[redsymbol]

It's an interesting situation. I think that despite the issues, Meta is the best (and fastest-learning) platform for mass-market purchase conversions. Linkedin has powerful targeting options, but the fact that it's tied to GMT drives me nuts. For LI, typically I use manual bids so I can easily dial down delivery at off times (e.g. if the ad objective is booking a sales call).

All in all, these ad platforms are tremendously complex software systems, and as someone who has been a fulltime software engineer I have a lot of sympathy. But with so much money is on the line, the standards are high.

[neom]

I agree with you. I think meta is fine if you have a very very clear value prop to a very very clear ICP that is already repeatably converting and is generally b2c in nature. If you are trying to do anything specialized or b2b message testing on meta, I find their algo really expensive, maybe I'm just shitty at targeting or don't use the platform well but hiring a task rabbit to stand outside a conference or event and hand out fliers seems to be cheaper and higher preforming than anything I've gotten out of meta, and I can still do it from my basement.

These platforms are quite complex, but I feel they are more complex than they need to be, using them, they really feel like they were built out of hybrid consulting discovery to enterprise, with a result that doesn't translate down well to SMB.