What you're experiencing is a very common problem that can feel impossible to solve. The combination of a sudden performance drop, high costs, and a festive season points to a few specific issues that are likely all happening at once.
The Diagnosis: Why This Is Happening
There are three main culprits behind your high Cost Per Result (CPR):
The Festive Season Effect: During a festive season, every business is trying to get a slice of the same audience. This massive increase in competition drives up ad costs for everyone. Your Cost Per Result is high because the cost to enter the auction (CPM) is likely skyrocketing.
The Learning Phase Trap: You mentioned you've changed creatives and budgets. While this seems like the right thing to do, making frequent, significant changes can reset the campaign's learning phase. This confuses the algorithm, making it struggle to find the right people to show your ads to, which leads to poor results and high costs.
Campaign Rejection: Having one campaign rejected will not affect your entire ad account's performance. It's a very common occurrence. The only time a rejection would lead to a larger problem is if it's a severe policy violation (like promoting illegal or dangerous goods) that you repeat. A single minor violation is nothing to worry about.
How to Fix This
Phase 1: Diagnose & Stabilize
Stop Making Changes: For the next 3-5 days, stop touching your campaigns. Let them run with their current settings. The algorithm needs a chance to get out of its learning phase and gather some data.
Check Your Frequency: Look at the "Frequency" metric for your ad sets. If it's higher than 2, your audience is likely seeing the same ad too many times. This causes ad fatigue, lowers performance, and drives up costs.
Phase 2: Take Strategic Action
Rethink Your Creative: Instead of just changing your creatives, change your creative angle. Focus on a festive-themed offer or message that speaks directly to the season. For example, use ad copy that says, "Find the perfect festive gift," or show people celebrating with your product.
Change Your Bidding Strategy: The automatic "Lowest Cost" bidding strategy is struggling with the high competition. Consider setting a Cost Cap or Bid Cap to tell Meta exactly how much you're willing to pay per result. This will give you more control over your CPR.
Expand Your Audience: The audience you're currently targeting might be too saturated with competitors. Try using broader interests or Lookalike Audiences to find a new, less expensive segment of people to show your ads to.
The key to recovering from this situation is to give your campaigns time to stabilize and then make small, strategic changes rather than panicking and changing everything at once. This is a common hurdle during the festive season, and you can absolutely recover from it.