Meta Ads
Ranked 2 of 7 advertising platforms by recommenders
Advertisers report strong sales and beat alternatives for mass-market buyers. Common caveat: buggy ad manager, misleading AI-written copy, and hard-to-appeal account bans.
Advertisers report strong sales and beat alternatives for mass-market buyers. Common caveat: buggy ad manager, misleading AI-written copy, and hard-to-appeal account bans.
42 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 28
- approval share
- 33%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Outperforms alternatives for purchase conversions
“atrociously buggy, AI shoved everywhere, money draining with questionable results. And yet it still outperforms the alternatives”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Making physical Japanese cards: The full walkthrough from zero to launch” “Meta is the best (and fastest-learning) platform for mass-market purchase conversions.”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Meta's ads tools started switching out top-performing ads with AI-generated ones” “Meta is just way, way better than any alternative right now.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Meta's ads tools started switching out top-performing ads with AI-generated ones” - Comment from 18 Jan 2026 in “The A in AGI Stands for Ads”
Strong revenue results for advertisers
“it was so successful she was at 3x revenue over the previous client base in 2 years”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots” “We have a customer who's seeing ~30k in monthly revenue driven by their meta ads.”
Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots” “I spent $16 doing that this month and got $940 in revenue from those customers.”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min” - Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “Does Internet Advertising Work?”
Effective for certain audiences and businesses
“The surprising effectiveness of Meta Ads for certain audiences as counter-intuitive as it seems is one example.”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Facebook is absolutely cooked” “pretty good specifically if you're a business owner who wants to advertise his product”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Meta to cut 10% of jobs, or 8k employees” Steady results over time
“I'm running Meta ads... That's worked well”
Comment from 28 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: If you only needed 200 customers at$49, how would you approach it?” “it worked well for a long time”
Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Buggy, confusing ad manager
“atrociously buggy, AI shoved everywhere, money draining with questionable results. And yet it still outperforms the alternatives”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Making physical Japanese cards: The full walkthrough from zero to launch” “their ads dashboard is so totally broken that these mystical ads that ran are nowhere to be found”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Meta's ads tools started switching out top-performing ads with AI-generated ones” “many aspects of the ad manager UI will activate settings that had previously been disabled”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Meta's ads tools started switching out top-performing ads with AI-generated ones” - Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “Why is Meta destroying its engineering organization?”
AI-generated copy can mislead
“some of the AI-generated creatives and copy that Meta has suggested to me actually misleads or flat-out lies about what is being advertised”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Meta's ads tools started switching out top-performing ads with AI-generated ones” “just think of how much money Meta could make by slopping fetish-bait over your brand and charging you for every click”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Meta's ads tools started switching out top-performing ads with AI-generated ones” “Meta's generated text can in some cases mislead or flat-out lie about what is actually being sold.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Meta's ads tools started switching out top-performing ads with AI-generated ones” Account bans with hard appeals
“even getting a legitimate ad that doesn’t break any rules through review can be an exercise in frustration”
Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “Meta made scam ads harder to find instead of removing them” “I've seen businesses lose their ad account and have their fb page banned with no recovery options.”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Meta poised to surpass Google in digital ad revenue for first time” “Ran meta ads for about a week, account shutdown. asked to verify ID. Jumped through the hoops.”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “Veracrypt Project Update” Privacy and settings changed without consent
“As far as I'm concerned they had no business telling a creepy company like Meta who I bank with.”
Comment from 18 Oct 2026 in “Legal experts warn Meta's new terms still grant broad scraping permissions” “Meta automatically switched those toggles to "on," even when they'd explicitly turned them off”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “Meta's ads tools started switching out top-performing ads with AI-generated ones” “Despite this being an obvious antipattern to security it is very much by design for meta.”
Comment from 21 Feb 2026 in “Meta Deployed AI and It Is Killing Our Agency”
Other advertising platforms people recommend
The four most recommended other advertising platforms, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 25 | 144 | 15% | 11 | 16 yrs10 owners | — |
| Meta AdsThis page | 14 | 28 | 33% | 6 | — | — |
| Instagram ads | 12 | 4 | 75% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Google AdSense | 11 | 47 | 19% | 6 | 20 yrs6 owners | — |
| Facebook Ads | 7 | 23 | 23% | 5 | 10 yrs3 owners | — |
What people said
40 of the 51 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“As far as I'm concerned they had no business telling a creepy company like Meta who I bank with.”
“it was so successful she was at 3x revenue over the previous client base in 2 years”
“on Meta, google and X the sub 1 second bounce rate was around 0.7%”
“Your 'competitors' are actually 'value chain competitors' - Google and Meta”
“it worked well for a long time”
“We have a customer who's seeing ~30k in monthly revenue driven by their meta ads.”
“gotten tons of real users for my app”
“yes, they are wasting money, they know it”
“more than half of it is just Meta ads spending cause its just addictive”
“virtually all the ad management platforms for social and search are total dogshit”
“their core products (Ad Manager) has a very poor image, even with non-technical users”
“ad network companies (Google, Meta) don't really care about scam ads”
“I feel like I'm in a perpetual state of fighting their software.”
“Meta's ad manager breaks maybe once a year on Safari”
“I spent $16 doing that this month and got $940 in revenue from those customers.”
“it's notorious for ddosing your website with bots”
“I've seen businesses lose their ad account and have their fb page banned with no recovery options.”
“We make a nice daily profit using Meta ads.”
“pretty good specifically if you're a business owner who wants to advertise his product”
“The ban, and support by AI is a terrible way to treat people.”
“Ran meta ads for about a week, account shutdown. asked to verify ID. Jumped through the hoops.”
“Despite this being an obvious antipattern to security it is very much by design for meta.”
“The surprising effectiveness of Meta Ads for certain audiences as counter-intuitive as it seems is one example.”
“they basically stream all kinds of scams without checking”
“I'm not a fan of pouring money into Meta's or Google's black-box algorithms”
“atrociously buggy, AI shoved everywhere, money draining with questionable results. And yet it still outperforms the alternatives”
“The best ROI is generally google/meta”
“even getting a legitimate ad that doesn’t break any rules through review can be an exercise in frustration”
“I find their algo really expensive, maybe I'm just shitty at targeting or don't use the platform well”
“Meta is just way, way better than any alternative right now.”
“Meta's generated text can in some cases mislead or flat-out lie about what is actually being sold.”
“some of the AI-generated creatives and copy that Meta has suggested to me actually misleads or flat-out lies about what is being advertised”
“Meta is the best (and fastest-learning) platform for mass-market purchase conversions.”
“Meta is the single most malicious tech company I can think of”
“their ads dashboard is so totally broken that these mystical ads that ran are nowhere to be found”
“many aspects of the ad manager UI will activate settings that had previously been disabled”
“just think of how much money Meta could make by slopping fetish-bait over your brand and charging you for every click”
“Meta automatically switched those toggles to "on," even when they'd explicitly turned them off”
“I'm running Meta ads... That's worked well”
“the incoherent and buggy garbage that is ads manager”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.