Have you checked whether the CPC itself is actually the problem, or if the real issue is conversion quality after the click?
Lately I've seen too many advertisers obsessing over CPC while the bigger headache is that Meta's been sending inconsistent buyer-intent traffic underneath. Ran a few campaigns where "expensive" $2-3 clicks outperformed ultra-cheap $0.40 ones hands down, simply because the pricey traffic actually converted. Right now the platform feels way more volatile than it used to - especially after recent delivery changes and end-of-month behaviour swings. A lot of accounts are seeing CPM hikes, unstable CPAs, and random traffic quality fluctuations while CTR and CPC still look acceptable on the surface. So if your CPC increased but your add-to-cart rate, checkout rate and purchase conversion stayed healthy, you might be fine.
Worked with a small ecommerce account spending around $250/day where CPC jumped from roughly $0.85 to nearly $2.40 over about ten days. The founder thought Meta had completely broken when ROAS dropped from 3.1 to 1.2 almost overnight. after digging deeper into the funnel, the real culprit wasn't the click cost - the ATC rate collapsed from about 12% to under 4% because Meta started expanding into weaker purchase-intent users. CTR still sat above 3% the whole time, which made the front-end metrics look deceptively healthy. Once we tightened creative messaging, stabilised campaign structure and improved post-click filtering on the landing page, CPA recovered from roughly $74 back to near $29 while CPC stayed relatively high around $1.90. Traffic quality mattered far more than raw click price.
Right now on your account - are your ATC and checkout rates also dropping alongside the CPC increase, or are clicks still behaving normally but purchases specifically tanked?
