Free diagnostic

Why your cost per acquisition moved

Cost per acquisition is not a setting. It is produced by three numbers — CPM, click-through rate and conversion rate — and when it moves, usually one of them is responsible. Each has a completely different remedy, and most accounts get restructured when the answer was somewhere else entirely.

Take two periods from Ads Manager and this works out which one moved. Nothing is stored, nothing is sent anywhere, and it runs in your browser.

Earlier period

A window when the account behaved normally.

Recent period

The window you are worried about.

Ads Manager → Columns: Performance, then add CPM, CTR and Frequency.

What it checks

CPM rose, the rest held

Auction cost. Competition and seasonality, not your advertising. No setting fixes it and the decision is commercial.

Click-through fell

Fatigue if frequency rose with it. If frequency held, the creative or the audience changed rather than wore out.

Conversion rate fell

The problem is after the click — or conversions are still happening and stopped being recorded.

Under 50 conversions a week

Delivery has not stabilised, so the comparison may be describing noise. It will tell you when this applies.