Lesson 4 of 4 · 5 min

Reading a losing batch

You can tell a bad concept from a bad execution and fix the right one.

When every ad in a batch underperforms, there are two very different reasons and they look identical in the numbers.

Steps

  1. Look at whether the batch actually varied. If it did not, you tested one idea.
  2. Separate the ads that got attention and lost people from the ads nobody looked at.
  3. For the ignored ones, the hook failed. For the abandoned ones, the argument failed.
  4. Fix one layer and rerun, rather than rewriting everything.

The distinction that matters

A bad execution is a good idea rendered badly: right angle, wrong image, unreadable text, crop that cut the product. Fix the render.

A bad concept is a well made ad for an argument nobody cares about. Fixing the render makes it prettier and it still loses.

What to watch for

Rewriting everything after a losing batch is the most expensive possible response, and it destroys the one thing the batch gave you, which is information about which layer failed.

Reference