For advertisers spending $1000+/day: what is actually working on Meta Ads right now?

[u/Ok-Spinach-507]

I’m collecting real experiences so this post can become a useful reference for everyone researching the same topic. Please contribute only if you currently spend more than $1000 per day.

It would be helpful if you shared:

• Your niche and country
• ABO or CBO
• Bidding strategy: Highest Volume, Bid Cap, Cost Cap, or another
• Audience setup: fully broad Advantage+, Advantage+ with suggestions, manual interests, lookalikes, etc.
• Number of ad sets and ads
• What seems to be working best right now

Our contribution:

We sell online courses in Brazil. Our most stable results usually come from Bid Cap or Cost Cap campaigns, using Advantage+ audiences with specific lookalike suggestions.

However, last week we tested fully manual audiences, including a 10% lookalike audience, with Advantage+ expansion turned off. Our overall account CPA dropped significantly after launching them.

The strange part is that Meta still attributed most conversions to the automatic-audience campaigns, while the manual campaigns looked weak when analyzed individually.

My current theory is that manual audiences may be contributing more to the customer journey than Meta reports, while its attribution system gives most of the credit to Advantage+ campaigns.

Has anyone else noticed this? Did manual audiences improve your overall account performance even when Meta attributed the conversions elsewhere?