The Future of Meta Ads: Why the Old Funnel is Out and the “All-in-One” Campaign is In
- CA Bhavesh Jhalawadia
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For the past decade, we, as savvy advertisers on Facebook and Instagram, lived by the rule of the three-step sales funnel: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. We painstakingly created separate campaigns for each stage—one for “Top-of-Funnel” traffic to warm up cold audiences, one for “Middle-of-Funnel” leads, and one for “Bottom-of-Funnel” conversions to go in for the kill.
This was the standard—until Meta’s ad platform became a true machine of artificial intelligence.
If you’re still running your ads this way, I have a strategy that I fully expect to blow your mind. The best results today come from a dramatically different, consolidated approach.
The Evolution: From Three Steps to One (and Why It Broke)
A few years ago, as Meta’s algorithm got smarter, many of us started simplifying. We realized Meta could often find those “ready-to-buy” people much faster than our slow, top-of-funnel campaigns.
- The Simplified Approach: Many advertisers ditched the top-funnel and middle-funnel campaigns, resulting in a single “conversion” campaign. We relied on Meta to find immediate buyers.
- The Short-Term Win, Long-Term Problem: This worked great for a couple of weeks! But soon, we’d run out of buyers. Without that continuous “awareness” action—that warming-up process—our results would plummet. The fundamental logic of needing to warm people up didn’t change; the platform just focused on the fastest conversion, missing out on building the pipeline.
The New Strategy: The All-in-One Funnel Campaign
The good news is we can now have the best of both worlds: the effective, multi-step sales funnel logic, but consolidated into a single, high-performing campaign.
Structure: One Campaign, One Ad Set, Many Ads
The structure is shockingly simple and completely counter-intuitive to how we used to build campaigns:
- One Campaign: Create a single Sales (or Leads) campaign, which we’ll call the All-Funnel Campaign.
- One Ad Set: Use only one ad set inside this campaign.
- Open Targeting: This ad set should target a combination of warm and cold audiences.
- Many Ads: This is the key—you will have lots of different ads within this single ad set.
How Meta’s AI Does the Heavy Lifting
Meta’s sophisticated delivery system is now smart enough to take those multiple ads and use them in a sales-funnel approach—all on its own, and for each individual user.
- Personalized Delivery: For a customer who is ready to buy (e.g., they just looked at your product page 10 minutes ago), Meta won’t waste time with an awareness ad. It goes straight for the Bottom-of-Funnel ad (conversion-focused, heavy CTA).
- Warming Up: For a person who’s brand new and cold, Meta recognizes they need warming up. It might show them a Top-of-Funnel ad first (problem awareness), followed by a Middle-of-Funnel ad, and later the conversion ad.
- The Hidden Top-of-Funnel Ad: You may notice one ad in your sales ad set getting a lot of spend but a relatively poor Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Do not turn it off! This is Meta using that ad as your Top-of-Funnel/Awareness ad. It’s spending money to warm people up, and then re-targeting those users with your other, high-performing ads later. Turning it off eliminates your pipeline.
Creative Diversity: The Engine of the New Funnel
This entire strategy hinges on a concept Meta is pushing heavily: Creative Diversity.
If you just have five variations of the same product ad, Meta can’t run a multi-step funnel. But if you give Meta different types of ads, it has the flexibility to build a personalized journey.
The Awareness Ladder: A Guide for Your Creatives
Think about your ads as addressing different stages of customer awareness:
| Awareness Stage | Goal | Ad Content Example | Funnel Position |
| Problem Aware | Tell people they have a problem. | “Are you constantly waking up with neck pain? You don’t have to!” | Top of Funnel (TOF) |
| Solution Aware | Tell them a solution exists. | “A simple memory foam pillow can completely eliminate morning neck pain.” | Middle of Funnel (MOF) |
| Product Aware | Tell them your product is the best solution. | “See why the DreamCloud Pillow is rated #1 for pain relief and try it risk-free.” | Bottom of Funnel (BOF) |
By creating ads that cover this spectrum, you give Meta the “building blocks” it needs to create a successful, personalized funnel for everyone.
Optimization: Stop Looking Only at ROAS
With this new dynamic structure, the old way of optimizing—turning off the ad with the lowest ROAS—is dangerous.
The New Optimization Strategy:
- Add Many Ads: Introduce a good number of diverse creatives (e.g., six) into your single ad set.
- Watch the Spend: Wait until the campaign has had time to learn (past the learning phase). Meta will typically settle on spending the majority of the budget on only 1-3 ads.
- Turn Off the Ignored Ads: Turn off the ads that Meta is simply not spending budget on. These are your new underperformers. Meta has decided they are not effective for any part of the sales journey.
- Introduce New Ads: Create new, diverse ads and introduce them to the ad set to run alongside the best performers.
Your guide for what’s working best is no longer just the ROAS number—it’s where Meta decides to spend its money.
The Cold vs. Warm Audience Myth
Another common pushback is: “Shouldn’t I still separate cold and warm audiences into different ad sets?”
The answer is a definitive “No.”
Meta’s targeting options—like Custom Audiences (website visitors, email lists) and Lookalike Audiences—are almost entirely treated as suggestions within an ad set. Meta will target whoever it believes is most likely to convert, regardless of the suggestions you add.
The Bottom Line: If you create two separate ad sets—one “warm” and one “cold”—Meta is still going to show your ads to a mixture of people in both, spending your budget on the same audiences across both ad sets.
Consolidating your budget into one ad set gives Meta maximum data and learning power, which leads to better optimization and the best possible return on your ad spend.
This one-campaign, one-ad-set, all-funnel approach is a massive development that leverages the power of Meta’s AI to its fullest potential. If you haven’t adopted this strategy, it’s time to test it and see your results soar.