Why Is My ROAS Tanking at 8pm?

You've got your morning coffee, check your Google Ads dashboard, and everything looks peachy. ROAS is humming along nicely at 4.2x, CTR is solid, and you're feeling rather pleased with yourself. Then 8pm rolls around, and suddenly your ROAS nosedives faster than a lead balloon. What gives?

If this scenario sounds familiar, you're not alone. The dreaded 8pm ROAS crash is more common than you'd think, and it's not just your imagination playing tricks on you. There are real, measurable reasons why your return on ad spend might be taking a beating during those evening hours.

The Prime Time Problem

Here's the thing about 8pm – it's when everyone and their dog decides to get online. Your target audience is there, scrolling through their phones after dinner, which sounds brilliant in theory. More eyeballs on your ads should mean more conversions, right? Wrong.

The issue isn't that people aren't online. The problem is that every other advertiser in your niche has cottoned on to this fact as well. The result? A bidding war that would make an auction house blush.

When competition heats up during these peak hours, your cost-per-click skyrockets whilst your conversion rates often stay flat or even drop. It's simple maths – if your costs go up but your revenue doesn't increase proportionally, your ROAS takes a hammering.

The Evening Browser Mindset

Let's talk psychology for a moment. The person clicking your ads at 9am on a Tuesday is vastly different from the person clicking at 8pm on the same day. Morning clickers are often in work mode, making quick decisions, ready to purchase. Evening browsers? They're in research mode, casually browsing, adding items to wishlists, and generally window shopping.

This shift in user intent means your conversion rates naturally dip during evening hours, even if your traffic volume increases. You're paying premium prices to reach people who aren't ready to buy yet. It's like paying West End prices for a dress rehearsal.

Smart Bidding Gets Not-So-Smart

If you're running automated bidding strategies (and let's face it, most of us are), Google's algorithms might be working against you during these peak hours. Smart Bidding relies on historical data and machine learning to optimise your bids, but it can struggle when competition patterns shift dramatically within short time windows.

The algorithm sees increased competition at 8pm and starts bidding more aggressively to maintain your target metrics. Problem is, it might be overbidding for conversions that simply aren't going to happen at the rates it expects, based on your morning and afternoon performance data.

Attribution Windows and Timing Mysteries

Here's where things get properly technical. Your ROAS calculation depends heavily on when conversions are attributed to your ads. If you're using last-click attribution with a seven-day window, conversions happening late in the evening might be attributed to ads that ran during expensive peak hours, even if the initial touchpoint happened during cheaper off-peak times.

This attribution timing can create artificial ROAS dips that don't reflect the true performance of your evening campaigns. You might be blaming 8pm for poor performance when the real culprit is how you're measuring success.

Device and Location Factors

Evening traffic patterns also shift dramatically in terms of device usage and geographic location. Mobile usage typically spikes after work hours, and if your landing pages aren't properly optimised for mobile conversions, you'll see your ROAS suffer accordingly.

Additionally, if you're running campaigns across multiple time zones, your 8pm might coincide with peak hours in other regions, creating unexpected competition spikes that throw off your performance metrics.

The Shopping Cart Abandonment Evening Effect

E-commerce businesses often see higher cart abandonment rates during evening hours. Shoppers browse, add items to their basket, then get distracted by dinner, the kids, or the latest Netflix series. They've clicked your expensive 8pm ads, driven up your costs, but haven't completed the purchase that would justify your spend.

This behaviour pattern is particularly pronounced for higher-value items where customers want to "sleep on it" before making a purchase decision.

Solutions That Actually Work

Right, enough doom and gloom. Here's how to fix your 8pm ROAS problem:

Time-Based Bid Adjustments: Reduce your bids by 20-30% during peak competition hours. You'll maintain visibility whilst avoiding the worst of the bidding wars.

Audience Segmentation: Create separate campaigns for evening traffic using tighter audience targeting. Focus on users who have previously converted during evening hours or those showing high purchase intent signals.

Smart Scheduling: Consider pausing your highest-cost campaigns during 8-10pm and redirecting that budget to off-peak hours when your audience is more likely to convert.

Attribution Model Testing: Experiment with data-driven attribution or first-click attribution to get a clearer picture of which touchpoints are actually driving conversions.

The Day-Parting Strategy

Day-parting isn't just about avoiding expensive hours – it's about understanding when your specific audience converts best. Run a detailed analysis of your conversion data by hour of day for the past 90 days. You might discover that whilst 8pm is expensive, 10pm offers better value with similar audience quality.

Many successful e-commerce businesses shift their evening budget towards late-night hours (11pm-1am) when competition drops but purchase intent remains relatively high, particularly for impulse purchases.

Budget Reallocation Tactics

Instead of fighting the 8pm battle, consider reallocating that budget to underutilised time slots. Early morning (6-8am) and late evening (10pm-midnight) often provide better value whilst still reaching your target audience.

You can also increase your weekend budgets when competition is typically lower but consumer spending intent remains high, particularly for retail and lifestyle brands.

Measuring True Performance

Your platform-reported ROAS might be lying to you, particularly during high-competition periods when attribution becomes messy. Set up proper conversion tracking that accounts for view-through conversions and assists, not just last-click attribution.

Consider implementing customer lifetime value (CLV) tracking to understand the true value of evening traffic. Those 8pm browsers who don't convert immediately might become your highest-value customers over time.

The 8pm ROAS crash isn't inevitable – it's just a sign that you need to adapt your strategy to match how your audience actually behaves during different parts of the day. Stop fighting the algorithm and start working with the natural flow of online shopping patterns.

Remember, the goal isn't to win every auction – it's to win the profitable ones. Sometimes that means stepping back from the 8pm feeding frenzy and finding smarter ways to reach your audience when they're actually ready to buy.

If you're still struggling to make sense of your time-based performance patterns, it might be worth getting a professional eye on your account structure and attribution setup.