Meta Ads Pro Shares Why You’re Not Converting — Marin Ištvanić | Why Facebook Ads Are Getting Tougher In 2025, How to Structure Accounts for Testing, Budget Strategies Scale Ads, How to Set Up Pixel Tracking and Metrics, How to Diagnose Ad vs. Site Issues

In this episode of eCommerce Coffee Break, we dive into the art of structuring Facebook ad accounts for top efficiency with expert insights from Marin Ištvanić, Head of Performance at Inspire Brands Group, inspirebrandsgroup.com. 

Marin shares strategies for using Facebook’s pixel tracking, testing ad variations, and setting clear metrics. With experience managing over $100 million in paid social for brands like Odi and Vessi, Marin discusses how to overcome challenges in Facebook’s ad platform and optimize for growth in today’s competitive landscape.
 
Topics discussed in this episode:   

• Why Facebook Ads are harder in 2025 and their role as brand amplifiers 
• How to set up Facebook pixel tracking and define target metrics 
• What customer research reveals for better ad messaging success 
• How to structure ad accounts with optimal ad sets for testing 
• Why Facebook's AI tools create problems for advertisers 
• How to diagnose performance issues between ads vs website 
• What budget strategies work for scaling Facebook ads 
• Why influencer page whitelisting outperforms brand pages 

Links & Resources 

Website: https://inspiredigitalgroup.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marin-i%C5%A1tvani%C4%87/
X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/IstvanicMarin 

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at
https://t.ly/Sv89a 

SPONSORS:

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Transcript

Welcome to the e commerce coffee break podcast. In today's episode, we discussed the power of Facebook ads and how to structure your ad account for maximum efficiency. Joining me on the show is Marin Ištvanić, Head of Performance at inspirebrandsgroup.Com. So let's dive right into it. 

This is the e commerce coffee break.

A top rated Shopify growth podcast dedicated to Shopify merchants. And business owners looking to grow their online stores. Learn how to survive in the fast changing e-commerce world with your host Claus Lauter, and get marketing advice you can't find on Google. Welcome. Welcome to the show. Hello 

and welcome to another episode of the e-Commerce Coffee Break podcast.

Today we wanna dive into ads, into paid ads, into the power of meta ads, Instagram and Facebook. And we wanna find out how to structure your ad account for maximum efficiency. Joining me as a guest on the show today is Marin Ištvanić, she is the head of performance at theinspirebrandsgroup. com. Marin has managed over 100 million in paid social to help DTC brands like Odi, Vessi and Filippo Loretti scale with Facebook ads.

His deep expertise in driving growth for nine figure brands in his role as a speaker at two top e commerce events like Geek Out and Affiliate Worldwide. Marketing conferences make him a true industry leader. He's also a partner in several brands with successful exits and building an e commerce brand that's already hit 18 million in just two years.

So perfect person to speak to when it comes to ads. And I would like to welcome him to the show. Hi, Marin, how are you today? 

Hey, pretty good. Thanks for having me and I appreciate the nice intro. 

Let's talk about meta ads. A lot of people have burned money there. A lot of people had disappointments with the platform, um, over the years and a lot of people are still investing it and it's quite complex.

What's, what's your take on where meta ads are standing right now? 

So I would definitely say the meta ads are harder than what they've been like a few years ago, especially since the rise of iOS. Update where like Facebook had less data, but for me, Facebook ads are just an amplifier. They're like a cherry on a top where you have product market fit.

You have your, uh, offer dialed in and then, you know, if something is working, you just want to like put the fuel on a fire. So probably most of the people that run meta ads and don't have success don't have their fundamentals dialed in and they're thinking Facebook ads is just a magic bullet that that would get them like crazy results.

I mean, that might be worked like in the golden era of Facebook ads, you know, 2016 to 2018, 19, where like you could just launch image ads and like your loss was 10. But nowadays, like customers are more sophisticated, platform is more sophisticated, like, and you actually need to, as I mentioned, have proven product market fit and a proven offer.

You mentioned the good old times. I remember them quite well. That Facebook was easy at this point in time, but obviously the platform has become much more complex, um, much more professional, and I think that's a good thing. Um, what are the problems that you see when clients come to you that they usually face when it comes to meta ads?

So most frequent problems are like, as I mentioned, if they don't have fundamentals, if they're not running some other channels, let's say Google ads, or they don't have an email campaign, uh, dialed in because Facebook is. Top of the funnel, it kind of like creates the demand and then Google and email are capturing that demand.

So it's always going to be harder for Facebook to make it work unless you have like outstanding product. So that's one thing that they're thinking that Facebook is a magic bullet. The other thing is they do not adjust their content. They just think, Hey, let's launch this image. Let's launch this video.

And like, they hope it would work. So for all of our clients, we actually are focused on the research to actually understand why people are buying the product. For example, we had one client that was selling coffee replacement drink and they were targeting like wide audience. Then we realized through the research that most people that are buying Our, uh, school professors working afternoon shifts and like people that are working late hours and they didn't want to drink coffee because they would have jitters.

They could not sleep. So then we switch our messaging, be more productive in your afternoon meetings, be more productive in your afternoon shifts and like results massively improved. That's like, you need to understand who your customer is and you need to address them with the problems they have. That's one thing.

Research is the most important thing. The other is. We always make multiple variations of the same creative that actually maximizes our chances of finding a winning creative. When it's a video, we launch different hooks. Just one hook. Can massively outperform the other video just because okay, people are reacting to this hook Facebook for some reason is picking that one.

So you want to diversify your, uh, strategies because launching one ad is just a hit or miss. You're forcing Facebook to spend the money on that variation without actually knowing it, but whether it would work. So as I would say, Okay. Research then actually casting a wide net to see what would work. And then obviously double down on what's working.

Because for me, Facebook ads are just a set of assumption. We have a hypothesis, we test it, we get the data, and then we discard what's not working, and then we double down on what's working and we are basically improving, uh, on a weekly basis. 

Now, title of this episode is how to structure your ad account for maximum efficiency.

And I want to take one step back before you actually go into a campaign and ad set on ad. What do you have to do first and to get it right before you really start launching campaigns? 

So obviously you need to have your pixel, uh, which is a Facebook tracking code installed on your website that, that can actually track the events.

On your website when someone added to cart when someone initiated checkout when someone if someone broke like three colors of your t shirt Or like five so basically it doesn't make sense to run facebook ads unless you have Uh proper tracking like luckily facebook and shopify made that easy for us So basically you just add facebook channel in your shopify and that's automatically done from your side.

So there's no like Uh need for any hard coding or anything. So that's one thing The other thing is actually as I mentioned research you need to understand your customers You need to create ads that are suitable for that customers and you need to create a lot of ads Because reality is probably 90 of your ads would fail And have your results below your targets.

The third thing is that you need to actually understand what are your targets and when are you profitable and like, what is okay, uh, CPA for you. Cause I have some clients that have target Ross of 1. 2. I have some clients that have target Ross of four. They all have different margins. They all have different AOVs.

So you need to know your numbers before you start running out. Because sometimes clients would get to me and say, Hey, I need Ross of six. And I would ask you like, why do you need Ross of six? He said, like, I don't know, like, I just think I need, but then like we realize we check his numbers and we realize that his break even is 1.

5. So, okay. You could have scaled and spent like five times more and still be profitable. So like, definitely the basis is to know your numbers. 

Yeah, I think that's a very important point. Um, I think a conversion rate of, of 6%, um, that's where people dream of. Um, uh, I don't think many brands actually reach that.

Now, when we talking about the structure, so we're talking about campaigns, ad sets and number of ads, what's your take on how many ads do I need? How many ad sets do I need to get started before I start? So that I basically feed Facebook something, and you mentioned that before, um, that Facebook really has something to work with.

What are the numbers on this? 

Yeah. So in terms of the number of ads per ad set, I like to have between three and six. So if I launch one ad, as I mentioned, that's probably hit or miss. Two are like, okay, but I like to give Facebook Illusion of choice, which at least three variations, as I mentioned, if it's a video, then it's mostly different cook, different thumbnail or different length of the video, if it's an image, it is mostly like different layout or different text on the image or something like that.

So I'm structuring all of my tests in an ABO. So basically each new test is a new asset. So let's say if I have an unboxing video for three cooks, that's one asset. Then I have us versus them, three images. That's another asset. So basically for me, each of the tests is a new asset because it's not fair for me to compare image that is going to mostly do retargeting with the video.

That's like educational video and explainer video. That's going to probably reach top of the funnel audience. So I want to give chance to each of my concepts. That way I can learn from each of the concept and from each of the concept, I can potentially get one winner. So my goal is not to find one ultimate winning ad that would like beat everything else.

And then whatever you launch, you cannot beat it. That's how like people were tested previously. My goal is to get multiple winners that would actually. Allow me to scale more because if I have multiple winners, no matter if it's not an ultimate winning ad, it still allows me to scale to an extent. So if I have like six or seven ads like that, that allows me to spend more and to actually earn more and to be more profitable.

So that's why I'm structuring these ads in a ABO testing campaign, basically dedicating budget to each of the tests and actually learning from each of the tests. If I'm not using, if I'm using CBO or if I'm launching all the ads in one campaign and just one ad set, Facebook would spend the money only on like two or three, then like my creative team would ask me, Hey, like, like what can we conclude from this test if they did not get spent, but for me, I value the learnings more than potential inefficiency.

But if you manage your budget properly, and I always like to have my budgets tied to the performance. I can, I can still maximize the efficiency with my approach. 

I want to go into scaling in a minute, but before that, I want to touch on AI tools. Facebook has added a lot of AI tools lately and, um, advantage plus and whatsoever.

So they help you with creating your ads to create artwork and so on and so forth. What's your take on that? Is that something you use? That's something you facilitate? 

So, uh, Advantage Shopping Plus is definitely something that I use. And I would say that like in the past three, four years, that's probably one of the best features, one of the best, uh, options that they added into the ad accounts.

So it is a bit more simplified setup. You cannot define gender. You cannot define placement. You just create a campaign. You cannot even create multiple ad sets. You just create a campaign and then you add ads there. And basically you're letting Facebook to kind of like pick a winner. I personally like to use Advantage Shopping Plus as a scaling campaign.

So I'm not going to use it for testing. I'm going to put only my winning ads there. So then I'm okay with setting a higher budget in that, my Advantage Shopping Plus campaign, because there's a low chance that campaign would not perform because I imported winning ads. And we all know that creative or the ad is, is what actually driving the results.

Because nowadays Facebook is doing the targeting with the ad, like going out of the days where you have to like do the research, find the like super niche audience publication that you're going to put on your ad set level. So basically this way I have my testing campaign and I have my scaling campaign and whatever works from testing, I put it into scaling with a higher budget.

When you asked about, um, AI tools in terms of the image improvements and stuff like that, to be honest, I hate those improvements because Facebook is actually, let's say. They're putting the music behind your image. So I had multiple times when clients asked me, Hey, like, why are we running this like cheerful music with our, uh, with our ad that's like solving, let's say plantar fasciitis problem.

So it just doesn't make sense. Sometimes Facebook is adding discount codes. That are expired to your ad. So like, there's a lot of mess. I know the intention is good, but it's not actually executed properly. And then like, you have to untick all of those enhancements from Facebook. So the ad creation is like way, way harder than what it was, uh, like a few months ago.

And like, I know they have good intention, but it's a lot, most of the advertisers are not happy with, uh, with those enhancements. 

Yeah, you just make me smile because I'll be on the same page there. I was in my ad account earlier this today, um, setting up ads and, um, the artwork, um, examples they bring and the music is just annoying.

So it doesn't really help. I agree with you. Now, when we talk about, um, scaling, obviously not everyone has a million, um, dollars at, at budget, um, to throw on meta ads. What's your plan for a company that starts slowly and then grows? Um, how do you assign budgets to your campaigns? 

I would try to dedicate the budget that I'm comfortable spending without necessarily, uh, getting the results because at least you'll get some learnings, then you'll get better.

So your loss would go from a 0. 5, then the next week, 0. 8, then the next week, 1. 2, then the next week, 1. 5. So basically, if you're setting up your tests, Properly, you should learn something. You should learn whether images are working better than the videos, whether your us versus them image is working better than the just product image, whether your us versus them compared to your competitor is working better than your, let's say inferior solution that someone has.

So basically you're always learning. And obviously you're not going to throw like one 1, 000 budget on a daily basis, like just in two ads, like you're going to start slowly. Once you see, once you see the results, you're going to increase the budget. If you do not see the results, okay, let's iterate. If you launch, let's say 10 different concepts and none is working, then I would think like, okay, maybe it's not the ads problem, maybe like our website conversion rate is pretty bad.

Maybe we are talking about benefits. Or features to of the product that are not really important to the users Maybe we missed like what our audience really wants to solve. So like it's not always ads problem There's sometimes problem in the funnel. For example, we launched one ad we launched one client ads And then like we launched probably 15 concepts.

Nothing was working then we realized okay Our price is like way more higher than what it is for our competitors So then we decrease the prices and like everything else started working All the ads that were not working before they now started working I'm not saying like you have to decrease your prices, but you need to find out why people are not buying.

Because if people are clicking, but they're not adding to cart, then it's probably a website problem. If people are not even clicking, then it's your ads problem. So basically we have some diagnostic tools based on the numbers that we can understand. What is the problem? Is it funnel? Is it, uh, our messaging?

Is it AOV? So basically you want to diagnose what is the problem. 

I think it's quite important to look at the bigger picture, as I said, it might be the landing page, there might be something not working from a technical side, there might be just some, something somewhere in the funnel that's not working.

And then META can't be the magic bullet that helps you in getting there. Creating new leads or new sales. Now you're working with a lot of brands out there, DTC brands. Can you share some success stories or case studies and you don't need to name the brand that has leveraged your structure, your system for their Facebook ads?

Yeah. For example, I could mention one of my, uh, biggest case study and the results that I'm proud of, uh, it's DUD. It's a wearable blanket brand. So I was with them for three and a half years. Basically when we started, it was me, girl that did customer service and, uh, founder, Davey, when I left, it was probably like team of 70, 80 people.

Uh, we went from like daily budget of 2000 to over 100, 000 daily budget. We expand from one region to six regions. And I was basically almost as a part of the internal team, although I was, uh, I was working, uh, with them as an agency. And like, that's definitely experience. That's definitely a project that had the biggest impact on me as a media buyer.

So basically I helped the brand, the brand helped me grew. So it was like truly amazing journey. 

Who's your perfect customer? Are there specific industries, verticals that you work more with than others? 

So basically I would say that, um, we are not usually working with people that are beginners. We want to have someone who's spending at least 1k on Facebook ads for us.

That's a sign that that brand has legs, that, that, that brand has like product market fit and we are there to Increase the results. So basically anybody who's spending at least 30 K a month on Facebook ads in DTC, in e com, so basically 99 percent of our clients are in e com. We don't do lead gen. We don't do app installs.

We focus on, um, on e com, uh, Facebook ads. We do some Google TikTok ads and Google ads, but that's not our bread and butter. Facebook, what we are best at Facebook, what we have max maximum success with in terms of the niches. Uh, I don't have any preference. Recently, we are getting more and more, uh, clothing brands.

Uh, but then it's harder to create the ads for those because like that, that product is not really solving problems. Uh, so as I mentioned, I don't have preference. We just, we are just not doing any like gray hat or black hat stuff like crypto, CBD and stuff that could like potentially cause, uh, bans. 

Walk me through the typical onboarding process for a new client.

What steps are involved? How long does it take to get up and running? 

Yeah. So basically I do not onboard any clients until I do the audit of their red account. They share me access to their red account because I need to understand whether I can actually help. Because a few times I did the audit and like I told them, Hey guys, you don't have a problem with your Facebook ads.

You have a problem with your website. You need to hire a commercial agency or like you don't have a proper creatives. Like they were doing in house, but like it was not working. So your media buying is not the problem. I always want to assess the situation before I can promise I can help. Once I do the audit, I jump on a founder with on a call with the founder and tell them, Hey guys, like this, these are mistakes.

These are things. These are, these are the opportunities that I think, uh, can improve the results. If that makes sense, then they share the rest of the access to us, basically access to Shopify, access to Klaviyo, uh, list of their, uh, approved creatives, uh, list of the ad copies. We do the analysis a bit deeper and then like within a three or seven days, uh, we are up and running.

We create our tracking, uh, sheet where we are tracking numbers on a daily basis. Um, we create a Slack channel together with our clients. So we can keep, keep them, uh, updated on the performance. They keep us posted on the new creatives, like maybe new product launches, new sales, stuff like that. And then in the ad account, I'm start, I start adjusting the numbers.

I said to start adjusting the campaigns based on the numbers. Okay. I'm not going to just turn off everything that the previous agency or the in house team did. Okay. Just because I'm taking over, basically, I'm going to keep whatever is working. And then we're going to gradually implement my structure with ABL testing with advantage shopping plus With catalog campaign while focused on the numbers So basically that trip can last two days if the performance was terrible and everything Was bad sometimes it can take like up to a few months because if there's a campaign that's working I'm going to keep it active and john's going to optimize it properly.

So basically The audit Sharing the access, aligning with the targets. Um, and then like within a few days we are in the other account and, uh, running. 

Was typically your contact person was in the brand was in your clients organization. 

So in most clients, in most clients, it is either a founder or a CMO or like a head of growth.

So basically someone who is in charge of making decisions about potentially working with another agency outsourcing or someone who is like involved in a broad, if it's a bigger brand, because like there are a lot of plans that are like, you know, Founder that does everything he does email. He like helps with the creatives, uh, depending on what level they are We have some clients that are like one man show and we were working with the brands that are like 60 Uh people, you know that have presence in retails that have like three graphic designers So like it really depends on what the level they are because we have clients that are spending, you know, 2k a day We have clients that are spending 25k a day So it really depends, obviously, the bigger the brand, the bigger the infrastructure, but mostly, uh, decision is made by either a CEO or founder or a CMO.

Okay. That makes sense. How does your pricing structure work? How do you charge for your services? 

So we charge percentage of spend, but as we go up, as the spend goes up, the percentage goes down because I cannot charge, let's say 10%. Which I charge to someone who's spending 30 K. I cannot charge that to someone who's spending one mil because like nobody in the right mind would pay me 10 percent of one mil, you know, this way we are aligning.

As we're scaling, the percentage goes down on the other side. We are scaling only if you're hitting the results. So if the client tells me, Hey, I need Ross of three. If I'm at like 2. 2, I'm not going to spend more because of like, he'll fire me tomorrow. So this way I'm spending only if I'm hitting the results, if I'm hitting the results Then the client is okay paying me more because I actually earned him more money So it really depends on what level of spend you are Uh the different percentage we charge but I can say let's say we start with 10 and 30k Uh, then let's say it's 100k.

It's seven percent. Let's say 250k. It's 2. 5 or three percent So like as I said as we go up the percentage goes down. What's also Uh worth mentioning is that we don't have a minimum time contract So I'm not going to lock anyone that has to work with me for three months or six months or something like that, because maybe he's not satisfied with the communication, maybe the results are not great.

Maybe it doesn't have a stock. So from my perspective, because we also have a brand, I don't like to be working with someone who is not like bringing the results. So that's the way I set up my agency. Uh, on the other side, if someone is not satisfied with the results or whatever, he can just cancel within a seven day period.

Okay. No, that's very fair. I think if you have an agency partner, it should be really like a good relationship, a good partnership that works both ways. Before we come to the end of the coffee break today, is there anything you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet? 

So pretty much I'm sharing the strategies and like exactly tips and tricks on a daily basis on my Twitter and on a weekly basis on my YouTube.

So if someone is interested in like. Like expanding their knowledge base, uh, around Facebook ads, because I covered literally everything from testing to scaling, to whitelisting, to ad account structure, to what that types to run. Definitely check, uh, those two platforms for more information. 

Okay. That sounds great.

I will put the links in the show notes and you just one click away before we leave. I want to just have a little bit because you're on the platform every day and you see what's happening there. What kind of trends do you see on paid advertising on, on Meta? 

So I would say considering we're like middle of Q4, uh, the CPMs are getting, uh, more expensive.

But also potentially conversion rate is getting better. So if you're thinking about starting now, like be mindful that some people would wait for the sale to happen because the sale like by the sale would happen. So people pretty much already picked what they want because they know they know it would be on sale.

So that's one thing that I'm noticing. The other thing is, um, white listing is something that's working for most of our brands. Basically, you're not running ads through your page, brand page, but you're running ads through, uh, influencer page. So let's say if I, if I'm advertising about, uh, some DTC, uh, great app or fast.

I would not run ads under the brand page of the SAS. I would run ads through my page, let's say, or through cloud space. That way, like, someone who's an authority in this space is recommending your product. It feels more genuine, and people are like, Okay, this guy is not selling himself. He's, like, actually selling something.

That way, uh, this is a nice way to actually get a cheaper CPA and better click through rate. 

And that's a great trip, uh, tip because you're building up to trust through an influencer and then you get the sale in the next step. Perfect. Where can people find you on the interwebs? 

So mostly I'm active on Twitter.

Uh, so basically if you have a genuine question that is not like, Hey, I have a landing page to sell you or something like that, I'll be probably, uh, responding you to, to my Twitter DMS. Thanks. Bye. 

Okay, excellent. Otherwise, I will put a link to your main website directly in the show notes and you just want to click away.

All right. Thanks so much for giving us an overview on the Meta platform. I think it's still a power tool and a must have when you're doing DTC, when you're on Shopify. As you mentioned earlier, the connection between Shopify and Meta is very close, very close connected there and makes it easy for the setup.

And if one, if someone wants to scale, I think they should get in touch with you and get in free audit. Thanks so much for your time today. 

Perfect. I appreciate you having me.