| name | suede-ads |
| description | Suede-owned paid-acquisition operating system for channel choice, campaign structure, audiences, bidding, budget pacing, negative keywords, retargeting, and kill-or-scale decisions. Use when planning, auditing, or optimizing paid campaigns on Google, Meta, LinkedIn, X, or comparable platforms. NOT FOR: producing creative variants (use suede-ad-creative), implementing measurement (use suede-analytics), or optimizing the landing page (use suede-site-alchemy). |
| metadata | {"version":"2.2.0"} |
Suede Paid Ads
Use this Suede paid-acquisition playbook to create, optimize, and scale campaigns against explicit acquisition economics. Never assume account access.
Before Starting
Check for product marketing context first:
If .agents/product-marketing.md exists (or .claude/product-marketing.md, or the legacy product-marketing-context.md filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.
Gather this context (ask if not provided):
1. Campaign Goals
- What's the primary objective? (Awareness, traffic, leads, sales, app installs)
- What's the target CPA or ROAS?
- What's the monthly/weekly budget?
- Any constraints? (Brand guidelines, compliance, geographic)
2. Product & Offer
- What are you promoting? (Product, free trial, lead magnet, demo)
- What's the landing page URL?
- What makes this offer compelling?
3. Audience
- Who is the ideal customer?
- What problem does your product solve for them?
- What are they searching for or interested in?
- Do you have existing customer data for lookalikes?
4. Current State
- Have you run ads before? What worked/didn't?
- Do you have existing pixel/conversion data?
- What's your current funnel conversion rate?
Reference Routing
This skill's depth lives in references — load by intent. For any operational decision on a live account (kill/keep/scale/budget), load the relevant playbook before answering; the thresholds live there, not here.
| User intent | Load | Covers |
|---|
| B2B strategy, funnel stages, budget splits, kill rules, lead quality, breakeven math | b2b-paid-playbook.md | Demand lifecycle, leading/lagging signals, kill rules, offline conversion loop, U/B/F lead scoring, scaling quadrant |
| Meta operations: when to kill/graduate/scale an ad, fatigue, testing structure | meta-decision-system.md | TCPL-anchored decision tree, ad-count ceiling, 80/20 CBO structure, fatigue bands, lead forms, Advantage+ transition |
| LinkedIn operations: bidding, audience sizing, scaling, benchmarks, TLAs, formats | linkedin-b2b-playbook.md | Bidding progression, penetration scaling, sizing rules, funnel benchmarks, document/conversation ads, audit shortlist |
| Google Search: what to spend on first, structure, match types, negatives, PMax | google-search-playbook.md | Intent ladder, account structure, match-type gates, negatives, bidding by volume, offline conversions, PMax guardrails |
| Named-account targeting, pipeline acceleration, cross-channel retargeting | abm-playbook.md | LinkedIn/Meta ABM, list mechanics, acceleration campaigns, UTM cross-channel remarketing, ABM measurement |
| Generating Google RSAs | rsa-output-spec.md | Mandatory output spec — limits, sidecars, template, self-check |
| Audience setup, tracking setup, launch checklists, copy formulas | audience-targeting.md · conversion-tracking.md · · |
Platform Selection Guide
| Platform | Best For | Use When |
|---|
| Google Ads | High-intent search traffic | People actively search for your solution |
| Meta | Demand generation, visual products | Creating demand, strong creative assets |
| LinkedIn | B2B, decision-makers | Job title/company targeting matters, higher price points |
| Twitter/X | Tech audiences, thought leadership | Audience is active on X, timely content |
| TikTok | Younger demographics, viral creative | Audience skews 18-34, video capacity |
Campaign Structure Best Practices
Account Organization
Account
├── Campaign 1: [Objective] - [Audience/Product]
│ ├── Ad Set 1: [Targeting variation]
│ │ ├── Ad 1: [Creative variation A]
│ │ ├── Ad 2: [Creative variation B]
│ │ └── Ad 3: [Creative variation C]
│ └── Ad Set 2: [Targeting variation]
└── Campaign 2...
Naming Conventions
[Platform]_[Objective]_[Audience]_[Offer]_[Date]
Examples:
META_Conv_Lookalike-Customers_FreeTrial_2024Q1
GOOG_Search_Brand_Demo_Ongoing
LI_LeadGen_CMOs-SaaS_Whitepaper_Mar24
Budget Allocation
Testing phase (first 2-4 weeks):
- 70% to proven/safe campaigns
- 30% to testing new audiences/creative
Scaling phase:
- Consolidate budget into winning combinations
- Increase budgets ~20% at a time — never 30%+ in one move (resets platform learning)
- Wait 3-5 days between increases for algorithm learning
Ad Copy Frameworks
Key Formulas
Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS):
[Problem] → [Agitate the pain] → [Introduce solution] → [CTA]
Before-After-Bridge (BAB):
[Current painful state] → [Desired future state] → [Your product as bridge]
Social Proof Lead:
[Impressive stat or testimonial] → [What you do] → [CTA]
For detailed templates and headline formulas: See references/ad-copy-templates.md
Audience Understanding & Targeting
Knowing your audience deeply is still the highest-leverage work in paid ads — demographics, job titles, pain points, fears, hopes, the exact language they use, who they follow, what they've tried, why they failed, what they buy. Gather every identifier you can.
What's changed in 2026 is where you apply that knowledge. As ad-platform algorithms have gotten dramatically better at finding the right person, jamming all your audience identifiers into the platform's targeting filters underperforms feeding those same identifiers into the creative (headlines, copy, visuals, hooks, examples).
The discipline now: audience knowledge → creative first, targeting filters second. How much that ratio tips toward "creative" varies meaningfully by platform.
Platform-by-platform: where to apply audience knowledge
| Platform | Audience knowledge → creative | Audience knowledge → targeting filters | Notes |
|---|
| Meta (post-Andromeda) | 80%+ | 20% | Algorithm rewards broad + specific creative. See [[#Modern Meta playbook (Andromeda era — 2026+)]] below for the full reframe. Interest-stacking now actively hurts. |
| Google Search | 40% | 60% | Keywords are still the dominant signal — match-types, search-intent layering, and negative keywords still drive performance. Creative (RSA headlines) matters but is downstream of the keyword. |
| Google Performance Max / Demand Gen | 70% | 30% | Audience signals are advisory, not deterministic. Creative + product feed quality dominate. |
| LinkedIn | 40% | 60% | Job-title / company / industry filters still produce real precision because LinkedIn's identity data is high-quality. Creative makes the click; firmographics make the right person see it. |
| TikTok | 70% | 30% | Algorithm is closer to Meta's model — broad targeting + native-feeling creative wins. Some audience interests help but creative dominates. |
| Twitter/X | 50% | 50% | Interest + follower targeting still meaningful, but creative differentiation is high-leverage given lower competition. |
These ratios are directional, not precise. Test in your actual account.
Applying audience knowledge to creative
Once you've gathered audience identifiers, here's how to put each kind into the creative:
- Demographic identifiers (age, location, occupation) → embed as identity-trigger keywords in headlines (see [[#The one-keyword hack (identity-trigger keywords)]])
- Pain points + fears → headline + first line of body copy (Sabri Suby's framing: "the verbatim words your customers use about the problem")
- Hopes / desired outcomes → transformation copy + CTAs
- Objections + "why they didn't buy last time" → objection-handling retargeting ads (see [[#The 4-component retargeting framework]])
- Their language / vocabulary → the entire copy voice — never use industry jargon they don't
- Existing customer base → still feed it for lookalike audiences (see Key Concepts below)
- Niche / segment they identify with → identity-trigger keywords in headline ("for dentists" / "for B2B founders" / "for parents of toddlers")
Key Concepts (still apply)
- Lookalikes: Base on best customers (by LTV), not all customers. Still high-value across platforms.
- Retargeting: Segment by funnel stage (visitors vs. cart abandoners). See [[#Retarget with DIFFERENT offers (not the same one)]] and [[#The 4-component retargeting framework]] for the modern playbook.
- Exclusions: Exclude existing customers and recent converters — showing ads to people who already bought wastes spend.
Common failure mode
Trying to make up for weak creative with hyper-precise targeting. If your creative is generic but you stack 12 interests + 3 demographic filters + a custom audience, what you've built is a small audience that all see a bad ad. Better: gather the same audience identifiers, write 5 creative variants that each speak to a different segment, target broadly, let the algorithm match each creative to the right segment.
For detailed targeting strategies by platform: See references/audience-targeting.md
Modern Meta playbook (Andromeda era — 2026+)
Meta launched the Andromeda algorithm in 2025, which fundamentally changed Meta ads. The old playbook (interest stacking, polished video creative, single-winner scaling) underperforms. The new playbook:
Creative volume is the constraint (statics > polished video)
- Andromeda is "a hungry panda" — it needs constant fresh creative or it fatigues
- Statics often outperform video in 2026 because:
- Meta's algorithm has a bias toward statics — it can show more statics per session per user, so they're cheaper to deliver
- Static creative is 10x cheaper and faster to produce than video, enabling the volume Andromeda needs
- Even top advertisers running 17+ VSLs report that down-and-dirty native statics often beat 2.5-month-production VSLs
- Dedicate 1 hour per week to producing fresh creatives for your winning offer. Volume > polish.
Creative IS the targeting (broad audience + specific creative)
- The old playbook: stack interests, narrow the audience, hope to find the right buyer
- The new playbook: target broadly (just the country) and let the creative do the targeting
- Long-form ad copy works better than short-form in 2026 — gives Meta a wider context window to understand who to show the ad to
- Test it: take your best winning ad with interest-stacked targeting, duplicate it, remove all targeting (just pick the country), run side-by-side for 7 days. Check CPAs. Broad typically wins.
The one-keyword hack (identity-trigger keywords)
- Take your winning ad
- Duplicate it with a niche/identity keyword inserted in the headline or body copy
- "Here's how to get 462 leads per week on autopilot" → "Here's how to get 462 dental leads per week on autopilot" / "...lawyer leads..." / "...property investment leads..."
- The keyword is an identity trigger for the viewer AND a targeting signal for Andromeda
- Dramatically drops CPL and opens audience pockets you couldn't reach with a generic ad
AI variant farming (the 100-people test)
- Take your winning ad
- Feed to Claude/ChatGPT/Kong with the prompt:
"I want you to read this ad and be the author. If I show the next ad I'm going to ask you to write to 100 people, not 1 in 100 would be able to tell you it's written by a different person. Now write this for [demographic/niche]."
- The output should read essentially the same with subtle relevance shifts for the target
- Apply in sequence: body copy → headlines → creative
- Drop all variants in a CBO, let Meta's AI allocate spend
Zombie campaigns
- After running a CBO, Meta will give 80% of variants no spend
- Take the dead variants you have high conviction about
- Launch them in a separate ad set ("zombie campaign")
- Typically resurrects 20% as winners that Meta's first allocation passed over
Don't make ads look like ads
- Hundreds of millions of people have ad blockers — the polished-ad aesthetic kills performance
- Study what content natively performs in your niche on TikTok/Instagram/YouTube → produce ads that match that aesthetic
- Burner account technique: create a clean Instagram/TikTok account, follow all influencers and pages in your niche, like their content. Your feed becomes a curated view of what's natively winning. Produce ads that match.
- If you have an organic video with millions of views, run that exact video as a paid ad — proven content + paid distribution = the highest-leverage move
Creative Best Practices
Image Ads
- Clear product screenshots showing UI
- Before/after comparisons
- Stats and numbers as focal point
- Human faces (real, not stock)
- Bold, readable text overlay (keep under 20%)
Video Ads Structure (15-30 sec)
- Hook (0-3 sec): Pattern interrupt, question, or bold statement
- Problem (3-8 sec): Relatable pain point
- Solution (8-20 sec): Show product/benefit
- CTA (20-30 sec): Clear next step
Production tips:
- Captions always (85% watch without sound)
- Vertical for Stories/Reels, square for feed
- Native feel outperforms polished
- First 3 seconds determine if they watch
Creative Testing Hierarchy
- Concept/angle (biggest impact)
- Hook/headline
- Visual style
- Body copy
- CTA
Campaign Optimization
For hard kill/keep/scale thresholds, use the platform playbooks (see Reference Routing): the kill rules and breakeven CPL/CPC math live in b2b-paid-playbook.md, and Meta's full decision tree lives in meta-decision-system.md.
Key Metrics by Objective
| Objective | Primary Metrics |
|---|
| Awareness | CPM, Reach, Video view rate |
| Consideration | CTR, CPC, Time on site |
| Conversion | CPA, ROAS, Conversion rate |
Optimization Levers
If CPA is too high:
- Check landing page (is the problem post-click?)
- Tighten audience targeting
- Test new creative angles
- Improve ad relevance/quality score
- Adjust bid strategy
If CTR is low:
- Creative isn't resonating → test new hooks/angles
- Audience mismatch → refine targeting
- Ad fatigue → refresh creative
If CPM is high:
- Audience too narrow → expand targeting
- High competition → try different placements
- Low relevance score → improve creative fit
Bid Strategy Progression
- Start with manual or cost caps
- Gather conversion data (50+ conversions)
- Switch to automated with targets based on historical data
- Monitor and adjust targets based on results
Retargeting Strategies
Funnel-Based Approach
| Funnel Stage | Audience | Message | Goal |
|---|
| Top | Blog readers, video viewers | Educational, social proof | Move to consideration |
| Middle | Pricing/feature page visitors | Case studies, demos | Move to decision |
| Bottom | Cart abandoners, trial users | Urgency, objection handling | Convert |
Retargeting Windows
| Stage | Window | Frequency Cap |
|---|
| Hot (cart/trial) | 1-7 days | Higher OK |
| Warm (key pages) | 7-30 days | 3-5x/week |
| Cold (any visit) | 30-90 days | 1-2x/week |
Exclusions to Set Up
- Existing customers (unless upsell)
- Recent converters (7-14 day window)
- Bounced visitors (<10 sec)
- Irrelevant pages (careers, support)
Retarget with DIFFERENT offers (not the same one)
The conventional retargeting playbook re-shows the same product/offer to people who didn't buy. The Sabri Suby principle: the #1 reason someone didn't buy is the offer wasn't right for them. Re-showing the same thing harder doesn't help.
Instead, retarget with different products, services, or offers from your catalog:
- Visitor clicked on protein powder, didn't buy → retarget with creatine (totally different category)
- Visitor downloaded a lead magnet, didn't book a call → retarget with a different lead magnet on a related topic
- Visitor viewed pricing, didn't sign up → retarget with a free audit or assessment instead
The lift from this is often dramatic — a 2-3 ROAS audience on the original offer can hit 6+ ROAS on a different offer.
The 4-component retargeting framework
Build out your retargeting layer with these 4 ad types running simultaneously:
- Objection-handling ad — directly addresses the most common reasons people didn't buy. To find these, outbound call every lead who didn't convert and ask why. The verbatim objections become the headline of this ad.
- Proof testimonial carousel — multi-image/multi-slide carousel of testimonials and proof that supports the claims of your original ad
- Other-offers CBO — your other best-performing ads for other products/services in one CBO, retargeted to the same audience
- Value-first audit/assessment ad — wraps your call in a free piece of value. Whether they buy or not, they leave with something useful. Lowers the friction to engage.
These four together, retargeting the same audience that didn't convert from the top-of-funnel ad, dramatically lift the ROAS of the entire funnel.
Landing Page Alignment (the headline-mirror trick)
Ad-to-landing-page congruence is the single most underrated lever in paid ads. Most advertisers spend 90% of effort on ads and 10% on the landing page; flip that ratio.
Headline mirroring
Meta is the best split-testing tool that exists — your ad headlines are exposed to ~1000x the audience that actually clicks through to your landing page. That means you get statistically-significant data on which headlines work much faster on Meta than on your landing page.
The play:
- Run 20-40 different headlines as ad variations
- Identify the best-performing headline (by CTR + downstream conversion)
- Mirror that winning headline on your landing page — exact wording in the H1, sub-headline, and lead-in copy of the body
- Expect a 15-20% minimum lift in landing-page conversion rate from this single change
This works because the viewer who clicked is expecting that specific promise. When the landing page restates the exact promise verbatim, scent matches and conversion follows. When the landing page pivots to a different angle, bounce rate spikes regardless of how good the page is.
Three split tests minimum at all times
A standing discipline: at any given moment, you should have at least 3 split tests running somewhere in your funnel — ad creative, landing page, offer, or post-conversion flow. If you don't, you've capped your improvement curve.
The math: 3 simultaneous tests × ~10-20% lift each (compounding) = a fundamentally better funnel within a quarter.
Reporting & Analysis
Weekly Review
- Spend vs. budget pacing
- CPA/ROAS vs. targets
- Top and bottom performing ads
- Audience performance breakdown
- Frequency check (fatigue risk)
- Landing page conversion rate
Attribution Considerations
- Platform attribution is inflated
- Use UTM parameters consistently
- Compare platform data to GA4
- Look at blended CAC, not just platform CPA
Scaling discipline (net cash > ROAS percentage)
The most common scaling failure: a business at a 40 ROAS spending $5k/month, refusing to scale because "if I spend more, my ROAS will drop." This is the wrong frame.
Net cash flow > ROAS percentage at the business level:
- ROAS dropping from 10 → 5 sounds bad
- But if spend goes from $10k → $100k, you net dramatically more total profit
- The number to optimize is blended ROAS at the business level, not per-ad-set ROAS
- Even better: optimize net free cash flow, not ROAS at all
Find your break-even ROAS:
- Calculate the absolute maximum you can pay to acquire a customer and still be profitable (factoring LTV)
- That's your break-even ROAS / CPA ceiling
- Scale until you approach that ceiling, not until your ad-account ROAS drops below an arbitrary preference
The 3-hour founder review:
- Block out 3 hours per month in the calendar to physically review the numbers yourself
- Not what your data analyst says. Not what your media buyer says. You, going through the actual data
- The confidence this generates is irreplaceable — and confidence is what lets you scale with conviction
- "Data gives you confidence. Confidence gives you speed."
Outbound-call your leads who didn't convert:
- Every lead that downloaded a lead magnet or hit your funnel but didn't buy gets a call
- Ask why they didn't book, what was confusing, what the actual blocker was
- These verbatim answers become objection-handling ads (see Retargeting section)
- Massive insight-to-creative loop that most advertisers skip
Platform Setup
Before launching campaigns, ensure proper tracking and account setup.
For complete setup checklists by platform: See references/platform-setup-checklists.md
For conversion pixel installation and event setup: See references/conversion-tracking.md
Universal Pre-Launch Checklist
Google RSA Output Spec (mandatory when generating RSAs)
When the user requests Google Ads RSAs, load references/rsa-output-spec.md and follow it exactly — hard character limits, required sidecar artifacts (ad groups, negatives, sitelinks, callouts), output order, template shape, CFM medical compliance, and the pre-send self-check. Do not output any RSA that violates it.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Strategy
- Launching without conversion tracking
- Too many campaigns (fragmenting budget)
- Not giving algorithms enough learning time
- Optimizing for wrong metric
Targeting
- Audiences too narrow or too broad
- Not excluding existing customers
- Overlapping audiences competing
Creative
- Only one ad per ad set
- Not refreshing creative (fatigue)
- Mismatch between ad and landing page
Budget
- Spreading too thin across campaigns
- Making big budget changes (disrupts learning)
- Stopping campaigns during learning phase
Task-Specific Questions
- What platform(s) are you currently running or want to start with?
- What's your monthly ad budget?
- What does a successful conversion look like (and what's it worth)?
- Do you have existing creative assets or need to create them?
- What landing page will ads point to?
- Do you have pixel/conversion tracking set up?
Tool Integrations
This pack does not include ad-network integrations. Work through an authorized
platform UI, current export, API, or installed connector; verify current
official documentation and the selected account before any mutation.
| Platform family | Typical use | Verify before execution |
|---|
| Search ads | Capture declared intent | Query scope, match behavior, negatives, location, conversion action |
| Social feed ads | Create or harvest demand | Audience controls, placement, creative specs, attribution window |
| Professional-network ads | Reach role or account segments | Targeting availability, minimum audience, lead form and CRM mapping |
| Short-video ads | Visual discovery and creator-style demand | Placement specs, audio rights, age and regional policy |
For the measurement contract, use
references/conversion-tracking.md and
route implementation and firing checks to suede-analytics.
Boundaries
- Do not create, launch, pause, delete, or change campaigns, bids, audiences, or budgets without explicit authorization.
- Do not claim ROAS, attribution, or incrementality when conversion tracking and revenue inputs have not been verified.
- Do not recommend spend above the stated cap; if no cap exists, provide a bounded test budget and wait for approval.
- Do not target sensitive traits, evade platform policy, or present inferred audience attributes as verified facts.
Routing
- Need ad copy or visual variants -> use
suede-ad-creative.
- Need conversion tracking and attribution -> use
suede-analytics.
- Need post-click conversion work -> use
suede-site-alchemy.
- Need CRM handoff or offline conversion design -> use
suede-revops.
- From those skills, route paid channel, budget, bid, and campaign decisions back to
suede-ads.
