The One Meta Ads Setting Shopee & Lazada Sellers Always Get Wrong
If you’re running Meta ads for a shop on Shopee, Lazada, or Tokopedia through CPAS (catalog ads synced from your marketplace shop), there’s one setting that quietly undermines conversions more than almost anything else in the campaign: choosing Website as the destination instead of App.
📺 This tip comes from a full training on setting up Meta ads for ecommerce and marketplace CPAS campaigns. Watch the full training here →
Why this setting matters so much
At any level of a CPAS campaign, campaign, ad set, or ad, the destination setting determines where someone lands after clicking your ad. For marketplace sellers specifically, the correct choice is App as the primary location, with the specific marketplace (Shopee or Lazada) selected as the destination.
The reason is simple: customers shopping on Shopee or Lazada overwhelmingly do so inside the app, not through a mobile browser. If your ad routes someone to the mobile web version of the marketplace instead of the app itself, you’re sending them into an experience they don’t normally use, slower, less familiar, and sometimes requiring them to log in again. That friction is exactly the kind of thing that quietly kills conversions between the click and the purchase.
The fix
When setting up a CPAS campaign for Shopee, Lazada, Tokopedia, or a similar marketplace, explicitly select App as the primary destination, then choose the correct marketplace app as the specific target. This tells Meta to route the click directly into the app experience rather than defaulting toward a website flow the customer isn’t used to.
This is different from a standard ecommerce campaign for your own website, where “Website” as the destination is exactly the right call, the marketplace context is what changes the correct setting here.
Why this is easy to miss
Because CPAS setup otherwise looks almost identical to a normal catalog campaign for your own website, it’s easy to leave the destination on a default that works fine for a website-based store but quietly sabotages a marketplace-based one. This single setting is worth double-checking on every CPAS campaign before assuming a conversion problem is about creative, audience, or budget.
Written by Jason Gan, a Meta ads strategist who has run Meta ads since 2010 and personally audited more than 1,000 ad accounts. Meta Certified Professional and Badged Meta Business Partner. Watch real account breakdowns on his YouTube channel.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CPAS on Meta ads? CPAS (Collaborative Ads / catalog ads for marketplace sellers) works by syncing your shop’s product catalog from a marketplace like Shopee, Lazada, or Tokopedia into Meta Ads Manager, so you can run catalog-based retargeting and prospecting ads for products listed on that marketplace, the same way you would for your own website.
Why should I choose App instead of Website for Shopee or Lazada Meta ads? Because customers on Shopee, Lazada, and similar marketplaces overwhelmingly complete purchases inside the app, not on the mobile web version of the site. Selecting App as the primary destination tells Meta to route people directly into the marketplace app, which significantly improves the odds of completing the purchase.
Does the destination setting really affect conversion rate that much for marketplace ads? Yes. Sending someone to a mobile web version of a marketplace they’d normally shop through an app adds friction, a slower, less familiar experience, sometimes requiring another login. Routing directly to the app removes that friction entirely.
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