how to tell if your ad is actually a winner (most people get this wrong)
A winning creative is defined by hitting sufficient spend ($500+), maintaining a cost per acquisition below your target CAC, and proving consistent performance across multiple scaling methods and channels. The definition of "winning" is highly dependent on your business economics and scale, with true winners demonstrating reliable performance regardless of how or where they're deployed.
Summary
Mark discusses how to identify winning creatives in digital advertising, emphasizing that the answer depends entirely on individual business economics rather than universal metrics. For most growing brands using BBA (his program), he recommends a minimum threshold of $500 total spend before declaring a creative a winner, as this provides sufficient data to work with. The second critical metric is cost per acquisition (CPA)—the creative must perform below your target CPA, which should be calculated based on your desired profit margins. He provides an example where a $50 target CPA at scale maintains a 30% profit margin.
Mark explicitly warns against over-relying on ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) early in testing, especially for high AOV (Average Order Value) funnels where a single full-funnel buyer can inflate ROAS numbers and create a false sense of success. He illustrates this with an example where one sale at $200 on a $400 funnel value looks like a 2x ROAS but actually exceeds the target $80 CPA by more than double—representing luck rather than a reliable winner.
True winning creatives, which he terms "S tier," are those that perform consistently across all scaling methods (bid caps, CBO, cost caps, cost per result, target ROAS), all geographic regions, and all demographic segments. These hero creatives "earn the right to scale" by repeatedly proving their effectiveness. He contrasts this with the broader spectrum of winning creatives that meet minimum thresholds but may not work universally.
For larger-scale businesses (seven figures monthly), the definition shifts entirely. These operators don't rely on simple ROAS calculations but instead media buy using more sophisticated metrics like contribution margin or new CAC (new Customer Acquisition Cost). The overarching principle is that the only metric that truly matters is spend volume—the absolute amount spent on a creative that has driven enough new customers within target economics to justify scaling.
Key Insights
- Mark argues that a winning creative is not defined by a universal metric but by whether it has spent enough money and returned enough new customers to allow scaling within target KPIs, making the definition entirely dependent on individual business economics.
- Mark claims that getting a single full-funnel buyer at $200 on a $400 funnel value creates a deceptive 2x ROAS while actually exceeding a $80 target CPA by more than double, representing luck rather than a proven creative.
- Mark asserts that creatives must 'earn the right to scale' through consistent performance, and true S-tier winners prove themselves by working across every scaling method tested (bid caps, CBO, cost caps, etc.) and across all countries, geos, and demographics.
- Mark states that for large-scale operators doing seven figures monthly, the game changes entirely and ROAS is no longer the buying metric—instead they media buy off contribution margin or new CAC metrics.
- Mark emphasizes that spend volume is the only metric that truly matters when evaluating creative performance, as all other considerations are secondary to the amount of money a creative has generated and the profitability of that spend.
Topics
Transcript
[0:00] Hey Mark, how do I know if I've found a winning creative and what do I do with the winning creative? Okay, so I'm going to tell you the true answer and then I'm going to make it really, really applicable to you. The true answer of what makes something a winning creative is it depends. If I were to go to somebody like Rise, like the owners of Rise, who is doing well over 300 million a year, and I would say, "How do you define a winning creative?" They would give me a completely different answer than somebody who is currently doing 1K per day or who is spending $100 per day. Completely different answers. And all…
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