Calls & Learnings

Marin Istvanic presents at Affiliate World Conference how he scaled his brand from $5M → $15M → $30M over two years, with profit as the primary metric over revenue. Complete framework: define your ROS target → optimize the funnel → track daily → know when to spend → structure the account → test systematically → scale winners. Watch on YouTube →

• Scaled $5M → $15M → $30M in ~2 years — profit-first throughout
• Primary KPI: ROS (Return on Spend) — not ROAS, because it accounts for actual margins across all costs
• Two-campaign model kept structure clean and algorithm signals pure throughout the journey

1. Define Your ROS Target [1:40]

• Map your P&L to find the exact break-even ROS number — this is the guardrail for all ad decisions
• Set: (a) break-even ROS floor, (b) minimum acceptable ROS, (c) target ROS — only scale at or above target
• Prospecting and retargeting campaigns should have different ROS targets
• Scaling without a defined target = burning money blindly

2. Dial In the Funnel [2:38]

• Scaling amplifies what already exists — a leaky funnel gets more expensive at scale
• Checklist: landing page CRO optimized, AOV/upsell flows in place, email/SMS post-purchase running, backend retention dialed in
• High CTR + low CVR = funnel problem, not an ad problem. Fix the funnel before increasing spend

3. Daily Tracking [3:23]

• Track spend, revenue, ROS, CPM, CTR, CVR, CPA every single day
• Use conditional formatting in a Google Sheet (green = on target, red = below) for instant visibility and fast reaction
• Without daily tracking, budget hemorrhages over weekends and bad days undetected

4. Know When to Spend [5:25]

• Pull 4+ weeks of day-of-week performance data and map your highest-ROS days
• Concentrate budget on peak windows; hold back during low-performing periods
• At $10k/day scale, bad timing costs 10× more than at $1k/day

5. Account Structure [7:15]

• Testing Campaign — new creatives only. 1 ad set per creative concept, fixed small budget (~50 optimization events to exit learning)
• Scaling Campaign — proven winners only. Never mix testing and scaling
• Evaluation threshold: does creative hit CTR, CPA, and ROS targets? Pass → graduate. Fail → kill immediately. No ego-attachment

6. Ad Set Configuration [8:51]

• Broad targeting preferred — let Meta's algorithm find buyers; avoid over-constraining with interest stacking
• Use Advantage+ audience where applicable
• In scaling campaign: never edit working ad sets (resets learning) — duplicate and scale instead

7. Scale — Multiple Ad Sets Per Winner [11:26]

• Run 3–5 ad sets per winning creative at moderate budgets — safer than one massive ad set hitting frequency ceiling fast
• Each ad set competes in separate auctions → reaches different users → more delivery, more conversions at stable CPAs
• Meta distributes differently across ad sets even with identical targeting + creative
• Increase budgets in 20–30% increments only — larger jumps restart the learning phase

• Intentionally increase budgets +30–50% on peak days (typically Friday–Sunday for consumer brands)
• Reduce 20–30% on low-performing days — use automated rules to execute without manual intervention
• Ramp budget ahead of seasonal spikes (Black Friday, Christmas, Valentine's) — not during, when CPMs spike
• Pull 4+ weeks of day-of-week data to identify your specific peak days; review and adjust weekly

• Run ads from influencer/partner pages to diversify social proof and reduce ad fatigue from brand page
• Unlocks additional inventory and audiences outside your own page's reach
• Underused scaling lever — especially effective when combined with multiple ad set structure

• Safe budget increase rate: 20–30% increments (not 2×/3× — restarts learning)
• Weekend budget boost: +30–50% on peak days, –20–30% on low days
• Learning phase exit target: ~50 optimization events per ad set
• Ad sets per winning creative: 3–5 (each in a separate auction)
• Day-of-week data lookback: 4+ weeks minimum before setting rules

• A DMCA notice was filed against Pocket Artist by a larger brand via a third-party agency, claiming the brand copies their product. Shopify auto-accepted it (standard behavior for major brand filings).
• Team assessment: no legitimate IP grounds — no copyrighted elements copied. Lawyer filed a counter-response; Shopify rejected it, requiring legal escalation.
• Estimated ~20% probability of store getting banned. Listing expected to go offline May 12; Facebook/Google Ads also at risk.
• Decision: Do NOT pause Pocket Artist ads; continue running normally while awaiting legal outcome.
• Contingency plan (if banned): liquidate remaining inventory through the Number Artist email list at ~$20 price point (below cost, emergency clearance).
• Number Artist already has a lawyer filing 2–3 DMCA takedowns per day on competitor products — the team understands this process from both sides.
• Do NOT open warehouse kits to swap sketchbooks (~10,000 units at ~$1/unit labor cost) until legal outcome is confirmed.

• Best performance period: April 14–21. Top image ad drove ~2% CVR, taking ~70% of budget; remaining 30% went to video ads. Since then CVR has dropped to ~2.5% (from ~5% peak).
• Current problem: top ad consuming ~90% of budget, leaving no room for secondary ads to test or spend.
• Audience issue: ~20% of budget spending on men 65+ via Advantage Plus — off-target for this product.
• Action: Relaunch video-only Facebook campaign before the 15th, targeting women (with men optional given ~20% revenue share from male buyers).
• Video ad "5v1" historically drove ~20% of budget with higher ROAS but is now spending only ~$25 of last $900 — deprioritized.

• Negative ad comments ("scam," "coming from China," "shipping complaints," "too expensive") are a direct conversion killer — potential buyers check comments before purchasing.
• Data pattern identified on Number Artist: ad performance drops sharply at the same time negative comment clusters appear; recovers once comments are addressed.
• Immediate fix: Have the official brand page (Number Artist) respond to comments using real customer reviews and photos from the website. Safe, authentic, effective starting point.
• Assign a team member (Princess) to shift from email support to dedicated reputation management — monitoring and responding to ad comments across all brands.
• Micro-creator seeding strategy (advanced): Recruit ~15 loyal customers or micro-creators via Facebook group / Incense to post authentic positive comments with photos/videos on winning ads in exchange for free product kits.
• IP/safety note: seeding requires varied IP addresses (US, UK, Australia) — Facebook detects fake profiles via VPN patterns. Use this carefully and phase in only after the brand-page response approach is established.
• Number Artist model: support team responds from individual team profiles AND from the official brand page — always responds to complaints with real customer photos and reviews.

• Smile.io loyalty program active in Shopify since end of March / early April. Low redemption rates noted — Katarina scheduled a strategy consultation call with Smile.io support.
• Current 4-tier structure: Level 1 (entry, 5pts/$1) → Level 2 (after first purchase, 6pts/$1) → Level 3 (after $300 cumulative spend, 7pts/$1) → Level 4 (after $500 spend, 8pts/$1 + extra perks). Points do not expire.
• Early-access emails now sent to Level 3 and Level 4 members (expanded from Facebook group only).
• "Songs Inspired" collection launched exclusively in the Facebook group on a weekend — resulted in ~4–5 sales, ~$250 revenue. Facebook suppresses link posts; links should go in comments rather than post body, or use "comment to get the link" mechanic.
• Explored: exclusive limited-window collections available only to Facebook group / email list for 7–10 days to drive group membership and urgency.

• Stitch Book is Punchora's top seller. Over the last 30 days: $7,400 of ~$54,000 gross sales (~17% of revenue, trending toward 20%).
• Problem: Stitch Book ads pull traffic that converts on the Stitch Book even when other campaigns were the entry point — cannibalizing classic kit sales and inflating Stitch Book attribution.
• Stitch Book lives in a hidden side-menu (not the main Mega Menu) — limits organic discovery. Action: add to Mega Menu and main filters.
• Successful ad batch: "Version 2.0" story (listened to customer complaints, improved the Stitch Book) — strong traction and ROAS. 3 new creators hired in April with content due for this week.
• Attribution fix: Set up custom Pixel events at product-ID level to accurately attribute which product (Stitch Book vs. kit) a Facebook-driven purchase landed on. This separates the two revenue streams for proper ROAS measurement per product.
• Nordbeam confirmed as the attribution benchmark going forward — evaluate per campaign, not platform-wide. Facebook-reported metrics alone are not reliable for Punchora.

• Current whitelisting campaign underperforming — ~95% of creator organic posts fail. Single winning creator ad takes 60–70% of spend.
• Proposed restructure: Instead of each creator in an isolated ad set, bundle 4–5 brand-edited ads alongside creator content in the same ad set. Let Meta's algorithm allocate spend — avoids siloing failing creator content.
• Restart the whitelisting test from scratch: $80/day per ad set; pause after a few days if no performance signal.
• Hila (supplements brand): Meta Partnership Ads / whitelisting connection already confirmed active. Brand slot secured by converting two "people" slots — already connected in the whitelisting hub. No additional setup needed.

• Continue Pocket Artist ads as normal; contingency plan ready (NA email list liquidation at ~$20).
• Relaunch Pocket Artist video-only campaign targeting women before May 15.
• Start comment management with official Number Artist brand page responding using real customer reviews.
• Assign Princess to reputation management full-time (reduce email support load).
• Set up custom Pixel events (product-ID level) for Punchora Stitch Book vs. kit attribution.
• Add Songs Inspired and Sports collections to Number Artist Mega Menu and filters.
• Nordbeam is the primary attribution benchmark going forward — per campaign evaluation only.

• Penelope / Jill — Best month ever, beating holiday season.
• Relentra (Matthew) — Found a winning angle (Winnie Engel), now iterating.
• Lushi Chiron — Best month ever at ~200% of previous Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
• Vida Prima (Lukas) — 3 consecutive record months. March was tough for most brands, making these more significant.

What It Is

• Request Meta partnership ad access from people who have organically tagged your brand on Instagram — no contracts, no outreach, no payment required.
• They accept a single in-app notification → you can run ads from their account. Mason coined this "Ghost Partnership Ads."
• Rugtomize result: sent to 19 accounts → 12 accepted (63%), 1 declined, rest didn't respond. 2 campaigns live at time of call.

Step-by-Step

• 1. Go to your brand's Instagram tagged posts.
• 2. Copy the account handle of anyone who has posted about you.
• 3. In Meta Partnerships Portal → enter their handle → select your brand → Send Request.
• 4. They receive an Instagram notification, click Accept → you now have ad access to their account.

Campaign Structure

• Run on ABO only — one ad set per creator. When one hits big, you need full control to scale fast.
• Name ad sets by creator Instagram handle for easy tracking.

Ad Types Available

• Use Existing Post — their organic post becomes your ad (most common).
• Dark post — upload your own video and run it under their account without posting it publicly.
• You can also edit/crop their content inside Meta's ad creative tools.
• Licensed music: Meta will auto-replace it. To keep original music, download and re-upload the video as a hard upload.

Identity Settings

• Start with Dynamic Identity (shows as both brand + creator) to appear less aggressive while testing.
• Switch to First Identity (pure whitelisting look) once results confirm the approach works.

Verdict: Run both simultaneously

• ABO Testing (primary): Your high-conviction ads. Full spend control. Definitive answers in 3–7 days. Forces creative discipline — you're committing budget per concept.
• CBO Testing (add-on): Everything including long-shots and older ads. Let Meta's algorithm (Andromeda/Lattice/Gem) choose. Low budget — $200/day across 34 ad sets / 123 ads for Rugtomize. Minimum: $10–25/day total.

Recommended Workflow

• Every ad → CBO (let Meta find surprises).
• Your favorite, high-conviction ads → also go into ABO.
• CBO surfaces an unexpected winner → move to ABO or winner's campaign and scale hard.

Warning

• Don't use CBO as an excuse to flood with low-quality AI-generated creative. Quality still determines outcomes — CBO just gives low-confidence ideas a cheap seat at the table.
• ABO forces intentionality. CBO can create laziness. Mason's primary preference remains ABO.

• Advantage Plus campaign that was previously top performer is now declining.
• Do NOT pause the whole campaign — pause individual underperforming ads only.
• Keep decreasing spend on the declining campaign and continue adding new winning ads into it.
• Option: launch a new Advantage Plus campaign alongside the old one. If old one doesn't recover in 2+ weeks, shut it down. New campaign gets the latest algorithm version (Meta has updated significantly in ~9 months).
• You don't always have to have an Advantage Plus campaign running. If something isn't converting for 2+ weeks, cutting it is the right business decision.
• Possible causes: seasonality (March 2026 was rough broadly), stale audience pool, outdated campaign settings from an old Meta version.

• Stories only shows the first slide of a carousel — often a poor impression.
• How to exclude Stories: Ad set → Show more settings → uncheck Stories.
• Diagnose first: Breakdown → Placement to see where budget is going and where orders are coming from.
• Critical: If carousels are in the same ad set as non-carousel ads, the Stories exclusion applies to ALL ads in that set. Keep carousels in a dedicated ad set.
• Feed placements are generally the strongest for carousels.

A deep-dive conversation with Loop Earplugs co-founder Dimitri O on how Loop grew from a single-use-case DTC brand into a multi-audience, multi-region eight-figure business — covering the Covid pivot playbook, acquisition-led growth, attribution reality, media mix experimentation, and an equity-for-all team philosophy. Watch on YouTube →

• [00:01] Loop was founded after both co-founders suffered hearing damage. Core positioning: "the sunglasses of your ears" — reach for them when noise is too much, just like sunglasses when light is too bright.
• [05:00] Covid forced Loop to go fully DTC overnight and test 46 use cases in weeks. They shortlisted 10–15, built 40+ funnels, tested 5 price points ($20–$35), and launched Loop Quiet (sleep) by October 2020.
• [09:30] Forced expansion revealed a broader mission: people use earplugs for control over noise — neurodivergence, focus, sleep, concerts. New tagline: "your life, your volume."
• [13:00] Loop is acquisition-first by nature — low repeat purchase means world-class new customer acquisition. They designed packaging to fit a letterbox (global postal shipping) and let algorithms maximize ROAS across all geographies from day one.
• [18:50] Attribution is spaghetti. For every 1 conversion: ~2,000 people saw the ad (1% CTR × 5% CVR). Buying is "an impulse decision for a consideration you've been having for a long time." Post-purchase surveys reveal customers knew Loop for weeks or months before converting.
• [22:40] In 2024, Loop ran a €10M media mix experiment — 20–40 simultaneous regional tests (AU, NY, UK, DE) covering incrementality, brand vs. performance creative, CTV, and new audience unlocks.
• [26:30] The profitability ceiling: as awareness costs rise and LTV stays flat, growth compresses. The answer is product development (smarter, higher-value products) and geographic expansion to Asia.
• [43:00] Loop scaled from 100 to 280 people in one year using five values (constellations) + cognitive aptitude testing (CCATs). Added a sixth value as they scaled: Keep It Simple.

• 1. Stop and stabilize — Paused all retail, went fully DTC to control pricing, promotion, and customer relationships.
• 2. Generate use cases at volume — Brainstormed 46 potential use cases for the existing product.
• 3. Match product to market — Cross-referenced use cases with product fit and existing customer reviews.
• 4. Survey + interview fast — Conducted surveys and interviews in weeks; shortlisted 10–15 viable use cases.
• 5. Build and test funnels rapidly — 40+ audience-specific funnels, each with tailored messaging, landing pages, and visuals.
• 6. Price test in parallel — Tested 5 price points; found $5 increments correlated with ~40% conversion rate swings.
• 7. Build product from review gaps — Sleep users needing higher NRR directly informed the Loop Quiet brief.
• 8. Expand the mission — Reframed brand positioning from one use case to a universal platform.

• "Tilling up the soil" (Taylor Holiday) — Brand marketing prepares customers so that when they become in-market, your brand is already top of mind.
• "Data can fuel intuition and train intuition" — Integrate post-purchase surveys, MMM models, and direct attribution. Don't over-rely on any single source.
• "Smart and a little bit lazy" — Dimitri's hire profile: intelligent people with low tolerance for complexity find efficiencies and challenge legacy processes.
• "Experience debt" (Taylor Holiday) — Hires who assume their prior playbook applies are the hardest to onboard effectively.
• Loop's 6 Constellations: Ambition · Drive for Action · Stay Curious · Drive Together · Do Good in the World · Keep It Simple.

Dara Denney's "Ad Spend" series goes behind the scenes with real brands on Meta. This episode features Seed (probiotic supplement brand) and breaks down their structured creative testing methodology — how they test concepts, iterate on winners, and scale what works. Watch on YouTube →

• [00:00] "Ad Spend" is about spending smarter — learning from real brand case studies, not just scaling budgets.
• Seed is a science-forward DTC brand. Their ads lead with credibility, education, and trust — not hype.
• They launch multiple distinct concept types simultaneously (UGC testimonials, educational explainers, founder story, product demos) — not just minor variations of one idea.
• Concept-level testing first. Only after a concept proves itself do they invest in iterating hooks, formats, and copy within it.
• Winning ads are "multiplied" — remixed with fresh hooks, new talent, and updated formats to extend their lifespan rather than just scaling budget.
• Seed leans into social proof and credibility signals: clinical studies, microbiologist endorsements, press mentions — these are core performing pillars.
• Having creative strategy upstream of creative production separates high-performing brands from those just producing content.

• 1. Identify core concepts — Define 4–6 fundamentally different ad concepts based on key brand messages (science/credibility, testimonial, lifestyle, problem/solution).
• 2. Launch concept tests — Run each concept with enough budget to get meaningful data. Don't judge performance too early.
• 3. Evaluate at concept level — Which concept type drives results (CTR, hook rate, conversion)? Answer this before going granular.
• 4. Iterate within winners — New hooks, new talent, new formats (Reels vs. static vs. carousel), new opening lines — keep the winning concept intact.
• 5. Scale winners — Increase budget on proven concepts while keeping the testing pipeline active with fresh concepts.
• 6. Refresh & remix — Repurpose winning angles in new creative formats to extend performance without starting from scratch.

• The concept-before-variation rule: Level 1 = concept test → Level 2 = hook/format variation within a winning concept → Level 3 = scale and refresh.
• Brand positioning drives creative: Seed is "a science company that sells probiotics" — credibility always leads. Your positioning should directly dictate your ad pillars.
• Creative strategy is upstream of production — Know what to make and why before making it.

Marin Istvanic shares his complete weekly Meta ad account optimization workflow — a systematic, repeatable process for reviewing performance, analyzing creatives, and making scaling or killing decisions based on data, not gut feel. Watch on YouTube →

• [00:00] End-to-end walkthrough of his actual weekly workflow — not theory, a live look at how he reviews accounts.
• Tracks specific metrics weekly: ROAS, CPA, CTR, CPM, spend. Focuses only on the numbers that drive decisions.
• Creative analysis is central — evaluates which creatives are working, which are fatiguing, and what to test next based on data signals.
• Uses a tiered decision framework: scale what's working, hold what's borderline, cut what's clearly underperforming — based on pre-set thresholds, not gut feel.
• Budget increases are incremental (~20–30% at a time) on proven winners to avoid disrupting the learning phase.
• Optimization happens on the same day each week — consistency prevents reactive, emotional decision-making.
• Reviews both campaign-level and ad-level data to avoid strong ads masking poor performers in the same campaign.

• 1. Pull weekly data — Review past 7 days across all active campaigns: ROAS, CPA, CTR, CPM, spend.
• 2. Creative analysis — Assess hook rate, hold rate, and conversion rate for each ad. Flag creatives showing fatigue (declining CTR, rising CPM).
• 3. Triage winners & losers — Apply performance thresholds: hitting targets = stay or scale; consistently missing = cut.
• 4. Scaling decisions — Increase budgets on proven winners by ~20–30% at a time. Never make large jumps that reset learning.
• 5. Plan new tests — Based on what's working creatively, identify angles, formats, or audiences to test next week.
• 6. Document changes — Log what was changed, why, and the expected outcome. Enables pattern recognition over time.
• 7. Repeat on schedule — Same day, same process, every week. The cadence is the system.

• Penelope — Retargeting DPA ads at 30+ ROAS over 7 days.
• Vital Apparel — Prospecting campaign at ~2.8x ROAS; individual ad sets 2–4.4x.
• Lars (Techniques) — Raw, lo-fi talking head comparing product to competitors. Strong early conversions. Filmed with a black eye to demonstrate combat sport protection product.

The Principle

• Every winning ad concept should become a permanent, recurring revenue stream — remade continuously, never abandoned.
• Ruggable ($500M/year): Mason's team catalogued every winning ad and remade them in perpetuity. This was a core growth driver.
• Rugtomize did $2.2M last year largely off repeated versions of one "rollout ad" concept.
• February 2026: Rugtomize's best month ever — $350K revenue, highest profit.

How It Works

• Find a winning ad (profitable, lasts more than a week).
• Recreate it with different actors, backgrounds, colors, settings, personas — keep the winning concept intact.
• Always run new versions through testing first — never launch directly into performance campaigns.
• Continue making new versions indefinitely. Replace fatigued versions immediately.

The System

• Maintain a spreadsheet of all winning ad concepts per brand.
• Each concept must always have at least one version live in the account.
• Rebuild immediately when a version fatigues — never let a proven stream go dark.
• Same principle applies to email/SMS: if a meme email crushed, run variations every week.

Rugtomize Examples

• "Rollout ads" — first big winner, now runs many versions simultaneously.
• "Us vs. them" ad (vs. Cintas/Aramark) — received cease and desist. Mason admits not remaking it was a mistake.
• Out of ~50–60 rollout versions tested, ~5 were true bangers. Normal ratio — test everything through ABO first.

• Winning static message: "Transform your apartment into a sanctuary of peace."
• Keep the winning message constant; change visual elements (background color, packaging color, product angle).
• ICP insight: customers want escapism and transformation — transport to nature, serenity.

Iterations to Test

• GIF version: incense burning, smoke drifting across the image
• Add a hand lighting the incense stick
• White background version, black background version
• Talking head video using same core message: "Transform your apartment into a forest in 2 minutes."

Standard vs. Incremental Attribution

• Standard: Counts any conversion where someone was exposed to an ad — regardless of whether the ad caused it.
• Incremental: Credits only conversions that would NOT have happened without that specific ad. Makes ROAS look terrible — strips out view-throughs and soft attribution.
• Incrementality is only relevant at large scale (millions/month). For smaller brands, almost everything is incremental by default.
• Recommendation: Do not use incremental attribution. Stick to standard.

Multi-Advertiser Ads

• Mason changed his position — previously left it on as a "free impression."
• Meta now shows your brand alongside multiple random brands, potentially including direct competitors.
• Recommendation: Uncheck multi-advertiser ads.

Recycling Winning Concepts — Where to Launch

• Always back through testing (ABO), 100%. Even proven concepts are not guaranteed to win again.
• Launching untested iterations directly into performance campaigns risks tanking performance.

• Build a "winning ad catalog" — list all proven concepts per brand; ensure at least one version is always live
• Remake winning ads on a monthly cadence — do not wait for fatigue
• Always test new iterations through testing campaigns before promoting to performance
• Uncheck multi-advertiser ads in campaign setups
• Skip incremental attribution for now — revisit at significant scale

• Lucy — Used purchase history data to identify ICPs; found winning angles; 4.5x+ ROAS over 7 days.
• Opalay (Robbie) — 2.4 ROAS on custom DPA catalog built from prior coaching technique.
• Chase — Early in program; already identified two winning ads.
• Lushi / Sharan — First 3 consecutive $1,000 days in 4 years; attributed to using purchase data to build customer profiles.

• Do NOT connect LLMs or APIs (e.g., Claude, ChatGPT) to Meta — risks profile and page bans.
• Complete ID verification on your personal profile.
• Add a trusted person (spouse, partner) to Business Manager with full admin access as a backup.
• Create extra ad accounts as contingency.

Top-Down Framework

• Use Shopify as a quick barometer for overall sessions — but not for channel-level diagnosis.
• Use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) for detailed breakdowns when a drop appears.
• GA4 path: Reports → Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition → Session Source/Medium. Compare current vs. prior period.

Key Channels to Monitor

• Paid: Meta, Google CPC, TikTok
• Organic: Google organic, Facebook/Instagram organic
• Direct traffic, Email/SMS (Klaviyo), LLM referrals (ChatGPT — growing), Referral

Metrics to Track Weekly

• Average daily sessions
• Cost per session
• Bounce rate
• Last-click conversion rate by channel

Why They Still Work

• Reach in-market users actively researching/considering a purchase.
• Drive incremental reach — audiences Meta's broad targeting won't naturally find given existing ad account data bias.
• Most people build them wrong, which is why they think they don't work.

How to Build Correctly

• Go to Audience Manager → Saved Audience → switch to original audience options.
• Target size sweet spot: 10–50 million (can go as low as 1–5M for ultra-niche).
• Avoid generic, broad interest terms (e.g., "small business," "golf") — these balloon audience to 80M+ and kill precision.
• Use very specific, niche interests. Cross-check size against real-world data.
• Save as a named audience for reuse.

Live Examples Built On-Call

• Rugtomize: Retail page admins + Instagram Business Profile admins = 12–15M. Targets business owners likely to want custom rugs for their store/office.
• T's Crossed (country club brand): Many interests disappeared after Meta updates. Fix: use specific country club names (e.g., Augusta National), NOT broad "golf" — which balloons audience and kills targeting.

Option 1 — Meta Creator Marketplace (Partnership Hub)

• Meta Business Suite → Partnerships → Creator Marketplace.
• Filter by creators who already follow your brand — they're likely genuine fans.
• Message directly; negotiate deals within the platform.
• Enables partnership ads and whitelisting in-platform.

Option 2 — UseClip.com

• Create a campaign brief; creators apply; you review their content and track record.
• Mason's result: 1 out of 3 Rugtomize creators produced a top-performing ad.
• Quality depends heavily on your brief — specify how to hold product, what to say, what NOT to say.

• Set up GA4 if not live; use it only when Shopify signals a traffic drop
• Track average daily sessions and cost per session weekly
• Add a backup admin to Meta Business Manager; complete ID verification
• Do NOT connect LLMs or APIs to Meta
• For interest audiences: use Audience Manager original options, stay 10–50M, be specific with interest terms
• For UGC: try Creator Marketplace or UseClip; write detailed creator briefs

• Opening round of client wins shared — positive momentum across accounts.
• Meta credit card deadline: April 1st — billing method must be current to avoid ad account interruption.

Core Difference

• ABO (Ad Set Budget Optimization): Budget set at ad set level. You control spend per ad set. Ideal for testing — forces Meta to spend on what you specify.
• CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization): Budget set at campaign level. Meta distributes across ad sets algorithmically, favoring cheapest conversions. Ideal for scaling.

When to Use Which

• Use ABO for initial creative testing — equal budget per ad set stops Meta from starving new creatives before they have data.
• Move winners into CBO scaling campaigns — let the algorithm allocate toward proven performers.
• DCO testing runs in ABO: need fair exposure across creative combinations.

Live Build Covered

• CBO scaling campaign setup inside Meta Ads Manager — naming conventions, objective (Purchases), Advantage+ settings.
• Ad set structure: single ad set per CBO campaign for maximum budget efficiency at scale.

Overview

• Rugtomize scaled to $2.2M revenue using just 2 campaigns — one ABO testing, one CBO scaling.
• Clean 2-campaign structure: new creatives always enter via ABO, proven winners graduate to CBO.

The System

• Campaign 1 — ABO Testing: New creatives enter here. Equal budget per ad set (~$50-100/day). Run to $200 spend. Kill losers. Identify winners by ROAS vs target.
• Campaign 2 — CBO Scaling: Only proven winners. Campaign-level budget scaled Friday/Saturday. Meta distributes to best performers. Reduce Monday, adjust Tuesday-Wednesday.
• No mixing of test and scale — keeps algorithm signals clean.

Budget Behavior

• Reducing CBO budget does NOT hurt ROAS — algorithm re-optimizes for efficiency because it wants to spend.
• Budget cadence: scale Friday/Saturday (high buyer intent), pull back Monday, algorithm recovers Tuesday.

ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

• ICP = psychographics + purchase triggers + the specific problem the creative must solve. Not just demographics.
• Number Artist ICP: woman 35-55, gift-giver mindset, stress-relief motivated, drawn to creative activities completable without prior skill.
• Strong ICP definition lets you audit creatives — does the hook speak to her? Does the visual match her expectations?

Retargeting

• If optimizing for new customer acquisition, retargeting dilutes signal — Meta serves to people most likely to convert, often past buyers.
• Audience exclusions (past purchasers) in testing campaigns are critical for clean new-customer data.
• Retargeting as a separate campaign (not mixed with prospecting) keeps attribution clean for ROAS NEW.

• Techniques (Lars) — Meme SMS and email campaigns already producing results.
• Vida Prima — 2nd consecutive best month ever; first 3-digit revenue month.
• Penelope — Hit last month's target; Hermeta responsible for 70%+ of revenue.

• Your number one ICP is the easiest person to convert and the fastest path to scale. Focus on one — not 3 to 5.
• Multiple ICPs = mixed purchase signals = Meta doesn't know who to find → higher CPAs, inconsistency.
• Every purchase from your #1 ICP is a positive training signal to the algorithm → it finds more people like them → positive flywheel. Every random customer = bad prompt to Meta.
• Brands that reach $1M+/month have ruthless ICP clarity — often without consciously realizing it.

Real Examples

• Ruggable — Dog owners only → $100M+/year. "Did your dog pee on your rug?" was all they talked about for 3 years.
• Kill Crew — MMA/jiu-jitsu enthusiasts → $4–5M+/year before any ICP expansion.
• Rugtomize — Business owners with physical locations → $350K/month.
• Brick (phone locker app) — "The ambitious achiever" → $100K/month → $7M in January.

Tool

• Use Claude with Extended Thinking / Deep Research mode for the deepest output (~11 pages). Any capable LLM works.
• Keep brand info clean and concise. Include AOV explicitly — not just price range.

Prompt Template

Rugtomize — Custom Logo Rugs for Businesses

• ICP: The Brand-Proud Business Owner — crossed from scrappy startup to real business, but their physical space doesn't reflect that yet. Needs the room to match the professional brand identity they've built.
• Core fear: looking cheap/generic, missing a time-sensitive moment (grand opening, trade show).
• Key insight: "Will it actually look good? I can't see it before I buy." → Push the free proof before production much harder — it's the most under-leveraged asset.

• Top angles (all selfie-cam-able):
• "Your customers decide if you're legit in 3 seconds. What does your floor say?" (CTA: get your free proof)
• "Disney, Netflix, Lakers — your business could be next." (social proof)
• "We won't make your rug until you've seen exactly how it looks." (risk elimination)
• "Grand opening in 2 weeks? Your rug ships in 2–4 business days." (urgency)
• "Some business owners put a logo on the door. Others put it on the floor." (identity)
• Start with: emotional trigger (#1) + logical/risk removal (#3) — test both simultaneously.

Par by Design — Modern Golf Art

• ICP: The Culture Golfer — ~34yo, discovered golf in the last 5 years through sneaker/streetwear culture. Plays 2–3 rounds/week, has a dialed bag setup. Thinks traditional golf decor looks like it belongs in a retirement community.
• Core desire: be seen as having a distinct identity within golf culture — not a stereotype.
• Key insight: "Your bag is dialed. Your wall isn't." — they already heavily invest in their golf aesthetic; trigger that identity.

• Top angles:
• "Your bag is dialed. Your wall isn't." — static image, no talking head needed
• "Finally, a golf gift that isn't a ball marker." — gift framing (Father's Day, golf season)
• "This is what a golfer's home office actually looks like." — room reveal / aspiration
• "Golf and sneaker culture finally collided. We made the art for it." — cultural identity

Lushi / hellolushi.com — Incense & Sensory Wellness

• ICP: The Burnt-Out Millennial Woman Quietly Rebuilding — not chasing wellness as a trend, chasing relief from overstimulation. Has tried the apps and the supplements. Wants something tangible, sensory, and ritual-based that makes her feel like she's taking her life back.
• 28–37 female, post-hustle, educated, literate in wellness culture but skeptical of overpriced.
• Core fear: another wellness product that doesn't work; buying something performative vs. genuinely useful.

• Top angles:
• "You don't need a whole routine. Just light one." — permission slip, removes the overwhelm barrier (start here)
• "This is what your evenings are missing." — sensory reset
• Home as sanctuary — lifestyle/space positioning
• The ingredient story — trust/quality proof
• Gift framing — for her, from someone who gets her

• For ads: Each angle can be a selfie-cam talking head, a static image overlay, or a UGC-style brief. The prompt often includes copy you can use directly as captions or scripts.
• For creative teams: Share as a context doc. They know exactly who they're talking to before making anything.
• Pre-launch filter: Before pushing any ad live, ask — does this resonate with my specific ICP? If not, revise.
• Continue prompting: Ask Claude for a brand voice guide, website CRO analysis, or email tone guide — all within the same thread.
• For image gen: Copy the context into Gemini to generate static ad visuals based on each angle.
• Mason offered to run this prompt for any brand in the program that doesn't have Claude access.

• Lars — 12 sales above target ROAS over the weekend.
• Blake Thompson (Penny Bees) — Outstanding weekend results from diligent ad crafting the prior week.
• Robbie (Opalay) — Custom DPA campaign at above 6x ROAS week-to-date.
• Rugtomize — First-ever $300K month; on track for $330–$360K this month.
• Dr. Gilligan's — Advantage Plus campaigns crushing over the weekend and into the week.

• End-of-month performance survey must be completed before 1-on-1s with Steve/Mason are booked (new SOP).
• "Bad days are data, not danger" — stay analytical through slow periods, zoom out and look at the bigger picture.
• Tag Matt/Steve on Slack for progress check-ins; tag Mason for strategy questions.
• $1,000 referral reward (bank wire) for qualifying brand introductions.

What It Is

• Running paid Meta ads through the founder's personal Instagram/Facebook page (not the brand page) — officially called "Partnership Ads" inside Meta Ads Manager.
• Mason's philosophy: build the brand first, then introduce the founder. Launch only once the brand has enough credibility.

7 Core Benefits

• Third dimension: Adds Brand ↔ Founder ↔ Consumer triangle — increases authenticity vs. brand-only advertising.
• Trust vs. competitors: Puts a real face behind the product; signals "small business" against faceless or overseas competitors.
• Double down on winners: Any banger from the brand account can be re-run under the founder's page — a free second life for proven creative.
• Scale potential: Duplicate every campaign and run whitelisting versions — more working campaigns = more scale.
• Double frequency: Meta caps impressions at ~5–7/day per page. A founder page doubles how often you can reach the same user — very useful during promotions.
• Different content styles: Behind-the-scenes, non-product storytelling works very well. Example: Healthy Soul's store-opening vlog ads crushing without explicit selling.
• Retargeting power: Long-form caption copy and bottom-of-funnel objection-handling ads work well through a founder's page.

Step-by-Step Setup

• 1. Create a Facebook Public Figure page → connect to founder's Instagram (use a creator account, not business, to access trending sounds).
• 2. From brand's Business Manager: Partnership Ads Hub → Partners → Add Partnership → search by Instagram handle → select brand → Send Request. Founder approves in-app via Instagram notification.
• 3. Build an ABO campaign (catalog off, objective: Purchases, 7-day click, ~$50/day, wide open targeting).
• 4. Turn on Partnership Ad toggle → Select Identity → Pure Whitelisting (choose founder's page; do not use Dynamic Identities).
• 5. Add creative: Pull from brand's existing library or upload net-new. Note: Post IDs cannot be reused in partnership ad format.
• 6. Founder story copy: Use AI with a prompt including founding story, credentials, and brand promise. Outputs require editing — not all are usable. Short-form (~270 chars) and long-form variants work best.

Q&A

• For maximum net-new reach: use net-new creative. For easy extra scale: re-run bangers under founder page — you'll still reach some new users from the different page signals.
• Same process applies to influencer whitelisting — identical setup via Partnership Ads Hub.

Audit Priority Order

• 1. Welcome Series — 2. Abandoned Checkout — 3. Site Abandonment (Mason's favorite; most overlooked, often beats Browse Abandonment) — 4. Browse Abandonment — 5. Post-purchase

Email-by-Email Findings (YTD)

• Email 1 "Welcome to Rugt…" — 45% open rate, ~2% CTR. Subject line too generic. Recommendation: split-test a stronger subject line; test a radically shorter version — cut everything below the first CTA.
• Email 2 — ~$400 YTD revenue (terrible). Near-identical to Email 1. Recommendation: replace with a before/after visual (space without vs. with custom rug); full-frame hero image aligned with headline.
• Email 3 — Size guide — Low CTR, minimal engagement. Recommendation: swap for a social proof / "Trusted by America's Best Brands" email, or add a founder story email.
• Email 4 — "Final Hours" — Performing well. Keep.
• Email 5 — "Your discount upgraded" — Decent CTR but too long. Trim aggressively.

• Complete end-of-month performance survey before it's requested — required before booking 1-on-1s
• Set up founder/partnership whitelisting: FB public figure page → creator Instagram → Partnership Hub → duplicate banger ads under founder page
• Use AI for first-draft founder story copy; edit for authenticity before running
• Run a quarterly email flow audit; start with welcome series — shorten Email 1, add before/after to Email 2, swap Email 3 for social proof
• Mine past campaigns for high-performing emails worth repurposing into flows

• Naturalo — Started taking bigger creative swings, uncovered a new winning ICP angle from test ad set, multiple variations, strong purchase volume and amazing ROAS.
• Penny Bees (Blake) — Had been running only statics; launched a founder's story video ad — crushed immediately off the bat.
• Anthony Roth — Launched his very first Meta ads last week; already found a winning angle generating purchases almost every day.

What They Are

• Traditional conversion campaigns → optimize for lowest CPA. Goal: maximize number of purchases.
• Value campaigns → optimize for highest purchase conversion value. Goal: reach people who spend more money when buying off ads — higher AOV buyers, bulk buyers.
• Meta knows all of this from the pixel + Conversions API embedded in every Shopify store — who buys $25 items vs. who buys $200+ in bulk. Real-time data.

Why Use Them Now

• Were broken after iOS 14.5. Mason avoided them ~2022–2024 after repeated failures. Tested extensively in Q4 2025 and January 2026 — confirmed working again.
• Reason 1 — Incremental reach: Conversion campaigns fish in the cheapest CPA pool. Value campaigns give the algorithm a different jump-off point and surface a net new audience that wouldn't see you in a standard conversion campaign.
• Reason 2 — Milk your winners: Holy grail ads are rare. This campaign lets you extract more lifetime revenue from proven creative instead of letting it fade out. "We need to get more out of our winning ads."

Preferred Setup (ABO)

• Campaign type: Sales → Value optimization → Purchase event.
• Budget: ABO (ad set level, not CBO).
• Ad set structure: one winning ad per ad set — never mix multiple ads in one ad set.
• Use post ID to preserve engagement on the ad. How to get it: go into the ad → Preview → "Facebook post with comments" (not Instagram) → copy the URL.
• Starting budget: 2× your normal testing budget (e.g., test at $50/day → start value campaign at $100/day).
• Attribution: 7-1-1 (7-day click + 1-day view + 1-day engaged view) — give Meta maximum signal.
• Multi-advertiser ads: turn OFF — puts your brand next to unrelated brands in a weird placement; Mason no longer recommends it.

Alternative Setup (CBO)

• Same structure (one winning ad per ad set), but budget at the campaign level.
• Set minimum ad set budgets so every ad gets daily spend.
• Each time you add a new winning ad, add 2× testing budget to the total campaign budget.

Scaling & Killing Rules

• Run 4–7 days before making decisions — winning ads deserve patience here.
• Terrible ROAS → pause at 3–4 days (protect budget).
• Borderline → run full 7 days (trust the algorithm — these are proven creatives).
• Crushing → scale 10–25%, or double up. Double-up = highest risk, highest reward.
• Important: A winner in your testing campaign is not guaranteed to win here. If it doesn't work — no emotions, kill it.

Launch Timing

• Mondays or Fridays as a rule of thumb, or launch on your historically best-performing day of the week.

• Every big retail brand constantly refreshes their in-store displays for holidays — because it gives them something to talk about and keeps them relevant. The stores that never change are the ones dying.
• Meta favors ads with trending/current content — similar to using a trending TikTok sound. You typically get cheaper CPMs when creative is seasonally relevant.
• You do not need a promo or sale. Just angle the creative around the holiday.

Examples

• Valentine's Day: "Gift yourself a clear face with natural soap" — add hearts, red-toned backgrounds.
• Rugtomize: "Gift your business a custom logo rug" or "Do you love your business? Prove it."
• Consider interest audiences around gifting/holidays — can outperform standard broad targeting in Q1/Q2.
• Mini collections or themed bundles work well (e.g., jewelry brand Valentine's Day collection).

Key Dates to Plan For

• Valentine's Day → President's Day → International Women's Day → St. Patrick's Day → April Fool's → Mother's Day → and on throughout the year.

• 2025 total: ~$2.081M revenue at 2.7 blended ROAS.
• Jan 2026 goal: $220K at ≥2.7 ROAS. Actual (as of call): ~$270K+ — beating forecast.
• Feb 2026 target: $360K — a significant step up that's driving aggressive budget pushing in January.
• Daily orders: 20+ orders/day. Monthly ad spend: ~$100K. Started from zero.

What's Driving January Results

• Static ad dominance — graphic designer started making ads for the first time two months ago; now producing winning statics consistently.
• Doubling down on winning elements: find a winning ad → immediately make 10 variations of it.
• Amazon halo effect: Meta ads drive brand searches on Amazon; Rugtomize Amazon AOVs have roughly doubled.

Next Frontier

• Video ads — testing an AI video agency; considering a freelancer to manage creator outreach.
• Creator flywheel: find creators → get raw footage + polished edits → feed to video editors.
• February focus: crank up static ad volume even further.

Resource: Drop Manifesto (11-slide doc, linked in Slack)

• Email volume is everything. Send 3–4–5 emails about your new product. Be so sick of talking about it that you know you've done enough. If you worked on this product for 6 months and send one email — that's a wasted launch.
• Stories + organic + SMS — post constantly until you've beaten it to death. That's the signal you've done enough.
• Post-launch: keep marketing with customer stories, sold-out/restock moments, keep the conversation going. Launch day isn't the end.
• Multiple products: if some are flopping, focus budget and energy on what's selling first, then move on.
• Ads: put your new product into your existing winning ad formats — don't reinvent the wheel. Can test new concepts too, but winning formats are your anchor.
• Have backup creatives ready before launch day. If the first round flops, don't be caught without anything to run.

• Mason AI — use it for rapid creative iteration: upload a winning ad → ask for 5 variations; describe a flop → ask what to change. All answers are based on Mason's actual content (calls, Twitter, YouTube). Available 24/7. Usage increasing but still underleveraged.
• End-of-month review forms — being released this week by Matt; fill them out.
• Verify business on Meta — if you haven't yet, do it immediately.
• Referral program — $1,000 cash (Zelle/wire) for referring a new brand that joins the program.

Q4 2025 kickoff call led by Mason Littlejohn. Live audit of a real client ad account demonstrated how to cut underperformers, consolidate spend toward winners, and build awareness now to maximize November and December results.

• Walked through a real client account live — auditing ad sets, cutting low-spend or underperforming ads, and consolidating budget toward proven winners.
• Key decision framework: when to pause ads based on weekly vs. daily performance patterns, not just today's numbers in isolation.
• Borderline performers: factor in day-of-week context (e.g., Monday data naturally looks weaker) before cutting — give it a full week window if the cost is low.
• Concentrating budget on proven creatives beats spreading spend thin across many ads — more data per ad improves Meta's optimization signal.
• Weekly wins highlighted: one member nearly 10x-ed profit via email campaigns; another achieved best-ever revenue by doubling from the prior month.

Using viral content as ad creative inspiration

• Technique: browse viral Facebook posts and trending news headlines to find structures that blend natively into the feed rather than feeling like ads.
• Goal: sensational-but-relevant — not pure clickbait that attracts low-quality traffic with no purchase intent.
• Mason live-briefed ad concepts for Rugtomize by remapping viral news structures onto the brand: "breaking news" framing, side-by-side comparisons, tweet-with-image formats.
• The creative brief format matters: take the emotional structure of what makes a post go viral and map it to your product's core benefit.
• Risk of being too clickbait-heavy: attracts disengaged audiences that hurt CPMs and downstream conversion rates — stay relevant to the actual product.

• September performance slowdown confirmed as industry-wide: seasonal transition effect, compounded by possible AI-driven job market softness affecting consumer spending.
• Audience Segment reporting inside Meta: use it to measure how much of broad campaign spend is going to retargeting vs. new audiences — useful for validating targeting efficiency without adding audience exclusions.
• Meta algorithm speculation: Mason's direct take — stop blaming the algorithm. Focus on inputs/outputs — creative volume, email, and fundamentals. Even at $300K/day spend, platform noise never trumped creative quality.
• Q4 strategy: use October to build brand awareness at scale so the brand is top-of-mind heading into November and December peak buying period.
• Upcoming guests announced: Phil Vilk (Creative Launch) and Oren Schauble (organic creative).

Hosted by Mason Littlejohn with Steven Belayneh and Matt Faria. Call covered a refined testing campaign SOP, a detailed Google Ads case study for a product with zero existing search demand, and tactical Q4 preparation discussions.

Repositioning testing as middle-of-funnel

• New framework repositions the testing campaign from an "outside the funnel" artifact to a deliberate middle-of-funnel vehicle.
• Phase 1 — Launch: No audience exclusions at all. Ads launch broad to prove conversion ability across the widest possible audience.
• Phase 2 — Confirm winners: Once a creative proves itself, add customer exclusions to isolate new-customer performance.
• Phase 3 — Graduate: Strongest winners move to cold top-of-funnel campaigns with full exclusions (customers + email lists + website visitors).
• Weekly wins: Evan of Break Free nearly 10x profit growth; Naturalo fixed a website issue and saw immediate performance lift; T's Crossed crushed ROAS with a new Ryder Cup drop; Brema, Nobad, Part by Design, Vita Prima ran stellar Labor Day promotions.

Scaling from $0 to $61K/month in 3 months

• Bricks is a physical phone-locking device with no existing direct search demand on Google — no one searches "phone locking device."
• Started May 2025: $15/day brand campaign only. Added non-brand PMAX (excluding brand terms, set to 3x target ROAS) plus adjacent keyword search campaigns.
• Adjacent keyword strategy: captured searches like "phone addiction," "block social media," "parental control app" — intent-matched but not product-specific searches.
• By June: $23K spend at 3.7 ROAS. By August: $61K/month.
• Custom segment signals inside PMAX and Demand Gen: used competitor website URLs and app-blocker app URLs to build high-intent audiences for algorithm targeting.
• Separate shopping campaign case study: a tactical baby carrier brand with a poor website still captured the top Google Shopping slot by stealing traffic from an entrenched competitor.
• Meta-Google flywheel effect: scaling Meta spend drives more branded Google search volume, making Google campaigns more efficient over time.

• Discount code vs. auto-applied: Mason endorsed requiring a code (Ruggable's approach) to protect margin from buyers who would have purchased at full price — auto-apply gives the discount to everyone.
• Budget optimization cadence: look at current-week data first, then expand to 7 or 10 days for more context. Focus on the weekend window when optimizing on Mondays — don't cut based on weak Monday data alone.
• Meta account verification: brief endorsement for priority support access — worthwhile for active advertisers.
• Disabling Advantage Plus audiences: when running strict interest campaigns, disable Advantage Plus audiences to prevent Meta from expanding beyond your chosen targeting.
• Rapid Ads tool (~$30/month): faster alternative to Ads Manager for launching multiple creatives simultaneously. Live demo showed streamlined multi-ad launch workflow vs. native Meta interface.
• Mason offered to build a live Google campaign from scratch on a future call for any volunteer client.

Dedicated BFCM preparation call. Mason Littlejohn walked through a comprehensive Q4 framework covering every pillar of a successful Q4 push. New member Nick (Paradigm Supplements) welcomed; weekly wins included 10 ROAS by Boris at iVanity.

• Minimum effective discount: at least 20% off site-wide. Keep the offer simple and consistent — do not change it daily.
• Separate Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers to give fresh reasons to buy on each day: use BF for a core site-wide discount, then add a free gift or rush shipping on CM to convert fence-sitters.
• Early November "early access" sale strategy modeled on Alo Yoga: run a pre-BFCM sale to get product in customers' hands before the main event, building loyalty and repeat purchase intent.
• Bundle strategy: create product bundles that increase AOV while still appearing heavily discounted to buyers.

• 0% business credit cards as a tool to fund Q4 inventory and ad spend without depleting personal cash reserves.
• Recommended cards: Amex Blue Business Cash and Amex Business Plus (12-month 0% intro APR), Chase Ink Business Cash and Chase Ink Business Unlimited (top alternatives).
• Strategy: use 0% credit to buy inventory and fund ad spend in October/November, repay from Q4 revenue in December/January before interest kicks in.
• Key rule: only use this if you have confidence in your product-market fit and a realistic Q4 revenue projection — it amplifies both wins and losses.

• Meta Ads: ensure both prospecting and retargeting campaigns are structured and budgeted ahead of November. Retargeting budgets should scale significantly during active BFCM days.
• Google Ads: branded search campaigns and Merchant Center coverage are essential for Q4 — Meta spend drives Google search volume, and competitors can steal that branded traffic.
• Email and SMS cadence: plan the full send schedule for the promotion period in advance. Frequency increases during BFCM are expected and accepted by buyers.
• Alia BFCM pop-up request and list-building: use pre-BFCM pop-ups to build SMS and email lists ahead of the promotional period.

• Mason used ChatGPT and Claude to analyze Rugtimize customer reviews, extracting "hidden" purchase motivations not obvious from surface-level review reading.
• AI output generated six green-screen ad scripts filmed in a single day — significantly compressing the creative production timeline.
• Process: feed AI a bulk export of customer reviews → prompt for underlying emotional motivations → use those motivations as ad script hooks → film with green screen for flexible background options.

• Scaled boosted posts: can be viable if results are strong, but build out proper ad account infrastructure for true scalability — boosted posts have limited targeting and optimization controls.
• Texas SMS compliance law: Attentive and Postscript are filing suit against the law. Safest approach: turn off Texas SMS sends. Rugtimize approach: exclude Texas from flows specifically.
• Macro events (tariffs, political news): Mason's firm advice — keep ads running always. Reduce budget slightly if truly concerned, but never fully pause. Stopping ads costs more in lost momentum than any short-term CPM spike.

What Happened

• Texas implemented a new Business & Commerce Code effective September 1, 2025 requiring businesses to register with the state if they want to send SMS messages to Texas residents.
• Registration costs: $200 application fee + a $10,000 surety bond (can be obtained via a bond provider without putting up full $10K).
• Not legal advice — Mason's interpretation based on uploading the law to ChatGPT.

Who Is Safe

• Exemptions include publicly traded companies, financial institutions, nonprofits, food companies, brick-and-mortar retailers.
• Key exemption: Businesses contacting current or former customers if the business has operated under the same name for 2+ years.
• Under the law, a "customer" = anyone who was contacted or solicited (even without purchase). So anyone already in your SMS list before Sep 1 is a customer and you can still text them.
• New subscribers from Texas after Sep 1 fall under the new law — they need registration or must be excluded.

Action Plan (Minimal Compliance)

• Step 1: Create a Klaviyo segment for Texas contacts (filter: Properties > State = Texas).
• Step 2: Add a trigger/profile filter to your SMS flows: State does not equal Texas. Add this to Welcome flows, Win-back flows, and any SMS campaigns.
• Step 3: For campaigns, exclude the Texas segment before sending.
• This creates a paper trail showing you attempted to comply — useful if anyone comes after you.
• Future state: Evaluate whether the ROI from Texas contacts justifies paying the surety bond (~$200 + bond cost).

Core Rules

• Retargeting ROAS must be higher than prospecting. If it isn't, your retargeting setup is broken — reconfigure or reach out for help.
• Retargeting budget cap: maximum 30% of total ad spend. Never exceed 50% except possibly during BFCM. If you're spending 60%+ on retargeting, your in-platform ROAS will look amazing but your business ROAS will be weak — you're burning money on people who would have bought anyway.
• Real example: A re-signed client had 60% retargeting spend, platform ROAS of 5, but their worst month top-line revenue of the year. Their best month (3× revenue) had a platform ROAS of only 3 but a healthy blended business ROAS of 4.25.

Brick (Single-Product Brand) Setup

• Bottom-of-funnel campaign: Audiences — add-to-cart 180 days, view content 7 days, initiate checkout 180 days. Small $50/day budget. Excludes customers and never-purchased email list.
• Creative strategy for retargeting: Take prospecting ads that have fatigued and repurpose them for retargeting — they're fresh for the retargeting audience. Don't launch new ads directly into retargeting first.
• Retargeting ad style: Keep it simple and punchy. Just remind them what the product is. No need for a full explainer video. Works: simple static showing product benefit, review as ad copy, "what is life like with this product" lifestyle video.
• Separate static and video retargeting into different campaigns for spend control — different inventory pools, different audience reach.
• Never-purchased email list is the single best retargeting audience. Better than pixel-based add-to-carts because email list = people who are bought in; Meta can match them precisely; they just need a reminder.

Special Purpose Campaigns (Product Drops)

• When launching a new product, create a dedicated temporary retargeting campaign for that product only — hit customers, email list, and engagers with ads specifically about the new product.
• Give it its own budget. Run until it loses steam, then pause it — the product naturally gets absorbed into evergreen campaigns.
• Example from Kimbo: 11 ROAS on customer retargeting for a new camo product launch. Even lower-performing ad sets generated meaningful revenue and justified the spend.

Testing Without Retargeting (No Exclusions)

• Running testing campaigns without exclusions still allows the algorithm to find and retarget warm audiences on its own — no control, but the coverage still exists.
• When you're ready to scale, add dedicated retargeting for full control over spend to those warm segments.

• On track to hit $200K month — Labor Day 15% off site-wide sale to push over the line. Code required (not auto-applied). Mason's principle: don't give away free money — many buyers don't even look for a discount, they just buy. Always use a code.
• Interviewing full-stack CRO agencies (Convertibles at $6K/month is the frontrunner). Mason's message to founder on sitting on $300–400K cash: "If you're not allocating capital to make more money, that's dumb. You're not Apple."
• New creative format being tested: green screen talking head with top-performing video playing in the background — reuse winning creative visuals while delivering a new script.

• Symptom: $41 CPM, $30 CPC, almost no clicks despite spending.
• Step 1: Try a completely new ad account and see if CPMs normalize.
• Step 2: Try running ads from a different page or handle you've never used.
• Step 3: If still broken, try the complete opposite creative strategy — if everything is niche/solution-aware, try broad/clickbait. If everything is UGC, try bold static. Eliminate all previous variables.
• Mason has seen accounts with stuck $100 CPMs no matter what — the only fix was a fresh ad account.
• RapidAds ($29/month) — bulk uploader for Meta ads that bypasses the slow/buggy native UI. Can set default copy, headline, description, and creative settings per ad type. Especially useful when launching large numbers of ads (e.g., 70 ads for a Labor Day sale). Not officially endorsed but Mason uses it for agency clients.

• High CPC while hitting your ROAS target is still not acceptable. The goal is: same CPA/ROAS + 3–5x the traffic from cheaper clicks.
• Mental model: if you're spending $X and getting 1,000 visitors at $5 CPC, a winning creative could get 5,000 visitors at $1 CPC for the same budget. Five times the email signups, five times the retargeting pool, five times the organic discovery.
• Do not accept high CPCs as the standard. Hold your creative team to the standard that cheap clicks are achievable — Mason has seen under-$1 clicks even at $300K/day spend (Ruggable).
• Rugtomize's current CPCs are high and Mason is not satisfied. Solution: CRO first, then hire a creative agency specifically to produce low-CPC ad formats.

• AIDA = Awareness → Interest → Desire → Action. Everything above Awareness is "Unaware."
• Types of awareness: Problem aware (they know their problem), Solution aware (they know solutions exist), Product aware (they know your product), Aspiration aware (they don't know they want the lifestyle you're selling — e.g., newly wealthy person seeing designer ads for first time).
• New/growing brands: stay in the Aware → Interested → Desire range. Target people most likely to buy first — your ICP who already know they have the problem your product solves.
• Unaware audience (true cold, no problem awareness) = massive scale potential, but save for when you're already doing $500K+/month. It's expensive to educate.
• Book recommendation: Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz — the foundational text on awareness levels in marketing.

• Test with intention, not volume. "I think this headline will resonate with my ICP because X" is better than "let me blast 300 AI variations and see what the algorithm picks."
• Isolate variables — when testing a static, test headlines first, then images. Don't test 5 things at once unless doing true multivariate.
• AI is a tool for amplifying intentional ideas, not a replacement for having a point of view on your brand and customer.
• Dropshipper volume-testing mindset is not Mason's style — as a brand owner you should care about the message you're putting out, not just what converts.

The Method

• When a campaign/ad is outperforming your ROAS/CPA target and the majority of leading + lagging indicators look strong — double the budget.
• This is how Mason scaled multiple brands from ~$100K/month to $2M+/month: repeatedly doubling when performance was strong, dropping 50% when it went off-track, then doubling again.

Required Metrics Before Doubling

• All of these should look good: CPC (≤$1.50 for Rugtomize), CPA (at or below goal), CPM (cheap), ROAS (at or above goal), cost per add-to-cart, cost per initiated checkout, cost per view content.
• If only CPA is good but other metrics are off — not enough signal. Wait.
• If all metrics are firing — extremely high probability that doubling will hold.

How the Cycle Works

• Launch at $50/day. CPA comes in at $10 (goal: $20). Double → $100/day.
• CPA rises to $15. Still under goal. Double → $200/day.
• CPA jumps to $25. Off target. Drop 50% → $100/day. Wait for stabilization.
• CPA stabilizes at $17. Back on track. Double → $200/day again.
• Repeat. Your baseline spend floor keeps rising with each successful cycle.
• Within ~23 days you can go from $50/day to $400/day on a single ad — 8x baseline in under a month.

Why the 50% Drop Works

• When you pull budget away, the algorithm works harder to earn it back. The algorithm is built to extract dollars from you — when you take dollars away, it optimizes aggressively to get back to good performance so you spend more again.
• Mason consistently sees: budget drop 50% → CPA recovers in 1–2 days → double again.

Common Mistakes

• Doubling without all metrics being strong — if just CPA is good but CPC is $5, the creative isn't built to scale. The pressure-test of a budget increase will reveal it.
• Leaving it at the high budget when it goes off-track. Immediately drop. Don't wait.
• Never taking the swing — most brands let opportunities go to waste by playing it safe. "Brands would have doubled their budgets when they had their opportunities. Their business could be 2–4x the size it is now."

Scale Hard in Testing Too

• Mason scales aggressively in the testing campaign, not just performance. Example from Brick: a test ad set that started at $50/day was scaled to $800/day using the double-up method.
• Good creative can sustain massive budget increases. Scale in testing early.

• Fall is effectively here for e-com even before the September 21 equinox — Halloween products are already in stores. Be the first in your niche to launch fall creative.
• Conversion rates naturally increase as people return from summer travel, wallets re-open, and Q4 spending mode kicks in.
• The Meta algorithm rewards trending, seasonally-relevant content — similar to using a trending TikTok sound. Expect cheaper CPMs.

What to Do

• Update ad copy keywords: "step into fall," "get autumn-ready," "fall refresh," etc.
• Overlay ads with fall colors, backgrounds, and settings. Swap backgrounds on existing winning statics.
• Test fall-specific interest audiences (Halloween, autumn, holiday shopping).
• Update pop-up themes and on-site seasonal imagery if on-brand.
• Example: Rug Bowl launches dedicated Halloween/fall rug campaigns annually and has been running the same strategy profitably for years. Ruggable does seasonal copy refreshes ("Closet refresh incoming").

Performance

• 2.78 ROAS last week; on track for first $200K+ month; ROAS up 10%, top-line revenue up 42%, net profit up 61% vs. prior month.
• First ever evergreen $10K day achieved.

In-House Static Machine

• Referenced a D2C Midas Twitter thread — his first $1M/month came from building an in-house static machine.
• Process: post on Upwork → shortlist applicants → give one paid test task → paid trial for top 2–4 → keep top 3 fastest performers.
• Reason: static ads are faster to produce than video for Rugtomize (custom product = hard to send to creators). Tried Constant Creative but the back-and-forth wasn't worth the cost vs. in-house.

CRO & Website

• PDP improvements: Added Okendo review app (best-in-class for reviews), us-vs-them comparison, FAQ section, design quality "transformation" examples, and a redesigned homepage with value props + social proof.
• Evaluating Convertibles CRO agency at $6K/month — formal call just had. Planning to onboard in September. If they can double conversion rate, the economics are undeniable.

Meme Ads + Creative Diversification

• Launched Justin Bieber/Kendall Jenner meme-style static ads (girl/guy talking meme format). Used Claude/ChatGPT to write 10 variations of brand copy in the meme template.
• Results within 24h: $1 CPC, one order. May reach audiences the standard ads can't. Low-cost, fast to produce — highly recommended to test.
• "If you see a meme in the morning and think it fits your brand — throw it in Canva and test it."

CPC Campaign Update

• Running top-of-funnel CPC campaign (no exclusions) and separate testing/performance campaigns. The CPC campaign drives awareness; testing/performance campaigns close the sale. System seems to be working — best month in progress.

• Do not apply the double-up method to retargeting. Retargeting has a finite audience — there are real diminishing returns from scaling too fast.
• Retargeting = consistent long-term play. Prospecting = where the aggressive scaling happens. Scale prospecting hard → your retargeting audience grows naturally.
• Preferred setup: CBO retargeting campaign with minimum ad spend set on the best-performing ad set. Example: campaign at $100/day, best ad set gets minimum $50/day floor — gives control without creating multiple budgets to manage.

• Optimization order: Check blended/off-platform ROAS (Northbeam, Triple Whale) first. If you're hitting your overall goal, stay the course. Then look into Meta if you're not.
• A bad Meta in-platform ROAS day doesn't mean you pull budget — it means check the actual business number first.
• "I call it: optimize the business off-platform, but optimize the details on-platform."
• Meta drives the lion's share of brand discovery (2M+ impressions/month for Rugtomize) — don't kill the traffic engine because one platform day looks off.
• Don't over-index on Meta in-platform attribution. An ad showing a $360 CPA might still be sending clicks that convert via email later.

• When you turn on age restrictions or saved audience targeting, Meta shows a message: "Further limiting the reach of your ads." This language is designed to make you feel dumb — ignore it.
• Age restrictions and saved audiences are perfectly valid — sometimes they're exactly what your business needs.
• Mason uses "Further limit reach" mode when adding interest audiences as saved audiences for seasonal or niche targeting.

The Problem

• In a standard testing or performance campaign, your winning ads (cheap CPC + great ROAS) compete for budget with ads that convert but have high CPCs. The high-CPC ads often steal the budget because they convert fast, starving your top-of-funnel cheap-click ads.

The Solution: A Dedicated CPC Campaign

• Take your winning ads that have a CPC under $1.50 and move them into a dedicated "CPC campaign" — a separate campaign running with no audience exclusions, optimized purely to drive cheap traffic.
• This campaign functions as pure top-of-funnel awareness. It drives cheap clicks, fills the funnel, and warms audiences for retargeting without being evaluated on ROAS.
• Your testing/performance campaigns (which have exclusions) then act as middle-funnel, converting with better ROAS on the traffic the CPC campaign generated.

CPC Standards

• Target: $1.50 CPC or below for prospecting ads. Anything above $2 is not acceptable.
• Even at $300K/day spend (Ruggable), ads were getting under $1 clicks. Cheap clicks are achievable at any scale — it's purely a creative quality issue.
• Exercise: If your CPCs are consistently high, intentionally create clickbait-style ads — not caring whether they convert, just trying to get the cheapest possible click. This teaches you what messaging/creative style drives cheap clicks for your audience. Then reverse-engineer to add value while keeping the cheap click.

High CPM Diagnosis

• High CPMs = either your ad account is bugged/glitched, or your creative is too narrow and not resonating with a broad enough audience. Meta is charging more to find the small niche of people your ad appeals to.
• Solution: create an ad that's relatable to the broadest possible audience — something everyone could care about. If the high CPM persists despite strong creative, try a fresh ad account.

What It Is

• An AI assistant built on Delphi AI, trained on 1.5M+ words of Mason's content — YouTube videos, client calls, coaching calls, all uploaded to Delphi.
• Modeled after Jeremy Haynes' "Jeremy AI" — Mason uses it for his own agency (writing prospect emails, handling client situations) and was so impressed he built his own version for the program.
• "I wrote the Ten Commandments of Meta Ads using my own AI. I used it to save my brain power because the knowledge was already there."

How to Use It

• Slack access: Use the dedicated Mason AI group channel for shared Q&A that benefits everyone, or DM Mason AI directly for private questions.
• Do NOT tag Mason AI in your brand channel — it creates notification chaos and makes it impossible to track real questions from the team.
• Can upload photos for creative feedback. For image uploads, direct Delphi access is needed (Slack version glitches on photos) — Mason was working on granting full access.
• Can upload CSV of ad account data for feedback — Steve tested this and reported it works very well.
• Cannot analyze videos. Cannot answer questions about specific coaching call content (Phase 3 roadmap).

What It Is Good At

• On-demand Meta ads + e-commerce strategy questions at any hour.
• Creative iteration: describe a winning ad → ask for 5 variations; upload an image → get copy suggestions.
• General DTC/Shopify app recommendations, bundling strategy, email marketing questions.

Important Notes

• If an answer contradicts what Mason has said recently (e.g., Advantage+ vs. broad — they're now the same), flag it so Mason can update the training.
• Phase 1: rollout. Phase 2: fixing kinks. Phase 3: adding coaching call search functionality.

• Blended ROAS: 2.76 for the month — acceptable (target: ≥2.5). On track for first $200K month.
• Instagram scrub: Reduced from 150+ posts to 13. Purged all "mom-and-pop" looking content. Keeping only high-prestige rug work for MLB, Red Bull, Dove, CBS, Hard Rock Cafe. Goal: look like a $50M brand even at current scale.
• Abandoned checkout phone calls: Founder's assistant now calls people who abandoned checkout. Only two weeks in but believed to have a positive impact at $425 AOV.

Instagram Content Pillars

• Founders content: Behind-the-scenes with Mason and Iman (founder).
• Brand content: Educational FAQs — non-slip, stain-resistant, 4K print quality. Treat it as objection handling, not selling.
• Behind the logo: Green screen storytelling — "Spotify began in 2006…" → reveal the rug version. Story of major brand logos.
• "If we made a rug for X": AI-generated rugs for SpaceX, Facebook LA office, etc. Builds association with recognizable brands to increase trust.
• Marketing tips for businesses: Since ICP is business owners, provide value content on marketing. Example: "I'm a startup CMO — here are the 4 most valuable marketing channels." Sell without selling.

• Core principle: Treat your product page like an info product sales page — it should never end. As long as someone keeps scrolling, keep giving them more information.
• Maximize real estate: Every section of the product page should be used — Klarna/BNPL info, reviews, model sizing, shipping speed, FAQs, warranty, guarantee, value props, us-vs-them, social proof.
• Reference brands: Ruggable, Alo Yoga, Dr. Squatch, Grüns — brands doing hundreds of millions have spent millions testing page layouts. Use them for inspiration.
• "Gun to your head" exercise: "If a person clicks your ad and lands on your page — and you'll get shot if they don't buy — what would you put on that page? That's your product page." Every piece of information they need to make the purchase decision.
• Objection research: Upload all your reviews to ChatGPT. Ask: "Why are people buying from us?" and "What objections were holding them back?" Then put those answers on the product page.
• Email the non-buyers: Email your list who haven't purchased — "Is there anything we can answer for you?" The questions they ask → put on the product page.

• Tough love answer: An ad that can't sustain beyond a week isn't built for scale. Good ads can scale and sustain.
• Practical check: Are you rewarding the algorithm with budget? When an ad is winning, increase budget immediately — don't wait a week to add spend. The algorithm reads your lack of investment as a signal you don't value its work.
• Rule: if an ad is winning in the first 1–2 days, scale it within 1–3 days max. Don't play it safe and wait a full week.
• If you've been scaling but it still drops off: cap increases at 10–50% instead of doubling.

• Never-ending Welcome Flow: Add your highest-performing historical emails to the Welcome flow, spaced every few days. Anyone new to your list will never have seen those emails. Keeps your list engaged even on weeks when you can't send campaigns.
• Win-back flows: 30, 60, 90, 120-day sequences. Adding an offer at the end of a win-back flow converts well. Free money — "at scale, these sequences equal massive revenue."
• Deliverability note: Use Smart Sending on far-out flow emails if open rates are declining. Don't nuke your list health.
• Retarget your email list with ads: If your open rate is 40%, that means 60% of your list never sees your emails. They need to be reached via ads. "Never purchased" email audiences in Meta consistently crush — these people want to buy, they just forgot about you.

• Book recommendation: Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell — highest leverage activities are few. If you're spending time on low-leverage tasks to save money, you're losing more than you're saving.
• Practical: if writing emails takes you too long and won't be good anyway — pay for it. Use the saved time on what moves the needle most (ads, creative strategy, key decisions).
• In the beginning, bootstrapping requires doing everything yourself. The shift happens when the opportunity cost of NOT outsourcing exceeds the cost of outsourcing.

What Changed

• Meta invested heavily in AI infrastructure (announced Dec 2024, rolling out through July 2025). The algorithm can now process approximately 10,000× more ad candidates than before, enabling hyper-specific micro-decisions on which ad to serve to whom.
• Result: creative fatigue happens faster for brands at scale. The algorithm has already processed everything it needs to know about your ad — it doesn't need to keep running it to gather data.
• The key signal it now rewards: genuine creative diversity — not just different hooks on the same body, but truly unique ads with different messages, different value propositions, different structures.

Who This Affects

• New/smaller brands (under ~$50K/month): Almost every ad is already diverse since the ad account has little history. Focus on fundamentals — don't panic-restructure because of Andromeda.
• Scaling brands ($50K+/month): Ad accounts have thousands of ads worth of history. The algorithm has seen your core angles over and over. This is where you need to actively pursue deeper diversification.

The Andromeda Creative Framework

• Ad type diversification: Run every ad type — video (short + long), static, GIF, carousel, DPA, collection ads. Different people consume different formats. Ruggable ran every format simultaneously. "You make it work, you figure it out."
• Angle/message diversification: Instead of the same hook + same body → different hook + different body. The whole ad goes deep on one specific value prop. A 30–60 second video entirely about gut health for your dog food. Not a hook about gut health + generic body about all benefits.
• Customer profile/pain point diversification: Same ICP, different reason to buy. Example (Ruggable): one dog owner cares about non-slip → full ad on non-slip. Another cares about washability → full ad on machine washable. Same customer, different entry point.
• For apparel: Settings and environment diversity — mirror selfies, POV walking into a club, restaurant photoshoots, street shots, different camera styles (iPhone vs. DSLR), lo-fi vs. hi-fi production. Different context = truly diverse ad.

Exercise: Value Prop Audit

• Look at your top-spending creatives year-to-date. What percentage of your spend is concentrated on one or two messages? If 70% says the same thing in slightly different ways — that's where Andromeda is limiting you.
• List every reason someone might buy your product. For each reason: has it been covered? Covered in one way or multiple deep ways? Which is underexplored?
• Use AI (Claude, ChatGPT, Manus AI) to write 5–15 scripts going deep on each individual value prop. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" — but this audit surfaces blind spots.

• Off to the biggest revenue start of the year. Possibility of first $200K+ month. Main focuses: creative volume, CRO, Instagram organic.

When Performance Is Strong — What NOT to Do

• Do not over-test while things are working. Launching new campaigns, new countries, new cost cap structures when performance is peak is how you accidentally nuke your profitability.
• When things are crushing: the only action you need is increasing budgets.
• "When things are going really well, go focus on things that you need to improve or have been putting off."
• Example: Brick (Mason's client) had their best week ever. Mason's instinct: don't launch anything new. Just double budgets.

Save Tests for Your Back Pocket

• Have a list of things you want to test (new countries, cost caps, TikTok, new creative formats). When things are crushing is NOT the time — wait for performance to normalize, then deploy those tests.
• Launching too many experiments during a peak period makes it impossible to attribute what caused the eventual slowdown.

• Start slow: $25/day budget on a test. Don't allocate $15K to Australia to "see what happens."
• Geo-stacking: Bundle multiple countries together in one ad set. Example: Korea + Singapore + Hong Kong + Australia → insanely cheap CPMs because the pool is large but audiences are engaged buyers.
• Take your best-performing ads and best-selling products for the first international test. Don't test new creative internationally.
• Run for 2–4 weeks without touching it. Let the algorithm learn. If it's working at $25/day, scale it — you can often mirror your entire US setup internationally.
• Retargeting first: If you're cautious about prospecting internationally, start with DPA retargeting worldwide for existing visitors. Very efficient, lower risk.
• Q4 is the right time to start figuring out international — double the working campaigns going into peak season.

• Moby gives recommendations based only on quantitative data — can't account for brand context, strategy, or qualitative reasoning behind campaign structure decisions.
• Example: recommended "spend more on branded Google" — not useful advice for most DTC brands.
• Risk: analysis paralysis. Following Moby down a rabbit hole can lead to constant second-guessing.
• Verdict: Not worth the cost unless you have extra budget and will actively use it. Ask for a free trial first. If it works for your specific setup — great. But it's not a scaling solution.

• Recommended platforms: Billow (used by Brick extensively), Clip/YouClip (used for Rugtomize with decent results).
• Mason planned to attend a Veo 3 tutorial in his mastermind group and would share learnings if the platform proved valuable.
• Manus AI: reportedly very good at scripting (better than Claude for this specific use case per Mason's mastermind). Worth testing for writing diverse value-prop scripts at scale.
• Core idea: AI video is a direct path to massive creative diversification at scale without the cost/time of traditional production.

Why August–October Is Critical

• Summer travelers return home in August — their "fun money" refocuses from vacations to buying products online. Orders pick up naturally.
• Conversion rates begin recovering as Q3 ends and Q4 approaches. This is the time to be building momentum.
• Labor Day (US) is a major spending holiday — kicks off the fall consumer spending surge.
• Q4 compounding effect: Customers acquired now will repeat-buy during BFCM and holiday. A $50K spend in October that acquires 500 customers can generate $200K+ in BFCM repeat revenue if your product is good.

The Strategy

• Goal: Acquire as many customers as possible at your minimum palatable ROAS going into BFCM/holiday. Don't leave budget on the table in Oct trying to protect ROAS — fill your funnel.
• Think in terms of: "What can I do now to set up the biggest November/December my brand has ever had?"
• Set your minimum ROAS target based on your break-even calculation (see next section) and push spend hard at that floor.

• Understanding your break-even ROAS is the foundation of every budget and scaling decision. Mason walked through the calculation live in a shared spreadsheet (sent to coaching chat).
• Inputs needed: product COGS, average order value, fixed overhead, marketing spend percentage target.
• The output tells you the minimum ROAS at which you're not losing money — anything above that is your "palatable minimum" range for scale season.
• Use OPM (Other People's Money): Do not fund inventory with your own cash. SBA loans, business lines of credit, and inventory financing exist specifically for this. "The richest people in the world don't use their own cash — they keep their cash and use OPM."
• Using a line of credit to fund inventory while keeping your own cash frees capital for marketing spend — which directly drives revenue.

• Blended ROAS = the only metric that matters. Not new customer CPA. Not Meta in-platform ROAS. The blended top-line return on total ad spend across all channels.
• New customer CPA is a secondary metric. Watch it — if your return customer rate climbs and new customer rate falls, fix it. But don't make NCPA your primary optimization lever.
• If blended ROAS is on target: keep spending. Full stop. Many brands handicap their own growth by cutting spend because NCPA ticked up while blended was healthy.

Budget Management Mindset

• One bad day ≠ action required. E-com has variance. Reacting to every single bad day with a budget cut creates a cycle of self-sabotage.
• Manage at the monthly and weekly level, not daily. If you're consistently off your ROAS target for the month and trending wrong, then cut budget.
• When off target consistently: cut budget until you're back above your ROAS floor → rebuild with better creative → scale back up. This ebb and flow is normal at every scale.
• "I have to constantly tell Iman (Rugtomize founder): we're good for the month, chill. You can't shoot yourself in the foot over one bad day."

• MidJourney just released video generation (v1) — ability to take a static product image and animate it into a short video ad.
• Workflow: (1) Use ChatGPT to write a MidJourney prompt for the animation you want — e.g., "Bottle dropping into juice with a splash effect, professional ad style." (2) Upload product image + prompt to MidJourney. (3) MidJourney generates 4 animation variations. (4) Select best, download, use as video ad creative.
• For 9:16 format, prompt for the specific ratio. Expect to iterate on prompts — the first result often needs refinement.
• Cost: ~$10/month for MidJourney basic plan. Much cheaper than studio production.
• Mason ran the tutorial live on call — with some technical hiccups that are common on first use. Recommend practicing before using in client work.
• Static animations are seeing success across Mason's agency clients — animated product statics as ad creative have been converting.

• Month ending around 2.7 blended ROAS. Theme page A/B test live via Shoplift — Shopify's best native A/B testing app. Prior PDP test showed meaningful conversion rate difference between polished mockup image vs. raw upload image.
• New theme launched mid-test — initial conversion rate looked terrible after 24h. More data needed.
• Ongoing Instagram overhaul: purging 300+ posts down to ~11; keeping only prestige brand rug work (MLB, etc.); developing content pillars (business storytelling, behind-the-logo, ICP-targeted marketing tips); Cut 30 challenge joining to force content creation habit.

• Non-opener resends can generate incremental revenue but carry deliverability risk — use them selectively.
• Timing trick: Send the original email at 8am, send the non-opener resend at 4pm (opposite time of day). People who don't open at 8am may check email later. Vice versa for evening sends.
• Only resend winners: If the first email performed poorly, don't resend. If it crushed, a non-opener follow-up will also crush. If it failed, the non-opener will fail even harder.
• Risk: damages deliverability at scale. Going into Q4, protect your email health — don't over-use non-opener campaigns in September/October.

• Mason's benchmark: 3 purchases within a 7-day window at your CPA goal before scaling an ad/ad set.
• "Rule of three" — 1 purchase could be a fluke. 2 is interesting. 3 within the window = crowd, actionable signal, scale it.

• Age breakdown in Meta: Use Ads Reporting → breakdown by age. 55+ typically has the highest CPMs across all brands — factor this into targeting decisions if relevant to your ICP.
• Shop Pay campaigns: Set-it-and-forget-it incremental revenue. Ask ChatGPT for setup instructions (Mason planned to drop a link in the coaching channel). Low-hanging fruit — if it ROIs, run it.
• Shopify Plus / Shopify Audiences: Shopify Audiences is essentially just a lookalike audience — not a scaling strategy. Don't pay for Shopify Plus specifically for Audiences. If you're already on Plus, use it, but it shouldn't be your reason to upgrade.

• Organic Wave Wellness (Carson) — launched new video ads; hit a record revenue day on Tuesday; on track for best July ever.
• VitaBoost Creatine Gummies — best month ever; winning combo of video ads + Instagram posts run as ads.
• Naturallo — completed a full email flow revamp; rebuilt flows with compelling storytelling and strong CTAs.
• Hoop Haven — solved a statics problem by pivoting to carousels; 2 new ad sets performing well.
• 4 Protein (Connor) — multiple winning UGC videos uncovered; new product flavors launching.
• Lucy Incense — best-ever ad performance using compelling statics on interest audiences.

The Four Windows Explained

• 1 Day Click — credits conversions within 24h of a click. Algorithm learns to find impulse buyers. Used by drop-shippers and affiliate marketers. Most expensive CPAs because it targets in-demand buyer profiles.
• 7 Day Click — credits conversions up to 7 days after a click. Allows longer consideration cycles. More data fed to Meta's algorithm. Mason's baseline recommendation for most DTC brands.
• 1 Day View — credits conversions within 24h of seeing (not clicking) an ad. Static ads qualify. Feeds the algorithm on awareness-to-purchase behavior.
• 1 Day Engaged View — newest setting. Credits conversions within 24h of a 3-second+ video view. Maximum data signal for the algorithm. Pairs with 7DC + 1DV for full attribution.

Mason's Recommendation: Full Attribution (7DC + 1DV + 1D Engaged View)

• Use 7DC + 1DV + 1D Engaged View as the default. Gives Meta the broadest possible signal set about who purchases = more efficient delivery over time.
• Rugtomize real-data example: CPA $169 on full attribution vs. $205 on 7-day click only — 7 conversions were view-attributed. Turning off view attribution would have inflated reported CPA without actual cost savings.
• Ruggable was scaled to $500M/year using 7DC + 1DV in-platform attribution. No Triple Whale or Northbeam needed at that stage — Mason's position: trust Meta's algorithm.
• Do NOT use Incrementality attribution at DTC scale — very high CPAs, brands risk paying to beta-test Meta's new product. Reserved for brands at true audience saturation (multi-hundred-million revenue).
• Compare Attribution Settings (Ads Manager feature): under Columns → allows viewing any attribution window historically without changing your active optimization setting. Use this to audit without disrupting live ad sets.

The Only Metric That Truly Matters

• Blended ROAS — total revenue / total ad spend. Attribution platform debates (Meta vs. Triple Whale vs. Northbeam) are "majoring in the minors." Use blended ROAS as the north star and invest saved time into creative, CRO, and email.

Philosophy

• "Most people think creatively about creative. They don't think creatively about campaigns." Each campaign type sends distinct, clean signals to Meta's algorithm.
• At Ruggable ($500M/year), Mason ran ~70 active campaigns simultaneously. Diversification = less volatility. "When some campaigns have a bad day, others carry the load."
• All below are Advantage+ (broad targeting) — the terms are now interchangeable as Meta collapsed all prospecting into the Advantage+ algorithm.

Expansion Menu (Prospecting)

• Advantage+ Evergreen — all ad types (video, static, carousel, GIF), excluding DPA. The main managed-list campaign.
• Advantage+ Video Only / Static Only — split by format for cleaner algorithm signals; prevents format imbalance.
• Advantage+ CPC Campaign — Mason concept (developed with client Brick): isolates low-CPC ads in a dedicated campaign. Prevents high-CPC ads from cannibalizing budget of efficient low-CPC performers.
• Advantage+ DPA Carousel — classic dynamic product ads in carousel format.
• Advantage+ DPA Single Image — DPA in single-image format; captures people who scroll past carousels.
• Product-Specific Campaign — one campaign per product; algorithm becomes very precise at finding buyers for that SKU.
• Collection-Specific Campaign — seasonal or thematic collections; typically run 1–2 months then paused.
• Advantage+ DR Promo Only — specific product on discount; keeps a promotion running even when no site-wide sale is active (Ruggable tactic).
• Advantage+ Seasonal — Halloween, Christmas, New Year's, etc. Themed ads in dedicated campaign.
• Advantage+ Bestsellers — top-performing SKUs only; algorithm gets trained on your highest-value products.
• Advantage+ Bundle — bundle-specific ads; algorithm learns the bundle-buyer profile (different from single-item buyer).
• Customer Profile-Specific — one campaign per ICP angle (e.g., Kill Crew: "fitness chicks campaign," "gym bros campaign," "run club campaign").
• Angle-Specific — pain point campaigns for CPG/skincare (e.g., acne campaign, eczema campaign, dry skin campaign).
• Reels Only / Stories Only / Reels + Stories Only — placement-specific; valuable when CPM arbitrage exists in those formats.

• Current diagnosis: Rugtomize looks like an "Etsy mom-and-pop shop" — not premium enough for a $1M+/month brand. Customer feedback included comments that it looked like a China dropshipping brand.
• The 50 Million Dollar Brand Exercise: "If we were a $50M brand, what would our website and Instagram look like right now? Build that." — Future-cast the brand identity, then work backward to build it today.
• Goal: appeal to both a Fortune 500 CEO and a local barbershop owner — broad trust, premium perception across demographics.
• Action: Instagram purge — archived all ~300 existing posts; rebuilding from scratch with intentional, brand-consistent content.
• Consulting with brand strategist "Oren" on brand pillars and positioning.
• Currently ~$150K/month; long-term target: $1M+/month. Brand perception is identified as the main conversion barrier at scale.

• Bad iteration: Changing only the text overlay (e.g., "custom business rugs" → "custom office rugs"). Too small a variable — doesn't move the needle. Often performs worse than the original.
• Good iteration: Changing the actual subject/visual in the creative (e.g., swapping the rug design shown in the ad). A significant enough variable to produce new learning.
• Framework question: "Am I changing the lever, or just the handle?" Identify which element of the winning ad is doing the work — then swap that element while keeping everything else constant.
• Budget allocation: keep 70–80% of effort on proven, tried-and-true concepts; 20% on completely net-new experimental angles.
• Not every iteration hits — this is expected and normal. High volume + clear variable isolation = consistent iteration wins.

• Fake FOMO to avoid: generic "limited time only" with no real scarcity. Consumers immediately recognize and distrust it.
• High-performing FOMO signals:
• Volume / social proof: "200,000+ customers" — "they must know something I don't." Herd behavior is a real psychological trigger.
• Velocity: "1 sold every 5 seconds" — implies demand is real and ongoing.
• Back in stock: One of Mason's favorites. Implies genuine historical scarcity. "People think, I better buy before it sells out again." Works even on first-time visitors.
• New / just dropped: Inverted FOMO — newness implies potential scarcity. No deadline needed; newness itself creates urgency in trend-conscious buyers.
• Restock: Similar to back in stock. Mason currently running restock ads for client 1620 Workwear — "crushing it."
• Last chance: Still effective even if overused. Use it when the promotion is genuinely ending.
• Design rule: use all available ad space. No blank space. Blend value props with sale/urgency messaging.
• Static inspiration: True Classic, Hollow Socks, Mod Gents, Grouns (VC-backed, runs both statics and UGC at high volume).
• If an ad keeps working past its intended window (e.g., a Veterans Day ad still running in January) — leave it running.

• New members: Vita Prima (hair/skincare) and Relentra (performance apparel for triathletes) welcomed to the program.
• Guitar Institute win: grew from $300K/month to $1.3M/month — shared as a case study on audience layering and creative volume.
• New CSM Matt (Matheus Faria) introduced to the group.
• Mason AI tool announced — launching end of month (details TBC).

The Three-Level ICP Hierarchy

• Primary ICP — the core, obvious buyer. For Ruggable: dog owners. Most brands already know and target this.
• Ancillary ICP — adjacent personas with a different trigger for the same product. Ruggable examples: cost-conscious buyers ("protect your investment"), clean freaks ("washable rugs"), eco/sustainability buyers (dedicated landing pages for each).
• Product-specific ICP — different ICPs emerge per product category (patterned rugs vs. solid rugs vs. outdoor rugs attract different audiences).

Why This Matters for Scaling

• Primary ICP ads have a reach ceiling — once you've exhausted that audience, frequency climbs and ROAS drops. Ancillary ICPs unlock new pockets of qualified buyers within Meta.
• Each ancillary ICP gets its own dedicated landing page + creative set. Mason built separate PDP variants for each Ruggable ICP — this is what drove the $100M+ scale.
• If your prospecting frequency is hitting 5–6+: you're over-indexing on your primary ICP. Time to introduce ancillary profiles with distinct creative angles and landing pages.
• Ruggable breakdown (4 main ICPs at scale): dog owners → cost-conscious buyers → clean freaks → eco/sustainability shoppers. Each had its own messaging, creative, and landing page.

• Mason ran a live demo: uploaded ~5,000 Rugtomize customer records (exported from Klaviyo) into ChatGPT.
• Prompt 1: "Who are the top 3 customer profiles in this list? Describe each by demographics, psychographics, and buying motivation." → ChatGPT identified distinct segments from purchase + behavioral data.
• Prompt 2: "What are the top 5 objections or questions these customers likely have before purchasing?" → Used to brief creative teams on objection-handling scripts.
• Prompt 3: "What are the top 5 reasons these customers actually bought?" → Surfaces buying triggers for hooks and headlines.
• Data sources to combine: Klaviyo customer list, product reviews (Amazon, Shopify), customer survey responses. Richer data = more specific ICP output.
• Output is used to create new ICP-specific ad angles, scripts, and dedicated landing page copy.

• Demo: analyzed a Symbiotica competitor video ad using Poppy AI's AI chat interface.
• Workflow: add competitor video URL → "Analyze the content of this video, break down the key elements" → AI identifies hook structure, emotional arc, social proof type, CTA format.
• Follow-up: "Write a script for [your product] that addresses [specific objection from the ChatGPT exercise] using a similar format to this competitor ad."
• Combining ChatGPT ICP analysis (objections + buying triggers) with Poppy AI (format templates from competitor ads) = a scalable brief factory for creative teams and UGC creators.

• ROAS: ~3x. Conversion rate is the primary bottleneck, not ad performance.
• A/B testing PDPs via Shoplyft AI — testing different product page layouts to find the highest-converting variant.
• Organic Instagram purge underway — archiving all ~300 old posts; rebuilding with brand-consistent, luxury-coded content.

• Budget scaling — double-up vs. 10–25% incremental: Mason's default is 10–25% incremental when an ad is proving itself but hasn't hit diminishing returns. Double-up is reserved for proven winners that have been running for weeks and are clearly not yet saturated. Key signal: if ROAS holds after a 25% increase, push again. If it drops significantly, pull back to prior level.
• Long-form PDPs vs. short: Mason uses Ruggable's PDP as the gold standard. Elements: title, star ratings with review count (clickable), shipping mentioned twice, value props, product recommendations, cart upsell. Add a sticky "Add to Cart" button — most Shopify themes don't have this by default; apps like UpCart or AfterSell can add it.
• Sticky add-to-cart button apps: AfterSell (post-purchase upsell) and UpCart (mini-cart + sticky ATC) are the top two picks. Checkout page is barely editable below Shopify Plus — focus on mini-cart and post-purchase page.

• Naturallo — expanded into new retail locations (North Carolina & Texas); launched first brand/product-style videos; strong early 4th of July sale results.
• Ohec Dogs — produced 5 product highlight video ads for the first time; best-ever Meta ads performance.
• Brema — sold out of majority of stock for the 3rd time this year.
• Hippy Youth — record-breaking anniversary sale; most profitable month to date; dermatologist endorsement secured.

• Life-with / life-without split: One of the highest-performing formats right now. Show life before the product (struggle/friction) vs. after (result/relief). Simple side-by-side or sequential cut works well.
• Brick example: phone-locked (left, life without) vs. scrolling freely (right, life with) — clean, fast demonstration.
• Application by niche: jewelry (no jewelry vs. wearing it), skincare (breakouts vs. clear skin), home decor (bare room vs. styled room), CPG (toxic alternative product vs. your product).
• Works as both static and video. Split-screen statics have been "crushing" — easy to produce with no editing required.
• Setting variation technique: If a winning ad always starts in one location (e.g., bedroom), test the same concept in a new setting (gym, desk, outdoors). Same winning structure, new environment = new audience segment reached.

• Founder video ads consistently outperform across nearly all niches. People buy into stories and the "why" behind a brand.
• Camera-shy founders: Use photos from the brand-building journey + a voiceover narrated by a third-party creator. The creator tells the founders' story from an outside perspective — often resonates even more than a direct founder address.
• Brick example: the founders didn't want to be on camera, but a creator-narrated story about them outperformed their regular ads. Narrator used LinkedIn photos and brand-building imagery to construct the story.
• Takeaway: founder story can be told by someone else. "Someone else's perspective" can actually feel more credible than the founder speaking directly.
• Rugtomize uses rollout videos filmed in the warehouse — Mason suggests testing the same concept in a different setting (retail floor, design studio) to reach new audience cohorts with familiar winning creative.

• Sourcing creative ideas from outside your niche is the highest-leverage move — avoids copycat accusations and finds untapped angles.
• Reference accounts recommended: Alo Gruens, Roosevelt Moringa, Mixed Tiles, Modern Gents, Ruggable.
• Skill to build: see an ad from an unrelated category → translate the format/mechanic to your product. Example: Brick's phone-lock concept → adapted to gym/desk settings, applied to any productivity or habit-formation product.
• Mason's team will publish a monthly "top ads" list (links to video ads + static swipe file) organized by category: CPG, apparel, jewelry, home decor, single products. Tool announced for end of month.

• Poppy.ai is an AI tool for analyzing competitor video ads and generating scripts. Cost: ~$500–600/year.
• Workflow: paste an ad URL (Instagram link works) → Poppy loads the video → use AI chat to analyze the ad's structure and key elements → generate a script addressing your product's specific customer objections.
• Prompt structure: "Analyze the content of this video, break down the key elements" → then "Write a script for [your product] that hits these same emotional beats, targeting [customer pain point]."
• Supports Claude, GPT, and other AI models within the interface. Best used with competitor ads + your customer review data as inputs.
• Mason's team uses it for Rugtomize scripting — uploads competitor examples + Klaviyo customer review data to generate objection-based scripts.

• Meta site links: Appear below ad copy as additional clickable links to product pages. If running creative tests, site links can dilute the signal — turn them off during testing phases.
• To disable: go to the ad set level → Placements → "Optional enhancements" section → uncheck site links and other automated enhancements.
• Enhancements include: site links, dynamic creative, background generation. Each adds Meta's automated optimization on top of your ad — can be helpful at scale but introduces noise during isolation testing.
• Recommendation: for new creative tests, disable enhancements so the only variable is your ad. For proven scaling campaigns, enhancements can be left on.

• ROAS: ~3.06. AOV: $437.
• Main current challenge: conversion rate on the product page (PDP). Testing PDP variants via Shoplyft AI.
• Static ad production ongoing alongside UGC video testing.

The Formula

• LTV = AOV × Purchase Frequency × Customer Lifespan. Rugtomize example: $351 AOV × 1.05 frequency × 2 years = $737 LTV.
• High LTV = permission to scale at a lower target ROAS without harming profitability — every acquired customer brings future repeat revenue.
• Rugtomize scaled from $1M → $500M in 4 years at Ruggable by calculating LTV >$1,000 — they kept spending aggressively knowing 40%+ of customers would repurchase.
• Snowball effect: each acquired customer adds to monthly baseline revenue as repeat purchases compound.

Practical Application

• Calculate your LTV before setting ROAS floors — if LTV is high, a 2.0 ROAS might be completely fine.
• Ask: what % of my customers are coming back? Even 20% repeat rate materially changes what you can spend to acquire.
• Survival comes first — don't be unprofitable. But question how profitable you need to be now vs. later when you have the data to back into better efficiency.
• Mason's take: "Get the scale up. You can back into better efficiency. If you get too stuck on certain numbers you will just stay in the same spot."

What This Is

• Document the winning elements that appear in every top-performing ad — then systematically include at least one in every new ad you make.
• Most brands skip this. The result: random creative output, unpredictable hit rates, wasted production budget.
• Your best practices list becomes the brief for every creator, photographer, and editor you work with.

How to Find Winning Elements

• In Meta Ads Manager: filter by Lifetime Spend (or ROAS). Go through your top 5–10 ads one by one.
• Document what visual elements, hooks, angles, or formats appear in all of them — you'll be surprised how consistent patterns are.
• Separate statics from videos — each has its own winning element set.
• Build a "Do" list and a "Do Not" list — losing ads also have consistent patterns.

Rugtomize Winning Elements (Examples)

• Rug rollouts — present in every winning ad without exception.
• Business spaces (offices) — not homes; converts because it anchors the product's use case for the B2B/business owner ICP.
• Wide shots, never close-ups — customers want to see the rug in a room, not zoomed in on texture.
• Trust badges — "trusted by" works in ads AND on product pages.
• Business logo rugs only — pets, babies, random objects don't perform; logos perform.

Brick (Phone-Locking Device) Winning Elements

• Founder story explaining why the product was made — "I tried these apps, flip phones won't work, so we created Brick."
• Introduce the product within first few seconds — waiting 30+ seconds to name it kills CPC and CPA.
• Before/after screen time transformation.

Skye / Flex Apparel Winning Elements

• Flat lays on concrete floor — historically best-performing format.
• Multiple products together (top + bottom full fit) — shows complete look, improves AOV.
• Two products side-by-side comparative flat lays.

How to Apply

• Every brief sent to creators/editors should include the "always do" list — make winning elements non-negotiable.
• A batch of ads with zero winning elements in them should not be expected to perform.
• Move winning ad elements to your website and email flows — an ad that crushes should also improve your PDP and Klaviyo campaigns.
• Consistency over creativity: 90–95% of creative production = tried-and-true winning elements. Reserve 5–10% of spend for experiments.
• "Best practices won for 6 years straight at Ruggable — every time we tried to beat them, they won anyway."

• Best ROAS month of the year — conversion rate improvement is holding.
• New winning ad: rollout + business space + calling out business owners + value props stacked = all winning elements combined.
• Custom PDP test: simplified upload UI (no white border mock-up) → better add-to-cart and checkout metrics; users adding to cart on new PDP then buying through main PDP (trust built on first touch).
• "Trusted by" section moved below the fold — counter-intuitively improved performance; users consume content first, then see social proof.
• New CSM Florencia Bicca added to the program team.

• Remove quantity selector? Yes — let them update quantity in the cart. Aloe Yoga, Akimbo and major Shopify brands don't show quantity on PDP. Removes friction and clutter.
• Restarting dormant campaigns: Build a new campaign under current Meta campaign setup (old Advantage+ Shopping campaigns are mostly sunset). Import your old winning ads into the new campaign. Test new ads in testing campaign as usual.
• Ads scaling when product sells out: Duplicate the winning ad, change destination URL to homepage or collection page — keep the creative momentum without falsely advertising a sold-out product.

• T's Crossed Golf (Carl) — Best sales day ever last Sunday; best month ever; blended 4x ROAS. Started in program Dec 2023 at <$1K/month revenue → now ~$50K/month+ (3× his prior best month). "He did everything we teach."
• Guitar Institute (Ian) — Hit $1M+ in last 30 days. International campaigns were the key unlock that broke through the $700K/month plateau they'd been at for 3 months.
• Iron Shay (Mark) — Brand new brand, had first purchases this week. Focus on high creative volume was the differentiator.

Layer 1: Ad Account Audit

• Bird's-eye view first: check every campaign's performance last 3 days AND 7 days. The 3-day view catches acute problems that 7-day averages hide.
• Cut bad actors ruthlessly. Even beloved ads that ran for 4 months — if they've been burning money for 3 days, pause them. "Sorry it might not come back, and you're burning money."
• "Punish the algorithm" — cut budgets on underperforming campaigns by 50% increments until you reach break-even or profitability. Keep cutting until you're back to a floor you can live with.
• Refresh campaigns with all recent winning ads that haven't been graduated yet — this is often the fastest lever.
• Self-audit question: "Have I been laissez-faire? Have I been waiting 7–10 days to graduate a winning ad when I should have done it in 3?" Loose habits during good periods cost you during downturns.

Layer 2: Retention Audit

• Review every flow email: last 7 days and 30 days. Any email that has generated $0 ever — replace it.
• Audit campaign history: what type of emails have generated the most clicks and revenue? Do more of that, stop doing what isn't working — even if the performing ones seem "boring."
• Ruggable learning: plain, no-product text emails with a big headline outperformed heavily designed product emails. Brand > performance tension is real, but money wins.
• Ramp email and SMS volume during performance downturns — it doesn't cost much and directly offsets ad spend reductions. Consider flash sales or limited offers to drum up immediate revenue.

Layer 3: Website Audit

• Check conversion rate on key pages (PDP, homepage, collection) — has it dropped vs. your baseline?
• Benchmark against top Shopify brands in your niche: what are they showing that you're not? Use ChatGPT to compare if needed.
• Sign-up rate benchmark: 15%+ is the target. Rugtomize (a "boring rug brand") hits 16%. If you're below 10%, your pop-up offer or layout is broken. Doubling sign-up rate = doubling welcome flow revenue = ability to double ad spend.
• Audit your pop-up: change the offer, the headline, the imagery. Platforms like Attentive/Privy have direct impact here — push your team on this.

• Origin: 5th generation Iranian rug makers, started with artist drops, pivoted to custom logo rugs (upload your image → get a rug). Was near-bankrupt in 2022; Mason joined as partner, helping for free initially.
• Core conversion problem: custom product upload flow (Zepto app, a black box) — unknown bug rate, slow add-to-cart, 0 visibility. Building internal custom app to own the experience.
• Also exploring headless Shopify build for more PDP control.
• Current focus: film in-house content weekly from warehouse studio setup; Mason getting on camera to humanize the brand.
• Month of Jun 5: scaling back spend to $46K (−46% vs prior month), focusing on efficiency at 2.65 ROAS while PDP is rebuilt. Target 3.0 ROAS before scaling again.

• Mason is exploring building an AI trained on all his coaching call content — similar to "AI Jeremy" from Jeremy Haynes' mastermind.
• Use case: live FAQ for program members to query between calls, on weekends, etc.
• Content from every coaching call would be fed in continuously. Member private channel data stays private.
• Group reaction: strong interest. Likely to be built — especially useful as Mason is expecting a baby and availability may change.

• Carson / Ball Boys — Joined program Nov 2023. Now at $1M/month. Just bought his first house in his mid-20s. "Shows how big of an impact Ecom can have."
• Merrill Clothing (Ian) — Best month ever in May; consecutive record months. Working through organic clothing sourcing challenges.

Why Testing Campaigns Exist

• Pre-Advantage+: every ad got spend regardless of history. Testing campaigns weren't needed.
• Post-Advantage+: the algorithm heavily favors ads with performance history — new ads in main campaigns often get $0 spend.
• Business impact: creative teams waste time, production budgets are burned, you never learn which ads work.
• Solution: isolated testing environment where every ad gets a definitive yes/no evaluation.

Testing Campaign Setup

• ABO only — not CBO. Full spend control per ad set.
• Broad targeting: 18–65+, male + female (or your brand's demographic range). No exclusions by default.
• Single country for most brands.
• Purchase objective only.
• One clean ad set per concept — never reuse old ad sets. Fresh data only. "We don't want to give any ad an advantage."
• Group similar concepts: 3 variants of the same hook/angle together. Don't test a "Us vs Them" against a "value prop static" in the same ad set.
• One testing campaign total. A high ad set count is a good sign — it means you're running a lot of tests.

Win / Loss Criteria

• Calculate your account average CPA over the last 30 days (all campaigns, all targeting). That's your goal CPA.
• Testing spend per ad: 2–3× your goal CPA. If goal CPA is $30, spend $60–$90 per ad before evaluating.
• At or below goal CPA → winner. Above goal CPA → loser. 0 purchases after full budget → pause immediately.
• Nuance: if CPC is >$15 and you've spent $45 on 3 clicks, pause early — don't wait for full budget.
• Borderline ad (decent metrics, slightly above CPA): cut budget to $25/day and let it run an extra week. Mason turned a borderline ad for Brick into a winner this way.

The Double-Up Scaling Method

• Start testing at $50/day. Double budget every 2–3 days when ad performs at or below CPA.
• Progression: $50 → $100 → $200 → $400 → $1,000/day in ~10 days.
• "True banger ads can take big budget increases every few days." If an ad dies at $200, it wasn't a true winner.
• You can and should scale within the testing campaign. Brick has $1,000/day on single ad sets in testing.
• When graduating to a new campaign: start conservative (e.g. $100/day), not at the testing budget ($1,000/day). Get it working, then double up.

80/20 Budget Rule

• 80% of total budget on proven winning ads. 20% or less on net-new tests (ads live less than 1 week).
• Launching 30 new creatives at once? That can push testing to 40–50% of budget → extreme account volatility. Plan creative releases in batches.
• At large scale ($5K+/day), consider <10% in net-new testing. The majority of spend should always be on bangers.

Graduation & Portfolio Approach

• Testing winner → graduate to performance campaigns (interest, lookalike, Advantage+).
• Mason runs winning Brick ads in 8 different places: testing, US lookalike, worldwide lookalike, interest, US Advantage+, worldwide Advantage+, US CPC campaign, worldwide CPC campaign.
• When a winning ad fatigues in prospecting → move it to retargeting for extended life at high ROAS.
• Not all testing winners work in every performance campaign — that's fine. Scale winners hard inside testing if performance campaigns reject them.

Exclusions Debate

• Mason's default: no exclusions in testing. Goal is to know if an ad drives conversions from anyone — even existing customers. Faster reads.
• If you want cold-traffic-only reads: exclude website visitors + email list + customers. But expect reads to take much longer — "you're making Meta play hard mode."
• Exclusions can be layered in later when an ad is scaling in testing and frequency starts rising — this extends the ad's life.

Systematic Weekly Process

• Launch new ads on Monday (or Thursday to capture weekend data).
• Evaluate Thursday/Friday: make decisions, scale or pause. Optimize for the weekend.
• Win rate: expect 10–30% of tested ads to succeed. 40% is exceptional. This is a numbers game — volume of testing is the input that drives winners.
• Minimum: test at least 1 new ad per week. Target: 5–10 new tests per week.

Benchmarks

• Campaigns: 60%+ open rate. Below this = sending to too broad a segment OR deliverability issues.
• Flows: 40%+ open rate. Welcome flow email 1 should be 60–70% (lower if discount code is given at opt-in).
• Click-through rate: 1%+ for campaigns, 2–3% for flows.

Deliverability Repair (What Worked for Rugtomize)

• Switch welcome flow email 1 to plain text only — no images, no design. ESPs treat it as a regular email → better inbox delivery.
• Add flow filters: only send email 2 to people who opened email 1; only send email 3 to those who opened email 2. Keeps your list engagement tight.
• For campaigns: send to "Never Purchased Active" segment — people who clicked/opened in last 60–180 days. This improves open rates and protects sender reputation.
• Credit to Joel from Capture Box for the strategy.

• Scaling back spend −46% this month to focus on conversion rate and efficiency (targeting 3.0 ROAS floor before scaling back up).
• Onboarding new email agency (same one used by Brick) — more affordable than alternatives.
• Building internal custom image-upload app to replace Zepto (black-box 3rd party tool).
• Filming weekly in-house content from warehouse studio.

• Guitar Institute (Ian) — Doing high 6-figures/month, moving into international campaigns. Took everything in the program and ran with it consistently.

The Mindset

• Entrepreneurship starts fun. Reality sets in — most of what drives results is boring, repetitive work. The brands that master boring = the brands that win.
• Avoid shiny objects: new tools, new ad formats, new platforms. Most of the time the fundamentals done consistently outperform everything else.
• Ignore emotional highs and lows: when things crush, you feel invincible; when things tank, you freeze. Neither is the right response. Stick to the inputs.
• Core principle: trust that inputs will eventually equal outputs. Keep doing the right things and you will have outsized returns.

Non-Negotiable Weekly Inputs

• 1 email campaign per week — minimum, no exceptions. No product launch, no holiday, no excuse.
• 1 SMS campaign per week — email open rates are 40–60%; SMS hits 90%+. You need both.
• 1+ organic feed post per week — people check your brand's social to verify you're still active. Not posting = brand looks dead to potential buyers.
• 1+ Instagram story per day — shows active brand presence alongside paid spend. If you're spending $1K/day, your page must look alive.
• 2 new static ads per week — minimum. AI-generated creative has flooded the market; everyone is making more ads than ever. You must too.
• 1 new video ad per week — minimum.
• Daily P&L check (Cody's addition) — know your net profit number every day. Triple Whale Founders Dashboard is free and does this.

• Brick (phone-locking device for focus): scaled from $100K/month → $1.4M/month since Mason joined in September — using only the strategies he teaches in the program.
• Testing campaign currently has 140+ ad sets. Some at $1,000/day. Started all at $50/day.
• "People say you can't scale in a testing campaign. Yes you can. You're just not aggressive enough."
• All new ads go to testing only — never launch untested ads into performance campaigns. Only winning ads should be in scaling/performance campaigns.
• Running multiple campaign types (lookalike, interest, worldwide, US CPC) — all populated exclusively with winners from testing.

• Standard "Never Purchased" segment on a 44K-person list includes ~30K inactive people — wasted retargeting spend.
• "Never Purchased Active" segment filter:
  • Placed order = 0 (all time)
  • AND/OR: Active on site in last 30–60 days
  • OR: Opened email at least once in last 60 days
  • OR: Clicked email at least once in last 60 days
  • OR: Clicked SMS at least once in last 60 days
• Result for Rugtomize's client: 3× ROAS → 6× ROAS just by switching to this segment for retargeting.
• Only meaningful for brands with a growing email list (10K+). Smaller lists won't have enough separation between active and inactive.

• Rugtomize makes $14–15K/month from a 4-email site abandonment sequence alone. "Literally free money."
• Trigger: someone visits your website and leaves without adding to cart or purchasing.
• Email 1: "Still thinking about [product]?" — simple, direct, product-focused.
• Even email 3 and email 4 in the sequence are still driving revenue — build flows long.
• If you don't have site abandonment running: build it this week. It's one of the highest-ROI flows in Klaviyo.

• Father's Day (Jun 15): plan promos ~2 weeks out. Start sending emails + ads before the holiday, not day-of.
• Mason missed Memorial Day (no sale) — Rugtomize lost ~3 days of revenue. Even a simple 20% off email would have recovered it.
• Ad creative for Father's Day: plain text ads ("Father's Day Sale — 20% off") consistently outperform designed creatives. Emotional lifestyle ads (father/son at grill, etc.) also work well for relevant brands.
• If your product doesn't lend itself to Father's Day, run an "End of Season" or "Summer Sale" instead — same traffic window, different framing.
• Business-focused brands (like Rugtomize) often don't see Memorial Day lift — B2B buyers don't care about consumer holidays. Adjust promo calendar accordingly.

• $160K month, 2.4 ROAS — missed 200K goal partly due to Memorial Day whiff.
• Got a CRO audit from an expert who works with Plunge, Princess Polly, and 9/10-figure brands. Sharing audit with the group once payment is made.
• Focus for June: conversion rate + efficiency before scaling back up.

• Pre-Sleep (Dylan) — Found a winning ad by going back to core pain points; hit target ROAS.
• Brema — Hit 6-month goal. Method: consistent USP focus, high creative testing volume, Instagram lookbook + UGC posts. Inventory constraints were the main limiter throughout.
• Becca Luna / Willow — Launched first new product in 2 years with a founder/product launch video. Held up as a storytelling and organic content benchmark.
• Rugtomize — Best evergreen day ever: $10,800 in a single day.

The Principle

• When you have a winning ad, take swift action immediately — distribute it account-wide, not just in the campaign where it was found.
• "Fortune favors the bold. You will not get rewarded by playing it safe."
• True winning ads work everywhere: testing campaign, lookalike, interest, Advantage+, worldwide. If an ad stops working after you scale it, it was never a true winner.

How Mason Does It (Rugtomize Example)

• Winning ad identified: "Turn any logo into a rug" — simple rollout video, Mason yelling the tagline. Started at $50/day, scaled to $200/day within days.
• Within 36 hours of identifying it as a winner (all metrics best in class: lowest CPC, lowest cost-per-add-to-cart, lowest cost-per-checkout, lowest cost-per-product-view), distributed to:
• 6 separate campaigns: testing campaign (kept scaling here), lookalike, worldwide lookalike, SMB interest, US CPC campaign, worldwide CPC campaign.
• "I 6×'d the impact this ad can have. That is how you get outsized returns and build momentum."

How to Know When to Scale Aggressively vs. Carefully

• Clear-cut winner (all metrics best in class from day 2): distribute account-wide within 36h, full aggressive mode.
• Borderline winner (sideways CPA, decent signals): wait 3–7 days, launch into one performance campaign first, validate before expanding.

• Meta platform ROAS can look bad on a day when your business is actually crushing — because Meta can't attribute everything it influences.
• A winning ad drives new people to the site → they sign up for email → they come back via Google → they buy direct. Meta gets no credit for any of those touches.
• Always check Triple Whale (or your MER tool) alongside Meta ROAS. A "mediocre" Meta CPA day can be a 5× ROAS day at the business level.
• "Don't shoot yourself in the foot by turning off ads because Meta looks bad. Take your head out of Meta and look at the overall picture."

The Core Concept

• Imagine a stadium full of your potential customers. Only ~3% are ready to buy right now. ~67% are open to buying but not actively looking. ~30% are not interested or unaware.
• Most ads only speak to the 3% ("buy now, here's the product"). This means you're ignoring 97% of your addressable market.
• Winning brands create content at every level of awareness — they engage the whole stadium, not just the front row.

Application by Vertical

• Problem/solution brands (supplements, devices, functional products): educate people who don't even know the problem exists. Once they know the problem, you become the natural solution. "You're not hard-selling; you're educating — and they buy because you made them aware."
• Fashion / aesthetic brands: top-of-funnel = "aura" content — cool visuals that make people feel they're missing something without seeing the product directly. Bottom-of-funnel = on-body shots, fit details, "how does it look?" content.
• Don't tell people something is cool — show them and let them feel it. "If you have to say it's cool, it's not cool."

Practical Ad Strategy

• Audit your ad mix: are all ads product-forward ("buy now") or do you have educational/awareness-building content too?
• Sell the sizzle, not the steak. Focus on transformation, outcomes, and identity — not specs (GSM of the shirt, fiber composition, etc.).
• Frame your product as the logical conclusion to the problem/aspiration you've surfaced — not as a thing you're selling.

• Turned corner on conversion rate — 4+ ROAS days after a sustained rough patch.
• CRO wins driving the change:
  • Trusted By slider with brand logo colors added — not matched to brand palette, just recognizable logos.
  • "Order in next 30 min" countdown urgency element added below upload widget.
  • Switched to Okendo reviews (from Stamped) — swipeable UGC photos showing different rugs across different environments → massive social proof upgrade.
  • New winning ad (rollout + logo) contributing to momentum.
• Key lesson: if you have a good conversion rate, freeze everything. Do not change your website. Audit what changed, document it, then make new changes one at a time.
• Upcoming: price increase — communicate to customers as an event ("prices go up in 7 days → buy now"). Turn price increases into a revenue moment, not an apology.

Why cold traffic rarely converts on PDPs alone

• Sending cold traffic directly to a PDP asks strangers to buy on first touch — they have no rapport with the brand yet. Presale pages warm them up before the buy decision.
• The five beliefs a page must install: (1) "This is for someone like me," (2) "I have this problem," (3) "This product can solve it," (4) "It'll work for me specifically," (5) "The offer feels low-risk enough to try."
• Smaller brands (~$10–20K/mo) often make the mistake of imitating 7–8-figure brands by relying solely on PDPs — those big brands can do it because years of ads and organic content have already built trust.
• Pre-sale pages let you be hyper-specific to a single ad angle or audience segment — something a generic homepage or PDP cannot do.
• Holostocks (sock/apparel brand) uses a short listicle presale page followed by a collection page with a tiered discount offer (20% off 4 items, 30% off 6+), maintaining full congruence from ad to checkout.

Hero section — the highest-leverage element on any page

• 100% of visitors see the hero section; it drives 70–80% of conversion outcomes. Everything else is just stacking more proof underneath.
• The hero hook must mirror the exact ad angle that drove the click — if the ad was about dark circles under eyes, the hero section headline must address dark circles.
• After the hero, stack trust in this order: UGC, before/after transformations, reviews, value-stacked offer. Past customers are better salespeople than the brand owner because potential buyers identify with them.
• For CPG/supplement brands running a single-product presale page, the buy box should reinforce the main USP and the discount/guarantee in the same view.

How to test landing pages (duration & volume)

• Test duration benchmark: 1–3 weeks per variant, with 2–2.5 weeks being the average. Don't call a winner or loser in under a week — volume determines statistical significance.
• The most successful scaling brands test pages as aggressively as they test creatives. Test hero section copy, offer framing, and full page layouts as separate variables.
• Don't split traffic across 5–10 pages simultaneously unless you have the volume to reach significance on each. Start with one challenger vs. control.
• Replo (no-code Shopify page builder, drag-and-drop, Figma/Webflow-like) allows fast page creation from templates and has built-in A/B split testing included in the base plan.
• For heat mapping and session recording: Microsoft Clarity (free) and Heatmaps.io (paid, shows revenue per session) are Jeff's go-to tools.

Single-product LP vs. collection page — when to use each

• Apparel/fashion brands with many SKUs: collection pages work well when the offer (e.g., 40% off) applies broadly and all products are relevant to the ad that drove the click.
• Single-product or supplement brands: dedicated single-product landing pages almost always outperform collection pages — multiple unrelated products cause decision paralysis.
• Real example (jewelry client): a $5K ring LP performed well alone; adding an $1,800 ring to the same page caused confusion — customers couldn't find the featured product because it got pushed below the fold.
• Rule of thumb: if the ad features one product, the page should feature one product. If the ad sells a lifestyle/collection, a curated collection page makes sense.

Presale pages for brands that don't discount (Vague Studios case study)

• For premium/streetwear brands where discounting cheapens the brand image, the presale page should sell the lifestyle and aesthetic — not a price reduction.
• Recommended format: a lookbook-style landing page with exclusively on-body model shots. Flat product imagery doesn't trigger the "how will this look on me?" belief. On-body shots do.
• Implement a scrollable image carousel directly on the collection/homepage so visitors can scan multiple fits without clicking into individual PDPs — reducing friction.
• Add hover-state animations on product thumbnails that reveal the model wearing the item — test whether this or the carousel drives more PDP clicks.
• Inject customer-submitted photos and short testimonials alongside product imagery to build social proof without a discount mechanism.

ICP-driven homepage optimization

• If you're going to send traffic to your homepage instead of a dedicated LP, rewrite the homepage entirely around your #1 ideal customer profile — not a catch-all for everyone.
• Mason's own rug brand (Rug Tomize) is 99% B2B buyers (companies/organizations) — the homepage messaging should speak directly to that buyer, not retail consumers.
• Mine reviews, ad comments, and DMs to identify the exact language, pain points, and purchase motivators of your best customers — use their words verbatim in headlines.

Why email is the "missing piece" for most Meta advertisers

• Win of the week: Naturallo leaned into email flows and campaigns and saw "massive success" — when ads underperform, retention picks up the slack.
• Minimum baseline: send at least one email per week. Sending emails only during product drops is the floor, not the strategy.
• Ads and email are complementary — strong email retention improves the blended ROAS signal Meta sees, making the ad account healthier over time.
• Every brand in the program is likely underutilizing email. Consistent weekly sends are the lowest-hanging revenue lever before touching ad spend.

Multi-ad funnel to support non-converters

• Not every visitor buys on first ad exposure. Have a second distinct ad that pushes them further down the funnel — more trust-building, stronger offer, or a different angle.
• The retargeting layer (second ad + email flow) catches people who added to cart but didn't convert — don't rely on the landing page alone to close them.

Why Advantage+ is hitting the same people over and over

• Advantage+ Shopping was great at finding net-new customers when it launched; over the past 4–6 weeks Mason has seen it revert to repeatedly serving the same existing customers and unconverted funnel visitors instead of prospecting cold audiences.
• Key diagnostic metric: pull your Shopify return customer rate and compare January vs. last month. If it jumped from ~25% to ~55% without a change in strategy, Advantage+ is likely cannibalizing existing customers rather than acquiring new ones.
• Secondary signal: check ad account frequency — rising frequency confirms the algorithm is recycling the same audience pool.
• This is account-specific: Brick (Mason's agency client) is not experiencing the issue, so exclusions are not applied there. Only add exclusions when the data signals a problem — don't break a working setup.

How to add exclusions to each campaign type

• Advantage+ Shopping: Go to Advertising Settings → redefine "existing customers" to include website visitors (180-day), email list, and purchasers. Then set the existing customer budget cap to 0% to fully exclude them from prospecting.
• Interest campaigns (saved audience): Edit the ad set → add Exclusions → exclude website visitors and all customers. Save as a new audience and rename to note exclusions added.
• Broad / Advantage+ Audience: Meta hides the exclusion option — scroll carefully in the ad set targeting section to find it. Mason is now adding exclusions to broad testing campaigns too given the current environment.
• Retargeting campaigns: For social engagers, exclude purchasers. For email list audiences (non-purchasers), no exclusion needed — let the algorithm use the full list. For website visitors, exclude email list + purchasers. For bottom-of-funnel, nuance applies based on audience size — reach out for account-specific guidance.
• Meta intentionally hides exclusion controls because easy retargeting of warm audiences drives more spend. You have to actively opt out.

The problem and the 3-angle attack

• Brick (phone-locking device, Mason's agency client) saw CPC rise, CPA rise, and ROAS decline in March–early April during peak tariff uncertainty. Client pushed Mason to take action rather than wait it out.
• Previous account structure: straight Advantage+ campaigns + one testing campaign + retargeting. No lookalikes, no interest targeting.
• Mason's thesis: when consumer sentiment is weak, you can't rely on broad reach — you need to be more surgical about hitting your actual ICP. In strong markets (e.g. Q4), almost anyone converts; in weak markets, you need tighter targeting.
• Angle 1 — Lookalikes: Launched a 3% customer lookalike for both US and worldwide. A 10% lookalike is ~20M people vs. broad's ~230M — still large, but far more targeted to proven buyers.
• Angle 2 — SMB Interest: Added a small business owner interest segment. Hypothesis: business owners are losing productive time to phone doom-scrolling, making Brick a natural fit. Tested a hunch rather than waiting for certainty.
• Angle 3 — Dedicated Low-CPC Campaign: Pulled all lifetime winning ads with the lowest CPCs into a single campaign and relaunched them. Rationale: high-CPC ads can hog budget in a mixed campaign, suppressing the efficient ads. Separating them isolates traffic efficiency.

Results and the key mindset principle

• CPC dropped from $2.16 → $0.73 (66% decrease). CPA dropped from $36 → $31. ROAS improved from 2.16 → 2.57. Account is now hitting all-time highs.
• Mason explicitly states these strategies are not necessarily evergreen — they may be a band-aid for a volatile period. He's not married to the lookalike or interest setup and will revert when conditions change.
• Lookalikes and interest targeting are not dead — Meta keeps products on the platform only if they work. The issue is dogmatic frameworks ("always go broad") that prevent you from using all available tools.
• Scaled one Brick ad from $50/day in testing all the way to $1,400/day within testing — proving you can and should scale inside the testing campaign, not just in core campaigns.

When to cut ads early and the CPC-first philosophy

• Mason's primary early-cut signal is high CPC — not CTR. He does not track CTR because it's a function of CPM (clicks ÷ impressions), so a high CPM environment inflates CTR artificially. CPC is the cleaner metric.
• Rule of thumb: ~$5 CPC = bad ad, even if it's hitting goal CPA. At scale, $5 CPCs devastate traffic volume: $1M spend at $1 CPC = 1M visitors; at $5 CPC = 200K visitors. That's 800K fewer potential email opt-ins.
• A good ad = cheap clicks + good CPA + good ROAS. CPA alone or ROAS alone is not sufficient to call an ad a winner.
• General rule: let creatives run to 2–3x brand target CPA before cutting. "Late bloomer" ads exist but are outliers — don't let them define your standard cutting process.
• Be more cutthroat about cutting than not. Outlier behavior should not dictate your default process.

Scaling methodology: double-up vs. conservative increases

• Mason teaches two methods: (1) double the budget when a winning ad pops, or (2) 25% budget increases. If doubling is causing ads to bomb post-scale, switch to 25% increments.
• In the current macro environment (tariffs, cautious consumers), 10% increments may be more appropriate than 25%. Consumer conversion rates are lower, so aggressive budget jumps are riskier.
• Never pause a winning ad in testing when you graduate it to core campaigns — keep it running in testing AND launch it elsewhere.
• Testing campaign is not just for new creatives — you can scale a winner inside testing. Mason scaled a Brick ad from $50 to $1,400/day entirely within testing.

Meta's new 75% daily budget flexibility feature

• Meta introduced a change: on high-opportunity days, Meta may spend up to 75% over your daily budget; on low-opportunity days, it will underspend. It balances out over a Sunday–Saturday 7-day window.
• This causes visible underspending on Saturdays (end of Meta's week) because early-week days already consumed the allocated pool. This is normal behavior, not a bug.
• Mitigation option: add ad set spending limits to cap overspend on individual ad sets.

Conversion rate diagnosis framework

• Under 1% conversion rate diagnosis ladder: (1) Check CPC — if cheap clicks are arriving but no add-to-carts, the problem is the product page. (2) If add-to-carts and checkouts are happening but no purchases complete, the problem is the offer (trust or price friction). (3) High CPC causing low traffic volume = creative problem.
• Real example: Mason's European agency client entering the US market has great clicks and checkouts — but no purchases. Diagnosis: offer/trust gap. Recommendation: launch a more aggressive welcome discount to overcome the trust deficit vs. established US competitors.
• Creative testing for retargeting: if a winning prospecting ad is also converting retargeting audiences, keep running it — results matter more than structural purity.

Rugtomize May performance and creative pipeline

• Rugtomize hit 3x ROAS for the first weekly period of May — first time above 2.5–2.7 in a while. Goal: $200K revenue at minimum 2.5 ROAS, requiring ~$67K spend (vs. $58–60K in April). Previous month hit $175K.
• Creative pipeline: Founder's Story V1 ads are live with early positive signals. Raw "rug kickout and unroll" videos being mass-produced — these were original winning formats.

Keywords in ad copy drive algorithmic targeting

• Meta reads all text in your ad — copy, image text, video audio — and uses it to match your ad to relevant audiences. Keywords in creative act as implicit interest targeting.
• Rugtomize headline says "custom logo rugs," copy mentions businesses repeatedly. This signals Meta to serve the ad to business-related audiences without manual interest targeting.
• Meta also reads video content — it can identify podcast-format ads and flag them as potentially deceptive. Assume the algorithm processes everything in your creative.
• Practical implication: align your ad copy and on-screen text with the exact language your ICP uses. This is a zero-cost targeting lever.

Advantage+ is now the default — and it's just the old manual campaign

• Meta removed the Advantage+ vs. Manual campaign split screen. Creating a campaign now goes directly to one setup — which Meta is calling "Advantage+" but it functions the same as the old manual campaign with the Advantage+ algorithm applied underneath.
• With one ad set in a campaign, it is automatically CBO. You can only use ad-set-level budgets (ABO) if you have multiple ad sets in the campaign.
• Interest targeting now defaults to a "suggestion" mode — Meta will expand beyond your selected audience. To lock targeting to only your chosen interest, click "Further limit reach of your ads." Meta will warn you of up to 70% higher CPR, but this is how precise interest targeting used to work.
• Exclusions (custom audience exclusions) are now available again inside what Meta calls Advantage+ — go to Custom Audiences and use "Ad Exclusion." Meta hides this intentionally; they want easy re-engagement conversions to inflate your reported purchase numbers.
• Incremental attribution is a new option — only relevant at $50M+/year scale. Ignore it for most DTC brands.
• Attribution setting recommendation: keep 7-day click + 1-day engaged view. Give Meta as much signal data as possible.
• Ad set spending limits (min/max) are still available under CBO — use a maximum to stop engagement audiences from eating the entire budget.

Account hygiene — name your ad accounts and catalogs

• Name your Meta ad account so it is searchable in Business Manager. Accounts created via Shopify often have no human-readable name.
• Name your Commerce Manager account and your product Catalog with the same brand name. To rename an ad account, go to Ad Account Settings and click Edit next to the account name.

Top, middle, and bottom of funnel for static ads

• Use the AIDA framework (Awareness → Interest → Desire → Action) to assign each ad a funnel role. The type of landing page the ad sends to is a good signal: homepage = top of funnel, product page = middle/bottom.
• Top-of-funnel (ToFu) example: Brick's founder static showing "founded by two 23-year-olds who used their phone too much." Introductory, brand-story driven, targets cold audiences. Landing page is the homepage.
• Middle-of-funnel (MoFu) example: Brick's "Hello, Deep Focus" static — assumes the viewer has seen the brand before, reinforces the product benefit in a warm audience.
• Bottom-of-funnel (BoFu) example: "I reduced my screen time by 17% with Brick" — social proof with a specific measurable result, effective as a closing ad for someone who has visited the site but not purchased.
• Some ads can live at multiple funnel stages. A strong before/after or specific stat ad may convert cold viewers and also serve as an effective retargeting close.
• Decide funnel stage before building the ad. The ad's hook, landing page, and audience targeting should all align with one funnel stage.

Rugtomize funnel structure in practice

• Current campaign mix: Advantage+ video campaign (core), SMB interest campaign (locked targeting), a new lookalike campaign (launched April 25), and an Instagram follower campaign for top-of-funnel awareness.
• The Instagram follower campaign drives traffic to the brand's Instagram profile — people who engage become warm signals for conversion campaigns to retarget.
• The lookalike campaign (first time testing for Rugtomize) targets a niche SMB customer. After ~300 clicks it showed outsized add-to-cart and checkout performance versus the account average CPA of $181.
• The combination of lookalike + follower campaign + existing campaigns appeared to compound: April 25–May 1 showed a 35% lift in conversion rate and 4.5x ROAS versus 2.06 the prior week.

The double-up method and when to scale in testing vs. performance

• Scale winning ads inside the testing campaign — do not wait to duplicate into a performance campaign. A live example showed a testing ad set going from $200/week → $400 → $1,000/day as it earned those budgets through performance.
• Every ad must earn its budget. Cut exposure first before turning an ad off. Treat it like a stock: cut position, let it settle, reassess — don't delete at the first dip.
• Macro events (e.g., stock market drops) can hurt performance temporarily without the ad being broken. Cut budget, hold, then scale back up when performance returns.

The consecutive-day positive trend rule

• Do not scale up budget after a single good day. Wait for 3+ consecutive good days at a stable budget level before increasing spend.
• One good day + one bad day = no trend. A 50/50 pattern is not a bet worth making with budget.
• If dropping budget restores performance, wait several days at the lower level to re-establish the trend before attempting to scale again.
• Rugtomize example: held at low budget the week of April 21–24 (2.06 ROAS), saw momentum return April 25, then increased from $1,000 to $1,200/day only after 4.5 days of strong consecutive performance.

How Rugtomize repaired catastrophically bad email deliverability

• Rugtomize had what multiple email experts called the worst welcome flow they had ever seen. After fixes, the account generated $48K from flows and $8K from SMS in April — with only 1–2 manual campaigns sent.
• Core fix: add a conditional split to every email in the welcome flow. If the subscriber opened the previous email → they continue the sequence. If not → they stop receiving emails. This protects deliverability by only mailing engaged people.
• Make the first email in every flow plain text. HTML-heavy emails are more likely to land in spam, especially for a list with damaged deliverability.
• Flow revenue breakdown for April: $10K from site abandonment, $7K from product browse abandonment, plus checkout abandonment and welcome flow. SMS drove 16% of Klaviyo revenue.

Klaviyo list hygiene — sunset flow and suppression to control billing

• Klaviyo now bills based on active profiles. Suppressed profiles do not count toward billing — suppressing unengaged subscribers saves money without deleting historical data.
• Build a "Sunset Engaged Customers" flow (available as a Klaviyo template). Trigger segment: can receive marketing + created 72+ weeks ago + 0 orders in 72 weeks + 0 email opens/clicks in 72 weeks.
• Alternatively, manually suppress the sunset segment once per month by going to the segment → select all → Suppress Current Members.
• Klaviyo's active profile billing means it's not enough to have a big list — you need a clean list. Cutting dead weight directly reduces costs.

Why brands are losing orders without Google Shopping

• As Meta ads build brand awareness, users start Googling your brand or adjacent keywords — if you're not running Google Shopping, competitors and resellers capture that demand for free.
• Akimbo case study: Before running Google ads, Realtree (a collab partner) and fake-hoodie sellers were showing up above Akimbo for searches like "Akimbo Realtree Hoodie" — stealing orders that should have been Akimbo's.
• Centenarius Nutrition was not running Google Shopping; competitors' creatine and protein products appeared for "Centenarius creatine" searches, potentially siphoning customers who had low brand loyalty.
• Even Amazon-native brands without Google Shopping are likely losing orders to third-party listings of their own products.
• The goal is twofold: (1) protect branded search so you appear #1 always, and (2) capture category/competitor demand.

How to structure the two recommended campaigns

• Campaign 1 — Shopping Catch-All (Maximize Clicks): Create a standard Shopping campaign (not PMax), set bid strategy to Maximize Clicks, budget $10–$20/day. Tactical Tykes result: 520,000 impressions, 8,000 clicks at $0.24 CPC, 72 orders from ~$2,000 spend (3.8x ROAS).
• Campaign 2 — Target ROAS Shopping: Set bid strategy to Target ROAS (e.g., 200% / 2x — not too high or it won't spend). This campaign goes after users showing active purchase intent.
• Always choose Standard Shopping, not PMax. PMax disperses budget across all Google inventory; Standard Shopping targets only product listing ad placements.
• In location settings, select "People in your location" — not "People interested in your location" — to avoid wasted impressions.
• Set up purchase conversion tracking before launching so Target ROAS has signal to optimize against.
• Google Shopping is largely set-and-forget after initial setup — it does not require the ongoing creative iteration that Meta demands.

When to use interest targeting instead of broad

• Running broad audiences for wholesale/B2B is "completely dumb" — the algorithm cannot reliably find the small, specific universe of wholesale buyers. Interest targeting is the correct approach for this use case.
• Always switch to Original Audience Options (not Advantage+ Audiences) when building B2B interest stacks, so the campaign only reaches people within the selected interests.
• Start by identifying the actual ICP: are they business owners, decision-makers who aren't owners, or licensed professionals (e.g., estheticians, barbers)?

Specific audience-building tactics live-demonstrated

• "Small Business Owners" interest: ~20M reach in the US (out of ~33M total US small businesses). Works well for wholesale prospecting and for Rugtomize B2B targeting.
• Layer related interests: Owner, CEO, Managing Director, Owner Manager, New Active Businesses, Small Business Administration to expand the B2B pool.
• Profession-specific stacking example (skincare into salons): Esthetician + Beauty Consultant + Beauty Therapist + Skincare Specialist + Licensed Cosmetologist = ~300K targeted audience.
• For retail store owners: "Retail Page Admins" and "Sports Page Admins" are strong proxy audiences — boutique stores almost always have a Facebook business page, so page admin targeting is an effective filter.
• Fact-check audience size against real-world data: search "how many barbers are in the US" and confirm your Meta audience is in a believable range. If it's 50M, you've added wrong interests.
• If your target universe is genuinely tiny, a small audience is correct — don't inflate it. Test with a small daily budget or use Advantage+ with the interest as a seed.

What ChatGPT image generation means for media buyers right now

• OpenAI's image generation (ChatGPT) can produce ad creative from a text prompt. Follow Jacob Posel on X/Twitter for tutorials on prompting for ad variants of winning creatives.
• Primary risk: mass adoption will make AI-generated ads look identical. Flooding your account with AI lookalike creative can hurt differentiation.
• Best use case for established brands: use AI to mock up a concept, then hand it off to a photographer/designer as a brief/mood board.
• Best use case for new/lean brands: rapidly increase creative volume for testing without paying designers for every variant.
• Human imperfection and original creativity will become premium signals as AI content saturates feeds.

Political/celebrity risk in creative and on-site imagery

• Rugtomize had a Joe Rogan image as the second product-page photo. After Rogan endorsed Trump in 2024, the brand saw declining conversion rates over ~6 months.
• Removing Rogan from the product page produced a notable CVR uptick within 48 hours. Lesson: stay politically agnostic in ads and on-site imagery.
• Any celebrity or influencer association carries political risk that can quietly suppress conversion rate without an obvious cause.

John's strategy — one ASC per product SKU

• Problem with a single ASC containing multiple products: the algorithm defaults to spending on the top-performing SKU, starving lower-price products of budget and data.
• Solution: break each product into its own Advantage Shopping Campaign (ASC). John went from 1 consolidated ASC to 21 separate product ASCs.
• Each campaign has its own CPA target calibrated to that product's COGS — easy to see profitability at a glance.
• Example result: a headset product getting ~1 new customer/month in the consolidated ASC now generates 5 new customers in the same period at $25/day budget, with 2.07x NC-ROAS on $165 spend delivering $342 revenue in 7 days.
• Google spend ratio insight: Google Shopping performs best when kept at roughly 1–3% of total MER budget. Scaling past 4–5% caused MER to decline even when platform ROAS metrics looked strong.

The Core Insight

• Meta's recommendation model (new — ~1 year old at time of call) now incorporates organic impressions alongside paid ad data.
• Without organic activity: the model only uses ad impressions and conversion data. Still the world's most advanced ad algorithm, but missing a key signal layer.
• With organic activity: the algorithm feeds on organic likes, impressions, new profile visits, and engagement signals → opens up net new audiences that paid ads alone cannot reach.
• When organic content goes viral: feeds the algorithm massive new signals all at once → huge expansion of reach to brand-new people.

What Content to Post

• Founder content — people want to know who they're buying from. "Buy from a person, not a corporation" is the current consumer trend.
• Educational content — how-to, product use cases, tutorials relevant to your niche.
• Brand storytelling — origin story, mission, behind-the-scenes.
• Reference brands for inspiration: look at how similar-category brands create content and have fun with it on Instagram/TikTok.

When to Use Lead Forms

• Use in-platform lead ads when you want to capture leads without sending traffic to your website.
• Ideal for building an email list pre-launch, capturing leads for high-AOV products with long decision cycles, or top-of-funnel audience building.

Setup

• Campaign objective → Leads → Ad set → Instant Forms (not "Website" conversion).
• Optimization: "Maximize number of leads" — NOT "Conversion Leads" (that's advanced: requires sending purchase data back via CAPI/server events, needs large data volumes).
• Instant Forms = lightweight, in-app form. User never leaves Facebook/Instagram → high completion rate.
• "Conversion Leads" optimization is advanced — only use once you have substantial purchase data and are feeding conversion events back via API.

• judge.me allows full review customization: select which reviews to show, widget styles, placement.
• Klaviyo integration: instead of judge.me sending review request emails, route triggers to Klaviyo → send fully branded, custom review request emails through Klaviyo flows.
• Still being tested/configured at time of call, but the integration exists — allows review emails to match your email brand design exactly.
• Practical note: dig into judge.me settings — there's a lot of customization available that most brands haven't found yet.

• Maraki Medicinal — Second consecutive record month, even with low inventory in a volatile macro environment.

• A new Klaviyo email flow using UGC-style content (real customers wearing/using the product) as a cross-sell to post-purchase customers.
• Not promotional — feels organic, "making you feel good about what you bought by showing others styling it." But links back to the site.
• Real data: the flow drove $12,000+ in the last 7 days from a single brand. Without the flow live: $0 from that audience.
• Flows are "set it and forget it" — automated revenue running in the background perpetually.
• Principle: same as ads — "the more things you can get working at once, the more scale." More active flows = more revenue without incremental effort.

• Major brands plan creative seasons ahead — now is the time to shift from winter/cold to spring/summer messaging.
• Change: backgrounds, colors, product context (by water, sunshine, spring colors). You don't need to be fully summer — but move away from snow/overcast/winter tones.
• Example: Hello Yoga already showing spring-oriented content (sunshine, people by water with hoodies — transitional, not fully summer yet).
• "The algorithm rewards seasonal relevance" — updating your creative context signals freshness and matches consumer intent as seasons change.
• Applies even to evergreen products — shoot the same product in different seasonal contexts.

• Current state: Rugtomize targeting 1.15%+ CVR (conversion rate) as the primary lever.
• Hyper-focus on 2 levers only: creative and conversion rate. Everything else (organic Instagram, etc.) is a distraction until these are optimized.
• Trap: getting busy with things that feel productive (social media, new channels) while the core conversion machine isn't working. "You're working but not getting the job done."
• If not hitting profitability targets → identify the 1–2 specific levers that close the gap → work only on those.

• March 2025 was broadly tough across many brands — macro headwinds (tariffs, crypto volatility, stock market uncertainty, consumer confidence down).
• Mason's outlook: "April/May/June we're going to ride out this volatility — crypto back, stock market roaring, gas prices low, tariffs gone, consumerism up."
• Implication: hold your structure, don't overreact to a rough month. Winning brands keep testing through volatility.

• Brima — Best month ever (nearly sold out entire stock after ~3 months in program; implementing growth plan one campaign at a time).
• Organic Wave Wellness (Carson) — After relentless creative testing, hit a record sales day on Sunday.

What Alia Does

• Alia is a Shopify-native email capture and pop-up platform (runs inside Shopify admin — no third-party iframe).
• Shopify-verified app: tested for speed regularly; doesn't negatively impact store performance.
• Difference from AMT: lives in Shopify admin = more centralized stats, simpler to manage.
• Brands migrating from AMT: Alia copies current pop-up setup and runs AB tests against Alia's best practices to lift opt-in rate.
• Integrates with Klaviyo: can route email capture requests to Klaviyo for custom email sends (instead of Alia's native emails).

Copy vs. Image AB Testing

• When AB testing pop-up elements, copy outperforms image testing in terms of increasing opt-in rate — more alpha from changing copy than swapping images.
• General recommendation: ditch images in pop-ups — go straight to a quiz format for higher opt-in and better segmentation data.

• Tested: immediate (0s), 2s delay, 6s delay.
• For the brand tested: deltas were close — all within ~2% of each other. Timing did not dramatically change opt-in rate for this brand.
• Answer: AB test it for your brand — varies brand to brand. Don't assume immediate is bad; the data may say otherwise.
• If showing on the PDP: important to balance user's intent to learn about the product vs. pop-up interruption.

• If an "us vs. them" concept is working in static ads, test it immediately in video ads.
• Conceptual validation on static = green light to shoot a proper video with the same angle.
• Rugtomize is investing in a first proper video shoot using the validated us-vs-them angle — a real production investment (not UGC).
• Key insight: the concept is validated by the static performance. Now the video format needs to prove itself — but the risk is lower because the concept already works.

• "Suffering from success" — selling out is a growth problem, not a failure. It means your ads are working.
• When you sell out: pause ads immediately, reorder aggressively. Don't keep ads running with no inventory.
• Plan inventory orders ahead of marketing pushes — supply chain planning becomes critical as you scale.

• Rosie's Chips — Bought a new machine, continuing expansion as they scale.
• Bloom — After many months of persistent testing, finally uncovered a winning ad concept by re-examining the target customer's pain points and developing very polarized messaging aligned to core beliefs.

• Color is a massive variable — same ad on a different color denim background completely changed performance ("shit the bed" on the wrong background).
• Test: white background vs. black background (like dark mode vs. light mode). People react completely differently.
• Real example: one client's website always had a dark background. Testing a white background version lifted conversion rate by ~10% across all metrics.
• When you have a winning image — test it with: different background color, different shirt/product color, different model positioning.

• Structure: product image + arrows pointing to key value props or product features.
• Works for any product — break down the physical or functional parts with labeled callouts.
• Headline iteration on this format: instead of product name, try a polarizing headline — "Best men's ring ever, voted #1 of 2025."
• Don't need the product name as the headline — the value prop or a bold claim works better for cold traffic.

• If an ad performs well on front-end metrics (CTR, CPM, CPC) on cold prospecting but doesn't convert, flip it into retargeting.
• Cold traffic may not convert because they need more education. Retargeting audience already knows the brand — they just need a reason to return to the site.
• "Clickbaity" ads often work better in retargeting — the goal is just to get them back to the site, not to educate.
• Website does the conversion. The ad's job in retargeting = make them remember you and click back.

• After many months of failed tests, Bloom found a winner by going back to the ICP and finding polarized messaging that speaks directly to core beliefs.
• "Us vs. them" framing — creating a clear identity between the brand's customer and everyone else.
• 2 weeks into running at the time of the call and still going strong.

The "Static First Test"

• A real test = multiple ads with the same main theme, different single variables — not completely different concepts.
• Headline is the hook for static ads. Mason tested 3 variations: same image, different headlines. One got all spend; the other two got nothing. Headline > image for performance differentiation.
• Recommended test structure: keep the image identical, vary the headline. This isolates the hook as the variable.
• Colors and backgrounds can also be tested — even subtle background color changes have significant impact (e.g., dark vs. light background showed ~10% CRO lift for one client).

Key Distinction

• Testing a single ad by itself = "I am testing this concept."
• Testing multiple ads with shared foundations + one variable = "I am testing this creative element."

• Videos have multiple hook types: visual hook and auditory hook.
• Statics: hook = image + headline. Videos: hook = opening visual + opening audio.
• Keep statics and video ads in separate ad sets. Mixing them prevents proper analysis and budget allocation per format.
• Iterate on winners: if a winning concept works on static, test it on video — the concept is validated, now test the format.

Budget Sizing Rules

• Testing budget = 20% or less of total ad account spend. Keep 80–90% in evergreen/proven campaigns.
• Recommended per ad set: $25–$50/day. Low end ($10–25) for newer brands. $50 for faster answers.
• Don't go higher without reason — one of Mason's biggest clients ($30–40K/day) tests at $50/ad set. Higher testing budget ≠ faster learning, just more volatility.
• Ignore the learning phase — "I don't subscribe to the learning phase. The algorithm is so good these days — zero impact on anything I do. What is the data telling us?"

Bootstrap → Growth Mindset Shift (Rugtomize)

• Sitting on excess cash = stalling the business. Cash should go to distributions or strategic business investments.
• Bootstrap mindset: "that costs too much" / "do the same stuff." Growth mindset: invest in warehouse, office, team, tools.
• Environment matters: moving into a real office/workspace changes your execution mindset — "you become a real company."
• Forward planning required: decide now where excess cash goes — suppliers, team, ads, infrastructure.

• Earthwave — Hit their first $1K day over the weekend. Mason: "If you can do it one day, you can do it every day. Make those your floor."

What Happened

• Performance down across almost all of Mason's agency clients for the past 10+ days — comparable in severity to the 2022 Ukraine War / inflation period.
• Confirmed industry-wide: David Herman ("Meta performance last 7 days have been brutal"), Ashvin Melwani (Obvi) — "haven't seen numbers like this in over a year."
• Suspected macro drivers: US inauguration uncertainty, crypto volatility, post-holiday consumer confidence dip.
• Smaller/newer brands less affected — still plenty of low-hanging fruit in their audiences. Larger brands feel macro events more.

What To Do

• Decrease budgets immediately — don't just watch it bleed. Stop the bleeding first.
• Never publicly blame Meta. Focus on what you can control: creative, structure, budget.
• Use the framework: cut budgets, shore up creative, monitor for recovery signal.
• Mason's stance: always take performance on the nose — "this is what we're doing to improve" rather than blaming macro. But knowing it's industry-wide helps validate you're not doing the wrong things.

• Committed to solving for: founder ads, brand origin story ads, and us-vs-them ads — all being rebuilt and tested.
• Building an "arsenal" of winning creative types: if you can solve for multiple formats (static, video, founder, UGC), scaling becomes systematic.
• Started using useclip.com to source UGC creators. Key learning: find business owners, not random consumers — Rugtomize's buyers are almost exclusively business owners.
• First UGC from Clip: princess party company owner showed custom logo rug in her dressing room — authentic, on-brand, great result.
• Offer to group members: send a rug + make a video = free rug. Requires real business owner use case.

What They Are

• Ads that drive users to your Instagram profile (not your website). Objective: grow followers, build brand.
• Campaign type: Traffic → Instagram Profile Visits.
• Ad format: boost existing Instagram posts — no new creative required.

Why Run Them

• Mason runs follow ads for Meta Ads at Scale — 2 program members came in via follow ads (not intended as a sales mechanism, but they converted anyway).
• Halo effect: drives up engagement/likes on posts. Visitors see 1,000 likes and think "this brand is popping" — trust boost without them knowing it's paid.
• Can drive followers AND orders, especially if your brand is strong on Instagram.
• No reliable attribution for e-com conversions from follow ads — treat as a brand-building / engagement tool.

How to Set Up

• Create campaign → Traffic objective → Ad set destination: Instagram Profile Visits.
• Manual placements (keep it simple).
• At the ad level: select existing Instagram posts you want to boost.
• Mason recommends using posts with existing engagement to amplify the social proof effect further.

• Big Guns — First major winning ad: 4.5 ROAS. Mason: "When you have your first ad hit, you think — what if I have 5 of these going? What about 10? The possibilities are endless."

Core Concept

• Treat your ad account like a financial portfolio — actively managed, not set-and-forget.
• Requires monitoring your mix of assets: prospecting vs. retargeting, video vs. static, Shops vs. website campaigns.

Key Ratios to Watch

• Prospecting vs. retargeting spend mix — if 95% is going to prospecting while retargeting is crushing, reallocate. Retargeting audiences are being underserved.
• Video vs. static mix — if 90% of spend goes to video, you're only reaching video-engaging users. Add static to broaden reach.
• Shops vs. website mix — matters more at $1K+/day spend. Monitor which is delivering better returns.

Budget Fluidity

• Ad spend is an asset — must be actively allocated, not left on autopilot.
• Doubling strategy: when an ad is crushing, double the budget for a fast scale attempt. High risk, high reward — requires immediate reversal if ROAS drops.
• If you double and performance tanks: pull back instantly. Don't sit on a doubled budget that's bleeding.
• This is a personality/risk-tolerance strategy. If scaling stress affects your judgment, use incremental increases (10–25%) instead.
• "I will always tell you what I would do — but you know your business better than I do."

• Column order: Impressions → Reach → Attribution Setting → (Bid Strategy) → Unique Outbound CTR → CPC → CPM → spend → results.
• Unique outbound CTR is the real metric — "unique" = one person, "outbound" = to your website. Filters out all vanity clicks (likes, comments, hearts, video plays — all count as "clicks" in Meta's default view).
• Vanity metrics to ignore: total link clicks, all clicks, engagement metrics when diagnosing ad performance.
• Add attribution setting column — critical to know which window is reporting results for each ad.

• Post-Q4 hangover is real — consumer fatigue from BFCM/holiday overspend. New Year's creative stops working faster than expected in 2025 (macro uncertainty, inauguration, crypto volatility).
• Solution: pivot to Valentine's Day creative now. Don't cling to New Year angles that aren't converting.
• Valentine's Day strategy: angle existing products as gifts, add hearts/red tones to creative, test themed bundles or mini collections.
• TikTok Shop volatility: some brands seeing 5 ROAS+ on TikTok post-ban scare — consumers impulse-buying before potential loss of platform.
• Consumer behavior reminder: people buy with emotion, justify with logic. Macro uncertainty (presidential transition, crypto swings) suppresses buying confidence temporarily.

• Rosie's Chips — Hit first $20K month in December.
• Dabbling Duck — Hit first $100K month in only 14 days of December.
• Becca Luna — Smashed it with a post-BFCM retrieval sale for the second year in a row.

• Mason's "#1 prediction for 2025": every product launch, restock, or collection drop should be treated like a Supreme-style drop — even for always-on/evergreen stores.
• Three types of drop models: (1) IDGAF — just push it live with a quick email (most brands do this by default); (2) Drop and Close — tease → drop → close store; (3) Evergreen Drop — apply drop model elements to a store that stays open.
• Why it works: creates a moment out of thin air, significantly increases likelihood of success vs. just "rolling it out," and builds a community of diehards who wait for your next drop.
• Works for single products, collections, and restocks — not just apparel.

3-Email Cadence

• Email 1 (4–7 days out): Tease the collection/product. Include "Add to Calendar" CTA. Segment: 60-day engaged + 180-day placed order (wide).
• Email 2 (2–3 days out): Deeper product details, value props. Tease early-access password. Segment: 15-day engaged + 30-day placed order (tight — protects deliverability).
• Email 3 (day before): Final reminder, dual CTA: Browse Site + Add to Calendar. Segment: 30-day engaged + 60-day placed order (slightly wider again).

Segmentation Logic (Wide → Tight → Slightly Wide)

• Go wide first for maximum awareness while deliverability is fresh.
• Tighten mid-sequence to keep open rates high and protect ESP reputation.
• Loosen slightly again at the end — still high-intent, final push.

SMS

• Akimbo sent one SMS on drop day only. Mason recommends at least one SMS the day before as well (not everyone opens emails).

• Homepage: Add banner image teasing the drop + embedded email capture form. Anyone hitting the homepage becomes aware of the drop.
• Lookbook landing page: Dedicated page for the collection/product — richer content, separate email capture form, and also usable as an ad destination.
• Pop-up: Change your site pop-up to reflect the drop/restock. Typically boosts sign-up rate significantly.
• Collection page: can be password-protected for early-access buyers (Akimbo approach — password sent in Email 2).

Option A — Leads Campaign

• In-platform lead form: stay inside Meta, 2-click signup, auto-populated data. Map in Klaviyo: Integrations → lead form → list.
• Website destination: leads campaign but sends clicks to your lookbook/homepage with embedded form.
• Targeting: broad audience works. If low account history, test customer lookalike or niche interest.

Option B — Purchase Campaign (Akimbo tested this)

• Run a standard sales/purchase-objective campaign with a "Sign Up for Early Access" CTA.
• Result: people were actually buying (other products on the evergreen store) while the CTA was just asking for email sign-ups. Double win.
• Purchase campaigns target Meta's most sought-after buyers (vs. leads which can include non-buyers).

• Formula: Expected Inventory Value ÷ Expected AOV = Orders Needed to Sell Out.
• Then subtract expected orders from existing customers (use your historical customer conversion rate — % of customers who buy within 3 days of a new product drop or email).
• Remaining deficit = orders you need from leads. Divide by your lead conversion rate to get the number of leads to acquire.
• Always overshoot by 100–200 leads as a safety buffer.
• If you've never done a drop: use your last new product launch email as a proxy. How many customers bought within 3 days?

• Drop day emails: Akimbo sent one AM email. Mason recommends AM + PM (like BFCM cadence) to maximize the moment.
• Post-drop: send a "going fast" urgency email within 1–2 days.
• Ad strategy: launch Advantage+ Shopping Campaign immediately on drop day, targeting tight warm audiences (email/SMS list + all customers + purchase pixel).
• Have the ads built and ready to go before drop day — don't be 2 days late to launch.
• If crushing: expand targeting to add-to-cart, initiate checkout, IG engagers, video views (progressively up-funnel).

• Grayson Kin — Beat their best day ever (Black Friday) by 20% on a Monday. Huge.
• Trap Jitsu — New drop day record, on pace to double their best month ever in December.

Why Forecasting Matters

• Accountability — without a goal, any number you hit is meaningless. You're flying blind.
• Manifestation — forecasting forces you to visualize your ideal month in detail. That's where execution starts.
• Creates inputs — if you set a revenue goal, the sheet forces you to work backwards to the spend, emails, SMS, and ads needed to hit it.
• Marketing calendar — what promos are you running in January? Valentine's Day in February? How many emails per week? Forecasting forces you to map all of it.
• Real-time illumination — as actuals come in you can see mid-month if you're off and take action (add emails, run a flash sale, increase ad spend).
• If you missed your goals in 2024, you almost certainly did not forecast. Forecasting makes you a real business owner — it's not optional at scale.

Live Demo — Rugtomize Q1 Forecast

• Jan target: $200K revenue (vs. ~$150K in Nov/Dec). Min ROAS: 4. Implied spend: ~$50K (~$1,613/day for 31 days).
• Adjust daily spend by day-of-week (Mon/Tue lower ROAS → lower spend; weekends → higher spend).
• Slot in marketing calendar events: product launch → add budget + expect 7× ROAS on launch day, 5× the following week; Valentine's Day gifting campaign in February.
• Actualize week by week: replace forecasted rows with actual spend + ROAS as data comes in. The blend of actuals + remaining forecast shows your end-of-month trajectory in real time.
• Keep it simple — high-level spend/ROAS/revenue per day is enough to start. Don't add sessions, CVR, AOV until you've built the habit.
• Mason will share the Google Sheet template with the group for self-use.

• Meta in-platform ROAS will always be lower than your blended business ROAS — Meta drives traffic that converts via email, Google, direct, and SMS downstream.
• Key task: figure out what Meta ROAS consistently equals your blended ROAS goal. That number becomes your Meta target — not your blended goal.
• Example: one brand needs a 4× blended ROAS. Whenever Meta is at 3×, blended is always at 4×. So Meta target = 3×. Don't panic and turn off Meta at 3× just because the goal is 4×.
• Don't get trapped optimizing in-platform ROAS at the expense of overall business growth. Meta is a traffic spigot — not all buyers convert on the first touch.
• Focus: optimize your ads in-platform (Meta-level KPIs); optimize your business off-platform (how all channels interact to produce blended ROAS).
• When things are working, study the setup: what's your Meta ROAS? How many emails per week? How many ads testing? That's your benchmark to protect.

Why Explore in January

• January CPMs are historically cheap — best time of year to test. Traffic you send in January may not buy immediately but enters your email/retargeting funnel and converts in February/March.
• Core principle: different campaign types give the algorithm different jump-off points. Running only Advantage+ means the algorithm always dives from the same board. Multiple campaign types = different audiences reached, different results.

1. Value Optimization

• Instead of maximizing conversions, maximize for purchase value. Algorithm seeks buyers who spend more per transaction.

2. One Ad Set CBO

• Running the same creative in a one-ad-set CBO alongside Advantage+ — different algorithm, different audience pool. Advantage+ and manual campaigns run on separate algorithms and don't fully overlap.

3. International Expansion

• If you're naturally getting orders from the UK, Europe, or APAC — test paid targeting there. Unit economics must make sense first (check shipping margins).
• Step 1: pack all countries into one Advantage+ or broad CBO, set language = English. Let the algorithm find who converts. No translation needed.
• Step 2: if one country dominates, break it out into its own campaign for more control.
• Mason's Brick App example: international beat US-only. Now runs UK, Switzerland, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore — all English ads, no translation.

4. Product-Specific Campaigns

• Give your best-selling product its own campaign. Algorithm gets hyper-targeted at finding buyers for that exact item.
• New product launch? Don't mix it with existing campaigns — give it its own campaign or ad set so you can push spend cleanly and read signal clearly.

5. Category / Collection Campaigns

• Mirror your website architecture in your ad account. If you have a "Hoodies" category, make a Hoodies-only campaign. Leopard collection → Leopard campaign. Collab drop → Collab campaign.
• Spreads risk across campaigns; gives you granular control over how you push individual products or collections.

6. Retention / Retargeting Campaign

• Easiest people to sell to are existing customers. Run ads specifically targeting past buyers with new products or cross-sell angles.
• Low-hanging fruit especially if you've been running cold prospecting and haven't touched warm/past-customer audiences yet.

7. Direct Response (Exclusive Promo) Campaigns

• Clone a product with a sale price → put that URL exclusively in ads. The only way to access the discount is through the ad — not on the main site.
• Algorithm self-selects for deal-seekers (a real and sizeable segment). High CVR because the landing page matches the ad's offer exactly.
• Rugtomize example: these DR campaigns scaled ad spend by 25% — deal-seeker audience was large and converting.
• Variation: use your existing pop-up offer (e.g. 10% off welcome code) as the ad's CTA — "Get 10% off your first order." Or give an exclusive ad-only code never shown on site.

8. Gender-Specific Campaigns

• If your ads only feature one gender but your product is gender-neutral, you're leaving reach on the table. Swap the creative (put women in ads that previously showed only men, or vice versa) → algorithm jumps off toward a new audience pool.
• Mason's 2025 push: crack men's rings for Mod Gents (currently skews heavily female). He's targeting the same segment Ridge Wallet uses to sell rings.

• Third-party pixels (Blotout, Triple Whale pixel, etc.): Legit — they create unique cross-device identifiers that Meta can no longer create post-iOS 14. They match more purchase events and feed more data to Klaviyo flows (larger audiences). Worth it at ~$250K+/month revenue; below that, the cost exceeds the lift.
• Meta Ad Library vs. Foreplay: Meta Ad Library is free — search any brand, see all active ads. Foreplay layers organization on top (save/heart ads, group them). Both pull from the same source. Use free library first; Foreplay worth it if you need to organize research across many brands. Key hack: ads running the longest = highest performers.
• International targeting structure: Start by putting all target countries in one Advantage+ or broad CBO. Set language = English. No translation needed. Once a country emerges as a clear winner, break it into its own campaign.
• DR ads with bundle offers: Yes — "buy more, save more" messaging already normalized on your site works well as a DR angle. Same logic: run a deal in ads that mirrors or slightly exceeds what's on site.
• DR campaign — exclusive code mechanics: Give a code only visible in the ad. It's never on the website. Customers feel they're getting an exclusive deal. High click-to-purchase rate because the offer is front and center with no search required on site.

• Do a full annual business review before Jan 1 — corporations do these quarterly (QBRs). For DTC brands, at minimum do it yearly.
• Goal: identify the biggest learnings from the year → use them to focus on the right 2–3 things for next year. Don't do too many things; do a few things very well.
• Four domains to audit: Website → Email & SMS → Meta Ads → Creative.

Signup Rate — The Underrated Lever

• Signup rate is massively underestimated. 2×–3× your signup rate = changes your business.
• New standard: 10%+ signup rate with modern pop-up software (Attentive, Amflow/AmpPush). If you're under 5%, your offer or software is suboptimal.
• Collect both email AND SMS. Signup rate impacts: email flows, campaign reach, email list retargeting on Meta, retargeting audience size — trickle-down across everything.
• Action: commit to improving signup rate in 2025. Consider investing in better software if your current rate is low.

Conversion Rate

• Even a 5–10% improvement in CVR compounds significantly over time.
• Review: what's on the product page? Are your ads educating people before they land? Set a CVR goal for Q1 2025.
• CRO benchmark: Rugable (500M+/year) — their product page has been tested with hundreds of millions in spend. Study it: title → clickable reviews → shipping time → value props (mentioned twice) → recommendations → cart upsells.

Average Order Value

• Levers: new products, upsells, bundling, price increases (easiest win — try after Christmas), free shipping threshold (raise it), top bar/ribbon messaging (rotate seasonally).
• Price increases often don't hurt CVR — test it. Fresh start post-holidays is the right time.

Revenue Target

• Email should drive ~30% of total revenue. Above 30–40% → ads aren't spending enough. Below → email work to do.

Deliverability

• Bad deliverability = emails going to spam. Symptom: low open rates across the board.
• Fix: start sending only to people who engaged in the past 7 days. Hold that tight window for an extended period to rebuild sender reputation with Gmail, Yahoo, etc.
• Rugtomize case: destroyed deliverability, had to hire an agency (Max) to repair it. Now fixed — next problem is click-through rate.

Campaign Frequency

• New brands: 1 email/week minimum. More established brands: 2+/week (one weekday, one weekend).
• Each additional email = at minimum one additional order. Four extra emails/month = four extra orders.
• Analyze: which campaign types performed best? Product drops, education, UGC/review emails? Do more of what worked. Add top performers into the welcome flow.
• Click-through rate benchmark: 2%+ is good. Below 1% = fix the email content (make it worth clicking).

Flow Audit Checklist

• Welcome flow — highest performing. Audit emails 2+ for open rate, CTR, CVR. Update weak slots (new subject line, new content).
• Browse abandon, cart abandon, site abandonment — are these live and optimized?
• Post-purchase / thank-you — enough education? Makes customers feel good about their purchase. Think of it as an onboarding experience.
• Customer winback — for anyone who hasn't bought in 30/60/90 days. Are these running?
• Replenishment flow — for CPG/consumable products only. Are you reminding people to reorder?
• Customer review / UGC flow — are you actively soliciting reviews and video content? Rugtomize building a custom UGC flow: "Upload your rug video — best ones run as ads getting millions of impressions." Use Google Form or Typeform to collect.

• Audit what Meta ad products you're using vs. what you haven't tested: Advantage+, broad CBO, interests, lookalikes. Best brands make all of them work. Don't have to use everything — but there's opportunity in each.
• Retargeting rule: if your retargeting ROAS isn't beating prospecting ROAS, it's broken. Fix the audience (too broad, wrong segments) or the creative (wrong message for warm audiences).
• Retargeting should be like "shooting fish in a barrel" — these people already know you.
• Start retargeting your email list and past customers if you haven't — even at $5/day. Get it working at low budget, then scale. Open rates are ~50%, meaning half your list isn't even seeing emails. Ads fill that gap.
• Bottom-of-funnel retargeting tactics: handle objections, give a better offer for cart abandoners, messaging for people on the fence.

Volume Commitment

• Biggest scaling bottleneck: finding a winner → stopping new creative testing. Never stop. Keep making the same volume of new ads every week regardless of whether you have a winner.
• Rugtomize example: had a creative drought — couldn't find winners because they stopped making enough ads. Fixed by hiring a videographer and committing to weekly production.
• Set a realistic goal: even 1–2 new ads/week = 8+ new ads/month. Gain momentum, then scale up output.

Top Ad Audit

• Which ads do you remember immediately off the top of your head? Those were memorable = top performers. Use them to define your 2025 creative strategy.
• Recreate winners. Make variations of them. But also keep testing new angles — don't be a one-trick pony.

Statics vs. Video Balance

• If most 2024 winners were video → statics should be a 2025 focus. Easier and faster to make, no editing, no actors. Statics give you stable baseline revenue while you experiment with video.
• Both formats should be running simultaneously — they reach different people and serve different functions.

Founders / Brand Story Ads

• Are you telling the brand origin story enough? People buy into stories and emotional connections.
• Almost every brand in the program that has a case study ran founders ads that performed well. If you're camera-shy, consider brand story / brand origin ads as an alternative format.

Customer Profile Diversification

• If prospecting frequency is hitting 5–6+, you're repeatedly hitting the same people. You need to expand ICP messaging to reach new audiences within Meta.
• Think about all use cases for your product — who else benefits? Different messaging for different profiles unlocks new audiences.

• TikTok and Instagram Reels are free shots — there is no other time in history where a simple video can go viral for zero ad spend.
• Winning organic content can be repurposed directly as paid ads. It's free data on what resonates.
• Mason example: wife's espresso martini jug video → 1M views in 3 days from a simple TikTok post.
• System: batch content creation — dedicate one day per week to filming, then schedule posts. Build this into your workflow rather than doing it ad hoc.

• New Year's is a guaranteed annual consumer psychology moment — resolutions happen every year even if people don't keep them. Position your brand around it.
• Core angle: "didn't do X in 2024? Make 2025 the year you finally do it." Taps into guilt + aspiration simultaneously.
• Simple formats work: "New Year, New [result]", "Top [product category] for 2025" (list your own products), "Best [your niche] for 2025".
• For health/beauty brands: be aware of Meta's increasing scrutiny on specific condition keywords (acne, eczema, etc.). Use descriptive language instead — "red skin", "chapped skin" rather than named conditions.
• MAHA ("Make America Healthy Again") trend gaining traction for food/wellness brands — early searches increasing. Worth testing if brand aligns.
• Examples brainstormed: web design (build the business you always wanted), holistic skincare (New Year, new skin / new beauty routine), pets (put your pup's health first in 2025 / make your pup healthy AF in 2025), apparel (new year, new wardrobe / top picks for 2025).

• Free shipping as a pre-deadline promo: Very effective, especially if you normally have a threshold or don't offer it. Combines urgency (deadline) with an offer (free shipping) — double win. Message both benefits clearly.
• Welcome flow — time-of-day send testing: Worth testing (split flow: 24h delay vs. send at 6 AM). Low lift to set up. Less impactful at low volume; matters more at scale since most subscribers who signed up during the day will still be online when the 24h delay fires anyway. Test it if you're thinking about it, but don't over-prioritize it.
• CRO benchmark: Study Rugable's product page — title, clickable reviews, shipping (mentioned twice), value props, recommendations, cart upsells. At $500M+/year this page is battle-tested. Also Jim Shark for apparel.
• Upsell apps: Aftersell (post-purchase upsell, used by many large brands) and UpCart (mini-cart upsells) are the top two. Checkout page itself is barely editable unless you have Shopify Plus. Main levers: mini-cart and post-purchase page.

• To change caption or headline copy on a winning ad while preserving its post engagement history: duplicate the existing post ad → use the Edit Placements option that appears.
• The engagement (reactions, comments) ties to the underlying post ID — stays intact when you edit through this method.
• Behavior can be glitchy across accounts: some accounts keep engagement even when headlines change, others don't. Test on your account.
• Headlines only appear in newsfeed placements. If running Stories or Desktop Right Column, you'll need to manually edit each placement separately.

Why Broad for Creative Testing

• Run creative tests on broad targeting (18–65+, all genders) so the only variable is the ad itself — adding an audience introduces a second variable that makes it impossible to isolate ad performance.
• Exception: if you want to test an interest or lookalike specifically, use the testing campaign for that too — but run it with a proven top-performing ad, not an untested creative.

Advantage+ as a Third Bucket

• Advantage+ uses a different algorithm from manual broad campaigns — it's a separate "jump-off point" that reaches a non-overlapping audience.
• If an ad is winning in broad testing, don't turn it off — graduate it to Advantage+ as well. Three separate buckets: broad, interest, Advantage+.

Testing Budget Rules

• Keep testing to ~10% of total budget — 90% should stay on proven performers.
• Minimum: $10/day per ad set (too low = slower signal, but adds less volatility). Sweet spot: $25/day.
• Goal at low budget: CTR, CPC, add-to-cart signals. Full purchase data comes slower but preserves account stability.

• Election period effect: CPMs creeping up ~$1–2 across most accounts (Rugtomize: $14 → $15). Not universal — some niches/accounts unaffected.
• Accounts running high volume of ads (especially statics) and Canada campaigns seeing lower blended CPMs — Canada has no election, cheaper inventory.
• Positive signal: Shopping behavior improving across all clients — conversion rates rising. Google Ads (search/demand) also improving, indicating real bottom-of-funnel intent growth.
• Action: when conversion rates uptick, recognize the moment and increase budget on proven performers to capture the wave.

• Subscriber unsubscribing after using the welcome discount is natural and expected — don't over-index on it.
• Loyalty/rewards program (points per purchase, member-only perks) — best long-term retention mechanism. Reference: Abercrombie's program.
• Post-purchase discount code on the thank-you page/email — hooks buyers into a second purchase before they've even left. Even if they don't use it, gives a reason to stay subscribed.
• Add SMS to maximize touchpoints — email + SMS together covers more reach.
• Key reminder: unsubscribed customers can still be reached via Meta ads — losing their email doesn't mean losing the customer.

Evergreen vs. BFCM Ads

• Never fully turn off evergreen during BFCM — reduce budget to fund promotional ads, but keep it alive. Edge case: if BFCM ads are crushing by a wide margin, you can pause temporarily.
• New BFCM ads are brand-new creatives — let them warm up on low budget first. Don't throw full budget on day one. Start Monday before Black Friday; let them earn their spend.
• Rule of thumb: make BFCM ads "earn" the additional budget through performance before scaling.

Retargeting Budget During BFCM

• Evergreen period: 5–10% to start retargeting, max ~30% of total budget.
• During BFCM: retargeting can go to 50–60% — people are ready to buy, so hitting warm audiences hard pays off.
• Warming up retargeting pre-BFCM is not strictly necessary — 4 days (Mon → Fri) is enough warm-up time if you launch Monday before Black Friday.

Creative Strategy for BFCM

• Simple no-product statics (just sale/discount messaging, no product shown) typically outperform everything during BFCM. Buyers are deal-hunting — no need to educate.
• Separate statics and video ad sets — if mixed, statics absorb all the budget, starving video. Run them in separate ad sets.
• DPA (Dynamic Product Ads) also perform well during BFCM — people are ready to shop, just need the trigger.
• Cover all formats: statics, carousels, GIFs, video — reach the full audience spectrum.

Discount Mechanics

• Keep it simple: flat site-wide discount outperforms tiered/complex offers.
• Minimum effective discount: 20% off. 15% can work but is marginal.
• Avoid combining codes — complexity kills conversion.
• Pre-BFCM flash sale strategy (Alo Yoga model): run an early November sale to acquire new customers who will then buy again on Black Friday.

• Don't optimize for maximum ROAS — optimize for maximum profitable spend at your ROAS floor. High ROAS at low scale leaves revenue on the table.
• Know your COGS, margins, and acceptable CPA before promotional periods — you can't make sound budget decisions in the moment without this baseline.

• Free plan available at usemotion.com (creative analytics, not the task manager app).
• Aggregates creative performance metrics from Meta: hook rate, thumb stop ratio, hold rate, watch %, CPC.
• Useful for rapid creative reporting — compare creatives side-by-side on the metrics that matter, without manually pulling each one from Ads Manager.

• Spanish-language ads: ~30M Spanish speakers on Facebook in the US — a valid incremental audience being tested for lower-priced product categories.
• Canada market: Adding free shipping for Canada is likely to significantly boost conversion — price sensitivity high in the Canadian market.
• SEO: Long-term investment (multi-year horizon); not essential for early-stage brands. Blog content can double as email content. Recommended learning: YouTube channels by specialist SEO agency owners.