paid-advertising

# Paid advertising Paid is the fastest way to buy a result and the fastest way to buy nothing. The difference is mostly discipline before launch. ## Before spending - **Know the ceiling.** Maximum acceptable acquisition cost, derived from margin and payback period, not from what feels affordable. - **Conversion tracking verified end to end**, with a test conversion confirmed in the platform. Optimizing against broken tracking teaches the algorithm the wrong thing, and that damage persists. - **The destination is ready.** Paid traffic to a page that does not convert is a donation. Fix the page first — it is cheaper. ## Structure Structure follows intent, since intent determines what a click is worth. - **Search** — separate by intent tier: brand, high-intent problem terms, category terms, broad research. Never one budget across all four; the broad terms will consume it. - **Social** — structure by audience, since creative fatigue and audience saturation are the two variables and you need to see them separately. - Enough volume per campaign to exit the learning phase. Over-segmentation starves every campaign of the data it needs. ## Naming conventions Decide the convention before the first campaign, because renaming later breaks historical reporting on every platform. A workable pattern encodes, in fixed order: channel, objective, audience or intent tier, geography, and creative theme — separated consistently, with no spaces. It should be possible to filt...