
  Not anymore. Meta handles this now ,automatically, all inside a single campaign.
  
  If someone visits your hoodie product page, watches your ad creative for a longer than average time, or likes your brands Instagram Reel, Meta logs that behavior. Then it retargets them at the right time with the right creative. You don’t need to build those sequences manually. Its super simple and it’s a lot more effective.
  
  What to Do:
  
  

• Run a full-funnel campaign with no audience exclusions (apart from one but we’ll get to that)

• Let your creative define who sees your ad (Again!)

  • Brand storytelling for Top of Funnel customers

  • Reviews, social proof, and urgency for Bottom of Funnel

• Meta handles delivery- less is more.

Your Attribution Settings Might Be Lying to You

Meta’s default setting attributes conversions to people who clicked an ad within seven days, or simply viewed an ad within one day.

The issue?

That one-day view setting skews your results. While its a complex issue and you can read more about it here, the fact of the matter is the ‘sales’ that come through that attribution widow are not real.

So not only are your results inflated but worse, Meta will optimize based on these fake signals.

What to Do:

• Use 7-day click only attribution

• Remove 1-day view entirely
  
  

You're Paying to Resell to Customers You Already Have

If you're not excluding past customers, you're paying to sell to people who would have bought again anyway.

This is especially common in apparel brands with strong product-market fit. Great product, great customer experience. People come back. Sounds like they work with Airventory ;)
You don’t need to pay Meta to do what your retention flows (email, SMS, loyalty) are already doing.

If someone already has your product in their hands your ad can do very little to sway their mind. They’ll either come back or they won’t. And remember, a new customer is worth more. They bring long-term value. Your ad budget should be focused on acquiring them.

What to Do:

• Export customer lists regularly from Shopify or Klaviyo

• Exclude these from all campaigns using pixel and file-based audiences

• Prioritize acquisition over re-conversion
  
  

When it comes to big sale event like Black Friday it may be a good idea to not exclude past customers just for a few days. This varies from business to business but I typically do allow my ads to retarget past customers during BFCM.