@monoes/monomindcli 2.15.3 → 2.15.4

package/org-skills/paid-ads/references/google-search-playbook.md

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+# Google Search Playbook (B2B)
+
+Intent-first operating rules for Google Ads: where to spend first, how to structure the account, when to loosen match types, and how to keep smart bidding pointed at revenue instead of junk form-fills. For RSA generation mechanics, see [rsa-output-spec.md](rsa-output-spec.md).
+
+## Contents
+
+- The intent ladder
+- Brand bidding (and the pause test)
+- Capture before you create
+- Account structure
+- Keywords and match types
+- Negative keywords
+- The weekly search-terms ritual
+- Bidding by conversion volume
+- Offline conversions
+- Quality Score and landing pages
+- PMax for B2B
+- Benchmarks and the weekly scorecard
+
+## The intent ladder
+
+Spend opens rung by rung — each tier unlocks only after the one below proves it converts to *pipeline*:
+
+1. **Brand** — "they want you" (brand name, brand + pricing/login). Cheapest clicks, highest conversion. Always on.
+2. **High-intent non-brand** — ready to buy ("cold email software," "best CRM for agencies"). The profit center; most budget lives here.
+3. **Competitor** — evaluating alternatives ("[competitor] alternative/vs"). Higher CPC, lower CVR; run selectively with dedicated comparison pages.
+4. **Problem-aware** — has the problem, isn't shopping ("how to scale outbound"). Longer payback; only after tiers 1–2 work.
+5. **Demand-gen/awareness** — broad, Display, YouTube. Last, with spare budget only.
+
+**Don't skip rungs.** Broad spend before high-intent proof is how B2B accounts burn budgets with nothing in the CRM.
+
+## Brand bidding (and the pause test)
+
+Bid on brand by default — if you don't, competitors will, and you pay in lost deals rather than clicks. The exception: if you're the only bidder and organic owns the whole SERP, test pausing brand and watch **total brand conversions (paid + organic)**, not just paid. If total holds, you were cannibalizing yourself; if it drops, turn it back on. Cap brand budget — it rarely needs much, and shared budgets let brand eat everything (see below).
+
+## Capture before you create
+
+Search **harvests existing demand**; it cannot create demand. If your category has near-zero search volume, say so and put the budget upstream (LinkedIn/Meta/YouTube) instead of forcing keywords nobody types. Demand creation happens on social; Search is where you catch it landing.
+
+## Account structure
+
+Minimum viable split — each with an **independent budget**:
+
+- **Brand** (own budget — never shared)
+- **Non-brand high-intent** (one campaign, themed ad groups by solution)
+- **Competitor** (own budget and messaging — its CPC/CVR economics are different)
+- **Remarketing** (separate from Search)
+
+Why independent budgets: in a shared budget the cheapest, highest-converting campaign (always brand) starves the ones you actually need data from. The account looks profitable on paper and is blind everywhere that matters.
+
+- **Themed ad groups, not SKAGs:** 5–15 closely related keywords sharing one intent, answerable by one promise. If two keywords need different landing pages or value props, split the group. 2–3 RSAs per ad group.
+- **Consolidation rule:** a campaign that can't reach ~15–30 conversions/month can't feed smart bidding — merge it. Fewer, better-fed campaigns beat elaborate structures in low-volume B2B.
+- **Default settings to flip on every new Search campaign:** turn OFF Search Partners and Display Network until proven; set location targeting to **"Presence"** (people physically in the target geo — the default "presence or interest" serves people merely interested in it); remember language targeting keys off the user's Google interface language, not the query language.
+- **Don't compete with yourself:** the same keyword at the same match type in multiple ad groups splits your data and bids against your own account. Use negatives to route each query to exactly one home.
+
+## Keywords and match types
+
+Source keywords from how **buyers describe the problem** (sales-call language, your own search-terms report, competitor ad copy) — not how you describe the product. A keyword with 50 searches/month and clear intent beats one with 5,000 and mixed intent. Tag every keyword by intent tier.
+
+**Match-type progression — in this order:**
+
+1. Start high-intent terms on **Phrase + Exact** (Exact still matches close variants; Phrase is the B2B workhorse), manual CPC or Max Conversions while volume is low.
+2. Mine the search-terms report weekly (ritual below).
+3. Introduce **Broad only after**: 30+ conversions/month in the campaign, AND smart bidding live, AND a tight negative list. Broad without all three is a donation to Google.
+
+## Negative keywords
+
+Starter lists to apply at build time:
+
+- **Universal junk:** free, cheap, jobs, salary, hiring, career, intern, student, course, tutorial, training, certification, pdf, template, reddit, wiki, login (except in brand campaigns)
+- **Research intent:** "what is," "how to," "examples," "meaning," "definition"
+- **Category collisions:** terms your category shares with an unrelated one (selling sales-engagement? negative "employee engagement")
+- **Your brand as a negative in non-brand campaigns** — routes brand traffic to the brand campaign where it belongs
+
+**Match-type mechanics gotcha:** negative broad requires ALL its words present (any order) — negative broad "free trial" does **not** block "free" alone. Negative phrase blocks in-order phrases; negative exact blocks only that exact query. Most accidental over-blocking and under-blocking traces to this.
+
+**Don't over-negative:** every negative narrows reach, and it compounds fast at B2B volumes. Negative the clearly wrong, not the merely uncertain — an ambiguous term deserves more data before it's cut.
+
+## The weekly search-terms ritual
+
+Once a week per campaign, three passes:
+
+1. **Waste:** terms with spend (3+ clicks) and zero conversions → negative the irrelevant ones.
+2. **Winners:** converting search terms that aren't keywords yet → add as Exact/Phrase in the right ad group.
+3. **Drift:** broad/phrase matches pulling adjacent-but-wrong meanings → tighten the match type or negative the drift.
+
+## Bidding by conversion volume
+
+| Conversions/month (campaign) | Strategy |
+|---|---|
+| 0–15 | Manual CPC or Maximize Conversions (no target) |
+| 15–30 | Maximize Conversions |
+| 30+ stable | Target CPA — set at or slightly above your trailing 30-day actual |
+| Real revenue values flowing back | Target ROAS |
+
+Rules of thumb: smart bidding needs ~30 conversions in 30 days per campaign to learn. Set tCPA near actuals — an aggressively low target chokes delivery (Google just stops bidding). Move targets in **±10–15% steps and wait 1–2 weeks**; every change restarts learning, so don't panic-edit inside the learning window. Budget mechanics: campaigns can spend up to **2× daily budget** in a day (Google balances monthly — single-day overspend is normal); a budget-capped campaign that's converting often *lowers* its CPA when you raise the budget, because constrained smart bidding underperforms.
+
+## Offline conversions
+
+The single highest-impact move in a B2B Google account: **import CRM outcomes** (SQL, opportunity, closed-won) back into Google via GCLID + offline conversion import or a native CRM integration, with real deal values. Until then, smart bidding optimizes to form-fills and buys you junk (see the optimize-to-quality trap in [b2b-paid-playbook.md](b2b-paid-playbook.md)). B2B clicks close in 60–180 days — in-platform conversion counts will never tell the truth on their own. Reconcile against the CRM monthly; the CRM wins.
+
+## Quality Score and landing pages
+
+QS (1–10, per keyword) = expected CTR + ad relevance + landing page experience. Low QS means paying more for the same position — **fix the weak component before raising the bid.** Landing page rules that move it: message match (page headline echoes the ad's promise and the query — not a generic homepage); one job and one CTA per page; speed; proof above the fold. **Form length is an intent gate:** short forms buy volume at lower quality, longer qualified forms buy fewer/better — match it to what you're feeding back as the conversion event.
+
+## PMax for B2B
+
+Value ranking: **brand Search > high-intent non-brand Search > remarketing > PMax > broad demand-gen.** PMax earns budget only after the cheaper, clearer wins are maxed. Never run it as the first campaign, on weak tracking, or on tiny budgets.
+
+Guardrails when you do run it: account-level **brand exclusions** (or it cannibalizes brand Search and claims the credit); audience signals from first-party data; negative keywords from day one; offline conversions imported *before* scaling it; check the CRM quality of PMax leads by campaign — if they convert to pipeline at half the rate of Search leads, PMax is cheap-looking and expensive-in-reality. Google auto-generates a bad video if you don't supply one.
+
+## Benchmarks and the weekly scorecard
+
+B2B SaaS Search ranges (wide on purpose — anchor to your own first 30 days): brand CTR 8–20%, CVR 15–40%; non-brand high-intent CTR 2–6%, CVR 3–10%, CPC $8–40+, CPL $80–400+; competitor terms run higher CPC and lower CVR than non-brand.
+
+Weekly scorecard — exactly eight numbers: spend · leads · CPL · lead→SQL rate (from CRM) · SQLs · cost per SQL · Search impression share · top wasted search terms. Diagnostic: **Search Lost IS (budget)** vs **Lost IS (rank)** tells you whether you're capped by money or by Ad Rank — different problems, different fixes. If the eight are healthy and trending right, the account is healthy.
+
+---
+
+*Framework lineage: adapted (re-expressed and restructured) from practitioner playbooks, notably Ivan Falco's ads-skills. Benchmarks are practitioner-reported starting points — recalibrate against your own account.*

package/org-skills/paid-ads/references/linkedin-b2b-playbook.md

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+# LinkedIn B2B Playbook
+
+Operational rules for LinkedIn Ads: bidding, audience sizing, scaling triggers, benchmarks, and format-specific tactics. LinkedIn is the precision channel — highest-quality B2B targeting at the highest cost, so the operating discipline is about not wasting that precision.
+
+## Contents
+
+- Bidding progression
+- Audience sizing rules
+- Job functions vs. job titles
+- Audience splitting rules
+- Penetration-based scaling
+- Benchmarks by funnel stage
+- Thought leader ads (TLAs)
+- Campaign group build order
+- Format notes (document, conversation, CTV)
+- Retargeting setup (non-retroactive!)
+- Account audit shortlist
+
+## Bidding progression
+
+1. **Week 1:** launch on automated bidding / maximum delivery. Don't touch it — you're buying CPC data.
+2. **Week 2+:** switch to manual CPC set **~20% below the average CPC** the automated phase produced. This reliably cuts CPC without killing delivery.
+3. **Exceptions:** small retargeting/ABM audiences stay on automated (manual underdelivers on small pools); reset to automated for a week whenever you change objective; audiences under ~10K may never spend their full budget at any bid.
+
+Scheduling note: LinkedIn's ad day resets at UTC midnight. Professional activity peaks weekday mornings–early afternoon in the audience's timezone; dayparting there stretches limited budgets.
+
+## Audience sizing rules
+
+- **Cold prospecting:** 50K–300K members. Minimum ~15K per cold campaign.
+- **Too-narrow failure mode:** hyper-narrow audiences spike CPMs several-fold and stall delivery entirely — budget won't spend at any bid. If it's not spending, the audience is usually too small, not the bid too low.
+- **Tiny TAM (<~30K addressable):** skip the TOF/BOF split — run one campaign that saturates the whole audience with all funnel layers.
+- **Retargeting:** audiences of roughly 1K–5K per segment (site visitors, 50%+ video viewers) are workable; below ~300 won't deliver.
+
+## Job functions vs. job titles
+
+Title targeting is precise but small and expensive. **Job function + seniority** targeting typically triples the addressable audience with materially cheaper reach at similar engagement — at the cost of a weekly "negative title" exclusion pass for the first ~2 months (like negative keywords: exclude irrelevant titles as they show up in demographics).
+
+Platform gotchas:
+- **Job-title targeting and seniority targeting are mutually exclusive** — you can't stack them. Entry-level exclusions only work under function/seniority targeting.
+- The **Business Development function includes many CEOs, CMOs, and managing directors.** Don't blanket-exclude BD if you sell to the C-suite — filter with seniority exclusions instead.
+- Leave **Audience Expansion OFF** (it quietly spends a meaningful share of budget on out-of-ICP members) and **Audience Network OFF** for B2B lead gen.
+
+## Audience splitting rules
+
+Split priority: **intent > persona > region/company size > seniority.**
+
+- **Region:** keep the US separate (most expensive market — grouped with cheaper regions, it eats the budget). DACH needs localized ads; UK/Canada/Australia group fine; Nordics/Netherlands run fine in English. Never group an expensive market with small ones.
+- **Company size:** segment by employee count (not revenue — LinkedIn's revenue data is estimated). Start with two bands, not three. Left unsegmented, LinkedIn over-serves the extremes (small companies and very large ones) and underserves mid-market — splitting forces fair distribution.
+
+## Penetration-based scaling
+
+Audience penetration (reached ÷ audience size) is the scaling trigger, not spend:
+
+- 30-day penetration **<25%** → room to raise budget on this audience.
+- **25–35%** → hold; let penetration accumulate before adding spend.
+- **~35%+** = healthy saturation → scale horizontally (new audiences), not vertically.
+- Expect diminishing returns: doubling budget grows penetration ~50–70%, not 100%.
+- One campaign at 35%+ penetration beats three campaigns at 12% each — consolidate before multiplying.
+- **Spend rising but reach flat (frequency climbing)?** Either competitors outbid you or ad quality is dragging your auction price. Strong ads → raise budget/bids; weak ads → fix creative first, more money just buys the same people again.
+
+## Benchmarks by funnel stage
+
+Practitioner-reported B2B SaaS ranges — recalibrate on your own account. **Careful:** for engagement-objective and thought-leader campaigns, LinkedIn's reported "CTR" includes social actions; judge traffic on **click-through to landing page (CTRTLP)** specifically.
+
+| Metric | Cold / TOF | MOF | BOF/retargeting |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| CTRTLP | 0.30–0.55% | 0.55–0.80% | 0.80–1.30% |
+| CPM | $33–65 typical | — | — |
+| CPC | $8–22+ | — | lower |
+| Cost per lead (Lead Gen Form) | — | $50–200 | — |
+| Cost per website form fill | — | — | $200–500 |
+
+Other useful bars: lead-gen form fill rate >8% (below = form too long, offer weak, or audience too cold); cost per SQL should stay under ~$500 (enterprise ACVs tolerate $300–500+ CPLs; SMB needs $50–150); video view rate >40%, completion 8–15% for horizontal; expect return data to lag 3–6 months.
+
+## Thought leader ads (TLAs)
+
+Ads promoted from a person's profile rather than the company page — currently the platform's biggest efficiency arbitrage:
+
+- TLAs typically deliver **~3–6× the CTR of company-page ads** at a fraction of the CPC.
+- **Non-employee/creator TLAs often outperform employee TLAs** — partnerships with niche creators are worth 30–50% of TLA budget if available.
+- **Organic-first pipeline:** posts that hit ~2–3% organic CTR are your TLA candidates — the audience already voted.
+- **The 72-hour edit:** organic reach concentrates in a post's first ~3 days. Let it run organic, then edit the post to add the CTA/product mention and promote it as a TLA — you capture organic credibility first, then convert it to demand gen.
+- Auction insight: single-image ads face the most auction competition. Document, conversation, and TLA formats often buy cheaper reach purely because fewer advertisers use them — format diversification is a *bidding* tactic, not just creative variety.
+
+## Campaign group build order
+
+Add groups in ROI order, funding each before the next: **1. Product value** (direct response on your core offer) → **2. Remarketing** → **3. Content** (only content that can't be consumed in-feed — it must earn the click) → **4. Social proof** (case studies, testimonials) → **5. Thought leadership** (slowest payback, add last). Group-budget optimization tends to favor cheap audiences and video — don't mix enterprise with SMB or static with video in one group.
+
+## Format notes
+
+- **Document ads:** always 1080×1350 portrait (4:5). 5–7 slides: hook → pain → shift → solution → differentiators → CTA. The classic mistake is making the "solution" slide generic category requirements and the "differentiator" slide a rehash — slide N must add what slide N-1 couldn't. Big standalone stat slides (one number, source small) carry these.
+- **Conversation ads:** subject 2–4 words; 3–5 short lines per message; specific numbers beat vague benefit claims; lead with a soft CTA ("see how it works") over "book a demo"; route the primary CTA to a Lead Gen Form, not a scheduling link. Benchmarks: 35–50%+ open rate, 2–5% CTR.
+- **CTV:** Brand Awareness objective only, auto-bid only, ~$50/day minimum, limited geos. Completion metrics are meaningless (forced view). Only worth it above roughly $15K/month total spend — below that it cannibalizes measurable-signal budget.
+
+## Retargeting setup (non-retroactive!)
+
+**LinkedIn retargeting audiences only start collecting from the moment you create them.** Create every retargeting audience you might ever want (site visitors, video viewers, ad engagers, lead-form openers, company page visitors) **before launch** — data you didn't capture is gone permanently.
+
+Cross-channel: tag paid-search traffic with UTMs and build LinkedIn (and Meta) retargeting audiences from it — see the [ABM playbook](abm-playbook.md) for the mechanic.
+
+## Account audit shortlist
+
+The highest-frequency findings when auditing LinkedIn accounts, in order: Audience Expansion left on · Audience Network left on · audiences too small to deliver · fewer than 4 active ads per campaign · campaigns under ~10 results/week (starved — consolidate) · stale creative (3+ months old) · no retargeting audiences created · lead quality never reconciled against CRM · brand/geo budget mixing · everything on automated bidding forever.
+
+---
+
+*Framework lineage: adapted (re-expressed and restructured) from practitioner playbooks, notably Ivan Falco's ads-skills. Benchmarks are practitioner-reported starting points — recalibrate against your own account.*

package/org-skills/paid-ads/references/meta-decision-system.md

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+# Meta Decision System (B2B)
+
+A quantified kill/keep/scale engine for Meta ads. Every threshold derives from one anchor number, so decisions become arithmetic instead of vibes. Pairs with the strategy-level Meta playbook in SKILL.md (creative-as-targeting, creative volume) — this file is the *operating* layer.
+
+## Contents
+
+- TCPL: the anchor variable
+- The ad-count ceiling
+- Two-campaign structure (Scaling / Testing)
+- Destination testing (CBO per persona, one ad set per destination)
+- Stage 1: delivery check (day 7)
+- Stage 2: quality evaluation (weekly)
+- Graduation criteria
+- Fatigue detection
+- Swap rules
+- Creative production math
+- Scaling protocol
+- Weekly cadence
+- Lead forms and social amnesia
+- Advantage+ transition
+- Partnership ads (the net-new-reach lever)
+- Rolling reach as a health signal
+- Benchmarks and seasonality
+
+## TCPL: the anchor variable
+
+TCPL = **Target Cost Per Qualified Lead** (qualified = meets your ICP bar, not just a form-fill). Set it one of three ways:
+
+1. **From deal math (best):** TCPL = target cost per demo × qualified-lead-to-demo rate. ($2,000/demo × 0.28 = $560.)
+2. **From history:** TCPL = trailing 30-day CPL(qualified) × 0.80 — a 20% improvement is achievable through operational cleanup alone (killing zero-QL ads, graduating winners). Once you have both, use whichever is tighter.
+3. **New account:** target CAC × qualified-lead-to-customer rate, or a placeholder from your ACV tier; replace with method 2 after 30 days.
+
+Every rule below is expressed in multiples of TCPL. Review TCPL monthly.
+
+## The ad-count ceiling
+
+More active ads than your budget can feed = every ad starves and nothing gets a fair read.
+
+**Ceiling = (daily budget × 14) / (2 × TCPL)** — i.e., over a 14-day evaluation window, each ad needs at least 2× TCPL of spend to be judged.
+
+$1,000/day at $500 TCPL → ceiling of 14 ads; run **6–10** (winners + 2–3 test slots). At the ceiling, launching a new test requires killing something first.
+
+## Two-campaign structure (Scaling / Testing)
+
+Run two CBO campaigns over the **same audience**:
+
+- **Scaling campaign (~80% of budget)** — holds only graduated, proven ads.
+- **Testing campaign (~20%)** — holds new concepts and iterations, with its own protected budget.
+
+Why: inside a single CBO, proven ads always starve new ads — tests never get enough spend to be judged. Why not ABO for testing: equal forced distribution keeps spending on ads Meta has already deprioritized. The separation is *budget protection*, not audience segmentation.
+
+**Image-first validation:** launch new concepts as statics first; only produce the video/carousel/UGC version after the image passes the checks below. Exception: concepts that are inherently video (testimonial, demo, UGC).
+
+## Destination testing (CBO per persona, one ad set per destination)
+
+A complementary structure for when the **lander, not the creative, is the biggest unknown**: one CBO per persona; inside it, one ad set per destination type — PDP, listicle/advertorial, quiz, demo page — with the **same creatives in every ad set**. Holding creative constant makes the read clean: any CPM or performance divergence between ad sets is the destination.
+
+Why it works: the destination is a test axis of the same rank as creative — a losing funnel can hide winning creative, and different personas convert through different funnel shapes. CBO allocates budget across destinations the way it allocates across ads, and practitioners running this report wide CPM/performance spreads between destinations plus meaningful new-reach gains (~30%) from the added variety.
+
+Fit with the two-campaign structure: treat a destination test like a concept test — run it in the Testing campaign with a protected budget, judge each ad set against TCPL at the usual spend gates, then graduate the winning creative × destination pair. *Practitioner-reported pattern (Alexander Pauwelyn, 2026), not a platform-documented mechanic — validate against your own account data.*
+
+## Stage 1: delivery check (day 7)
+
+CBO's spend allocation is itself a signal — Meta pre-screens your ads. At day 7 for each test ad:
+
+- **Fair share test:** minimum expected spend = (campaign daily budget ÷ active ads) × 7 × 0.5. Below that → **kill** (Meta actively deprioritized it). Zero spend → kill immediately.
+- **Ongoing:** if an ad has spent ≥ 1× TCPL lifetime AND averaged under ~$10/day over the last 7 days → kill. (The lifetime-spend gate stops you from killing ads CBO simply hasn't explored yet.)
+
+When iterating on a delivery-killed ad, change the **hook/visual/format only** — the audience never got far enough for copy or CTA to matter.
+
+## Stage 2: quality evaluation (weekly, rolling 14-day data)
+
+Run in order; stop at the first triggered action:
+
+1. **Data gate:** spend < 3× TCPL → **wait** (not enough signal). At true cost-per-QL = target, 3× TCPL of spend should produce ~3 qualified leads; zero QLs at that spend is ~5% probability — so judging at 3× gives ~95% confidence without wasting budget (2× has a 13% false-negative rate; 5× overpays for certainty).
+2. **Zero pixel leads** at ≥3× TCPL → **swap and abandon the concept** (don't iterate a dead concept).
+3. **Quality check** (the layer Meta can't see — requires your CRM):
+   - Pixel leads but zero qualified → swap; keep the format, change the angle.
+   - Qualified rate <40% → swap; the ad attracts the wrong people. Add ICP-filtering language. (At 40% QL rate, true cost per QL is 2.5× the pixel CPL you see in Ads Manager — two ads identical in-platform can differ 60%+ in real cost.)
+   - 40–60% → monitor one more week. ≥60% → proceed.
+4. **Cost check:** cost per QL ≤ TCPL → candidate winner. 1–1.5× TCPL → monitor (normal variance). >1.5× TCPL → swap (structural underperformance, not noise).
+
+## Graduation criteria (Testing → Scaling)
+
+Graduate only when **all** are true: ≥5 qualified leads · qualified rate ≥60% · cost per QL ≤ TCPL · running ≥14 days · ≥1 QL in the last 7 days.
+
+## Fatigue detection
+
+Frequency bands by campaign type (safe / warning / critical):
+
+| Campaign type | Safe | Warning | Critical |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| Cold prospecting | 1.0–2.5 | 2.5–4.0 | >4.0 |
+| Retargeting | 2.0–4.0 | 4.0–6.0 | >6.0 |
+| ABM (small audiences) | 2.0–5.0 | 5.0–8.0 | >8.0 |
+
+Other signals, in urgency order: CTR down 20%+ from baseline over 7 days; CPM up 30%+ over 2 weeks (leading indicator — moves before CTR); ad relevance rankings "below average"; CPA up with stable targeting.
+
+For **scaling-campaign ads**, apply a deliberately stricter bar than the general bands — these ads carry ~80% of spend, so fatigue there costs the most: warning at frequency 3.0–3.5 or cost +20% → start 2 iterations now (they take ~14 days to be ready); swap at >3.5, cost +40%, or >1.5× TCPL for 2 weeks.
+
+**Lifespan expectations (B2B):** statics 14–28 days; short video and carousels 21–35; UGC/testimonial 28–42. Small B2B audiences build frequency fast — plan refresh every 14–21 days.
+
+**Retire (don't iterate)** when CTR drops 30%+ from peak or frequency crosses the campaign type's critical band above — the concept is exhausted, not the execution.
+
+**Rotation without resetting learning:** never edit creative inside a performing ad — that resets the learning phase. Launch new ads alongside existing ones, or spin up a new ad set with the same targeting. Pausing doesn't reset; editing does.
+
+## Swap rules
+
+**Never pause without a replacement.** Keep 2–3 iterations staged; replacement live within 7 days, immediately for critical fatigue. If the pipeline is empty, redirect the budget to proven ads rather than leaving a zombie running. What to change depends on why it died: delivery kill → hook/visual; quality kill → angle and ICP language; cost kill → offer and audience; fatigue → fresh execution of the same proven concept.
+
+## Creative production math
+
+- **Test throughput** ≈ (monthly budget × 0.20) ÷ (3 × TCPL), per month. Delivery kills free budget early, so actual throughput runs ~1.5–2× the base rate.
+- **Win rates:** iterations on winners ~25%; brand-new concepts ~10%; blended ~1 in 6. To get N winners, plan ~6× N tests.
+- **Minimum proven-ad inventory** ≈ monthly budget ÷ $5,000 — each proven B2B ad absorbs roughly $5K/month before fatiguing. **You cannot scale budget ahead of creative supply**; if proven ads < minimum, fix the creative deficit before raising budget.
+- **Iteration priority** when refreshing a winner (ranked by impact): 1. hook (changes who stops) → 2. visual treatment → 3. format → 4. body copy/CTA.
+
+## Scaling protocol
+
+Scale only when all: proven-ad count meets the next budget level's minimum; account frequency <3.0; cost per QL ≤ TCPL for 2+ consecutive weeks; 3+ replacements staged.
+
+- **Rate:** +20% every 5 days. Never +30% or more in one move — that resets learning.
+- **Rollback trigger:** cost per QL >1.5× TCPL after a scale step → cut budget 20–30% immediately, stabilize 2 weeks, resume at +10% per week.
+- **Hitting the wall** (account-wide average frequency >3.5 — an account-level *scale* guardrail, distinct from the per-ad fatigue bands above): expand lookalikes 1% → 2–3%, add new seed audiences, test broad, activate cross-channel UTM audiences (see [ABM playbook](abm-playbook.md)), re-open remarketing.
+
+## Weekly cadence
+
+- **Monday — decision day:** pull rolling 14-day data; run Stage 2 on every test ad; run the fatigue check on every scaling ad.
+- **Wednesday — launch day:** launch new tests into freed slots; run Stage 1 on ads that hit day 7.
+- **Friday — scaling day:** apply scale steps or rollbacks.
+- **Monthly:** creative library audit + TCPL review.
+
+## Lead forms and social amnesia
+
+The #1 B2B Meta lead-quality problem: frictionless auto-filled forms produce leads who don't remember converting ("social amnesia"). **Intentional friction = awareness = quality:**
+
+- Use **Higher Intent** form type (adds a review step), not More Volume.
+- **Require work email** — it can't auto-fill from the Facebook profile, forcing a conscious act. This is the single biggest quality lever.
+- Add 1–3 multiple-choice qualification questions (4+ spikes abandonment), ordered easiest → hardest.
+- Confirmation message sets expectations for what happens next (combats amnesia at the follow-up stage).
+
+Lead form vs. landing page: LP converting ≥5% → use the LP; LP under ~2% → lead form; demo/trial offers → LP; content/webinar → form.
+
+## Advantage+ transition
+
+Manual is where you learn; Advantage+ is where you earn. Transition a campaign to Advantage+ only after: a proven offer, a validated audience, and **~50 conversions/week** on the optimization event (the learning-phase exit bar — budget needed ≈ target CPA × 50 ÷ 7 per day). If you can't hit 50/week on the target event, optimize a higher-volume event up-funnel and retarget converters. Advantage+ conflicts with strict ABM (you can't lock it to a list) — see the [ABM playbook](abm-playbook.md). Watch Campaign Score directionally (70+ healthy, <50 = fighting the algorithm) but never trade lead quality for score.
+
+## Partnership ads (the net-new-reach lever)
+
+Everything above optimizes *conversion inside an audience Meta already reaches you*. Partnership ads are how you reach a **net-new** one. Andromeda targets by **persona**, not interest lists — and a creator's own following *is* a pre-assembled persona. Running an ad as a partnership (branded content from the creator's handle) inherits that seed audience, so the algorithm expands from people who already trust the fronting creator. This is the single highest-leverage lever on Meta right now; a serious account without partnership ads is bringing a butter knife to a gunfight.
+
+**Where it fits the decision system:** partnership ads are a *scaling* move, not a testing gimmick. When the account hits the wall (frequency >3.5, rolling reach flattening — see below), the "add new seed audiences" step in the [scaling protocol](#scaling-protocol) is largely *this*. Judge them against TCPL like any other ad, but expect a different failure mode: a weak partnership ad is usually the wrong *creator*, not the wrong hook.
+
+**Partnership-ads playbook:**
+
+1. **Pre-test before you promote.** Don't pay to boost a creator's post on faith. Let their content run organically (or in a cheap traffic/engagement test) first; promote only the pieces that already earn saves, shares, and watch-through. Paid spend amplifies what's working — it doesn't rescue a flat creator.
+2. **Pick for persona overlap, not follower count.** The seed audience only helps if the creator's followers *are* your ICP. A 15K-follower creator whose audience is exactly your buyer beats a 500K generalist. Vet the audience, not the vanity metric.
+3. **Deal structure basics:** get **whitelisting / branded-content-partner access** (run ads *from the creator's handle*, not just reposts — this is what unlocks the seed audience) with **usage rights** for a defined window (typically 3–6 months, renewable) plus **spend/paid-amplification rights**. Pay a flat content fee; add per-deliverable pricing for extra cuts. Avoid pure revenue-share on cold creators — you can't attribute cleanly yet.
+4. **Companion tactic — commission low-fi statics per creator.** When you contract a creator for the partnership video, *also* commission a few quick, low-fi statics (screenshot-style, "how they'd post it to their own story"). Each creator then becomes a **mini-funnel**: the partnership video punctures cold net-new reach, the low-fi statics support mid-funnel conversion under the same trusted face. Cheap to add, and it multiplies the return on the creator relationship.
+
+Format-level guidance on *which* creator-fronted formats to run (founder content, yapper, authority, amateur-investigation, creator low-fi statics, etc.) lives in the ad-creative format taxonomy: [meta-creative-formats.md](../../ad-creative/references/meta-creative-formats.md) *(sibling addition — forward link)*.
+
+## Rolling reach as a health signal
+
+Rolling **month-over-month reach** (unique people reached, MoM) is the account's net-new-audience gauge — the thing conversion metrics can't tell you. CPL and ROAS can look fine while you quietly recycle the same shrinking pool; the tell is reach going flat or declining month over month even as spend holds.
+
+- **Track it monthly** alongside the TCPL review. Falling rolling reach is a *leading* indicator of the frequency wall (it moves before frequency crosses 3.5 and before CPMs spike).
+- **Trigger:** rolling reach declining MoM → **deploy partnership ads** to restore net-new reach (new seed audiences), before the fatigue bands force your hand. Treat it as the same class of guardrail as the frequency ceiling in the [scaling protocol](#scaling-protocol) — an account-level scale signal, not a per-ad fatigue read.
+
+## Benchmarks and seasonality
+
+B2B SaaS Meta ranges (practitioner-reported; recalibrate on your own first 30 days): CTR 1.0–1.5% (red flag <0.8%); CPM $10–20 (red flag >$25); CPL (form) $20–50 (red flag >$75); landing page CVR 8–12%. Seasonality: Q1 CPMs are the year's lowest (scale aggressively); Q4 runs +60–80% (consider reducing B2B spend and banking budget for January).
+
+---
+
+*Framework lineage: this decision system is adapted (re-expressed, reconciled, and restructured) from practitioner operating systems, notably Ivan Falco's ads-skills. All thresholds are starting points — recalibrate against your own account.*

package/org-skills/paid-ads/references/payback-period.md

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+# Payback Period Budgeting
+
+The gate before every channel decision: **can I afford this channel?** Advertising has to be **deterministic** — $1 in, more than $1 out, on a clock you can name. Payback Period is how you set the clock.
+
+## Kill LTV:CAC first
+
+**LTV:CAC is a useless, often destructive metric.** It feels rigorous and is usually a lie. Four flaws:
+
+1. **It assumes all customers churn.** LTV bakes in an eventual death for every account. Your best customers don't churn — they compound. A metric that pre-writes everyone's obituary underprices your actual base.
+2. **It assumes churn is evenly timed.** It isn't. Baremetrics data shows **more churn happens in the first 3 months than in any other window** — front-loaded, not smooth. Blended LTV smears that spike into a flat average and hides the real risk (and the real payback math).
+3. **It hides per-plan variance under blended ARPU.** A $9/mo plan and a $999/mo plan get averaged into one number that describes neither. The channels, creative, and payback that work for the $9 buyer are nothing like the $999 buyer — but blended LTV:CAC says "3:1, we're fine" and you scale the wrong thing.
+4. **It ignores revenue delay.** Free trials, free plans, and long sales cycles mean money arrives weeks or months after CAC is spent. LTV:CAC treats acquisition and revenue as simultaneous. They're not. The gap is where startups run out of cash.
+
+A "healthy" 3:1 LTV:CAC can sit on top of a channel that bankrupts you, because the ratio never asks *when the cash comes back*.
+
+## The replacement: Payback Period
+
+**Payback Period = CAC / ARPU** (monthly).
+
+The answer is in **months** — how long until a customer pays back what you spent to acquire them. **Target 3–12 months.** Under 3 is often leaving growth on the table; over 12 means you're financing customers longer than most early-stage balance sheets can survive.
+
+Because it's per-cohort and per-plan (not blended), it exposes exactly what LTV:CAC hides.
+
+### Worked example — same CAC, wildly different payback
+
+Say a channel costs **$300 to acquire a customer** (CAC = $300):
+
+| Plan | ARPU (monthly) | Payback = CAC / ARPU | Verdict |
+|------|---------------|----------------------|---------|
+| Starter | $9 | 300 / 9 = **33.3 months** | Unaffordable. You wait ~3 years to break even on acquisition — before churn. Do not run this channel for this plan. |
+| Pro | $99 | 300 / 99 = **3.0 months** | Healthy. Bottom of the target band. Scale it. |
+| Enterprise | $999 | 300 / 999 = **0.3 months** | Excellent. Pays back in ~9 days. Pour budget in. |
+
+Same CAC, same channel. On the $9 plan the channel is a cash incinerator; on the $999 plan it's a printing press. **Blended LTV:CAC would have averaged these into one meaningless "we're fine."** Payback Period forces you to run the channel only for the plans it can actually afford.
+
+The practical move: compute payback **per plan (or per cohort)**, then only turn on paid acquisition for the segments where it lands inside 3–12 months. Route the cheap-plan buyers to organic/product-led motions instead.
+
+## Discounted Payback Period (churn-adjusted)
+
+Raw payback assumes everyone survives to pay you back. They don't — especially in those first 3 months. Adjust for it:
+
+**Discounted Payback Period = CAC / (ARPU × annual retention)**
+
+Multiply ARPU by the fraction of customers still paying, so the denominator reflects real, retained revenue instead of theoretical revenue.
+
+Example: CAC $300, ARPU $99, annual retention 70%:
+- Raw: 300 / 99 = 3.0 months
+- Discounted: 300 / (99 × 0.70) = 300 / 69.3 = **4.3 months**
+
+Still inside the band — but the discounted number is the one to budget against. When retention is weak, discounted payback blows past 12 months even when raw payback looked fine; that gap is your early warning.
+
+## Using it as the channel gate
+
+1. Compute CAC for the channel (all-in: spend / customers, including creative and management).
+2. Compute discounted payback per plan/cohort.
+3. **Turn the channel on only where discounted payback ≤ 12 months** (aim for 3–12).
+4. Re-run monthly — CAC drifts up as you scale; the gate moves with it.
+
+This composes with breakeven CPL/CPC math in [b2b-paid-playbook.md](b2b-paid-playbook.md): breakeven tells you the *most* you can pay per lead; payback tells you *how long your cash is tied up* — you need both to scale without running dry.
+
+## Two adjacent rules
+
+**OOH without social amplification is a waste of money.** Out-of-home (billboards, transit, print) has no click, no pixel, no deterministic loop on its own. It only pays back when it's engineered to be photographed, posted, and amplified on social — the OOH buys the moment, social buys the reach. Running OOH with no social plan is buying awareness you can't measure or compound.
+
+**Narrative momentum** (ad copy): the strongest-performing ads carry a story forward rather than restate a pitch — each line earns the next, building tension toward the CTA instead of front-loading features. Pair it with the discipline of **testing one variable at a time** (copy, then creative, then audience) so you can tell what actually moved payback. Depth on both lives in the **ad-creative** skill; this file only flags them as levers that change your CAC.
+
+---
+
+*Source: Corey Haines, *Founding Marketing*, ch. 7 ("Spend budget where customers spend their time"). Payback targets and the Baremetrics first-3-months churn finding are practitioner-reported — recalibrate against your own cohort data. For attribution of the CAC inputs, see the **attribution** skill; for setting ARPU and plan structure, see the **pricing** skill.*