Your Meta account is too complex (and it's costing you a fortune)

Hey everyone,

It's time for another bite to chew on.

Last week I (Ash) collaborated with Alex Song of Proxima and Caleb Madsen of WIN Brands Group for a webinar about Meta strategy.

(You can check out the Webinar recording here.)**

My DMs haven't stopped buzzing since. The topic everyone keeps asking about?

Account structure.

See, running Meta ads in 2024 isn't about fancy strategies or secret hacks. 

I’d say most brands are actually killing their marketing efficiency by overcomplicating things. 

I audited some accounts live during the Webinar, but if you missed it - let me show you exactly how to fix the complexity problem so you can scale with confidence. 

On the Menu 

• First - The truth about account complexity 

• Second - The 3 campaign framework 

• Third - Learning phase management 

• BONUS - Applying this to BFCM

**BTW - We highly recommend you watch the whole webinar if you have the time. Ash goes through live Meta account audits which help illustrate a lot of what we talk about in this newsletter.

But if you don’t make it, we wanted to share an exclusive Black Friday offer that Alex revealed during the Webinar.

Top DTC marketers know that BFCM is all about efficiency — smart spending and maximizing returns. That’s why Proxima is launching their Efficiency Guarantee™️

Here’s how it works:

1. Run a free 14-day test to see how Proxima compares to your top Broad/ASC campaign

2. They’ll fully reimburse you for any lost revenue you miss out on if Proxima loses the test

If it doesn’t work, Alex will cut you a check for any lost efficiency if Proxima loses to your control campaign.

That means zero risk. 

And if they’re more efficient? You’ve uncovered a new path to profitable growth. It’s a win-win 🤝

That’s why we’re mentioning it here. We didn’t want anyone to miss out on such a no-brainer opportunity. 

Apply here, but don’t wait. 

You need to get your tests running before BFCM to qualify. 

The truth about account complexity

Every so often I see Meta accounts that look like they were designed by someone trying to solve a Rubik's cube blindfolded. 

Dozens of campaigns, multiple targeting strategies, endless ad sets, and complex rules that would make an engineer's head spin. 

Almost always → the more complex the account, the worse it performs.

The real killer? Auction overlap. 

When you create multiple campaigns targeting similar audiences, you're actually competing against yourself in Meta's auction system. 

Think of it like sending three salespeople to pitch the same customer at once - they end up fighting each other instead of closing the deal.

I recently audited an account spending six figures monthly with over 20 active campaigns. 

Their CPMs were 40% above industry average, simply because they were bidding against themselves. 

The sad part? They thought more campaigns meant better optimization. In reality, they were just burning money.

This complexity creates a cascade of problems:  

• Your data gets diluted across too many tests. 

• Your budget gets spread too thin to exit the learning phase. 

• And worst of all, Meta's algorithm never gets enough consistent data to optimize effectively.

There’s a better way…

The 3 campaign framework

Yup, you read that right. Three campaigns. 

At Obvi, that's all we use to manage our significant monthly spend → 

1 testing campaign + 2 scaling campaigns = simple, clean, and incredibly effective.

Let's talk about testing first. 

Our testing campaign is designed to give every new angle a fair shot while maintaining clean data. 

We allocate one ad set per angle, which allows us to clearly track performance without confusion. Within each ad set, we run between 4-6 different ads, mixing formats to find what resonates best with our audience. 

Budget is crucial here - we never go below $50 per day per ad set, because we want to be sure each test gets enough exposure to prove itself.

When it comes to scaling, we keep it even simpler. 

Our first scaling campaign uses ASC, letting the creative do the heavy lifting. 

That means → 

• No interest targeting

• No detailed targeting 

Just clean, proven creative speaking to our audience. 

The second scaling campaign is a CBO with 2 ad sets: 

→ One with broad targeting 

→ One with  Proxima AI Audiences, which gives us access to higher-intent customers based on actual purchase behaviors from other stores.

The key to making this work? Never running the same ad in multiple places. 

Each piece of creative lives in exactly one spot at any time. This eliminates self-competition and keeps our data crystal clear.

Learning phase management

Here's where most accounts go off the rails - they don't understand the math behind Meta's learning phase. 

Let me break it down simply: Meta needs about 50 conversions to optimize properly. Take your target CPA and multiply it by 50 - that's your minimum weekly budget per ad set.

For example, if your target CPA is $40, you need a minimum budget of $2,000 per week per ad set ($40 X 50 = $2000).  

At $30 CPA, you need $1,500. etc. 

Anything less and you're asking Meta to optimize with incomplete data. It's like trying to judge a basketball player's skill level by watching only the first quarter of one game. This is why we're so strict about consolidating winners and killing underperformers quickly. 

Every ad set stuck in learning is wasting budget that could be spent on proven winners. 

At Obvi, we keep our total spend in learning phase under 15% - anything over 20% is a red flag that needs immediate attention.

Attribution is another critical piece of this puzzle. 

We've stripped our attribution settings down to the bare essentials - either 1-day click when volume allows, or 7-day click for testing. 

We completely ignore view-through attribution. 

This might sound extreme, but here's why: in a recent audit, we found that 25% of an account's reported "conversions" were just view-through. That means a quarter of their supposed results came from people who never even clicked an ad. 

They were likely converting through email, organic search, or other channels.

BFCM application

With Black Friday approaching, you might be tempted to throw this entire framework out the window. 

Don't. This is exactly when you need to keep things simple and stable.

We started our Black Friday strategy really early (November 1st) this year, because data shows that 45% of holiday shoppers start before Black Friday itself. 

These early birds typically have larger budgets and are more likely to make multiple purchases throughout the season. Why wait to capture that demand?

Our approach to holiday scaling is gradual. 

In early November, we begin testing different offer presentations within our existing structure. 

We're not creating new campaigns or complicated promotional setups - we're simply layering in "early access" messaging and different offer angles into our proven framework.

As we move into mid-November, we start increasing budgets gradually while maintaining our core structure. 

This gives Meta's algorithm time to adjust to higher spending levels without losing efficiency. 

We'll add sale USPs to our winning creatives, but the fundamental creative concepts that worked before don't change just because it's BFCM.

Think about it →  

If you're targeting cold audiences during Black Friday (which you should be), these people don't know what your regular prices or offers are. 

They're encountering your brand for the first time. So why complicate things with elaborate campaign structures? 

Existing winners + urgency + offer callouts = killer BFCM ads

By the time Black Friday week arrives, we're running at maximum budget with our best offers live, but still within our three-campaign framework.

The only real difference is that we're pushing harder on retention campaigns to our existing customers - but that's handled through our email and SMS channels, not by creating new Meta campaigns.

Reminder - Don’t miss Proxima’s risk-free Black Friday offer here. 

You won’t get a better chance to find out if their predictive intelligence can help you get more scale out of BFCM. ~50% of our scaling budget is dedicated to Proxima AI Audiences at Obvi. 

Sum it up

After auditing hundreds of accounts and spending years overcomplicating things ourselves, we've learned that Meta success in 2024 comes down to 3 principles → 

• Simplicity wins: Fewer campaigns mean better performance, cleaner data, and faster scaling

• The math matters: Understanding your CPA targets and budget requirements is non-negotiable

• Trust the process: Test systematically, scale methodically, and stick to what works

Remember - the moment you try to get fancy with your Meta account structure is the moment you start losing money. 

Keep it simple, trust the data, and focus on removing obstacles between your ads and your audience.

All the best,

Ron and Ash