appendix a · facebook & instagram
The account runs Facebook and Instagram across Australia and the United States: Dynamic Product Ads, partnership ads and standard creative campaigns. The issues are structural. The right tools exist, but they are not configured to let the algorithm optimise effectively or to measure what matters most to the business.
the good news
Catalogue DPA campaigns are generating above-average returns. The algorithm is matching products to in-market users effectively, based on browsing and purchase intent signals.
The constraint is audience scope. These campaigns are locked to retargeting audiences only, which limits their ability to reach genuinely new customers and understates their potential contribution to new customer acquisition.
Tagged creative from influencer and brand collaborations is producing one of the most efficient CPAs in the entire account, at approximately $34, on a budget of only around $200 per week.
These ads are not housed in their own campaign, so they compete for budget with other ad types and are consistently deprioritised by the algorithm. The efficiency is proven; the investment is not proportionate to the result. The account is also not activating enough partnerships. This should be a clear focus, as partnership creative is strongly favoured for both performance and incrementality.
Where incremental attribution is already running, the account holds a 3.44× incremental ROAS. That is a genuinely solid baseline: it means real, ad-driven returns exist to build on, not just attribution-flattered ones.
The problem is consistency, covered below: this measurement standard applies to only part of the account.
the leaks
Attribution is not standardised across the account. Some campaigns run on 7-day click, some on 7-day click plus 1-day view, and at least one on Meta's incremental model. Reported ROAS is therefore not comparable between campaigns, and blended performance should be treated as directional rather than definitive.
impactSpend decisions are being made on numbers measured to different standards. Standardising on incremental attribution is the foundational measurement fix the account needs, and the prerequisite for evaluating every other change.
Meta's Customer Lifecycle feature, built specifically to push spend toward genuinely new customers, is not active on any campaign. Simple audience exclusions are insufficient: Meta's probabilistic matching means existing customers keep receiving ads regardless. Without this feature there is no reliable mechanism for ensuring acquisition spend reaches genuinely new customers.
impactNew customer acquisition cannot be accurately measured or optimised. A non-negotiable activation for any account where growth is the primary objective.
Multiple product categories and customer personas are combined within single campaigns. A campaign containing formal dresses, festival wear, swimwear and everyday styles simultaneously cannot optimise effectively for any of them, and makes it impossible to see which category drives revenue versus drags performance.
impactBudget cannot be allocated intelligently across categories. The algorithm is optimising toward a blended signal that reflects no single customer intent.
1.1 million reach generated 4.6 million impressions in a single month in the US market: an average frequency of approximately 4.2×, well above the recommended 2-3× ceiling for performance campaigns. Middle and bottom-of-funnel audiences are saturated, and the problem compounds the longer it runs.
impactRising CPMs, declining CTR and diminishing returns on existing audiences. Needs immediate creative refresh and audience expansion.
The majority of DPA catalogue spend is restricted to existing website visitors. The account reports reaching new customers through DPAs, but the data does not support this: spend labelled as new is largely recapturing existing demand.
impactNew customer acquisition figures are inflated, and the true cost of reaching genuinely new customers is understated.
Klaviyo email lists and pixel-based website visitor audiences overlap significantly, and existing purchasers are not cleanly excluded from acquisition campaigns. This wastes spend on people who have already bought and sends conflicting signals about who the target customer is.
impactWasted spend on existing customers, unreliable new customer reporting, and degraded algorithm performance from conflicting signals.
Spend is concentrated on the top two to three ads across campaigns. Meta has classified the remaining creative as too similar to the top performers and is not distributing budget across the full set. Content is now the primary targeting mechanism on Meta: diverse creative is how the account reaches diverse audiences.
impactThe account cannot reach new audience segments without creative variety. Long-term scalability is constrained by creative concentration.
the fix list
Move every campaign onto Meta's incremental attribution model as the single measurement standard. This is the prerequisite for accurate performance measurement across the account; without it, no other optimisation can be properly evaluated.
Enable Customer Lifecycle across all acquisition-focused campaigns. No additional budget required, it is an account settings change, and it is the only reliable mechanism for ensuring acquisition spend reaches genuinely new customers.
Break campaigns out by category: formal, festival, swimwear, everyday. Each category gets its own campaign, dedicated creative and separate budget, so Meta can develop category-level learning and budget decisions can be made on category-level data.
Create clean, non-overlapping segments: website visitors excluding purchasers, Klaviyo subscribers excluding purchasers, and AU and US purchaser lists held separately. The prerequisite for accurate new customer reporting and clean algorithm signals.
Introduce broad-targeted cold TOF campaigns running on incremental attribution as the primary new customer acquisition engine. Budget allocation driven by category-level contribution margin data once the restructure is complete.
Move partnership ads into their own standalone campaign with a significantly increased weekly budget, with creative set to dynamic format so ads deliver natively from the partner's page. The proven $34 CPA gives a clear, defensible benchmark for scaling decisions.
Remove the retargeting-only restriction on DPA catalogue campaigns and run them on incremental attribution. This broadens catalogue reach to new customers and ensures only genuinely ad-driven conversions are credited.
Build a structured creative testing framework beyond on-location fashion shoots: UGC-style content, talking-to-camera, static lifestyle and product-focused formats. Pull competitor creative intelligence from Princess Polly, Sabo and Dissh to identify winning angles.
Layer bid cap and cost cap campaigns alongside existing lowest-cost campaigns, letting the account find natural scale at a defined efficiency threshold and protecting profitability as budgets increase.