I couldn't save the report to campaign-analysis-2026-10-05.md because I have no file-write tool in this session. The full analysis is below. Tell me if you want it saved once a write tool is available.
Ad Campaign Analysis: Google Ads + Meta (last 30 days)
Total spend: $10,300. Goal: purchases. Target CPA: $40.
Not provided: impression share, frequency, margin, and any changes made mid-period. Anything that depends on those is flagged as an assumption.
Executive summary
Blended CPA is $70 (147 purchases, ROAS 1.35), well above the $40 target. The average is misleading. Brand Search ($15) and Retargeting ($24) beat the target, and Lookalike ($50) is close. Generic Search ($155) and Prospecting Video ($350) take 71% of spend for 22% of purchases. Moving budget alone won't reach $40, because Brand and Retargeting are demand-capped. The top recommendation is to cut the two losers by 60–75%, scale Lookalike and Retargeting carefully, and hold a test reserve.
Performance dashboard
| Campaign | Spend | Impr. | Clicks | CTR | CPC | Conv | Conv rate | CPA | ROAS | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand Search | $900 | 12,000 | 1,500 | 12.5% | $0.60 | 60 | 4.00% | $15 | 6.00 | Maintain, small scale |
| Retargeting | $600 | 40,000 | 800 | 2.0% | $0.75 | 25 | 3.13% | $24 | 4.58 | Scale carefully |
| Lookalike | $1,500 | 110,000 | 1,900 | 1.73% | $0.79 | 30 | 1.58% | $50 | 1.93 | Optimize, then scale |
| Generic Search | $3,100 | 90,000 | 2,700 | 3.0% | $1.15 | 20 | 0.74% | $155 | 0.58 | Cut and restructure |
| Prospecting Video | $4,200 | 300,000 | 2,400 | 0.8% | $1.75 | 12 | 0.50% | $350 | 0.26 | Cut to test budget |
| Total | $10,300 | 552,000 | 9,300 | 1.68% | $1.11 | 147 | 1.58% | $70 | 1.35 |
Average order value is about $95 and is similar across campaigns. The performance gaps come from conversion rate and cost per click, not order size.
Channel rollup
| Channel | Spend | CTR | CPC | Conv | Conv rate | CPA | ROAS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $4,000 | 4.12% | $0.95 | 80 | 1.90% | $50 | 1.80 | |
| Meta | $6,300 | 1.13% | $1.24 | 67 | 1.31% | $94 | 1.07 |
Channel-level numbers hide the real split. Each platform has one very good campaign and one very bad one.
Efficiency ranking
Efficiency index is share of conversions divided by share of spend. Above 1.0 means under-invested.
| Rank | Campaign | Spend share | Conv share | Index |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brand Search | 8.7% | 40.8% | 4.67 |
| 2 | Retargeting | 5.8% | 17.0% | 2.92 |
| 3 | Lookalike | 14.6% | 20.4% | 1.40 |
| 4 | Generic Search | 30.1% | 13.6% | 0.45 |
| 5 | Prospecting Video | 40.8% | 8.2% | 0.20 |
Budget waste
- Zero-conversion items: none at campaign level. I have no keyword, ad or ad-set breakdown, so this is untested below campaign level.
- CPA above 3x target ($120): Generic Search and Prospecting Video, $7,300 combined.
- Spend above what the $40 target justifies:
- Generic Search: $3,100 − (20 × $40) = $2,300.
- Prospecting Video: $4,200 − (12 × $40) = $3,720.
- Lookalike: $300.
- Total about $6,300, or 61% of spend.
- Realistic saves: about $5,300/month from the two losers, assuming you cut them to about $1,000 each. The last $1,000 of Generic Search and Prospecting Video is a test budget, not savings.
Significance check
Generic Search (20), Prospecting Video (12) and Retargeting (25) all have fewer than the 30 conversions the skill sets as the minimum for a CPA comparison. So individual CPA figures are directional. The conversion-rate gaps do hold up, though.
| Test | Rates | z | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prospecting vs Lookalike (both Meta) | 0.50% (n=2,400 clicks) vs 1.58% (n=1,900) | 3.6, p<0.001 | Significant, Lookalike wins |
| Generic Search vs Lookalike | 0.74% (n=2,700) vs 1.58% (n=1,900) | 2.7, p≈0.007 | Significant |
Confidence is high that Prospecting and Generic convert worse. The exact CPA for each is less certain.
Diagnosis
- Prospecting Video: CTR is 0.8% and conversion rate is 0.5%, so it fails at both ad relevance and traffic quality. Cold video clicks rarely buy at a $95 order value. Last-click attribution also undercounts upper-funnel impact, so don't cut it to zero without a test (see caveats).
- Generic Search: CTR is fine at 3.0%, but CPC is $1.15 and the conversion rate is 0.74%. That points to broad or loose match terms and a landing page that doesn't match intent. Check the search terms report first.
- Brand Search: CPA of $15 is mostly demand harvesting. Brand searchers were already coming, so extra budget won't produce proportional gains. Some of these conversions would have happened organically.
- Retargeting: 40,000 impressions is a small pool. Expect the cost of each extra conversion to rise quickly as you scale.
- Lookalike: $50 CPA is 25% over target, but its conversion rate is the best of the cold-traffic campaigns. It's the best place to scale, and its creative or seed audience is worth tuning first.
Funnel coverage
| Stage | Covered by | Spend | Gap? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Awareness | Prospecting Video | $4,200 | Overfunded, poor yield |
| Consideration | Generic Search, Lookalike | $4,600 | Generic is leaking |
| Decision | Brand Search | $900 | Capped by demand |
| Retargeting | Meta Retargeting | $600 | Underfunded, small pool |
No Google retargeting or shopping/feed campaign is running. That's a gap worth testing.
Reallocation (budget-neutral, $10,300)
| Campaign | Current | Recommended | Change | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand Search | $900 | $1,000 | +$100 | Capped by demand; check impression share |
| Retargeting | $600 | $1,200 | +$600 | Best cold-to-warm yield; expect costs to rise past about $1,200 |
| Lookalike | $1,500 | $3,500 | +$2,000 | Best scalable cold campaign |
| Generic Search | $3,100 | $1,200 | −$1,900 | Move to exact/phrase match, add negatives |
| Prospecting Video | $4,200 | $1,000 | −$3,200 | Keep as a creative test |
| Test reserve | $0 | $2,400 | +$2,400 | Split between new Lookalike seeds and Google non-brand exact-match or Shopping/PMax |
Projected impact (assumptions):
- Marginal CPAs: Retargeting about $40, Lookalike about $70 past current spend, Brand about $20.
- Cut campaigns: Generic and Prospecting conversions fall in proportion to the spend cut.
- Reserve: counted as zero conversions.
- Result: about 175 purchases (+19%) at about $59 blended CPA (−16%).
- If the reserve converts at $100 CPA: about 199 purchases at about $52.
Scenarios
- Conservative (±20%): cut Generic by $620 and Prospecting by $840, and move the money to Retargeting and Lookalike. That gives about 170 purchases at about $61 CPA, with low risk.
- Recommended plan (about 60–75% cuts): the table above, with medium risk because Lookalike roughly doubles.
- Efficiency-first (spend less): run Brand $1,000, Retargeting $1,200, Lookalike $1,500 and Generic $500. That's about $4,200 spend for about 138 purchases at about $30 CPA. It loses about 9 purchases but frees $6,100. Those last 9 purchases cost roughly $680 each. If $40 CPA is a hard requirement, this is the only scenario that meets it.
Action plan
This week
- [ ] Pause the Prospecting Video ad sets with the lowest CTR; cut the campaign to about $1,000.
- [ ] Pull Generic Search's search terms report. Add negatives, switch to exact/phrase match, and cut to about $1,200.
- [ ] Raise Retargeting to $1,200 and set a frequency cap.
- [ ] Raise Lookalike in steps of about 20% every few days to avoid resetting learning.
- [ ] Check Brand Search impression share and whether it is losing budget or rank.
This month
- [ ] Test new Prospecting creative (short hook, product demo, UGC) with a holdout to measure incrementality.
- [ ] Test Lookalike seeds built from purchasers or top-value customers.
- [ ] Match Generic Search landing pages to query intent.
- [ ] Set up Google retargeting or Shopping as a test.
Next month
- [ ] Re-run this analysis. Judge Lookalike and Retargeting on marginal CPA, and aim for 30+ conversions per campaign before trusting CPAs.
Caveats
- Prospecting feeds the Retargeting and Brand pools, so a deep cut could shrink them. Watch Retargeting volume and branded search volume for 2–3 weeks after the cut.
- Attribution is likely last-click, so Prospecting and Brand are probably mis-credited in opposite directions.
- Break-even CPA depends on margin. At a $95 order value, $50 CPA is profitable only if gross margin is above about 53%.
- Please share the missing inputs (date range, impression share, frequency, margin, ad-set breakdown) and I can tighten the projections.
Real run in an isolated folder with only this skill installed. Only the Skill and Read tools were enabled, so nothing was fetched from the web and no file was written. The example is fictional. The model tried to save its report as a file, could not, and printed it inline instead.
What it does
Takes campaign data you provide from Google Ads, Meta or LinkedIn (CSV, pasted table or screenshot) and diagnoses it like a paid-media specialist. It normalises the data, flags wasted spend (zero-conversion items, high-CPA outliers, weak creative), picks winners, checks whether an A/B result is statistically meaningful, analyses the click-to-revenue funnel and compares channels on equal terms.
How it works
- The model asks for the platform, period, budget, goal, target CPA or ROAS and any funnel data.
- It builds a campaign health check, a waste report, winners and a channel efficiency ranking.
- It proposes a budget reallocation with conservative and aggressive scenarios and an action plan for this week, this month and next month.
Good for
Founders and marketers who see a ROAS number and need to know what to cut, what to scale and where the next dollar should go.
Pure reasoning over data you paste: no scripts, no network access, no accounts or API keys. The skill's final step saves the report as `campaign-analysis-<date>.md` in the working directory or a path you give, so tell the model where, or ask for it inline. Your spend and revenue figures enter the conversation, so remove anything you do not want shared. Benchmarks are generic and the projected improvements are estimates, not promises.