Meta Ads Is Cracking Under Peak Load
Here's What Really Happened in the Last 10 Days
Meta Ads is supposed to be the most reliable performance channel on earth, especially in November.
Instead, over the last 10 days, the platform has delivered one of the messiest, most unstable pre-Black-Friday periods in recent memory: delivery outages, CPC explosions, learning resets, reporting delays, and a complete absence of transparency from Meta.
Thousands of advertisers are asking the same question: What's going on with Meta Ads?
At AdStatus, we track outages and instability across major ad platforms in real time. Here's the ground truth from the last 10 days in the U.S. market.
Executive Summary
Meta Ads has experienced multiple platform-wide disruptions in the last 10 days:
- Ad delivery outages
- CPC spikes of +50% to +300%
- Campaigns overspending in minutes
- Learning phases resetting overnight
- Reporting delays and frozen metrics
- Zero official communication during active incidents
Advertiser sentiment across Reddit, X, and LinkedIn is the lowest we've seen all year. Many describe Meta Ads as "unstable, unpredictable, and dangerous to scale."
The Last 10 Days: What Actually Broke
Nov 10 - Delivery Outage
A late-night delivery bug stopped spend for ~3 hours. Meta quietly acknowledged it hours later. CPC and conversion data looked corrupted for the rest of the night.
Nov 11-12 - Algorithmic "Reset"
Advertisers saw:
- CPC doubling
- CTR dropping ~50%
- Conversions falling to near zero
Meta's own status page glitched and showed October as the last update, a known sign of internal system rollback.
Nov 14-16 - The Rollercoaster
Performance partially recovered Friday... then collapsed again Sunday. Advertisers reported violent swings hour-to-hour, consistent with missing or stale optimization data.
Nov 17-18 - The Big Meltdown
One of the worst days of the year:
- Campaigns spent the entire day's budget in under 10 minutes
- Zero clicks, zero conversions
- CPC spikes of +200%
- System-wide performance collapse
Meta? Silent.
Nov 19-20 - Public Backlash
Meta still had not formally acknowledged the incidents. Advertiser anger erupted on LinkedIn and X.
Industry leaders called this "the buggiest BFCM season Meta has ever shipped."
The Patterns Behind the Chaos
Across thousands of comments and reports, the same issues repeated:
A. Frequent Ad-Delivery Outages
Spend halting without warning. Budgets stuck. Ads not serving. Happens at least weekly now.
B. Algorithm Instability
CPC multipliers. Sudden learning resets. Wrong audiences. Classic symptoms of data pipeline issues or an AI model failing to update.
C. "Metadata Resets"
When Meta's status page reverts to old dates, campaigns collapse. Advertisers strongly suspect temporary loss of conversion-model data.
D. Reporting Blind Spots
Stats freezing. Link clicks showing zero. Delayed attribution. Advertisers stuck guessing.
E. Overspend Bugs
Several cases of budgets being burned in minutes with no results. This is not "bad creative." This is a pacing failure.
The Most Likely Root Cause
Meta's new AI-powered ads engine, the foundation of all Advantage+ and automation features, is still in active rollout.
And despite Meta's size, new ranking models + fragmented data + Q4 volume = instability.
Meta appears to be:
- Pushing algorithm changes weekly
- Updating AI-driven creative & delivery models
- Modifying optimization pipelines during the busiest period of the year
Internally, this is probably a mix of:
- Model drift
- Failed data refreshes
- Cache resets
- Behind-the-scenes code pushes
- Infrastructure stress
Externally, advertisers see the symptoms: chaos.
Advertiser Sentiment Right Now
It's bad. Really bad.
Across performance forums:
"I've never seen anything this broken in 9 years."
"Facebook ads feel like gambling now."
"This is the worst week of my career."
"We lost an entire day's profit."
"Meta has become unpredictable."
Some agencies are advising temporary budget cuts. Some advertisers are pausing completely. Some are calling for a spending boycott until Meta stabilizes.
What to Expect in the Next 7 Days
Historically, Meta doesn't freeze code during BFCM, they keep pushing.
Expect at least one more disruption between Nov 22-30.
- Delivery halts
- CPC spikes
- "Learning phase" resets
- Status-page date anomalies
- Budget dumping at midnight
- Sudden drops in attributed conversions
- CPC normalizing
- Delivery stabilizing
- Consistent CPA again
But until Meta publicly acknowledges the problem, assume uncertainty.
How AdStatus Helps During Volatile Weeks
AdStatus was built for weeks exactly like this.
When Meta goes down at 2:07 AM, you should know at 2:08 AM, not after wasting $2,000 in broken delivery.
With AdStatus, you get:
- Real-time Meta outage alerts
- Delivery anomaly detection
- Trend monitoring
- Slack/Teams alerts
- Early warnings before Meta updates its own status page
Advertisers using AdStatus this week paused spend early, avoided overspend spikes, and protected their acquisition costs during outages.
If your performance matters, you shouldn't be flying blind.
Start Free TrialFinal Thought
Meta Ads is still one of the most powerful acquisition channels in the world.
But reliability matters, especially during BFCM.
Until Meta stabilizes Andromeda and fixes its data pipeline issues, advertisers need better visibility, faster alerts, and stronger safeguards.
That's exactly why we built AdStatus.
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Methodology & Data Sources
This analysis is based on real-time monitoring of Meta's official status page, combined with community reports from Reddit (r/PPC, r/FacebookAds), X (Twitter), LinkedIn performance marketing groups, and direct advertiser feedback. Incident timestamps and severity assessments reflect U.S. market observations.
Limitations: Performance impacts vary by account, vertical, and region. Some issues may be account-specific rather than platform-wide. Always verify with your own data.
Last Updated: November 21, 2025