Paid Ads

Before Starting

1. Campaign Goals

• What's the primary objective? (Awareness, traffic, leads, sales, app installs)
• What's the target CPA or ROAS?
• What's the monthly/weekly budget?
• Any constraints? (Brand guidelines, compliance, geographic)

2. Product & Offer

• What are you promoting? (Product, free trial, lead magnet, demo)
• What's the landing page URL?
• What makes this offer compelling?

3. Audience

• Who is the ideal customer?
• What problem does your product solve for them?
• What are they searching for or interested in?
• Do you have existing customer data for lookalikes?

4. Current State

• Have you run ads before? What worked/didn't?
• Do you have existing pixel/conversion data?
• What's your current funnel conversion rate?

Reference Routing

Platform Selection Guide

Campaign Structure Best Practices

Account Organization

Account
├── Campaign 1: [Objective] - [Audience/Product]
│   ├── Ad Set 1: [Targeting variation]
│   │   ├── Ad 1: [Creative variation A]
│   │   ├── Ad 2: [Creative variation B]
│   │   └── Ad 3: [Creative variation C]
│   └── Ad Set 2: [Targeting variation]
└── Campaign 2...

Naming Conventions

[Platform]_[Objective]_[Audience]_[Offer]_[Date]

Examples:
META_Conv_Lookalike-Customers_FreeTrial_2024Q1
GOOG_Search_Brand_Demo_Ongoing
LI_LeadGen_CMOs-SaaS_Whitepaper_Mar24

Budget Allocation

• 70% to proven/safe campaigns
• 30% to testing new audiences/creative

• Consolidate budget into winning combinations
• Increase budgets ~20% at a time — never 30%+ in one move (resets platform learning)
• Wait 3-5 days between increases for algorithm learning

Ad Copy Frameworks

Key Formulas

[Problem] → [Agitate the pain] → [Introduce solution] → [CTA]

[Current painful state] → [Desired future state] → [Your product as bridge]

[Impressive stat or testimonial] → [What you do] → [CTA]

Audience Understanding & Targeting

Platform-by-platform: where to apply audience knowledge

Applying audience knowledge to creative

• Demographic identifiers (age, location, occupation) → embed as identity-trigger keywords in headlines (see [[#The one-keyword hack (identity-trigger keywords)]])
• Pain points + fears → headline + first line of body copy (Sabri Suby's framing: "the verbatim words your customers use about the problem")
• Hopes / desired outcomes → transformation copy + CTAs
• Objections + "why they didn't buy last time" → objection-handling retargeting ads (see [[#The 4-component retargeting framework]])
• Their language / vocabulary → the entire copy voice — never use industry jargon they don't
• Existing customer base → still feed it for lookalike audiences (see Key Concepts below)
• Niche / segment they identify with → identity-trigger keywords in headline ("for dentists" / "for B2B founders" / "for parents of toddlers")

Key Concepts (still apply)

• Lookalikes: Base on best customers (by LTV), not all customers. Still high-value across platforms.
• Retargeting: Segment by funnel stage (visitors vs. cart abandoners). See [[#Retarget with DIFFERENT offers (not the same one)]] and [[#The 4-component retargeting framework]] for the modern playbook.
• Exclusions: Exclude existing customers and recent converters — showing ads to people who already bought wastes spend.

Common failure mode

Modern Meta playbook (Andromeda era — 2026+)

Creative volume is the constraint (statics > polished video)

• Andromeda is "a hungry panda" — it needs constant fresh creative or it fatigues
• Statics often outperform video in 2026 because:
  • Meta's algorithm has a bias toward statics — it can show more statics per session per user, so they're cheaper to deliver
  • Static creative is 10x cheaper and faster to produce than video, enabling the volume Andromeda needs
  • Even top advertisers running 17+ VSLs report that down-and-dirty native statics often beat 2.5-month-production VSLs
• Dedicate 1 hour per week to producing fresh creatives for your winning offer. Volume > polish.

Creative IS the targeting (broad audience + specific creative)

• The old playbook: stack interests, narrow the audience, hope to find the right buyer
• The new playbook: target broadly (just the country) and let the creative do the targeting
• Long-form ad copy works better than short-form in 2026 — gives Meta a wider context window to understand who to show the ad to
• Test it: take your best winning ad with interest-stacked targeting, duplicate it, remove all targeting (just pick the country), run side-by-side for 7 days. Check CPAs. Broad typically wins.

The one-keyword hack (identity-trigger keywords)

• Take your winning ad
• Duplicate it with a niche/identity keyword inserted in the headline or body copy
• "Here's how to get 462 leads per week on autopilot" → "Here's how to get 462 dental leads per week on autopilot" / "...lawyer leads..." / "...property investment leads..."
• The keyword is an identity trigger for the viewer AND a targeting signal for Andromeda
• Dramatically drops CPL and opens audience pockets you couldn't reach with a generic ad

AI variant farming (the 100-people test)

• Take your winning ad
• Feed to Claude/ChatGPT/Kong with the prompt:

  "I want you to read this ad and be the author. If I show the next ad I'm going to ask you to write to 100 people, not 1 in 100 would be able to tell you it's written by a different person. Now write this for [demographic/niche]."

• The output should read essentially the same with subtle relevance shifts for the target
• Apply in sequence: body copy → headlines → creative
• Drop all variants in a CBO, let Meta's AI allocate spend

Zombie campaigns

• After running a CBO, Meta will give 80% of variants no spend
• Take the dead variants you have high conviction about
• Launch them in a separate ad set ("zombie campaign")
• Typically resurrects 20% as winners that Meta's first allocation passed over

Don't make ads look like ads

• Hundreds of millions of people have ad blockers — the polished-ad aesthetic kills performance
• Study what content natively performs in your niche on TikTok/Instagram/YouTube → produce ads that match that aesthetic
• Burner account technique: create a clean Instagram/TikTok account, follow all influencers and pages in your niche, like their content. Your feed becomes a curated view of what's natively winning. Produce ads that match.
• If you have an organic video with millions of views, run that exact video as a paid ad — proven content + paid distribution = the highest-leverage move

Creative Best Practices

Image Ads

• Clear product screenshots showing UI
• Before/after comparisons
• Stats and numbers as focal point
• Human faces (real, not stock)
• Bold, readable text overlay (keep under 20%)

Video Ads Structure (15-30 sec)

1. Hook (0-3 sec): Pattern interrupt, question, or bold statement
2. Problem (3-8 sec): Relatable pain point
3. Solution (8-20 sec): Show product/benefit
4. CTA (20-30 sec): Clear next step

• Captions always (85% watch without sound)
• Vertical for Stories/Reels, square for feed
• Native feel outperforms polished
• First 3 seconds determine if they watch

Creative Testing Hierarchy

1. Concept/angle (biggest impact)
2. Hook/headline
3. Visual style
4. Body copy
5. CTA

Campaign Optimization

Key Metrics by Objective

Optimization Levers

1. Check landing page (is the problem post-click?)
2. Tighten audience targeting
3. Test new creative angles
4. Improve ad relevance/quality score
5. Adjust bid strategy

• Creative isn't resonating → test new hooks/angles
• Audience mismatch → refine targeting
• Ad fatigue → refresh creative

• Audience too narrow → expand targeting
• High competition → try different placements
• Low relevance score → improve creative fit

Bid Strategy Progression

1. Start with manual or cost caps
2. Gather conversion data (50+ conversions)
3. Switch to automated with targets based on historical data
4. Monitor and adjust targets based on results

Retargeting Strategies

Funnel-Based Approach

Retargeting Windows

Exclusions to Set Up

• Existing customers (unless upsell)
• Recent converters (7-14 day window)
• Bounced visitors (<10 sec)
• Irrelevant pages (careers, support)

Retarget with DIFFERENT offers (not the same one)

• Visitor clicked on protein powder, didn't buy → retarget with creatine (totally different category)
• Visitor downloaded a lead magnet, didn't book a call → retarget with a different lead magnet on a related topic
• Visitor viewed pricing, didn't sign up → retarget with a free audit or assessment instead

The 4-component retargeting framework

1. Objection-handling ad — directly addresses the most common reasons people didn't buy. To find these, outbound call every lead who didn't convert and ask why. The verbatim objections become the headline of this ad.
2. Proof testimonial carousel — multi-image/multi-slide carousel of testimonials and proof that supports the claims of your original ad
3. Other-offers CBO — your other best-performing ads for other products/services in one CBO, retargeted to the same audience
4. Value-first audit/assessment ad — wraps your call in a free piece of value. Whether they buy or not, they leave with something useful. Lowers the friction to engage.

Landing Page Alignment (the headline-mirror trick)

Headline mirroring

1. Run 20-40 different headlines as ad variations
2. Identify the best-performing headline (by CTR + downstream conversion)
3. Mirror that winning headline on your landing page — exact wording in the H1, sub-headline, and lead-in copy of the body
4. Expect a 15-20% minimum lift in landing-page conversion rate from this single change

Three split tests minimum at all times

Reporting & Analysis

Weekly Review

• Spend vs. budget pacing
• CPA/ROAS vs. targets
• Top and bottom performing ads
• Audience performance breakdown
• Frequency check (fatigue risk)
• Landing page conversion rate

Attribution Considerations

• Platform attribution is inflated
• Use UTM parameters consistently
• Compare platform data to GA4
• Look at blended CAC, not just platform CPA

Scaling discipline (net cash > ROAS percentage)

• ROAS dropping from 10 → 5 sounds bad
• But if spend goes from $10k → $100k, you net dramatically more total profit
• The number to optimize is blended ROAS at the business level, not per-ad-set ROAS
• Even better: optimize net free cash flow, not ROAS at all

1. Calculate the absolute maximum you can pay to acquire a customer and still be profitable (factoring LTV)
2. That's your break-even ROAS / CPA ceiling
3. Scale until you approach that ceiling, not until your ad-account ROAS drops below an arbitrary preference

• Block out 3 hours per month in the calendar to physically review the numbers yourself
• Not what your data analyst says. Not what your media buyer says. You, going through the actual data
• The confidence this generates is irreplaceable — and confidence is what lets you scale with conviction
• "Data gives you confidence. Confidence gives you speed."

• Every lead that downloaded a lead magnet or hit your funnel but didn't buy gets a call
• Ask why they didn't book, what was confusing, what the actual blocker was
• These verbatim answers become objection-handling ads (see Retargeting section)
• Massive insight-to-creative loop that most advertisers skip

Platform Setup

Universal Pre-Launch Checklist

• Conversion tracking tested with real conversion
• Landing page loads fast (<3 sec)
• Landing page mobile-friendly
• UTM parameters working
• Budget set correctly
• Targeting matches intended audience

Google RSA Output Spec (mandatory when generating RSAs)

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Strategy

• Launching without conversion tracking
• Too many campaigns (fragmenting budget)
• Not giving algorithms enough learning time
• Optimizing for wrong metric

Targeting

• Audiences too narrow or too broad
• Not excluding existing customers
• Overlapping audiences competing

Creative

• Only one ad per ad set
• Not refreshing creative (fatigue)
• Mismatch between ad and landing page

Budget

• Spreading too thin across campaigns
• Making big budget changes (disrupts learning)
• Stopping campaigns during learning phase

Task-Specific Questions

1. What platform(s) are you currently running or want to start with?
2. What's your monthly ad budget?
3. What does a successful conversion look like (and what's it worth)?
4. Do you have existing creative assets or need to create them?
5. What landing page will ads point to?
6. Do you have pixel/conversion tracking set up?

Tool Integrations

Related Skills

• ad-creative: For generating and iterating ad headlines, descriptions, and creative at scale
• revops: For the CRM side of ABM — lead scoring, routing, and the offline conversion loop
• customer-research: For the voice-of-customer inputs that feed ad copy and creative angles
• copywriting: For landing page copy that converts ad traffic
• analytics: For proper conversion tracking setup
• ab-testing: For landing page testing to improve ROAS
• cro: For optimizing post-click conversion rates