More spend on a broken ad account doesn't lower your CPA. It locks it in.

Axolt sells nootropics: supplements for people who want to focus longer and think faster. When they came to us, their Meta account was live, the ads were running and the money was going out the door. But it was costing them $269 to win one customer on cold US traffic. Their target was $100.

They weren't doing anything obviously wrong. They had creative, campaigns and a media buyer. What they didn't have was a system.

What we found

Two things were fighting for the same budget.

• Campaigns that worked but were starved. The creative angles that converted sat in ad sets without enough budget to prove themselves.
• Campaigns that were bleeding. One cold audience campaign had spent $7,477 for 8 purchases. That's a $935 cost per purchase, and nobody had turned it off.

The creative mix had the same problem. The account ran almost entirely on video, and the video was returning 0.53× ROAS. A single static comparison graphic we tested returned 2.08×. Nobody had tested statics at scale.

What we changed

1. A testing layer and a winners layer. Every new batch of creative goes into testing first. What wins moves to the winners campaign and gets budget behind it. What loses gets cut. No exceptions.
2. A different creative mix. More statics and direct response angles, and fewer production-heavy videos that weren't converting.
3. A steady rhythm. We ran six creative batches, and each one built on what the last one told us.

The honest part

The goal was $100 and we got to $179. There's more work to do. But before, there was no clear path to $100. Now there's a testing structure, a creative rotation and a pool of winners that gets stronger over time.

What to check in your own account

• Is there a campaign spending money with a cost per purchase you'd never accept if you saw it written down?
• Do your best ads have enough budget to prove themselves?
• When did you last test a completely different format, not just a new hook on the same one?