I’m paying for GrabFood ads but orders are not increasing. Why?
The diagnostic order
The most common and most expensive cause. While the restaurant is offline, ads either do not run or lead to a closed listing — and the algorithm remembers the unreliability and cuts organic impressions. USSR Phuket had 3,977 offline minutes a month; once removed, search impressions went from zero to 7,481 a month. Enjoy Healthy Food had a 73% offline rate — brought to 0%, impressions grew from 7,038 to 25,543 a month.
If impressions are there and orders are not, ads are not the problem — the listing is. At Etna Phuket, 39,211 people saw the listing monthly and 182 ordered: 0.5% through-conversion against our 0.9% fleet average. Only 5.2% of viewers even opened the menu. Until that is fixed, every ad dollar buys one more look without an order.
A promo lifts your position and cuts your margin at the same time. What matters is not "how many orders the promo brought" but what is left after the discount, the platform commission and the ad spend. A promo that does not pay back looks like order growth and behaves like a loss.
From 4.8 the algorithm serves impressions more generously, and a customer choosing between two listings looks at the number next to the name. Ads bring them to the listing; the rating decides whether they order. USSR Phuket went from 4.5 to 4.8, Zaytun Ubud from 4.67 to 4.8.
Auto-bidding buys cheap, irrelevant impressions: you pay for people who do not click. At Etna we switched to manual CPO with daily management — CTR went from 2.8% to 5.59%, cost per order from 42 to 29 THB, ROAS from 14.75x to 34.57x. The budget rose only 50% while ads revenue grew 3.4x. At Zaytun Ubud, GoFood campaigns were losing money at 0.25x ROAS — Rp 3.1M spent, Rp 763K returned; after the rebuild, 15.52x on nearly the same budget.
The one mistake
Ads are the only lever that works instantly and shows up in a report, so they get pulled first. The other four steps require daily work and produce no pretty chart by day two. Yet they decide what a purchased impression turns into. Ads on an unprepared listing are payment for the speed at which you lose the customer.
Case studies with the full numbers
Etna Phuket — orders x2.2 on falling traffic, ROAS 14.75x → 34.57x. Zaytun Ubud — GoFood ads from a loss-making 0.25x ROAS to 15.52x. Enjoy Healthy Food — revenue x9.4 in 14 months, offline rate 73% → 0%.
Frequently asked
What ROAS should I expect from GrabAds?
Our clients hold 20–27x, higher in individual campaigns. But ROAS in isolation is misleading: it counts ads revenue and ignores your discount, the platform commission, and the share of those orders you would have received anyway. Read ROAS together with through-conversion and post-promo margin.
Should I just raise the budget?
If the listing does not convert, a bigger budget buys more views without orders — the fastest way to waste money. At Etna we raised the budget 50% only AFTER fixing the listing and the bidding, and got 3.4x the ads revenue.
How long until results?
First movement in 2–4 weeks, full ramp-up in 3–6 months. Availability and bidding respond fastest; listing conversion and rating take longer because the algorithm needs history.
Do I need ads at all if my listing is good?
Yes — but as an amplifier, not a substitute. Ads buy impressions; the listing earns the order. In the right order, ads multiply what already works; in the wrong one, they pay for what does not.
Related answers: can I hand the account over · the full Delivery Booster Method
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