Enter your ad metrics and get an instant verdict - Kill, Wait, Optimize, or Scale - with platform benchmarks and specific next actions. No guesswork.
Please fill in Spend, Impressions, and Clicks to get your verdict.
Kill an ad when it has spent at least 2x your target CPA with zero conversions and has enough impressions to draw a directional conclusion (typically 3,000 or more on Meta, 500 or more on Google Search). Do not kill based on spend alone if the campaign has been running fewer than 3 days - Meta's algorithm needs time to exit the learning phase. The clearest kill signals are: CPM is more than double the platform average (meaning your creative is losing ad auctions), CTR is below 0.5% on Meta or below 2% on Google Search, and frequency is above 3.5 on a cold audience. If all three conditions are true, pause the ad and test a new hook or angle before restarting.
Scaling means increasing your ad spend while maintaining or improving your cost per result. There are two main methods: vertical scaling (increasing the budget of a winning ad set by 15-20% every 2-3 days) and horizontal scaling (duplicating a winning ad set and running it against a new audience). Vertical scaling is lower risk but hits a ceiling; horizontal scaling reaches new audiences faster but dilutes results if done too aggressively. Before scaling, confirm that your CPA is below target for at least 7 days, your frequency is below 2 on cold audiences, and your landing page conversion rate is above 2%. Scaling a profitable ad into a broken funnel will only amplify the problem.
The reliable minimum is 50 conversion events per variant for statistical confidence, but most budgets cannot wait that long. A practical rule is to spend at least 2 to 3 times your target CPA before making a kill decision on a conversion campaign. For a $30 CPA target, that means $60 to $90 minimum before judging the ad as failed. For traffic and awareness campaigns, you can draw directional conclusions after 5,000 to 10,000 impressions per variant. The biggest mistake is pulling an ad after just $20 in spend because you see no conversions - early data is almost always inconclusive noise.
On Meta, a link CTR (the click-through rate to your website) above 1.5% is considered good for a conversion or lead generation campaign. Between 0.8% and 1.5% is acceptable, and below 0.8% typically indicates a hook, creative, or audience problem. For video ads, watch hook rate (3-second video views divided by impressions) - above 30% is healthy. A low CTR on Meta raises your effective CPM because the algorithm prioritizes ads that users engage with, meaning you pay more per impression over time. Improving your CTR is almost always the highest-leverage action when an ad is underperforming.
Optimizing means making changes to improve a struggling or average-performing ad - this could mean a new hook, tighter audience targeting, a stronger CTA, better landing page alignment, or a different bid strategy. Scaling means taking a clearly profitable ad and expanding its reach or budget without changing what is working. The mistake many advertisers make is trying to scale before the ad is truly profitable, or making creative changes to an ad that is already scaling well and disrupting its performance. The decision framework is simple: if CPA is above target, optimize. If CPA is below target consistently over 7 or more days, scale. If the ad has spent 3x target CPA with no results, kill it.
