Is Facebook ads a waste of money in 2026? + Reviews included

Is Facebook ads a waste of money in 2026? The short answer is – most likely (just an opinion from someone who actually used the service) for most people and here’s why:

We’ve personally tested Facebook ads this year 2026 and in 2025 and the result was… well… a total waste of money! BUT, that doesn’t mean it’s a waste of money for everyone, it just was for us and it’s just our opinion here. It’s up to you to decide if it’s wort it or not. And below, we collected some negative reviews (we left all the positive ones because mostly written by fake internet gurus who sell courses and all that fake nonsense that is a waste of money and a scam most of the time, and yes, not every positive review is fake or bad, we just encountered a lot of such reviews).

All the reviews below written by people who actually used a lot of money on these ads so that you could decide further to use them or not + source links with more info.

First 2 reviews mentioning a serious issue that a lot of people seem to have.

⭐ Review written by a reddit user on November 28th 2025 – source link – reddit.com/r/FacebookAds/comments/1p8wf8a/meta_facebook_spent_90_of_my_budget_within_5/

“Meta (facebook) spent 90% of my budget within 5 minutes, $1.3K instantly GONE

Turned off my Facebook campaign for one week, i turned it back on today 28 November at a budget of $1.5K, Checked my Shopify store and saw 100+ visitors which never happens, I thought i had a winning ad creative, turns out Facebook was spending my ad budget LIKE CRAZY! $1.3K wiped out within FIVE MINUTES. 0.3 ROAS!!!! My usual ROAS is 2!

This is a scam, Facebook reps don’t admit. One of them is a little bit more transparent, they told me they know this issue, but they can’t really do anything about it, they have been instructed to tell you that it is ABSOLUTELY NORMAL. This is what they said:

“Thank you for patiently waiting. We recognize the campaign budget that was spent faster than anticipated. Upon checking with our dedicated team.

This accelerated spend is a standard, temporary behavior while our system optimizes delivery. The spend rate has since normalized, the budget limit was not exceeded, and the impressions delivered were appropriate for the amount spent. Moving forward, the campaign should maintain a steady spend rate. We apologize for any temporary fluctuation this caused.”

Can’t believe this is happening to me! Is this happening to anyone else?“

⭐ Here is another review written by a reddit user on November 9th 2025 – mentioning the same issue as the review above – source link – reddit.com/r/FacebookAds/comments/1oshibc/meta_ads_are_broken_spent_my_entire_daily_budget/

“Meta Ads are broken: Spent my entire daily budget in minutes with zero results — glitch or straight-up scam?

Apparently, Meta Ads has invented a new kind of “advertising” where the entire daily budget disappears in minutes and nothing useful happens afterwards.

I set a daily budget of ₹20,000 (about $240 USD). Instead of pacing throughout the day, optimising, entering the learning phase, or delivering any real results, Meta burned almost the full amount in roughly five minutes and then produced nothing meaningful.

I received zero sales, almost no clicks, and only 23 message conversations, which put my cost per conversation at ₹863 (about $10.40 USD) when my usual cost is ₹21 (about $0.25 USD). These are the results for India.

For comparison, on a normal day I spend ₹11,600 (about $140 USD) and receive more than 550 conversations. On this day, I spent ₹19,800 (about $238 USD) for only 23 conversations.

The targeting, placements, and creatives were identical to normal. The only thing that changed was Meta deciding to consume the budget instantly, without pacing or optimization, as if the platform was speed-running my wallet.

Support responded with a generic “we understand your concern” message and then disappeared. Many other advertisers are reporting the exact same issue: budgets vanishing instantly, no learning, no pacing, no conversions, and no explanation.

At this point, it is reasonable to ask whether this is a pacing bug, a delivery glitch, or a silent cash-grab that Meta will pretend is normal.

If an ad platform can consume a full day’s budget in minutes, provide no results, and then ignore support requests, is it really advertising, or are we all just donating money to Meta for nothing?

UPDATE: I ended up disputing the charges with my bank, and I’m happy to say the entire amount was reversed. Meta provided no refund or credit whatsoever and treated the situation like it was standard practice, so going through the bank was the only thing that worked.“

⭐ Here’s another review also written by a reddit user on August 6th 2025 that mentions the same issue we had recently when testing Facebook ads and probably applies to most of the people who use them – source link – reddit.com/r/FacebookAds/comments/1mj0eh2/anyone_else_feeling_like_bots_are_eating_up_your/

“Anyone else feeling like bots are eating up your FB ad budget?

Lately I’ve noticed a weird drop in ad performance that doesn’t quite match the changes in my creatives or targeting. CTR looks fine, but conversions are way off and when I check the click data, some of it just feels… off. No scroll depth, no behavior, just clicks and vanish.

I’ve seen more people complaining about bots, but I used to think that was mostly noise. Now I’m not so sure.

Is bot traffic actually getting worse? Or is this just what bad traffic looks like these days“

❗ Top responses to the review above:

“Yep! You’re not imagining it! And Meta loves running up our ad spend and gives zero f**** because it’s making them money.

I’ve never seen a company display such blatant disregard for their customers.“

❗ And another one:

“Yes lots of bots last few days. My landing page has had a 6-8% conversion rate for 2 years. Last few days has been 1%.“

✅ Bottom line:

There are a lot of other reviews on reddit and on many other websites that we are not going to include in this article, because you can find them easily just by typing in google “facebook ads review” or similar. Just make sure that the reviews are recent, because things change all the time. Maybe Facebook ads is a waste of money at the moment, but it doesn’t mean that in the future they will also be the same.