The Biggest Lie Meta Marketers Believe

Helloooo

So I was speaking to this marketer and he did believe the same thing… Our conversation was something like this.

Why did I say that, I thought of it clearly for once and for all.

CAPI is Something, But CAPI is Not Everything

Yes, majorly for three reasons:

First, businesses don’t have the same goals. Some want higher AOV. Some want repeat buyers. Some want non-discount purchasers.

But standard CAPI treats everyone the same.

Second, Meta’s algorithm doesn’t optimize just because events are firing.
Meta learns from the sequential patterns; who converts, how often, how valuable they are, and what kind of users keep repeating.

Standard server-side events don’t give Meta that depth.

And third, this is the most overlooked part, Meta needs precise, real-time, meaningful data to learn properly.

Basically the intent.

If time permits, check this blog that I wrote on the default Shopify capi limitations

So yes, your campaigns are “optimized”…but optimized for average, low-quality signals.

So How to Truly Optimize Your Campaigns?

Real optimization occurs when Meta is trained on quality, first-party signals.

Meaning, let’s say, you want to optimize your campaigns for new customers, with capi you will send all the purchase events to Meta and pray for better conversions.

But what you should really do instead is that, you should segment your new customer purchase events and send it to Meta for optimization

This way, you clearly tell Meta what is the expected outcome of the campaigns.

Now that’s what we did with this jewelry brand.

How Smars Moved Away from CAPI and Redefined Optimization

Smars, a leading D2C jewelry brand that wanted more new customer purchases, not just more total conversions.

Instead of relying on the default Shopify CAPI setup, Smars switched to first-party signal engineering with CustomerLabs and:

• Optimized campaigns specifically for new customer purchase (nCAC) goals

• Reduced cost per purchase (CPP) by 14%

• Achieved ≈86% of total conversions as new customers in just 7–14 days

This is exactly what happens when you start sending quality, intent-driven signals rather than generic standard events.

Smars didn’t just scale, they redefined what “optimization” means for their growth.

Read the entire story about Smars

But if you want to refine optimization and want to become the next story, reply “Redefine Optimization” and I will share with you the exact steps to implement to acquire new customers for your brand.