What Happened to Our Meta Ads in March 2026

Daily costs on our active subscribe campaign · February 15 – April 15, 2026

The 30-second story

$10 → $5 per new subscriber

Meta changed its ad system in early March. Costs spiked for almost everyone — including us, twice. We switched to a campaign the new Meta system rewards. Now we pay half as much per new subscriber and spend 10× more per day on it.

Cost per new subscriber & ad cost

Red zones = Meta cost spikes (Feb 26 – Mar 2, and Mar 15 – Mar 22, the week 1440 flagged). Green line = Mar 24, the day we switched campaigns. Green zone = recovery.

Cost per new subscriber ($)

Cost to show ad 1,000 times — CPM ($)

Meta cost spike

Our recovery

How much we spent each day on this campaign

We grew this campaign 10× — from ~$600/day to ~$6,000/day — while costs per subscriber dropped.

~14

days of elevated Meta cost in March, hitting us in two clusters — exactly matching what other advertisers (including 1440) reported.

the cost per new subscriber in April vs. early March. We dropped from ~$10 to ~$5 per subscriber.

10×

the daily spend on our winning campaign vs. early March — and it kept getting cheaper as we scaled.