Your Meta ads plan: Merrowbank Linen

1. Your plan at a glance

Today: about A$125 per purchase, from your last 30 days. That's from only 8 purchases, too few to plan from yet, so this plan uses a starting estimate of A$45–A$75 until you have 10 purchases in 30 days.

Merrowbank Linen sells bedding and linen online, and your ads will lead with the stonewashed linen sheet set, your first-listed best seller. You're a growing store, so this plan runs one campaign with one ad set on A$1,200 a month and asks Meta to find people who add to cart until purchases come often enough for it to learn from. Treat every number on this page as a starting target, and reset it after two weeks of your own results.

What you're running

One campaign, one ad set, 3–4 ads. Your whole budget, A$33 a day to start, goes into one place so Meta learns as fast as your budget allows. People who've visited your store are folded in, with past buyers excluded (section 6.4). Your Growth budget buys about 3.8 purchases a week, too few to split across campaigns, so it stays in one ad set until it gets about 50 adds to cart a week, and could still get that after a split (section 4.2).

• Campaign name: Merrowbank Linen | Sales | Sheet set | Oct 2026
• New ads: start with 3, and add a new one only when your stop rule switches one off, so the ad set holds 3–4 ads (plus any dated ads in December)

Your numbers

These come from your answers. Each one is worked out from your exact amounts and rounded once, as it's printed: money down to the whole dollar, ROAS up, both on the safe side, so a sum redone from the rounded figures here can come out a dollar or 0.1x apart. Your break-even and targets change only when your price, costs, shipping, fees or returns change; your expected cost per purchase is your own A$125 from the last 30 days, and it updates as your results change.

• Average order: A$185, including GST. After GST, product cost, shipping and payment fees (taken as about 2%) you keep A$88 of it (47%), before ads.
• GST: You're registered for GST, so 1/11 of every sale is GST, not yours: A$16.82 of an A$185 order. These numbers start from A$168.18, your A$185 order without GST.
• What your ads sell: the A$229 Stonewashed linen sheet set. After GST and costs it keeps A$112 ex GST of each sale before ads, against A$88 on your A$185 average order, so your stop and target figures below use it.
• Break-even cost per purchase: A$112 ex GST on what your ads sell, the A$229 Stonewashed linen sheet set; A$88 on your A$185 average order. Pay more than this for a first order and you lose money on it.
• Break-even ROAS: 2.1x (rounded up from 2.04x for safety) on what your ads sell, the A$229 Stonewashed linen sheet set, on sales including GST. Each A$1 of ads has to bring back at least this much in sales.
• What Shopify sends Meta: we haven't confirmed whether its purchase value includes GST and shipping. Your 2.1x break-even ROAS (on what your ads sell, the A$229 Stonewashed linen sheet set) is on sales including GST, so check one real order in Events Manager: if Meta's value leaves GST out, compare Meta's ROAS with 1.9x instead.
• Allowable cost for a new customer: A$97, your A$88 break-even on your A$185 average order, because your first orders are any basket, plus credit for repeat orders: 10% of it (half your 20% repeat rate), the most a new customer is worth if they come back as often as your repeat rate says. If most first orders are the Stonewashed linen sheet set, it's A$121 (its A$112 break-even plus the same credit). It's a ceiling, not a target.
• Your targets: A$89 ex GST per purchase on what your ads sell, the A$229 Stonewashed linen sheet set (80% of your break-even, so each sale keeps a margin of safety for Meta's over-counting and the weeks that go badly), a ROAS of 2.6x on sales incl. GST (2.4x if Meta's purchase value leaves GST out).
• How to judge your ads: lift. Your A$1,400 a week of sales (from your answers, until your section 3.4 average replaces it) already includes your ads, so judge each change on what it adds, from Shopify's own sales incl. GST, after refunds, Australian orders only (filter by shipping country). At today's spend, sales should hold at about A$1,400 a week. Each week, also note Shopify's orders with utm_medium=paid and utm_source meta or facebook (your new ads carry those tags from their first publish, section 4.3 step 17) and the ones it shows as coming from Facebook or Instagram, with how many are first orders, beside Meta's purchase count: that's the closest read, before your first raise, of how many of Meta's purchases your ads brought in. After a raise, the lift is the rise in sales ÷ the rise in spend: at least 2.1x, your break-even ROAS on your A$185 average order, so your first raise, from A$33 to A$39 a day, which adds A$42 a week of spend, needs sales up at least A$88 a week, or the raise loses money. Judge it on 4 weeks against the 4 before, leaving out sale weeks: one week's sales swing by more than that by chance. MER is a record only.
• Expected cost per purchase: A$45–A$75 (a starting estimate, not yet your own figure: replace it with your own cost per purchase after the later of 4 weeks or 30 purchases)
• MER now: about 6.1x: A$6,105 of Shopify sales ÷ A$1,000 of ads, last 30 days. Meta counts 8 of your 33 orders (24%): those are the purchases it credits to its ads, not everything your pixel sees. Check Events Manager's Purchase count for the same 30 days: near 33 means tracking is fine and the gap is sales Meta didn't drive (repeat, email and organic orders); well under it means purchases are going missing (cause 2.4). MER includes the sales you'd make without ads, so it can't tell you on its own whether the ads pay: it's a record, not a target.
• Do your ads pay today? To cover A$1,000 of ads in 30 days, they must bring in about A$2,088 of sales you wouldn't have made without them (A$1,000 ÷ A$88.57 kept per A$185 order, the exact figure). Meta claims 8 purchases, about A$1,480 at your A$185 average order, more than Meta claims, so on Meta's own count your ads don't pay for themselves yet.
• What your budget buys: about 3.8 purchases a week, at A$33 a day now; about 4.5 at your full A$1,200 a month. That's too few purchases for Meta to learn from. Section 4.2 sets out your choice of optimisation event.

Your weekly rules

• Stop: Judge an ad once it has run for at least 7 days and has spent A$72 since it launched (about 4 adds to cart at a typical A$18 each), however many clicks it has had. Then switch it off if it has no add to cart, or if its cost per add to cart since launch is above A$33, your break-even (ex GST) on what your ads sell, the Stonewashed linen sheet set: past that, each add to cart loses money after the ads. Leave everything else alone. Count click-through adds to cart only: in Ads Manager, Columns > Compare attribution settings > 7-day click, and judge each ad on that column; an add to cart from someone who only saw the ad doesn't keep it on. These stop figures are per add to cart, for the ad set your plan builds. An ad set that optimises for purchases uses the same rule per purchase: judge an ad once it has run for at least 7 days and spent A$240, and switch it off with no purchase on the 7-day click column (Columns > Compare attribution settings), or if its cost per purchase on that column is above A$112 ex GST, your break-even per purchase on what your ads sell, the Stonewashed linen sheet set. Your per-add-to-cart figures assume about 3 in 10 adds to cart become a purchase (our assumption: replace it with your own purchases ÷ adds to cart from Shopify, once you have 10 or more adds to cart and some sales), so an add to cart is worth about A$33 ex GST to you at break-even on what your ads sell, the Stonewashed linen sheet set.
• Scale: Raise the daily budget by 20%, to A$39 (about A$1,185 a month), only when all five of these hold for the last 7 days added together: 1. At least 3 more new-customer orders than a normal week in those 7 days (about 6 a week, estimated from your 20% repeat rate until your own weekly count from section 3.4 replaces it, so at least 9), in Shopify's own orders, Australian orders only. 2. Meta's cost per purchase on the 7-day click column (Columns > Compare attribution settings), at or below A$89 ex GST, your target on what your ads sell, the A$229 Stonewashed linen sheet set. 3. Shopify's own sales incl. GST, after refunds, Australian orders only (filter by shipping country), at or above your A$1,400 weekly baseline, so the ads aren't just taking credit for sales you already had. 4. The campaign spent its full daily budget on at least 6 of the 7 days. 5. Stock and packing for at least 14 days of orders at the higher rate. Then wait until the 4 weeks after this raise have been judged (section 7) before any further raise. Your ceiling is A$39 a day, your A$1,200 a month: no raise past it unless you choose to spend more. No raises in sale weeks. No raises from Mon 23 Nov 2026 to Sun 3 Jan 2027: Black Friday week, the sales and December's gift buying aren't normal weeks (section 8). Your scale rule starts again on Mon 4 Jan 2027.
• No sale yet: If the campaign spends A$336 after your last site fix without a single purchase, pause it and work through section 11, "Spending, but no sales", before you spend more.
• Dated ads: Your spring ad ends on Mon 30 Nov 2026. Its replacements are section 8's Christmas ads: by Tue 24 Nov, have them ready (images and copy, not drafts in your live ad set), and on the evening of Mon 30 Nov, switch it off, build the Christmas ads and publish them in the same publish.
• Placements: check Audience Network's share of spend by day 3, then every week (section 7).

Most likely holding you back

1. 2.3 You're paying for clicks and likes, not sales
2. 2.2 Your budget is split across too many ad sets
3. 2.5 Meta is claiming sales you'd have got anyway

Your first week

Before anything else: what's running now. Switch your current campaign off on Sat 24 Oct 2026: it runs boosted posts, which Meta shows to people likely to click or react, not to buy or book. Publish this plan's campaign the same day. Carry over your best 1–2 ads using their existing posts, and switch the old campaign off in the same publish.

1. Do the setup in section 3. Start with the check of what you already have (section 3.2), and fix every miss.
2. Check your tracking with Test events (section 3.6), up to add to cart. Then check the cart once inside Instagram's own browser, where most ad clicks open: send yourself a product page link in an Instagram message, open it there, tap Add to cart once and open your cart, then stop. Never a test checkout or a test purchase on your live pixel: your first real orders confirm checkout and Purchase.
3. Check your live ads for product browsing and enhancements (cause 2.6). Open Advanced preview on each live ad. Where product browsing, catalogue add-ons or any enhancement that changes your words or image (text improvements, text overlays, enhance CTA) show, duplicate that ad without recommendations, using its existing post so its likes and comments carry over, and switch all of them off in the copy. Publish the copy and switch the original off in the same publish, the one that adds this plan's first new ads, so the ad set never runs without that ad (a single ad has no start time of its own: it goes live once approved).
4. Tell Meta who your existing customers are (cause 2.5): in your ad account's Advertising settings, set your audience segments now, with your customer list as existing customers. It changes no ad set. Each week, read Breakdown > By demographics > Audience segments beside Shopify's new-customer orders. If your account doesn't offer segments yet (Meta is still rolling them out), note it and rely on your tagged orders.
5. Build your campaign (section 4) to start at 12:00 am Sat 24 Oct 2026, the day the old one goes off ("Before anything else", above).
6. Leave it alone for 7 days. Then do your first 30-minute week (section 7).

Start with the biggest blocker: you're paying for clicks and likes, not sales. Stop paying for boosts and clicks, and build your one campaign to optimise for Add to cart, as section 4.2 explains, then hold it steady for 7 days.

2. What's holding your Meta ads back

Meta's ad system is an AI. It decides who sees your ad by watching who does the thing you told it to optimise for, then finding more people like them.

When store ads "don't work", the AI is usually doing its job with bad inputs: too little data, the wrong signal, a pixel that miscounts, or a sale that can't make money. Sometimes it's simply taking credit for sales you'd have made anyway.

Before you take anyone's advice, including an AI's: Meta makes its money when you spend yours. The recommendations in Ads Manager, the Opportunity score (0–100) that rises when you apply them, and most of the default settings are built to get more ads running and more budget spent. Meta itself says a high score doesn't mean better results. Ask an AI chatbot how to run Meta ads and you mostly get Meta's own advice back, repeated from its help pages and the blogs built on them. Some of that advice is good. It just isn't measured against your margin. This plan is.

These are the twelve causes we check first. The ones your answers point to are marked.

You said you "can't tell which ads, if any, are paying for themselves", and that's the right question to ask of any ad spend. From your answers, two things stand out: you're paying for clicks and likes, not sales, and your budget is split across too many ad sets. Both have clear fixes below, and section 7 gives you a weekly way to check whether the ads pay their way.

3. One-off setup (2–3 hours)

Do this once, properly, and most "Meta can't see my sales" problems never start.

4. Your campaigns

5. Your ads

Your industry at a glance

How your customers decide

• Two questions: will it fit, and will it go with what I have? Dimensions, scale and true colour decide the sale.
• Small pieces are quicker buys and frequent gifts.
• Quality is judged by material: the linen's weight and finish, named plainly and shown up close.

What Meta does well: room inspiration that stops the scroll; carousels that show a whole look; reminders over the weeks a big purchase takes; gift peaks for small pieces.

What Meta does badly: surviving a delivery-cost surprise at checkout. If the ad says "free delivery", the cart has to agree.

Your type: Bedding and linen

Offers that work, and why

1. Free delivery over a threshold just above your average order (A$185; yours is A$150). Sheet set at A$229 clears your A$150 free-shipping line, so its ads can say free shipping.
2. Bundles and sets: a full bedding set, "complete the look".
3. Free swatches or samples (fabric, linen). They remove the fear of the wrong colour.
4. Gift sets and gift boxes for small pieces.
5. Afterpay, which you already offer, shown beside the price, in Afterpay's own wording.
6. A trial period, only if it's real, with clear terms on the page.

Your offer:

Free delivery on Australian orders over A$150, in every ad. Your threshold already sits below your A$185 average order and the sheet set clears it on its own, so the offer costs you nothing new and settles the delivery question before shoppers reach the cart.

Add-on: Afterpay, shown near the price in Afterpay's own wording.

Skip: "was" prices you never really charged (section 10: the biggest recent penalty here came from sale prices); permanent "sales"; "free delivery" with exceptions buried at checkout.

From a client's accountA client's Australian homewares store set a free-delivery threshold and kept ad spend flat at A$5,070. Average order value rose from A$99 to A$126 and purchases from 127 to 147, while cost per purchase fell from A$39.92 to A$34.49. Attributed revenue went from A$12,573 to A$18,522, and ROAS from 2.48x to 3.65x. That's what happened alongside the threshold, not proof it caused it, and free delivery has a cost: the subsidy comes out of your margin on every qualifying order.

For you: your average order is A$185 and your threshold A$150. Section 1's A$88 an order is already after the delivery you pay, so an order that ships free over your threshold costs you nothing beyond it.

Hook bank

Use only what's true for you this week.

1. "Housewarming gift, sorted."
2. "Free delivery over A$150."
3. "Stonewashed linen sheet set. Pre-washed for a soft, relaxed finish. A$229."
4. "The weave, up close."
5. "Every bed size, every colour." (only if you stock them all)
6. "Your bed, sorted for the season: Stonewashed linen sheet set, A$229."

Ad angles

The texture. "Stonewashed linen. Set: fitted sheet, flat sheet and two standard pillowcases. A$229." Creative: a macro of the linen weave, then the set folded in one of its six colourways.

The look. "[add the room]: Stonewashed linen sheet set + Linen quilt cover set + Linen pillowcase pair. Shop the look or one piece." Creative: a carousel, the styled room first, then each item.

The proof. "'[add a review from your product page, word for word]' — [add the reviewer's first name and initial], [add their state], with the reviewer's permission." Creative: the customer's own photo in their home, with permission. Quote only reviews from your product page, and note which one in your creative file.

Phone-shot list

Shoot 4:5 for feeds and 9:16 for Stories and Reels: daylight for the room, scale and texture shots, true to the colour and finish that arrives, in every colour or finish you sell.

• Stills and video both work here. Video suits movement: a slow room pan, a bed being made up. Stills suit scale and texture. Run them as separate ads in the same ad set, and judge each by your stop rule (section 7).

Your copy

Where a price in your ads reads "$[add your delivery cost]", put in what you charge for delivery on an order under A$150 before the ad runs, the same amount your product page shows (section 9). A price ad names its delivery charge (Australian Consumer Law), and section 8's dated copy does too.

Primary text 1 (the offer): A bed worth getting into. Our stonewashed linen sheet set is A$229: fitted sheet, flat sheet and two pillowcases. Free delivery on Australian orders over A$150, or pay in 4 with Afterpay.

Primary text 2 (the material up close): Stonewashed linen, pre-washed for a soft, relaxed finish. The sheet set comes in queen and king, in six colourways.

Primary text 3 (its own ad, until Mon 30 Nov 2026): Warmer nights are coming: swap the winter layers for the stonewashed linen sheet set. Make up the guest bed now, before the summer visitors arrive.

Headlines (3):

• Free AU delivery over A$150
• Stonewashed linen, in queen and king
• Dispatched within 2 business days

6. Your audiences

7. Your week

About 30 minutes a week to run your ads, plus an hour every second week making new ones. Online stores need more fresh creative than local businesses, so the creative hour is part of the plan.

Do the 30 minutes at the same time each week, ideally Monday or Tuesday morning, so it covers a full weekend of sales.

5 minutes: check the numbers

From Shopify, last 7 days:

1. Store sales: Shopify's own sales incl. GST, after refunds, Australian orders only (filter by shipping country), the figure your lift uses
2. Orders, how many were from new customers, and how many carry utm_medium=paid and utm_source meta or facebook in Shopify (or, while some of your live ads' links carry no tags, come from Facebook or Instagram), beside Meta's purchase count: the closest read of how many of Meta's purchases your ads brought in.

From Ads Manager, last 7 days, campaign level:

3. Amount spent
4. Purchases and cost per purchase on the 7-day click column (Columns > Compare attribution settings), against A$89, your target on what your ads sell, the A$229 Stonewashed linen sheet set

Then check your lift: your baseline (A$1,400 a week) already includes your ads, so check what each change adds. At today's spend, sales should hold at about that. After a raise, compare the 4 weeks after it with the 4 weeks before (leave sale weeks out): sales must be up at least 2.1x the extra spend, A$88 a week for your first raise, from A$33 to A$39 a day, which adds A$42 a week of spend, or the raise loses money. MER (store sales ÷ ad spend) is a record, not a pass mark. Meta's numbers and your store's won't match. Use Meta to compare ads with each other. Use your store to decide whether the spend is worth it.

From 12 Nov 2026, Meta may count more purchases than before, on sites that qualify. Meta is adding "Measure conversions on customer devices", on by default in each pixel's settings, to credit purchases it couldn't see (Meta Business Help Center, "About measuring conversions on customer devices"; Meta's notice as reported by Stape, 22 Oct 2026). Trade reports say it only works where the pixel sits directly on the page and shoppers log in with an email or phone (PPC Land, 27 Oct; Relevant Audience, 28 Oct); Meta's page doesn't confirm those conditions yet, so many stores with guest checkout or a sandboxed pixel may see no change. To check yours: Events Manager > Data sources > your pixel > Settings, look for the setting, and note whether it's on and the date. Either way, your score stays Shopify orders and your lift.

10 minutes: stop and keep

At ad level:

• Stop: Judge an ad once it has run for at least 7 days and has spent A$72 since it launched (about 4 adds to cart at a typical A$18 each), however many clicks it has had. Then switch it off if it has no add to cart, or if its cost per add to cart since launch is above A$33, your break-even (ex GST) on what your ads sell, the Stonewashed linen sheet set: past that, each add to cart loses money after the ads. Leave everything else alone. Count click-through adds to cart only: in Ads Manager, Columns > Compare attribution settings > 7-day click, and judge each ad on that column; an add to cart from someone who only saw the ad doesn't keep it on.
• Never switch off the last ad in an ad set. Add a new one first, in the same publish.
• Dated ads: Your spring ad ends on Mon 30 Nov 2026. Its replacements are section 8's Christmas ads: by Tue 24 Nov, have them ready (images and copy, not drafts in your live ad set), and on the evening of Mon 30 Nov, switch it off, build the Christmas ads and publish them in the same publish.

These stop figures are per add to cart, for the ad set your plan builds. An ad set that optimises for purchases uses the same rule per purchase: judge an ad once it has run for at least 7 days and spent A$240, and switch it off with no purchase on the 7-day click column (Columns > Compare attribution settings), or if its cost per purchase on that column is above A$112 ex GST, your break-even per purchase on what your ads sell, the Stonewashed linen sheet set.

Placements: by day 3, then every week. In Ads Manager, open Breakdown → By delivery → Placement for the last 7 days.

• Audience Network takes more than 10% of spend, or most link clicks with few landing page views? Build a new ad set without it: duplicate the ad set without recommendations, untick only Audience Network, set it to start at 12:00 am, and publish it with the old ad set switched off in the same publish. Never edit the live ad set, and keep Stories and Reels.
• Any other placement is cut only on its own numbers, at a meaningful volume: once it has spent A$72 with no add to cart.

Meta finds the cheapest version of the result you asked for. On automatic placements that can be accidental taps inside other apps, so link clicks look healthy while visits and sales don't follow.

10 minutes: new ads

Start with 3 ads. Add a new ad from your creative hour only when you switch one off under the stop rule, in the same publish, so the ad set holds 3–4 ads: at A$231 a week, more ads than that never reach the spend the stop rule judges them on. If none has been switched off for 4 weeks, swap one new ad in for the oldest, in the same publish.

5 minutes: comments and messages

• Reply to product questions under your ads ("Does it come in…?", "How long is shipping?"). An unanswered question costs sales.
• Hide spam and scam links.
• Note any complaint about delivery or quality. Fix the cause, not the comment.

Your creative hour, every second week

Batch it. One hour makes the next fortnight's ads.

1. 10 minutes: pick Stonewashed linen sheet set, the product your ads lead with (or another product that keeps more before ads than a sale costs you, section 1), plus one angle you haven't tried (section 5).
2. 30 minutes: shoot 2–3 stills and 1 short video from the shot list, on your phone, in daylight. Frame for 4:5 and 9:16.
3. 15 minutes: write 3 primary texts and 3 headlines from the hook bank. Check every pairing reads correctly.
4. 5 minutes: file them by date and angle, so you know which angle won.

Your scorecard

Scale

Raise the daily budget by 20%, to A$39 (about A$1,185 a month), only when all five of these hold for the last 7 days added together: 1. At least 3 more new-customer orders than a normal week in those 7 days (about 6 a week, estimated from your 20% repeat rate until your own weekly count from section 3.4 replaces it, so at least 9), in Shopify's own orders, Australian orders only. 2. Meta's cost per purchase on the 7-day click column (Columns > Compare attribution settings), at or below A$89 ex GST, your target on what your ads sell, the A$229 Stonewashed linen sheet set. 3. Shopify's own sales incl. GST, after refunds, Australian orders only (filter by shipping country), at or above your A$1,400 weekly baseline, so the ads aren't just taking credit for sales you already had. 4. The campaign spent its full daily budget on at least 6 of the 7 days. 5. Stock and packing for at least 14 days of orders at the higher rate. Then wait until the 4 weeks after this raise have been judged (section 7) before any further raise. Your ceiling is A$39 a day, your A$1,200 a month: no raise past it unless you choose to spend more. No raises in sale weeks. No raises from Mon 23 Nov 2026 to Sun 3 Jan 2027: Black Friday week, the sales and December's gift buying aren't normal weeks (section 8). Your scale rule starts again on Mon 4 Jan 2027.

• Small, slow steps: a big budget jump can restart learning (Meta Business Help Center, "Last significant edit").
• Judge each raise on 4 weeks, not one: if store sales, Australian orders only (filter by shipping country), for the 4 weeks after it aren't up at least 2.1x the extra spend on the 4 weeks before (A$88 a week for your first raise, from A$33 to A$39 a day, which adds A$42 a week of spend; leave sale weeks out), or new-customer orders haven't risen, go back to the last budget that held: the extra spend isn't paying for itself.
• No sale yet: If the campaign spends A$336 after your last site fix without a single purchase, pause it and work through section 11, "Spending, but no sales", before you spend more.

Once a month

• Update your expected cost per purchase from your store's own orders, after the later of 4 weeks or 30 purchases, then monthly: your spend on ad sets that target Australia ÷ the Australian orders in Shopify with utm_medium=paid and utm_source meta or facebook, not Meta's count. While some of your live ads' links carry no tags, divide only the spend of the ads that carry them (filter Ads Manager to the ads you published from this plan) by those orders, or all your spend on ad sets that target Australia by all the Australian orders Shopify shows as coming from Facebook or Instagram. Recalculate your break-even and target only when your price, product cost, shipping, fees or returns change.
• Refresh your customer list.
• Run the prompt in section 12 with your numbers and this month's update email.

8. Your next 90 days

Your dated ads: Your spring ad ends on Mon 30 Nov 2026. Its replacements are section 8's Christmas ads: by Tue 24 Nov, have them ready (images and copy, not drafts in your live ad set), and on the evening of Mon 30 Nov, switch it off, build the Christmas ads and publish them in the same publish.

Black Friday to Boxing Day: your peak plan

Black Friday is Fri 27 Nov, 35 days from this plan; Cyber Monday is Mon 30 Nov. Nothing below changes a live ad: every peak ad is new, dated and built ahead, with one real offer.

1. Your current campaign isn't one to protect. Switch your current campaign off on Sat 24 Oct 2026: it runs boosted posts, which Meta shows to people likely to click or react, not to buy or book. Publish this plan's campaign the same day. Carry over your best 1–2 ads using their existing posts, and switch the old campaign off in the same publish. If your No sale yet pause (section 7) stops the campaign before Mon 23 Nov 2026, build none of the dated ads or ad sets below, and restart paid ads only once you've worked through section 11.
2. Finish section 3 by Mon 9 Nov 2026, so your ads have two clean weeks before Black Friday week starts on Mon 23 Nov 2026.
3. No Black Friday ad. You haven't given us a Black Friday offer, so this plan builds no Black Friday ad and writes no Black Friday copy: your evergreen ads carry on. If you decide on one, price it in section 4.7 first, then by Tue 24 Nov build it as one ad set in a campaign of its own, Merrowbank Linen | Peak | 2026, with an ad set budget (not Advantage+ campaign budget), so it takes nothing from your main ad set, and every ad in it carries the URL parameters from section 4.3, step 17: start 12:00 am Fri 27 Nov, end 11:59 pm Mon 30 Nov. Conversion location Website, event Add to cart, the same as your main ad set (section 4.2). Placements: everything except Audience Network. Audience: Advantage+ audience, with your customer list and website purchasers from the last 180 days excluded (section 6.4); your list gets the offer by email. One offer per ad set, in the same words in the headline, the ad text and on the landing page. Give it A$10 a day, A$40 over its 4 days, from the room your main campaign leaves under your A$1,200 a month, and leave your main ad set's budget alone.
4. Christmas gifting, Tue 1 Dec to Thu 17 Dec. Lead with Stonewashed linen sheet set. By Tue 24 Nov, have 1–2 Christmas ads ready (images and copy). An ad set of its own would get under 10 adds to cart a week on what your budget leaves for it, too few for Meta to learn from, so they go in your main ad set as dated ads, with no extra budget, not a new ad set. A draft there would go live with your next publish, so build them on the evening of Mon 30 Nov and publish them in the same publish that switches off your spring ad, then switch them off on the evening of Thu 17 Dec. Meta can't end a single ad, so put both dates in your calendar now. Give them no offer, the headline "Order by Thu 17 Dec (WA 16, NT 10)" and, near the start of the ad text, so every date shows before Meta's "more" (its first 125 characters), "Order by Thu 17 Dec for Christmas (WA Wed 16, NT Thu 10).", and on the product page, "Order by Thu 17 Dec for Christmas delivery to metro addresses (WA by Wed 16 Dec, NT by Thu 10 Dec)."
5. After the cut-off. The Christmas ads come off on Thu 17 Dec. Your evergreen ads carry on, promising no Christmas delivery. If you offer Express Post, 1–2 Express Post ads in your main ad set, published on the evening of Thu 17 Dec in the same publish that switches off your Christmas ads and switched off on the evening of Mon 21 Dec, your last Express Post order date for delivery interstate (table below), keep your gift ads going until then, with the headline "Express: order by Mon 21 Dec (WA/NT 18)" and, near the start of the ad text, so every date shows before Meta's "more" (its first 125 characters), "Express Post: order by Mon 21 Dec for Christmas (WA and NT Fri 18).", and on the product page, "Order by Mon 21 Dec with Express Post for Christmas delivery to metro addresses (WA and NT by Fri 18 Dec)." If you sell digital gift cards, 1–2 gift card ads in your main ad set, published on the evening of Thu 17 Dec (Mon 21 Dec if you run the Express Post ones) and switched off on the evening of Thu 24 Dec, are the one replacement worth having ready.
6. Boxing Day: only with a real Boxing Day offer. If you decide on one, price it in section 4.7 and by Tue 22 Dec build it as one ad set in a campaign of its own, Merrowbank Linen | Peak | 2026, with an ad set budget (not Advantage+ campaign budget), so it takes nothing from your main ad set, and every ad in it carries the URL parameters from section 4.3, step 17: start 12:00 am Sat 26 Dec and end 11:59 pm on your offer's last day (set both when you build it), so nobody edits ads over Christmas and Meta switches it off for you. Conversion location Website, event Add to cart, the same as your main ad set (section 4.2). Placements: everything except Audience Network. Audience: Advantage+ audience, with your customer list and website purchasers from the last 180 days excluded (section 6.4); your list gets the offer by email. Give it A$10 a day for each day it runs, from the room your main campaign leaves under your A$1,200 a month, and leave your main ad set's budget alone.
7. Budgets on Meta: no raises from Mon 23 Nov 2026 to Sun 3 Jan 2027. Nothing live changes mid-sale: a big budget change can restart learning (Meta Business Help Center, "Last significant edit"), and December's gift buying lifts your sales with or without ads. Your scale rule (section 7) starts again on Mon 4 Jan 2027.
8. Judge the peak on Shopify's numbers. Sale days don't count toward your scale rule or your weekly targets, and from 12 Nov Meta may count more purchases on sites that qualify (section 7). Shopify's orders and sales against your normal weeks are the score. Your A$1,400 weekly baseline is an ordinary week, and gift buying lifts December's sales with or without ads: compare each December week with the same week last December, if you have it, and make no raise on December numbers.

The maths (what an order keeps is ex GST; ROAS is on sales incl. GST): At about A$60 of ads a sale (a starting estimate, not yet your own cost), the deepest discount in the table that keeps at least 10% of each sale after the ads is 15%; 25% still leaves a little, under 10%. The full table is in section 4.7.

Your Christmas order-by dates. Your last order date is Australia Post's send-by date ("posted by" below) minus your handling time of 2 business days (from your product page). Metro to metro; regional and rural addresses need extra time (Australia Post's Christmas send-by dates, auspost.com.au/christmas, checked 28 Oct 2026). Your Christmas and Express Post ads carry their own order-by date in the headline and ad text; your site, product pages and emails carry the full table. Never put a "posted by" date in an ad: it's the day the parcel must leave, not the day to order.

October. Start promoting: Christmas gifting and hosting.

November. Diwali (8 Nov): gifts and hosting. Singles Day (11th). Black Friday 27 Nov and Cyber Monday 30 Nov 2026. Run: your evergreen ads; no Black Friday ad without a real Black Friday offer (section 8). Start promoting: your Christmas order-by dates on your site and in emails; your Christmas gift ads start after Black Friday (section 8).

December. Christmas hosting, Boxing Day. Australia Post's 2026 metro send-by dates from Vic (the day a parcel must be posted, not the day to order): Parcel Post Tue 22 Dec within Vic, Mon 21 Dec to other states and the ACT, Fri 18 Dec to WA and Mon 14 Dec to NT; Express Post, if you offer it, Wed 23 Dec (Tue 22 Dec to WA and NT) (auspost.com.au/christmas, checked 28 Oct 2026). Your order-by dates are earlier by your handling time (section 8's table): use those, never these, in ads. Run: gifts to your cut-off, then Express Post ads to its cut-off, if you offer Express Post.

For linen bedding, Christmas is the one to plan for: guest beds get made up and sheet sets make easy gifts. Switch your Christmas gifting ads on in late October and set your last order date from Australia Post's 2026 cut-offs (Parcel Post Mon 21 Dec interstate, Tue 22 Dec within a state). Black Friday (27 Nov) earns a place only if your was-prices are genuine (section 10).

9. Fixes for your website

We checked your website against the checklist below. These are the fixes most likely to be costing you sales, most costly first.

1. Show what delivery costs before checkout. The product page says free shipping over A$150, but not what smaller orders or New Zealand orders pay. Put both near Add to cart, so the price in your ad matches the price at checkout.
2. Give every bed size in centimetres. Queen and king are listed by name only, with no measurements or fitted-sheet pocket depth. Add both to each size, so shoppers know the sheets will fit their mattress.
3. Give each colourway its own photos. All six colours share one gallery, so shoppers can't see the true colour of the one they want. Add a plain shot and a made-bed shot in daylight for each.
4. Say what the linen is. There's no linen weight or care information on the page. Add the weight from your supplier and simple washing and drying instructions.

10. Rules for your industry

Every online store: the price, sale, review, origin and returns rules are under "Rules for every online store", at the end of this section.

Product safety (mandatory standards; check productsafety.gov.au before you list)

• Anything else you sell: search its product type on productsafety.gov.au for mandatory standards and bans before you list it.

Material claims

• "100% linen", "French linen" and "organic cotton" only with supplier proof, and certification for "organic".
• Dimensions and colour in your ads must match the product you deliver.

11. When something goes wrong

Find your problem. Work through the checks in order and stop at the first one that fits.

12. Use this with your AI

Once a month, and whenever you're stuck, paste this guide into an AI assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude, along with your numbers. It will write your ads and walk you through the changes. You make the changes yourself in Ads Manager. Don't ask Meta's own AI to judge your Meta spend: your plan judges it on your own results, not on Meta's reports.

What to paste

1. This guide (download the AI-ready version from your guide page).
2. Your last 30 days from Ads Manager, per ad: spend, purchases, cost per purchase, adds to cart and frequency.
3. Your store's last 30 days, week by week: sales, orders, new vs returning customers and refunds.
4. This month's update email from us.

Never paste passwords, card numbers, or your customers' personal details (names, emails, phone numbers, addresses).

The prompt

Copy everything in the box.

You're helping me run Meta (Facebook and Instagram) ads for my online store. The plan pasted below is my rulebook. Stick to it unless my numbers show it isn't working, and if so, explain why before you suggest a change.

About my online store:
Merrowbank Linen is an online bedding and linen store on Shopify, shipping to Australia and New Zealand. Our lead product is the stonewashed linen sheet set at A$229, and our average order is A$185. We offer free delivery on Australian orders over A$150, and Afterpay at checkout.

My plan settings:
- Store stage: Early: about A$6,100 a month (33 orders)
- Objective: Sales, optimising for Add to cart
- Budget: A$1,200 a month (Growth)
- Average order: A$185; contribution margin 47%
- Break-even cost per purchase: A$112 on what my ads sell, the A$229 Stonewashed linen sheet set; break-even ROAS 2.1x (A$88 and 2.1x on my A$185 average order)
- Target cost per purchase: A$89 on what my ads sell, the A$229 Stonewashed linen sheet set; target ROAS 2.6x
- How to judge the ads: my A$1,400 a week of sales already includes my ads, so judge each change on lift: after a raise, sales, Australian orders only (filter by shipping country), must rise at least 2.1x the extra spend (A$88 a week for my first raise, which adds A$42 a week of spend; 2.1x is my break-even ROAS on my A$185 average order), over 4 weeks against the 4 before; MER is a record only
My stop rule: Judge an ad once it has run for at least 7 days and has spent A$72 since it launched (about 4 adds to cart at a typical A$18 each), however many clicks it has had. Then switch it off if it has no add to cart, or if its cost per add to cart since launch is above A$33, my break-even (ex GST) on what my ads sell, the Stonewashed linen sheet set: past that, each add to cart loses money after the ads. Leave everything else alone. Count click-through adds to cart only: in Ads Manager, Columns > Compare attribution settings > 7-day click, and judge each ad on that column; an add to cart from someone who only saw the ad doesn't keep it on.
My scale rule: Raise the daily budget by 20%, to A$39 (about A$1,185 a month), only when all five of these hold for the last 7 days added together: 1. At least 3 more new-customer orders than a normal week in those 7 days (about 6 a week, estimated from my 20% repeat rate until my own weekly count from section 3.4 replaces it, so at least 9), in Shopify's own orders, Australian orders only. 2. Meta's cost per purchase on the 7-day click column (Columns > Compare attribution settings), at or below A$89 ex GST, my target on what my ads sell, the A$229 Stonewashed linen sheet set. 3. Shopify's own sales incl. GST, after refunds, Australian orders only (filter by shipping country), at or above my A$1,400 weekly baseline, so the ads aren't just taking credit for sales I already had. 4. The campaign spent its full daily budget on at least 6 of the 7 days. 5. Stock and packing for at least 14 days of orders at the higher rate. Then wait until the 4 weeks after this raise have been judged (section 7) before any further raise. My ceiling is A$39 a day, my A$1,200 a month: no raise past it unless I choose to spend more. No raises in sale weeks. No raises from Mon 23 Nov 2026 to Sun 3 Jan 2027: Black Friday week, the sales and December's gift buying aren't normal weeks (section 8). My scale rule starts again on Mon 4 Jan 2027.
My placement rule: Check Breakdown > By delivery > Placement by day 3 and every week; if Audience Network takes more than 10% of spend, or most link clicks with few landing page views, build a new ad set without it (keep Stories and Reels), publish it with the old ad set switched off in the same publish, and never edit the live ad set.

My last 30 days:
[paste Ads Manager numbers per ad here]
[paste store sales, orders, new vs returning customers and refunds, week by week, here]

This month's Meta changes:
[paste the update email here]

Please:
1. Work out my lift for each week from my store numbers first: store sales above my baseline ÷ ad spend. Tell me in plain English what's working and what isn't, using only the numbers I've given you. If a number is missing, ask me for it. Don't estimate.
2. Apply my stop, scale and placement rules. List which ads to switch off, which to leave alone, whether to change the budget, and whether Audience Network needs a new ad set.
3. Check the twelve causes in section 2 of my plan against my numbers, and tell me which one to fix first.
4. Write 2 new ads for Stonewashed linen sheet set. For each: 3 primary texts, 3 headlines that read correctly with any of them, and the image or video to make from my shot list. Australian English. No claims my plan's industry rules forbid. One offer only, in every ad: free shipping over A$150 on Australian orders. Use only these facts: stonewashed linen, pre-washed for a soft, relaxed finish; set: fitted sheet, flat sheet and two standard pillowcases; sizes: queen and king; six colourways; stonewashed linen sheet set at A$229; dispatched within 2 business days; Afterpay available. No reviews, ratings, best-seller or award claims, and no delivery dates beyond the order-by dates in section 8.
5. Walk me through every change in Ads Manager, step by step, as one publish. Never tell me to edit a live ad that's working: add a new ad instead. Any new ad set starts at 12:00 am. Remind me to switch off creative enhancements, catalogue add-ons and product browsing on new ads.
6. Tell me what in this month's Meta changes affects my plan, and what to do about it.

Rules for you: every amount is in Australian dollars (A$); don't invent numbers or benchmarks; don't promise results; judge my ads on store sales above my baseline (lift), not Meta's ROAS; if Meta's screens don't match your steps, tell me to check Meta's Business Help Center rather than guessing.

Appendix