The new Andromeda update has burned way more budget that we expected.

We created personalized sports products (hockey, baseball, etc) and have been struggling with our Meta Ads campaign since the update rolled out in August. The last one we ran was the most up-to-date based on publically available knowledge, but the behavior was very absurd. Our target market is USA and Canada, and it kept sending our ads to people in China and Thailand. Our campaign was made for Sales (Purchase) and it kept giving us engagement instead (Likes, etc.) We tried with a lower budget ($150 a day) and it gave bad results. We tried with a much higher budget and after testing our creatives and using the winners in a new budget ($500) and it targeted completely incorrectly. Meta says to keep targeting wide open, but its just giving us bad results. The AI seems terribly incomplete, and seems like Meta is using us and our wallets as guinea pigs to beta test their incomplete product.

Either way, I would love to know how you guys are doing and if you have any feedback based on your experience. Do I really need 50 creatives and recycle them every week (the max I have used are 11, but very diverse)? When does learning actually exit (its been over 7 days and learning still hasn't caught up)? What should the budget for a healthy campaign be?

Thanks for reading!