Why are creatives missing or showing no TrueROAS sales in Creative Lab?

Creative Lab only loads Meta ads with impressions in your dates, and shows TrueROAS sales only for orders it could tie to the ad.

Work through the list

Start at the top. The first causes are the most common.

1. Meta is not connected or no ad account is picked

Until Meta is connected, the Ad Performance and Creative Breakdown tabs show Connect Meta to Unlock Creative Analysis instead of your ads. When Meta is connected but no Meta ad account is picked for the store, they show Select a Meta Ad Account. The steps are in What is Creative Lab and what can I do there?.

If your Meta connection stopped working, see What do I do when my Meta or Google Ads connection stops working?.

2. The ad did not run in your dates

Creative Lab only loads ads that Meta showed at least twice in your dates. An ad that was off for the whole period does not show, even when it brought in orders in those days.

When Meta sends no ads at all, the table reads No ad data available for this time period. and the chart reads No creative performance data available.

Pick a longer period. See How do I change the dates in Creative Lab?.

3. The ad runs in another Meta ad account

Creative Lab loads the ads of the Meta ad account picked for the store. Ads in another ad account do not show until that account is picked. See How do I connect or change the ad account behind the Meta, Google and Tiktok tabs?.

If you ticked several Meta ad accounts in Choose Meta ad accounts, Creative Lab does not combine them. It shows the ads of your main ad account, so the ads of the other ticked accounts usually do not show here, even though the Ads Manager lists their campaigns. Which account is your main one is explained in Can I combine several Meta ad accounts in one store?.

4. Your ad account has many ads

Meta sends ads to Creative Lab in batches of up to 100. Creative Lab stops asking for more once it has 250 ads or more, or after 10 batches, so in a large ad account the rest do not show. A shorter period has fewer ads that ran, so the ones you want are more likely to fit.

The line above the table shows how many creatives and ads were loaded. See What do the numbers on the Ad Performance tab mean?.

5. The ad runs on another ad platform

Creative Lab only shows Meta ads, as explained in What is Creative Lab and what can I do there?.

6. It is in the table but not in the chart

Top Performing Creatives lists at most 6 creatives, and only creatives with sales and a picture. See What do the numbers on the Ad Performance tab mean?.

7. A list is missing on Creative Breakdown

A list on Creative Breakdown only shows when it has something in your dates, and the tab opens on Images, even when that list is empty. See How do I see which images, videos, headlines and ad copies work best?.

Why a creative shows only Meta's figures

Attribution is how TrueROAS decides which ad gets the credit for a sale. When TrueROAS has no sales for a creative, its ROAS, Sales and Orders only show the figure Meta reports, with the Meta icon. The usual reasons:

• The ad's link is missing its tracking. TrueROAS gives an order to an ad only when it can tell which ad the customer clicked. When an ad's link is missing its tracking parameters, TrueROAS sees that the click came from Meta but not from which ad, and the order shows in the Ads Manager under Meta ads (untracked). See What is Organic & Unassigned and what do its rows mean?. To add the tracking, see How do I add the TrueROAS tracking code to my Meta ads?.
• Another ad or channel got the credit. The customer also came through another ad, an email or a search, and your attribution model and window gave the sale to that one. See How do I change the attribution model and attribution window?.
• Nobody who clicked the ad bought in your dates. Meta can still report purchases for the ad, for example from people who only saw it. See Why don't my TrueROAS numbers match Meta or Shopify?.

Good to know

• These causes are the same for everyone on the store who uses the same dates and the same Meta ad account.
• Creative Lab has no search box or filter that hides creatives. What it shows depends on your Meta connection, the store's Meta ad account, your dates and the store's attribution settings.
• If a creative shows but its numbers do not match the Ads Manager, see Why do Creative Lab numbers differ from the Ads Manager?.
• You cannot add ads from other ad platforms, raise the limit on how many ads are loaded, or show the ads of several Meta ad accounts together here.