Last year a sale cost you $12 in ads. Now it costs $20, and nothing obvious changed. Same products, same budget, maybe even the same ads. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone, and it is usually fixable.
The short answer: a rising cost per acquisition almost always comes from one of four places: tired creative, more expensive auctions, a weaker website or offer, or broken tracking that makes results look worse than they are. The fix starts with finding out which one it is.
Why are our CPA and CAC going up?
Open your ads manager and break the problem into three numbers. This takes ten minutes and saves weeks of guessing.
1. CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) went up. You are paying more just to be seen. Causes:
- Seasonal competition. Ramadan, back to school, White Friday and the December holidays push prices up across Lebanon and the GCC as every brand spends at once.
- Audiences that are too narrow. Squeezing ads into small interest groups makes each impression more expensive.
2. CTR (click-through rate) went down. People are seeing your ads and ignoring them. This is usually creative fatigue. Check frequency: if the same people have seen an ad four, five, six times, they have stopped noticing it.
3. Conversion rate went down. People click but do not buy. Look at the website and the offer:
- Did prices, delivery fees or stock change?
- Is the site slower after an update?
- Is a competitor offering the same thing cheaper or faster?
A few other common causes:
- Too many edits. Changing budgets, audiences or ads every day keeps campaigns stuck in the learning phase.
- Too many small campaigns. Splitting a modest budget into ten ad sets means none of them gets enough data to perform.
- Broken tracking. If purchases are not reported properly, the platform optimizes blind and your CPA looks inflated. Which brings us to the next question.
CPA vs CAC, quickly: CPA is usually the ad cost per purchase or lead on one platform. CAC is the total cost of getting a new customer across everything (ads, agency, content, discounts). CAC is the number your business actually lives with.
How do you track sales accurately after iOS privacy updates?
Since Apple’s App Tracking Transparency update in 2021, a large share of iPhone users opt out of tracking. Browsers also block more cookies. Ad platforms lost part of their visibility, so the pixel alone now misses sales.
Here is the setup we use to get the numbers back as close to reality as possible:
- Meta Conversions API (CAPI). Sends purchase data from your server directly to Meta, not only through the browser. On Shopify this can be connected through the official Meta sales channel app. On WooCommerce, through a plugin or server-side tagging.
- Google Enhanced Conversions. Sends hashed customer data (like email) with each conversion, so Google can match more sales to ads.
- TikTok Events API and Snapchat Conversions API. Same idea for those platforms.
- Server-side tagging through Google Tag Manager for businesses spending enough to justify it.
- Clean UTM links on every ad, so Google Analytics 4 can show where sales came from.
- Offline conversions. If you sell on WhatsApp, by phone or in store, upload those sales back to Meta and Google from your CRM or a simple spreadsheet. For many Lebanese businesses this is where most revenue is hiding.
- A “how did you hear about us?” question at checkout. Simple, and surprisingly accurate.
Then check everything against one honest number: MER (marketing efficiency ratio), which is total revenue divided by total ad spend. Platforms will each claim credit for the same sale. MER does not care who claims what. If MER is healthy, the ads are working, even when individual platform numbers look messy.
How much budget should go to testing creative vs scaling winners?
A good starting rule is to spend 20 to 30% of your budget testing new creative and 70 to 80% on ads that are already proven. If you are small or just starting, test more. If you have a big, stable account, you can test less.
Why so much on testing? Because on Meta, TikTok and Snapchat, the targeting is increasingly handled by the platform. The creative is now the targeting. A new angle reaches a new group of people. Without fresh creative, even great campaigns fade.
How to test properly:
- Test ideas, not tiny tweaks. A different hook, a different problem, a different format (a founder talking, a customer review, a product demo, a before and after). Changing only the button color teaches you nothing.
- Give each test enough money. As a rough guide, let a new ad spend two to three times your target CPA before you judge it.
- Keep a steady flow. A handful of new creatives every week beats a big batch once a quarter.
- Move winners into your main campaigns and raise budgets gradually, by around 20% every few days, so performance does not swing.
This is why we keep photography and video production in house. Testing only works if you can make new ads quickly.
Should we start with Google Ads or Meta and TikTok?
Ask one question: do people already search for what you sell?
Start with Google Ads if:
- There is clear search demand (“plumber near me,” “iPhone case Lebanon,” “wedding venues Beirut”)
- You sell services people look for when they need them
- Your budget is small and you need sales from people already ready to buy
Start with Meta (Instagram and Facebook) if:
- Your product is visual, new, or an impulse buy
- You need to create demand, not just catch it
- You sell to the Lebanese market, where Instagram is where most people discover brands
Add TikTok or Snapchat if:
- Your audience is under 35
- You sell in Saudi Arabia or the wider Gulf, where Snapchat has a massive daily audience
- You can make native-looking vertical videos, not polished TV ads
With a small budget, pick one channel and do it well. Spreading $1,000 across four platforms usually means none of them gets enough data to work. Once one channel is profitable, add the next.
Most healthy businesses end up with both: Google catching people who are ready to buy, and Meta or TikTok filling the top of the funnel so more people are searching for you on Google in the first place. For how to split the budget between them, see our guide to ROI, budgets and agency fees.
If your CPA has crept up and you cannot see why, request a free ad account audit. We will check your tracking, creative and campaign setup and show you where the money is leaking.
