“I turned off my client’s best performing ad. Here’s what happened”
I’ve been working across two Aussie ecomm brands recently and ran into the exact same issue in both their Meta accounts. It’s something I’m seeing more and more at the moment.
They’ve each got a “unicorn” ad. You know the one. It’s been sitting in the account forever, driving most of the conversions, technically doing its job… but it’s also kind of shit compared to the other new ads, a little outdated, and somehow still eating all the bluddy media spend.
Ironically, one of them was literally an ad about a bangle that says “Be The Shiniest Fucking Unicorn In The Room”.
The “unicorn” ad problem
All I keep seeing lately (yes, over on LinkedIn) is people banging on and on about finding a winning ad. About testing 70 million ads every single week. Andromeda this, Andromeda that. Which, sure. Great. In this career, we’re good at pivoting, we need to keep learning and being open to new ways of working.
But with this approach, no one is really talks about what happens when that one ad starts doing all the heavy lifting.
Because it sounds good in theory, but in reality it means your other products aren’t getting a look in, your new ad creatives (that take time / effort / money) aren’t getting seen, and everything just kind of stalls.
You end up relying on one ad to carry the whole account. (which is not what you want to see when you’ve spent half your days strategising, developing new creatives, writing new ad copy, setting up new ads, toggling off every silly new AI feature Meta tries to force on you, then toggling them off again cos they all magically turn back on, etc etc).
What actually happens when one ad dominates
When one ad takes over:
It takes all the budget.
Nothing else gets a chance.
Testing slows right down.
And suddenly your whole account depends on one piece of creative.
Which is fine… until it stops working.
One high-performing ad can actually limit growth if it’s taking all the budget and stopping everything else from learning.
What I did instead (two different approaches)
I’ve handled this two different ways recently, depending on the account.
Brand 1 — I turned it off completely
I just turned the bluddy Unicorn ad off. Properly off.
And yes, there was a moment of “hope this doesn’t completely tank everything”, but I backed myself on it.
That ad was sitting around $20 CPP and bringing in consistent purchases, but it didn’t match the brand anymore which had evolved visually in the last 12 months, and it was blocking better, more relevant creative from getting any spend.
Since turning it off:
New creatives are sitting anywhere from $7.78 Cost Per Purchase (CPP)
ROAS is landing between 6–10+
Spend is now spread across multiple ads instead of one
More of the product range is actually selling
Brand is building (I have no metrics to prove this.. but I just know, ya know?)
Performance didn’t drop. It got stronger, and a lot more stable, pretty quickly.
Brand 2 — I forced the budget to behave
On the other brand, I took a different approach.
There was an old static doing the same thing, soaking up budget while the team was putting proper time and money into really nice video creative that just wasn’t getting any traction. I’d tried to restructure the campaigns already, tried all the tricks in the book that the marketing bro’s told me in their “steal my ad account hack today” emails. None of it worked.
Instead of switching this one off completely, I forced some budget into the newer ads using Meta’s brand new “push delivery to this ad” feature (still currently rolling out across accounts) just to give them a proper chance.
Short term, performance dipped a bit.
March: 92 purchases at around $28 CPP
April (so far): 46 purchases at about $43 CPP
So yes, more expensive initially.
But the difference is the new creatives are already converting.
Those ads are starting to pick up momentum, and the account is evening out instead of leaning on one old static. CPP is already starting to come back down as those ads get more spend behind them.
The other bonus? Some of the creatives aren’t converting.. but they do have spend behind them, so now I can confidently turn them off, use the learnings for the next round of creative briefs, and continue to grow the account.
So what’s the takeaway?
Honestly, I started mapping all of this out in reports to figure out what I’d do next time. But it just reinforced what I already know works… using my experience, staying practical to what’s actually in front of me, what resources are at hand, and trusting my gut.
There’s a lot of noise at the moment about needing 20+ creatives a week. I’ve got agencies and clients stressing about it, asking if they need to be pumping out endless hooks and versions just to even get seen.
And yeah, creative matters more than ever. I genuinely think it’s one of the best places a brand can invest right now.
But more creative isn’t the answer. Better creative is.
Ads that actually feel human, suit the platform, and give people a reason to stop and watch. And then actually giving those ads a proper chance to spend.
Because if you’re working with something like a $2,000 monthly budget, that’s about $64 a day. If you’re trying to run 20 creatives a week, that’s 80 a month… which ends up being about 80c per ad, per day. And that’s assuming they even get spend behind them. Spoiler alert: They won’t.
So what’s the point?
There’s no point investing in more and more creative if you don’t have the budget to test it properly, or if one ad is just going to swallow everything anyway.
Not to sound like a broken record to anyone who has spoken to me about this lately but strategy, experience, and human judgement still matter.
You can’t just set ads up and let Meta’s algorithm do its thing and hope for the best. Often you need to step in, move things around, turn stuff off, and actually guide the account. (why would Meta have introduced the new budget push feature, if they believe Miss Andromeda was 100% perfect at running ads…)
Because the goal isn’t to have one winning ad.
It’s to have multiple ads working, across your product range, that can actually support the account long term.
If you’re sitting on a “winning” ad that’s doing all the work, it’s probably worth asking what it’s actually costing you… not just in $$, but in time, energy and missed opportunity too.
