Audience Network
Meta’s network of third-party apps and websites where your ads can appear outside its own platforms.
Games, utility apps, small publishers. Not Facebook, not Instagram, and often not anywhere the viewer expected to see an advertisement.
Why it matters for HVAC
It reliably produces the lowest cost per lead and the lowest booking rate in a contractor account. Accidental taps inside a game are indistinguishable from intent in Ads Manager, and they are cheap, so automatic placements route budget toward them.
This is the single most common reason a campaign looks acceptable on the report and produces nothing the office can use.
How it is measured
Break down by publisher platform and read its share of spend, its cost per lead and its booking rate together. A placement taking meaningful spend at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the booking rate is the pattern.
A worked example
A contractor finds 22% of last month’s spend went to Audience Network, producing 38% of the leads at $17 each, of which one booked. Excluding it raises blended cost per lead from $44 to $61 and raises booked jobs, because the budget moved to surfaces where people meant it.
These figures are invented to show the arithmetic. They describe no real business.
What to ask
Ask what share of spend went to Audience Network last month. It is a two-minute check and it frequently pays for itself.
Where this is demonstrated
The Creative production pillar scores every listed agency on what they document here, and gives you the questions that tell you which one you are being sold.