Ben Heath
Runs Heath Media (UK), an agency offering done-for-you Meta ads, coaching and training. Claims 13 years and $300M+ managed spend, $1.2B+ client revenue and 5,000+ businesses; in Oct 2026 said the agency spends $100M+/year on Meta, 30–40% of it on testing new ads. Works across lead-gen, local, info and ecommerce — much of his advice is framed for lead-gen and smaller advertisers, with walk-throughs inside Ads Manager.
Strong on: Ads Manager mechanics (automated rules, value rules, instant-form conditional logic, push delivery and the creative testing tool), budget scaling, lead quality, adapting strategy to spend level.
Bias to keep in mind: sells a Skool course/community and Inner Circle coaching, and most videos carry sponsor reads for tracking/creative tools (Hyros, ClickMagick, Higgsfield, Holo, HubSpot, Criteo) — tool claims there are advertising. Numbers are mostly rules of thumb from his agency, rarely shown as data.
Sources: sources/youtube/ben-heath/.
Notes citing Ben Heath
- Broad targeting vs interests, lookalikes and retargeting on Meta (2023 → 2026)How targeting advice flipped from Smart Marketer's 2023 70/15/15 interest/lookalike/broad split to 2025–2026 broad-by-default — and the remaining cases for interests (forcing a new avatar, lead gen), geo-only (local), customer exclusions, and Advantage+ as audience research.
- Choosing what Meta optimises for — "Meta is literal" (lead quality, value, funnel events)Because Meta delivers exactly the event you ask for, optimise for the lowest-funnel event with ~20–25+ conversions a week, use instant-form conditional logic and SMS-verified "higher intent" forms (or split thank-you pages) so only qualified leads count, switch sales campaigns to maximise value of conversions, and avoid add-to-cart/landing-page-view optimisation.
- Conversions API (CAPI) — why server-side conversion feedback mattersWhy browser pixels broke under Safari ITP and ATT, how server-to-server Conversion APIs restore feedback to ad platforms (identifiers to send, full event stream), which platforms now offer CAPIs, and why advertisers only integrate a few.
- Diagnosing why a Meta ad isn't working (metric-pattern cheatsheet)Metric patterns that locate where an ad breaks — low thumbstop with OK CTR (fix the hook), high watch with low CTR (stronger CTA), clicks but short watch (shorten), high CTR with no conversions (landing page/offer), rising CPM/CPA on a winner (fatigue), no spend at all (similarity) — and how to turn each into a testable hypothesis.
- Five levels of Meta advertiser maturity (Renault → IKEA → New Balance → HelloFresh → Huel)Ben Heath's ladder for judging a brand's Meta ads from the Ad Library — level 1 repurposed TV/billboard ads with hashtags (Renault), level 2 good ads wasted on incongruent landing pages (IKEA), level 3 one creative style and weak CTAs (New Balance), level 4 high variety but one offer and one page (HelloFresh, 78 ads), level 5 offers and angles per avatar with 300+ ads (Huel).
- Fixing Meta underspend — CTC's four phases, and why they never turn off adsCommon Thread Collective's 4-phase answer when Meta won't spend at target efficiency — (1) creative expansion with big concept swings, (2) bid-surface expansion by duplicating evergreen campaigns into other bid types, (3) an "underspend" ASC for ads that got <3× target CPA in spend, (4) relaxing the ROAS/cost constraint only when the business justifies it — plus the "never turn off an ad" principle and how others disagree.
- Getting spend onto new Meta ads — push delivery vs the creative testing toolMeta's two ad-level ways to give new ads real spend without separate testing campaigns — "Push delivery to this ad" (default 20% of budget for 7 days, rolling out to ~half of Heath Media's accounts in Oct 2026) and the Creative testing tool (2–7 ads split-tested on segmented audiences) — when each fits by conversion volume, how much budget to test with (10–60%), and the short-term performance hit.
- How many ads per ad set, and the minimum budget for a Meta campaignPractitioner numbers for ads per ad set (10 to start, 15–20 diverse concepts in a consolidated ad set, 3–6 per concept test, ~20 for ASC) and minimum daily budgets (≥3× target CPA, ≥$100/day for ASC, $100–300 per concept test).
- How Meta ads strategy changes from $100 to $100,000 a monthBen Heath's side-by-side of a $100/month and a $100K/month Meta account — structure (one ad set vs multiple campaigns + 10–30% testing), targeting (hands-off vs audience segments + value rules), testing (one test a month vs a creative "factory" of e.g. 12 ads/week), bidding (most conversions vs value / CRM-fed), scaling steps, measurement and team.
- How to raise a Meta campaign's budget — automated rules, stepped increases and the scaling ceilingBen Heath's two scaling methods (automated rules, +3%/day when 7-day CPA is under target, −3% when over; or manual steps of 50→100→150…→1,000 with shrinking percentages every 5–10 days), Jon Loomer's pre-check (is it scalable among new audiences / 1-day click?) and ~15% steps, why increases cause temporary instability, finding the scaling ceiling — and why not to duplicate campaigns.
- How to structure a Meta ads account in 2025–2026The campaign layouts practitioners actually run — Dara Denney's testing campaign + Advantage+ (ASC) core, Smart Marketer's one-campaign-per-objective "Andromeda portfolio", CTC's evergreen (acquisition/retention ad sets filled to 150 ads) + marketing-moment campaigns, Ben Heath and Jon Loomer's one-campaign-one-ad-set start, Mars Men's 40 pillar campaigns — plus multiple products, countries, retargeting and the 2020 baseline.
- Is it really creative fatigue? Diagnosing a Meta ad's performance dropJon Loomer's case that most "creative fatigue" is really Meta shifting a new ad from remarketing to prospecting (prove it with audience-segment and attribution breakdowns), when fatigue is real (small/local or isolated remarketing audiences, too few assets, very high spend in niche markets per Ben Heath), and what to do instead of reflexively launching a new ad.
- Meta audience segments — proving remarketing happens on its ownDefine engaged-audience and existing-customer segments in Meta's advertising settings, then use the audience-segment breakdown on sales campaigns to see how much budget already goes to warm people (often 10–30%+) — why separate remarketing campaigns are usually unnecessary and non-incremental, and how the breakdown underpins scaling and fatigue decisions.
- Meta bid strategy — minimum ROAS vs cost per result goal vs lowest costCTC's analysis of ~$1.5B Meta spend across ~320 accounts (Mar–Jun 2026) found minimum ROAS lands within a few percent of its target at portfolio level while the cost-per-result goal hit target less than half the time (on Google tROAS 1.3× target, tCPA 0.8×); why value bidding gives the algorithm more room, how CTC sets the target from margin and incrementality, budget liquidity, and the low-volume counter-advice to avoid manual bids.
- Meta creative testing setups at $5K, $50K and $1M+ per monthConcrete creative-testing configurations by spend level — one ASC with ~10 ads at lean budgets, an ABO testing campaign with one ad set per concept (3–6 ads, $100–200/day) at growth, and 10–20 tests/week at $200/day for ~7 days at scale — plus rules on test length and not mixing new ads with proven ones.
- Meta value rules — bid more for people worth more (instead of restricting targeting)How to use Meta's value rules (Advertising settings → value rules → rule set; bid +X% by age, gender, location, placement, device…) to feed information Meta can't see — repeat-purchase rate, lead-to-customer conversion, LTV — instead of hard age/gender/placement exclusions, and the common mistake of copying data Meta already has.
- Meta's incremental attribution model — should you switch from standard?What Meta's ad-set-level "incremental" attribution model does (predicts which conversions the ad caused, and optimises for them) versus standard 7-day click / 1-day view / 1-day engaged-view, why results look worse after switching, and who should use it — Jon Loomer says most advertisers, Ben Heath says only larger advertisers with a customer base.
- Scaling a Meta ad from signal to winnerHow practitioners decide something is a winner (spend velocity of $2K in 4–5 days, 2× the account benchmark held 3–5 days, internal ROAS above ~2) and how they scale it — budget steps, duplication into ASC or new ad sets, bid-strategy combos, new funnels and new avatars.
- Signal engineering — auditing and shaping the conversion events ad platforms optimise onFirst check what conversion data actually reaches Meta/Google (duplicates, wrong optimisation event), keep "what the platform needs" separate from "what the business wants", and engineer enough purchase events (e.g. ~20/day per campaign in gaming) for campaigns to exit learning.
- Starting a new or low-volume Meta ad account — the simplest setup that can workWhat to do (and never do) with a brand-new or budget-limited Meta account — run in Ads Manager not boosted posts (iOS boosts add ~30% Apple fee), check purchase/lead events don't fire on page load, optimise for the purchase not add-to-cart or traffic, one campaign + one ad set + 1–2 ads, broad and unrestricted, leave it 1–2 weeks — plus Jon Loomer's fallback to a cheaper front-end product or leads.
- The breakdown effect — judge Meta results at the ad-set level, not per adWhy per-ad and per-asset comparisons mislead on Meta (historical ROAS doesn't predict future delivery; low-volume slices; day-1 delivery ≠ day-8), so judge ad sets or CBO campaigns in aggregate, launch new ads in batches of uniquely different angles every ~2 weeks, and don't chase the single winning headline or image.
- Weekly Meta media-buying cadence and attribution settingsLaunch new ads on one fixed day each week and judge after 7 days; use 7-day click for evergreen campaigns and 1-day click for flash sales; starter bid/attribution defaults; how teams run weekly pillar and hypothesis reviews; when third-party attribution tools are worth it.
- What actually moves Meta ads results in 2026 — the fundamentals checklistA consolidated checklist from Ben Heath ("97% of results"), Jon Loomer (foundational elements) and CTC (the "canon") — simplify and consolidate, make creative the targeting via diversification and creator partnership ads, accurate pixel + CAPI tracking, optimise for what you really want (value, qualified leads), value rules instead of restrictions, know and grow LTV, build brand, test with Meta's tools, read attribution properly.
- What Andromeda, GEM and Lattice are, and what they change for advertisersPlain-language model of Meta's 2025–2026 ad delivery stack (Andromeda retrieval → GEM ranking → Lattice unified models), the Advantage+ sales rollout of mid-2025, and the practical consequence that creative, not targeting or structure, decides delivery.