Audience Network is eating your ad spend

weekendhustle

After a colleague suggested checking my placement breakdown, I was shocked to find Audience Network had nearly 60% CTR but was burning through budget faster than anything else. Meanwhile, our actual ROAS came from Facebook and Instagram placements - especially Stories and Reels.

I've been trying to figure out how to make ads profitable again. I saw that Hormozi guy say you need 500 creatives a week - how is that even possible for someone not spending six figures? If you run a 1% lookalike worldwide of customers, each ad set maxes out at 50 ads. So do you create ten ad sets competing for the same audience and driving up CPM? That seems counterproductive.

someone in the discussion said audience network is rubbish and to turn it off at account level - which I've now done. Another person pointed out that testing hundreds of creatives only works for accounts spending huge amounts. For smaller budgets, stick to 3-4 different angles, scale the winners, and test new ones gradually.

I'd love to hear how others are managing creative testing without blowing the budget

roichaser

Audience Network is trash for lead gen, no contest. But the blanket "unselect at account level" advice is lazy marketing. test it on brand awareness with a proper whitelist and you'll get cheap scale. Otherwise, kill it.

buggedout

Honestly, I wish more people understood this earlier.

Audience Network is a drain for new accounts. Turn it off until you have conversion data and can afford the junk traffic.
The "test hundreds of creatives" advice only works when you're burning thousands a day. For accounts under, say, £50/day, it's just noise.
Stick to 3-4 distinct angles from the start. Scale the winner, test one new angle at a time.

Keeps the data clean and the CPA predictable.

chatbox

I've seen the exact same pattern. Audience Network looks like a vanity metric machine - insane click-through rates that make you feel like a hero, until you drill into the conversion data and realise it's all garbage traffic. had a client burning about £250-300 per day on it, and the only thing growing was the bounce rate in GSC.

Switched them to strictly Instagram and Facebook feed placements, paired with 4-5 solid creatives instead of trying to carpet bomb. here's the structure that worked:

Killed Audience Network entirely in the ad set placement options.
Consolidated creative volume - we record 10-15 variations in one session, then run a structured split test.
moved the LAL from 1% to 5% - wider net caught better intent signals, not just lookalikes of accidental browsers.
Monitored CPM closely - hovered around $12-15, which felt reasonable for the quality.

what I've found is that the quantity-over-quality approach just inflates your ad manager numbers without any real business movement. using GTM to fire conversion tags on actual on-site actions (add to cart, checkout initiations) was what finally confirmed the Audience Network was dead weight. empty clicks, zero downstream events.

Batch recording your own creatives and testing hooks beats burning cash on 500 variations any day. Screaming Frog won't help here, but a clean UA/GA4 setup with proper attribution will.

copycat

i wouldn't say turn it off across the board-it really depends on what you're selling and how clearly you can define your audience. I once ran ads for an event where we needed to shift tickets, and the Audience Network performed brilliantly. It ended up placing on dating sites and similar places, which felt weird at first but actually worked.

what people often overlook is the psychological effect of that fragmented exposure. Someone sees a snippet of your ad on a random third-party site, then again on Instagram, and later on Facebook. because they don't immediately associate that first sighting with Meta, it builds a kind of quiet trust. The thought is simple: "I've seen this in a few different places now, so it must be legit." It's like seeing a brand in a magazine, then on a billboard, then on your phone-you start to believe it's popular. So blanket advice to kill the network? I'd question that.

pixelpusher

hormozi's advice gets taken as gospel too often. creative testing is super important, but that 500-per-week number is arbitrary-your budget and account maturity dictate what's realistic. The real point is to keep testing different angles, not worship a specific volume.

Now, Audience Network? absolute bollocks for e-commerce. It dumps your ads on cheap gaming apps and low-quality inventory, burning budget on accidental clicks. Turn it off immediately. There's no scenario where that placement helps a scaling store.

analyticsjunkie

Oh, you sweet summer child. That 0.05% is still buying you bot traffic on some dodgy Solitaire app. Kill it and see if your CPA doesn't thank you.

wordweaver

Oh, absolutely this. the Audience Network is the digital equivalent of that one friend who "helps" by rearranging your flat without asking. found this gem by screaming into the void one night-go to advertising settings, placement control, limit to certain placements, and flip it off. It's account-wide, so you don't have to hunt down every bloody ad set. Saved me from burning my laptop

trendspotter

God, yes. Audience Network is the fastest route to seeing your pristine brand sitting on some grubby little app nobody trusts. A total brand safety dive. Kill it and pour budget into placements that actually earn their keep.

datanerd

completely agree. audience Network drains budget on garbage placements that generate zero enterprise intent. for B2B ABM, I manually exclude all placements except Facebook Feed and Instagram Feed/Stories at the ad set level. the difference in lead quality is night and day. nothing else works until you cut out that waste

storyweaver

Mate, I've got twelve campaigns and every single one had Audience Network secretly enabled. How the hell do you switch them off without pushing everything back into learning? Meta's a menace.

analyticsjunkie

Oh absolutely. nothing worse than a sky-high CTR that leads to sweet FA on the bottom line. I'll take a boring, low-CTR placement that actually prints revenue over a vanity circus any day

bigcoffee

Audience Network has its place - rewarded video included. The key is targeting users in the right intent window. Otherwise, it drags down ROAS.

dailygrind

Mate, I feel your pain. Spending $10k/day and the thought of flipping that Audience Network toggle at account level is enough to make anyone sweat through their shirt. I've been in similar territory - scaling a FinTech product through Meta where every dollar has to justify itself against a strict LTV payback window.

Here's the thing: turning off Audience Network at account level will force a relearning phase on every campaign running with it enabled. But 'nuke' might be overstating it if you're already past the initial learning phase and have decent conversion volume. What actually happens is Meta re-optimises without that inventory, so your CPMs jump initially as it shifts to higher-quality placements. You'll see a dip in volume for 48-72 hours, but if your CPA targets are sound, it typically recovers within the week.

What I'd do instead of an account-level switch:

Duplicate a high-spend campaign into a draft, turn Audience Network off at ad set level on the copy, then run a split test for 3-5 days. You'll see the real impact without risking the live spend.
If you absolutely must turn it off at account level, schedule it for a low-conversion day (Sunday or Monday) and pre-warn your stakeholders. Budget a 10-15% CPA increase for the first 48 hours.
Don't forget Audience Network is often the culprit for bot traffic and low-quality clicks - especially in FinTech where you're after actual sign-ups, not accidental taps. The long-term LTV improvement usually outweighs the short-term learning hiccup.

At $10k/day, you've got enough data to absorb a relearn without total disaster. Just don't touch it mid-week or during a critical campaign window.

metricsmuse

Totally agree on audience network. The real trick with ad volume is diversifying your creatives so each one talks to a different segment. Make them look distinct and keep testing. Usually go broad with a handful per ad set, then shift winners into evergreen campaigns while working on lowering CPA.

pixelperfect

I flagged this exact issue a while back - it's been a nightmare for so many people I work with. Turning off Audience Network made a huge difference for my clients' campaigns.

tiktokguru

I'm trying to find the setting to turn off Audience Network - where is it exactly?

communityfirst

Does anyone know how to switch this off at account level? Would love to hear if there's a straightforward way-feels like it could really help the team focus on quality placements

digitalnomad

yes, absolutely! i've seen Audience Network wreak havoc on active campaigns more than once. 😤 Turning it off mid-flight sorted out the waste - the algorithm kept serving to low-quality placements and tanking my ROAS. Now i always disable it from the start. Cutting it saved a few of my own campaigns, so I'd second that advice for anyone seeing odd results. Have you noticed the same?

tiktokguru

Great tip! Where exactly do I find the Audience Network toggle? I'm digging through Meta ads manager but can't spot it 👀