Step 1: Tracking
Compare the platform's conversions with your real orders or CRM leads for the same days. If real sales held steady but reported conversions fell, the ads are probably fine and the tracking broke.
Common causes: a site or theme update that removed the pixel, a new checkout or form tool, a conversion event renamed, or server-side events no longer matching browser events.
- Place a test order or lead and confirm each event fires once
- Check that browser and server events are both received and deduplicated
- Look at the account change history for attribution-setting changes
Step 2: Auction dynamics
If tracking is clean, look at what you are paying for attention. A rise in CPM or CPC across the whole account, with no change on your side, usually means more competition: a competitor raising bids, or a seasonal surge such as festive sales.
You cannot control the auction, but you can respond: tighten to your best-converting audiences, shift budget to placements that still convert, or accept a higher cost for a few weeks if the season pays for it.
Step 3: Creative
If costs to reach people are stable but results are falling, look at the ads themselves. Rising frequency with falling CTR is the classic sign of fatigue: the same people have seen the ad too many times.
Fatigue is a creative production problem, not a bidding one. Changing bids will not fix it; new ads will. In the accounts I run, creative is swapped weekly based on fatigue signals, so it never gets that far.
Step 4: Landing page
If clicks are steady but conversions fell for all traffic sources, including organic, the problem is after the click: page speed, a broken form, a price change, stock running out, or a checkout error.
Check the conversion rate by traffic source in your analytics. If it dropped everywhere at once, fix the page before touching the ads.
Why the order matters
Skipping straight to creative or bids is how accounts get worse. If tracking is broken, every decision after it is based on wrong numbers, and you may switch off campaigns that were actually working. Working through the four steps in order takes an hour and saves weeks.