In short
Meta ads that worked last year can quietly stop. Five causes to check, from tired creative to broken tracking, and how to get enquiries back.
When Facebook and Instagram ads stop bringing in enquiries, there are five causes to check: the same people have seen your ads too many times, the creative has gone stale, your tracking has broken, the campaign keeps being reset, or the page people land on is letting them down. None of them is fixed by a bigger budget.
The tricky part is working out which one it is. Here's how to tell, and what to do about each.
Are people still using Facebook and Instagram?
Yes, so the audience hasn't gone anywhere. Ofcom's Online Nation research from 2025 puts the combination of Facebook and Messenger at 93% of adults, making it the most widely used Meta service, and found that adults now spend an average of four and a half hours online a day, most of it on a smartphone.
What has changed is how much competes for that attention. People scroll quickly, and an ad that stopped them two months ago won't keep stopping them forever. So if your results have dropped, start with your campaign, not with the idea that your customers have moved on.
Have the same people seen your ad too often?
Local businesses run into this one because their audience is small. If you serve one town or a handful of postcodes, a campaign running for months will show the same ads to the same people again and again. At first they click. After a while they scroll past without noticing, and eventually some of them get irritated.
Ads Manager shows a frequency figure, which is the average number of times each person has seen your ad. When frequency keeps climbing while the click-through rate falls, your audience is tired of what they're seeing.
The fix is to give people something new, not to switch the ads off: a fresh video, a different offer or a new angle on the same service. Widening the area helps too, if you'd genuinely take work from further afield.
Has your creative gone stale?
Even when frequency looks fine, ads have a shelf life. The video that worked in spring can feel dated by autumn, especially if it mentions an offer that has ended or a season that has passed.
We build ads that look like part of someone's feed rather than an advert: short videos filmed in your own premises, real customers and your own team explaining what they do, rather than polished stock images. It's why our content studio, The Edit, shoots on location and turns the footage into a steady supply of reels and posts. With fresh material ready each month, it's much easier to rotate ads before they tire.
Is your tracking still working?
If Meta can't see which ads lead to enquiries, it can't go and find more people like the ones who enquired. A broken pixel, a form that's been changed on your website or a thank-you page that no longer loads can all cut that signal off, and the campaign starts optimising for the wrong thing without anyone noticing.
Check that every form submission and call from your ads is being recorded as a conversion. If you've redesigned your website, moved to a new booking system or changed your contact form recently, that's the first place to look. It's a dull fix, and it's the first one to rule out.
Do you keep resetting the learning phase?
Every time you launch a new ad set or make a significant edit, Meta goes back into a learning phase while it works out who responds, and performance is less stable during it. Meta's Business Help Centre says an ad set leaves the learning phase once it has had around 50 optimisation events in the seven days after its last significant edit.
If the budget, audience or ads change every few days, the campaign never gets past that stage. It's an easy trap to fall into when results dip. Someone makes a quick edit, results wobble, another edit follows, and the campaign spends weeks stuck at the starting line. Make changes deliberately, give them time to settle and judge them on at least a full week of data.
Is the problem after the click?
Sometimes the ads are fine and the leak is further along. If people click but don't enquire, look at where you're sending them. A slow page, a long form, a page that doesn't match what the ad promised or a website that's awkward on a phone will all lose people who were interested a moment earlier.
Meta's own lead forms can help, because people can enquire without leaving the app. The trade-off is that they're so easy to fill in that some leads are less serious. Adding a question a genuine customer would happily answer, such as their postcode or the type of job, filters out people who were only curious.
And if the leads are arriving but not turning into work, check how quickly you reply. Someone who filled in a form on Instagram at lunchtime can have booked with someone else by the evening.
When should you get help?
If you've worked through all of this and results are still flat, it's worth having someone look at the account with fresh eyes. Our free Meta Ads audit reviews your campaigns, your tracking and your competitors, then shows where the budget is going and what we'd change. Management starts at £600 a month + VAT, with ad spend paid directly to Meta, and our Meta Ads page shows what's in each plan.
If you need a steady supply of fresh content to feed your ads, The Edit can plan and shoot it for you, and our page on social media in Edinburgh shows how that works in a busy city. And if you'd like ads, content and search working together, the DLR Growth Engine runs Google Ads, Meta Ads, SEO and GEO for £1,499 a month + VAT.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I change my Facebook ads?
When frequency rises and click-through rate falls. Watch both in Ads Manager and refresh the creative as soon as they move in opposite directions. For a small local audience, that can mean new ads every few weeks.
Should I increase my budget when results drop?
No, not as a first step. More budget pushed through a tired ad or broken tracking just buys more of the same problem, so fix the cause first.
How long does a new Meta campaign take to settle?
Meta says an ad set leaves the learning phase once it has had around 50 optimisation events in the seven days after its last significant edit. How quickly that happens depends on your budget and how many enquiries the campaign generates.
Can you make the ads for us?
Yes. We write the ad copy and creative direction, and our content studio, The Edit, can shoot photo and video for your ads.
Get a free Meta Ads audit
If your Facebook and Instagram ads have gone quiet, call us on +44 1382 699595 and we'll take a look.
