Data: why is everybody's Meta performance tanking?

There’s a lot of fuss online right now about the state of Meta ads.

Anecdotal reports suggest that Meta ads are performing worse than ever. Certain strategists blame user error derived from Meta’s sweeping attribution changes in March. Some even blame Meta’s rounds of layoffs.

Love it or hate it, Meta continues to be the highest-performing full-funnel advertising channel for Northbeam-empowered advertisers. Meta regularly captures >50% of the share of ad spend across our clients.

So what’s really happening here? Is Meta performance as bad as they say?

I decided to dig into Northbeam’s aggregate customer performance data to find out.

All of this is brought to you by The Media Buyer, powered by Northbeam.

This is one-day clicks only accrual Northbeam data for all 950+ advertisers in Northbeam’s dataset. Billions in ad spend, trillions of impressions, billions in attributed revenue covered.

Reminder: Northbeam is independent ad performance data. This isn’t Meta’s in-platform data, so any changes to their attribution models, reporting techniques, or lookback windows won’t affect this data.

What I found was several interesting trends that defy clear interpretation. What’s happening with Meta is more nuanced than just “bad performance.”

Let’s explore this with charts.

First step is to analyze reach. A good efficiency metric to look at is CPM, which many iconic billion-dollar brands study as a rude proxy for how cheaply they’re acquiring reach. Also good is cost per click: looking at how efficiently you’re capturing that engagement signal, which then serves as a retargeting and remarketing enrichment.

CPM shows a healthy normal flatness for the last 12 months, right up until the new year. CPMs increased 10%-20% on average starting January 2026, a normal trend I’ve seen several years in a row now.

Cost Per Clicks are tanking as well, which would suggest improved efficiency and ad performance. Or at least an influx of ad placements that are getting tons of clicks.

So we’re seeing lots of cost per click price drops. Is this translating to improved clickthrough rates? Yes.

Is this translating to improved conversion rate? No.

Here are two charts comparing conversion rate to CTR and CPC.

Conversion rate has dropped in lockstep with Cost Per Click. The data suggests that advertisers are finding it much easier to reach and engage with audiences, but it isn’t translating into equal increases in purchase intent.

Clickthrough rates are at 12-month highs. Audiences are clicking. They’re viewing landing pages. So why aren’t they converting? Is the drop in conversion rate a function of increased volumes of traffic — more visitors, lower conversion rate?

It is possible. So let’s look at New Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Blended ROAS (Return on Ad Spend, both new and returning customers) to evaluate.

Across the last 12ish months, CAC has actually been dropping. So although conversion rate is dropping, this appears to be a function of increased traffic coming through ads. More people are clicking, meaning a lower percentage of those clicks end up as purchases.

Dropping CAC is a great sign, and it hit a 12-month low in February 2026. (We’ll talk about that 2026 performance in a second.)

ROAS shows the same trend: blended ROAS improved in a linear fashion all the way up to BFCM weekend.

These trends suggest a clear pattern: Meta click-through effectiveness has increased while CPMs remained flat, demonstrating efficiency at capturing site visitors in increasing volumes. Up until early 2026, this was also reflected in improving Blended ROAS and dropping New Customer CACs.

In short: right up until Q1 2026, Meta performance was looking great. More traffic, better efficiency, at the cost of conversion rates.

But early in 2026, something shifted across these metrics.

ROAS plateaued right after BFCM 2025. But it hasn’t started trending up again like it did the previous year — we’re nearly into June and if anything the trend looks to be flattening downwards.

Same with CAC: After hitting that low in February, New Customer CACs skyrocketed, erasing the efficiency gains earned through the entire previous year.

CPCs bottomed out and have bounced upwards in February 2026, breaking the downward trend. Looking at the chart, you can see a similar but less variable trend in the previous year. So I’m not as worried about this one.

CPMs bounced in price, but over the 12-month horizon, they’re still cheaper than previous highs so that’s good.

CTRs still keep climbing as well, which is driving continual decreases in conversion rate. So I’m not too worried about this relationship either.

It’s difficult and probably foolish to point at one causal reason for these performance trends. There’s been thousands of updates to Meta ads over the last twelve months, plus meteoric shifts in the advertising industry. Just to list a few:

In the face of angry clients, shrinking margins, and AI slop, it’s too easy to just point blame at Meta. Yes, Meta dominates the largest share of our budgets. Criticizing Meta on X makes your posts go viral, so everybody does it.

But that answer is too simple. It ignores the reality.

These charts demonstrate that Meta’s ad algorithm is evolving. As marketers, we have to evolve with it.

The ad platform we know and love is changing. User behaviors are changing with it. People are more reliant on AI search than ever. Vertical video dominates. Bad vibes are mutating customer shopping behaviors in ways we don’t understand yet.

You might be tempted to take these charts and claim the sky is falling. Don’t. It’s far more nuanced than that. Meta is changing their entire model, likely intentionally, given Zuckerberg’s plans to automate ad creation.

It’s time to change your perspective.

It’s not the same ad platform you’re used to, it’s not the same auction, and you are not advertising to the same humans.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus describes it best:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.”

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