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The FIFA World Cup kicks off in two days. England's first game is Wednesday 17th June against Croatia - 9pm UK time, a warm summer evening, revenge narrative built in. If you work in drinks marketing and you're not thinking about this right now, you should be.

But before you dust off the 2018 playbook and call it a strategy, it's worth understanding what the data actually says about World Cup uplifts, which categories win, and what's genuinely different about this tournament.

📅 England's Schedule Is Better Than You'd Think

The fear with a US-hosted tournament was brutal West Coast kick-offs landing at 2am UK time. The reality is more manageable.

England's group stage looks like this:

• Wednesday 17 June - England vs Croatia, 9pm UK
• Tuesday 23 June - England vs Ghana, 9pm UK
• Friday 27 June - Panama vs England, 10pm UK

All three are evening kick-offs. All three are viable pub occasions. All three fall in the height of British summer. On paper, the conditions for a commercial uplift are genuinely good - not quite 2018, but closer to it than anyone was expecting when the tournament draw came out.

The caveat: if England progress deep into the knockout rounds and games shift to West Coast venues, later kick-offs become more likely. But for now, the group stage is workable.

🏆 What 2018 Actually Looked Like in the Data

Russia 2018 is the benchmark everyone in drinks references, and rightly so. England reached the semi-finals, most games kicked off between 3pm and 7pm UK time, and the summer was one of the hottest on record. Everything aligned.

The BBPA reported pub beer sales during England's run to the semi-finals were up 25-30% versus equivalent weeks. The England v Sweden quarter-final alone generated an estimated additional £30m in on-trade beer sales. The Croatia semi-final - a 7pm Wednesday kick-off on a warm evening - reportedly drove the highest single-night pub sales many venues had seen outside New Year's Eve.

Off-trade figures were equally strong. Nielsen data reported by the WSTA showed beer and cider volume running 20-25% above baseline during the tournament, concentrated in the weeks England were still competing. When England went out on 11th July, the uplift dropped almost immediately.

The key thing about 2018: the time zones were helpful, the weather was exceptional, and England went all the way to the semi-finals. You're not going to get all three of those again. But 2026 has a decent shot at two of them.

❄️ What 2022 Taught Us About Unusual Conditions

Qatar 2022 was a genuinely useful data point because it removed variables that are normally bundled together.

The winter tournament (November-December) killed the weather-driven occasion entirely. No garden viewing parties, no warm evenings, no impulse purchases on the way home from work in the sunshine. The on-trade saw lower footfall than a summer equivalent. Off-trade uplift was more modest.

But kick-off times were actually fine - 1pm, 4pm, 7pm and 10pm UK slots. What suppressed sales wasn't the viewing time. It was the cold weather stripping out the outdoor occasion that makes summer football so commercially powerful for drinks brands.

The WSTA reported overall alcohol sales up approximately 10-12% during the 2022 tournament - real uplift, but well below 2018, and driven by a different product mix. Wine and spirits held up because the occasion shifted to sofa-and-screen. Beer and cider underperformed because their occasion - outdoors, warm, social - simply wasn't there.

The takeaway: weather and football are two separate multipliers. When they stack, as they did in 2018, the commercial effect is extraordinary. When you get one without the other, the uplift is real but more modest.

☀️ 2026: Summer Football Is Back. Use It.

This tournament has what 2022 didn't - a summer backdrop. June and July in the UK, England playing evening games, outdoor occasions back on the table. For beer, cider, rosé, gin and premium soft drinks, the seasonal conditions alone are worth planning around, regardless of England's results.

The most commercially significant variable is still England's run. The 2018 data makes clear that the multiplier effect kicks in properly once England are in the knockout rounds and the nation is genuinely invested. A group stage exit changes the picture significantly - you'd be left with a decent summer and not much else.

The realistic uplift scenarios:

If England exit at the group stage: expect a modest 5-8% uplift across the tournament period, driven primarily by summer weather rather than football occasions. Category winners are rosé, white wine and gin - summer staples that don't need a sporting event.

If England reach the last 16 or quarters: 12-18% uplift on beer and cider, stronger cross-category performance, meaningful on-trade lift on match nights. This is the most likely outcome and the scenario worth planning your media around.

If England go deep - semis or final: the 2018 dynamic reasserts itself. You're looking at 20%+ uplift on beer and cider, a national conversation that touches every category, and the kind of demand surge that catches unprepared brands short on stock.

🍺 Category by Category

Beer and cider are the most directly World Cup-sensitive categories. The 9pm kick-offs are pub-viable and the summer conditions restore the outdoor occasion. If England progress, expect the strongest uplift of any category. If they don't, beer still benefits from the summer backdrop - just not the football premium on top.

Rosé and white wine will perform well regardless of England's results. These are summer categories driven more by warm evenings than sporting occasions. A 9pm kick-off that sends people to the pub garden is just as good a rosé moment as any other summer evening.

Gin follows a similar pattern - sunshine hours matter more than the scoreline. The premium long-serve occasion is alive in June and July whether England win or lose.

Spirits (darker) - whisky, rum, bourbon - show minimal World Cup correlation. They're not occasion-sensitive in the same way. Don't expect meaningful uplift and don't blow your budget trying to engineer it.

Non-alcoholic drinks are the interesting story this tournament. The category has grown substantially since 2018 and the consumer base is now large enough to generate real volume data. Non-alcoholic beer in particular tracks summer occasions almost as closely as its alcoholic equivalent. Someone watching England at the pub who isn't drinking alcohol is now almost certainly reaching for a Guinness 0.0 or a Peroni 0.0 rather than a soft drink - and that's a meaningful commercial shift from even four years ago. Non-alcoholic brands should be treating this tournament as a proper planning occasion, not an afterthought.

Soft drinks and energy drinks benefit from both the summer conditions and the viewing occasions. Consistent uplift expected across the tournament, accelerating if England progress and the national mood picks up.

📱 What DTC Brands Should Actually Do

The temptation is to build a big World Cup campaign and let it run. That's the wrong approach. The commercial opportunity is concentrated and predictable - match nights, warm weekends, England's knockout games if they get there - and the media strategy should match that concentration.

Match day is the buying window, not kick-off time. Someone who's watching a 9pm game has already bought their drinks by 6pm. The decision happens in the supermarket or online in the afternoon. Off-trade and DTC purchase activity spikes mid-afternoon on match days, not at 8:45pm. Time your media to the purchase moment, not the broadcast.

React to England's results in real time. Winning breeds buying. The morning after an England win, search intent and social engagement spike. Having reactive creative ready and budget available to deploy is worth more than any pre-planned campaign. Set up the trigger now so you can move fast when it matters.

Weight your spend to the games that matter. The Croatia opener on 17th June is the highest-value game of the group stage commercially - it's the one that sets the mood for the tournament, the one with the strongest media coverage, and the one where consumer intent to make it an occasion is highest. Back it accordingly.

Don't wait for knockout rounds to start planning. The brands that win commercially in tournaments are the ones who are already in consumers' consideration before the first ball is kicked. Get your creative live now.

🎯 The Honest Forecast

2026 isn't 2018. Don't plan as if it is. But it's a summer tournament with viable UK kick-off times and England in reasonable shape. The baseline conditions are genuinely positive.

The weather and the football are your two variables. You can't control either of them, but you can plan around both - and that planning is exactly what separates brands that capitalise on the next six weeks from the ones who look at their July numbers and wonder what happened.

For anyone marketing a drinks brand—whether that’s wine, spirits, mixers, or kombucha—there’s one uncomfortable truth you can’t afford to ignore...

Facebook and Instagram ads will never be cheaper than they are today.

Over the past few years, the cost of reaching your ideal customer has risen steadily. And for the drinks industry, where competition is fierce and margins are tight, every penny counts.

Let’s break down why Meta advertising costs are climbing, how it affects drinks brands specifically, and why now is the time to double down on your strategy before it becomes even more expensive.

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🎯 1. Interest Targeting is Being Removed—Hurting Niche Drinks Brands the Most

One of the big appeals of Meta advertising used to be precise interest targeting. You could reach gin lovers, wine subscribers, cocktail connoisseurs, or people interested in zero-alcohol alternatives with incredible accuracy.

But Meta has gradually removed hundreds of interest categories, especially those around alcohol, health, and lifestyle. If you're marketing something like:

• A natural wine subscription
• A low-calorie RTD cocktail
• A functional sparkling tea

…you’ve probably noticed that your audience options have shrunk. Without granular targeting, it’s harder to reach cold audiences that actually care about your category.

This shift especially hurts early-stage brands who rely on interest targeting to build awareness. Instead, Meta is pushing everyone toward broader targeting, which often leads to higher CPAs and more wasted spend—unless you’ve got the budget to let the algorithm learn over time.

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🍷 2. The Drinks Space is Getting Crowded on Meta

We’re seeing more and more drinks brands entering the paid social space, from craft spirits to challenger soft drinks. And they’re not just competing against each other—they’re up against food brands, fashion, tech, and beyond.

Because Meta operates on an auction-based system, this growing competition means:

• CPMs (cost per 1,000 impressions) continue to rise.
• You’re paying more just to get seen in-feed.
• Smaller brands are being priced out of top-performing placements.

We’ve seen CPMs for drinks campaigns rise from £6–£8 in 2022 to £12–£16 in 2025, depending on the segment and creative format. That’s a 100%+ increase in just a few years.

If you're running an awareness campaign for a new flavoured gin or launching your canned spritz range for summer, you're likely paying significantly more to generate the same number of impressions than you would have 18 months ago.

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📈 3. Year-on-Year Increases in CPMs Are the New Normal

For drinks brands, the average CPM is rising fast. Here’s what we’ve seen across our client base:

• 2022: £6–£8 CPM for most alcohol and premium soft drink ads
• 2023: £9–£12 CPM range became common
• 2024–25: £12–£16 CPM, even higher in Q4

And that’s before you even get to key trading periods like Christmas or Dry January, when demand for ad space spikes.

Brands who wait until peak times to run ads—without already having tested creative and audiences—often find themselves paying 30–50% more per impression than competitors who planned earlier and locked in learnings.

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🔐 4. Privacy Changes Make Attribution Harder (and More Expensive)

With iOS14+ and GDPR in full swing, drinks brands are now flying partially blind. Whether you're promoting a direct-to-consumer discovery box or a zero-sugar energy drink, it's harder to tell which ads are actually converting.

This means:

• ROAS appears lower, making it harder to optimise
• CPAs rise, as spend is spread more thinly across testing
• Brands must invest in things like server-side tracking and Conversion APIs to get visibility back

In a high-volume, low-margin category like drinks, that’s a tough pill to swallow. Without accurate attribution, it’s easy to underinvest in ads that are actually working, or worse, over-invest in poor performers.

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🚨 Why Drinks Brands Should Act Now

Here’s the thing—paid social still works for drinks. When done well, Facebook and Instagram ads can:

• Grow your subscriber base
• Drive DTC sales at scale
• Launch new SKUs with speed and impact

But the window for low-cost testing is closing.

If you’re sitting on a product launch, planning to grow your DTC arm, or trying to hit subscription targets before your next funding round—now is the lowest cost it’s going to be.

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🥡 Key Takeaways for Drinks Marketers

• Don’t wait for CPMs to go back down—they won’t.
• Start testing broad audiences and creative formats now while costs are still manageable.
• Focus on building first-party data (email, SMS, pixel audiences) to protect future reach.
• If you haven’t already, invest in conversion tracking upgrades (e.g., Meta's CAPI) to keep attribution strong.

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Final Thought

As a drinks brand in the  digital world, you’re not just marketing a product—you’re battling against rising costs, limited targeting, and a crowded marketplace. But those who act now—who test, learn, and build an ad infrastructure while CPMs are still (relatively) low—will be the ones with the edge this time next year.

Because whether you’re pushing premium rum or functional soda, one thing’s for sure:

Facebook and Instagram ads will never be this low cost again.

If your Meta Ads performance has felt unpredictable lately, you're not imagining it. Meta quietly rolled out its biggest advertising system change in years, a new AI-powered engine called Andromeda, and it fundamentally changes how your ads reach people.

This guide breaks it down in plain English, with practical advice specifically for drinks and spirits brands.

What Actually Changed?

Previously, you (the advertiser) told Meta who should see your ads. You'd pick audiences based on interests, demographics, and lookalikes, then let the system optimise from there.

Andromeda flips that on its head. Now, Meta decides who sees your ads based on the creative itself. The algorithm reads your images, video, copy and design, and matches each individual ad to the user most likely to engage with it, in real time.

In short: your targeting settings matter far less. Your creative matters far more.

Why This Hits Drinks Brands Hard

Most drinks brands have historically leaned on a fairly narrow creative approach. Beautiful bottle shots, lifestyle imagery, maybe a cocktail serve or two. That's not enough anymore.

Under Andromeda, if your ads all look and feel similar, Meta sees them as repetitive. The system will actually penalise your account with higher CPMs (the cost to reach people) because it interprets a lack of creative diversity as content fatigue.

That means a feed full of the same bottle on different backgrounds won't cut it. You need genuinely different creative angles.

Campaign Structure: Keep It Simple

Andromeda works best with simplified campaign structures. The old approach of splitting everything into dozens of ad sets with different audiences actually hurts performance now.

The recommended setup is:

• One campaign per objective (e.g., one for purchases, one for awareness)
• Two ad sets per campaign: one for cold prospecting and one for retargeting
• Broad targeting on prospecting, with no interest or lookalike layering, just exclude existing customers
• Advantage+ Creative turned on so Meta can optimise placements and formats
• CBO (Campaign Budget Optimisation) to let the algorithm allocate spend

What you want to avoid is the old approach of splitting prospecting into loads of ad sets by interest or lookalike ("gin lovers", "health-conscious 25 to 34", "competitor followers" and so on). Andromeda handles that matching itself now through the creative, so fragmenting your budget across lots of narrow ad sets just starves each one of data and slows the learning.

The exception would be if you have genuinely different conversion goals or products. For example, if you're running both DTC and retail-driving campaigns, those should be separate campaigns because the objective and measurement are fundamentally different. But within each, keep the ad set count low and let the creative do the segmentation work.

Cold Audience Creative: 8 to 12 Concepts

Your prospecting ad set is where creative diversity matters most. These people don't know you yet, so you're trying to give Andromeda a range of hooks to match different people with different motivations. Aim for 8 to 12 genuinely distinct concepts:

1. The Founder / Brand Story
Why does this product exist? What's the mission? A short clip of the founder talking about the brand, or a behind-the-scenes look at the team. This works especially well for challenger brands trying to stand out against bigger players.

2. The Product Story
Your liquid, your process, your ingredients. What makes the drink itself special? Think close-up pours, ingredient sourcing, production craft. Let the product do the talking.

3. Education / Myth-Busting
"What actually is a non-alc spirit?" or "Why does single malt cost more?" Content that teaches while selling. Bold claims work well here too: "You won't believe this isn't gin" or "Zero sugar, full flavour."

4. The Occasion
When and where does someone reach for your product? A Friday night in, a summer BBQ, a dinner party, a quiet midweek moment. Each occasion is a separate creative angle, so don't bundle them all into one ad.

5. The Serve
How do you drink it? Simple serves, cocktail recipes, food pairings. Each one is its own creative concept. A G&T serve is a completely different angle to an espresso martini twist.

6. Lifestyle
Who drinks this? Aspirational but authentic lifestyle content that reflects your target drinker's world, without necessarily showing the product front and centre.

7. Social Proof
Press coverage, awards, customer reviews, influencer mentions. Let someone else do the talking. Instant credibility for someone who has never heard of you.

8. UGC-Style Content
User-generated or influencer content that feels less like an ad and more like a recommendation. This format consistently outperforms polished brand content in cold audiences.

9. Dynamic Product Ads (Catalogue Ads)
If you have a product catalogue set up (which most Shopify brands will), Meta can now serve dynamic product ads to cold audiences too, not just retargeting. The algorithm picks which product from your catalogue to show each person based on their behaviour and interests. This works best when you have a decent range of SKUs (different flavours, formats, gift sets). You're not designing this creative from scratch, but you can still influence how it looks with frames, overlays, and copy templates. Make sure your product imagery is strong, your titles are clean, and your pricing is accurate, because that is the creative quality for catalogue ads.

The key is that each one of these should feel like a completely different ad, not a variation on a theme. Different visuals, different hooks, different tone. That's what Andromeda needs to work with.

Retargeting Creative: 4 to 6 Concepts

Your retargeting ad set speaks to people who already know you (website visitors, add-to-carts, past purchasers). The job here is different. You're overcoming the last bit of hesitation and nudging them to buy. The creative pool can be smaller, but more focused:

1. Social Proof
Customer reviews, star ratings, "over 10,000 sold." Reassurance for someone who's on the fence.

2. Offers and Bundles
Free delivery, multipack savings, gift sets. Give them a reason to act now rather than later.

3. The Reminder
A simple, clean product shot with a direct CTA like "Still thinking about it?" or "Your basket is waiting." Straightforward and effective.

4. Food Pairing or Recipe Content
Give them a reason to buy now. "Perfect with Sunday roast" or "Three cocktails you can make in under a minute."

5. The Gifting Angle
"Not sure what to get them?" Works well if you have gift-ready packaging, especially around key gifting periods like Christmas, Father's Day, or Valentine's Day.

6. Dynamic Product Ads (Catalogue Ads)
This is arguably your strongest retargeting format. If you have a product catalogue connected, dynamic ads will show people the exact products they've already viewed or added to basket. They work alongside your manually created retargeting creative, not instead of it. The DPA handles the "here's what you looked at" job, while your other retargeting concepts handle the broader persuasion. As with prospecting, make sure your feed is in good shape: strong imagery, accurate pricing, and clean product titles all make a difference.

The retargeting creative should feel warmer and more familiar. They've already seen the brand, so you don't need to introduce yourself again. It's about reassurance and a gentle push.

The mistake most brands make is running the same creative across both audiences. If someone saw your founder story in prospecting and then gets served the exact same ad in retargeting, that's a wasted touchpoint.

How Many Personas Should You Target?

Under Andromeda, you're not manually targeting personas the way you used to. Instead, your creative acts as the targeting. Each distinct creative angle effectively speaks to a different persona, and Meta's AI matches it to the right person.

For most drinks brands, 3 to 5 core personas is the sweet spot. More than that and you'll struggle to produce enough quality creative to serve each one. Fewer than that and you're not giving the algorithm enough diversity to work with.

Here's an example for a premium non-alcoholic spirits brand:

How to Research Your Personas

You don't need expensive research tools. Here's a practical approach:

Mine your existing data. Look at your Shopify or website analytics. Who's actually buying? What pages do they visit before purchasing? What search terms bring them in? If you're running Meta Ads already, check Audience Insights for demographic and interest data on your converters.

Read your reviews. Customer reviews (on your site, Amazon, or Trustpilot) are a goldmine. Look for patterns in why people bought, who they bought for, and what they say they love. These are your creative angles spelled out for you.

Stalk the comments. Go through the comments on your own social posts and your competitors'. What questions do people ask? What objections come up? What language do they use? This gives you both persona insight and ad copy ideas.

Use Reddit and forums. Search for your category on Reddit (r/nonalcoholic, r/cocktails, r/whisky). Real, unfiltered opinions from real drinkers. Look for recurring themes, frustrations, and desires.

Talk to your retail partners. If you're in Waitrose, Ocado, or Sainsbury's, your buyer or account manager can tell you about shopper behaviour in the category. Who's buying, when, and what else goes in the basket.

Survey your existing customers. Even a simple post-purchase email asking "What made you try us?" and "Who else would love this?" gives you persona data straight from the source.

Refreshing Your Creative

Under Andromeda, ad fatigue happens faster. Even your best performers will start to decline after 2 to 4 weeks. Plan for a fortnightly or monthly creative refresh cycle.

This doesn't mean starting from scratch every two weeks. It means having a rolling pipeline where you're always introducing a couple of new concepts while retiring the ones that have fatigued. Keep an eye on these signals:

• Rising CPMs mean your creative is getting stale
• High Creative Similarity score (a new Meta metric) means you need more diversity
• Declining CTR means people have seen it too many times

The Bottom Line

Andromeda rewards brands that think like content creators, not just advertisers. For drinks brands, this means moving beyond the bottle shot and building a diverse creative library that speaks to different people, different occasions, and different motivations.

The brands that adapt early will see lower costs and better returns. The ones that keep running the same three ads will wonder why their CPMs keep climbing.

Start with your personas, build your creative angles, keep the pipeline fresh, and let Meta's AI do the matching. That's the game now.

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When it comes to scaling Meta Ads (formerly Facebook Ads), one of the most common bottlenecks is creative fatigue. You’re increasing budget, reaching wider audiences, and suddenly, your performance dips. The culprit? Not enough fresh creatives.

In this post, we’ll explore the relationship between ad spend and the volume of creatives you need to keep performance optimised. Whether you’re spending £1,000 or £50,000 a month, understanding this dynamic is key to maintaining ROAS and scaling sustainably.

📉 What Is Creative Fatigue?

Creative fatigue happens when your audience has seen your ads too many times. Engagement drops, CPAs rise, and Meta starts penalising your ad score. The result? Less efficient delivery and higher costs. This fatigue sets in faster at higher budgets due to increased impressions.

💡 Rule of Thumb: Creative Volume by Budget

While there’s no one-size-fits-all formula, a commonly used benchmark is:

For every £1,000 in monthly ad spend, aim for 2-4 new creatives.

This isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s a survival tactic for keeping CPMs low, engagement high, and your campaigns scaling without stalling.

👉 Why the range? It depends on your funnel structure (TOF/MOF/BOF), audience size, and whether you’re testing formats or iterating on winning concepts.

📊 Format Diversity Matters

Meta’s algorithm rewards variety. Don’t just rotate stills. Include:

• Video (1:1 and 9:16 for Reels)
• Carousels
• UGC-style testimonials
• Branded animations
• Product-focused stills with clear CTAs

A healthy mix = more data = faster optimisation.

📆 How Often Should You Refresh?

At higher spends, fatigue can set in within 7–14 days. For smaller budgets, you may get 3–4 weeks out of a single creative. Track frequency and engagement rate per ad to know when it’s time to rotate.

📈 Plan Ahead

Creative pipelines need to match your spend ambitions. If you plan to scale, build creative production into your growth model. It’s not enough to have one hero ad anymore.

Summary

If you’re managing Meta ad spend without scaling your creative output, you’re leaving money on the table. Use your budget as a trigger for how many creatives you need—then track fatigue, test format diversity, and keep that pipeline flowing.

Meta rewards momentum. Give it the creative fuel to keep running.