Platform
Playbooks
Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn — each runs on different psychology. What works on one platform fails on another. Minimum viable campaigns, gotchas, and the numbers that actually matter.
The minimum viable ad strategy is not a campaign structure. It is validated offer + credible creative. Without that, platform tactics are decoration. Start where buying intent already exists.
Meta Ads
Min budget: $40-80/day ($1,200-$2,400/mo)
E-commerce, local offers with visual proof, pain-aware services, broad-appeal products with emotional hooks.
High-AOV luxury (impulse fails above certain prices), B2B with long sales cycles, anything needing precise demographics (many exclusions retired March 2025).
1 Advantage+ prospecting campaign (now default for new campaigns), 4-6 creatives, broad audience or 'Describe Your Audience' text targeting, exclude existing customers manually.
Two campaigns: creative testing (modest budget, new variations) and winners scaling (larger budget, proven performers). Advantage+ for prospecting, manual for retargeting. Use 'Describe Your Audience' to define targeting in plain text (up to 2,000 chars) — Meta's AI maps it to signals.
Gotchas
Advantage+ includes existing customers
Unless excluded manually, you'll spend acquisition budget on people who'd buy anyway. Always upload and exclude your customer list.
Creative fatigue is invisible until ROAS collapses
Performance degrades gradually then falls off a cliff. On Meta, fatigue typically sets in at days 14-21 for most creatives. High-spend campaigns may fatigue by days 7-14. Monitor when CTR drops 20%+ from its 7-day peak.
Broad doesn't mean lazy
Andromeda (Oct 2025) uses deep learning on behavioral signals. Advantage+ delivers 13% lower CPA, 28% lower CPC — but only with strong creative. Boring ads + broad = expensive nothing.
Digital Services Tax surcharge (July 2026)
Meta adds 2-5% location fees for impressions in Austria, Turkey, France, Italy, Spain, UK. Based on audience location, not your business location. Not included in campaign budget — added on top. Starts May 2026, full billing July 1.
Google Ads
Min budget: $25-50/day per campaign, $500/mo minimum
Bottom-funnel, high-intent searches. Local services, SaaS with clear problem keywords, legal, dental, home services. High-ticket or urgent purchases.
Emotional/impulse purchases, new categories without search volume, visual products that need to be seen. Demand creation belongs on Meta/TikTok.
Under $1K: 2-3 Search campaigns by intent level, exact+phrase match, 3-5 keywords per ad group. $1K-$3K: Search primary, PMax only with 100+ conv/mo. Use campaign total budgets (open beta) for fixed-flight campaigns.
Start narrow: exact match for clearest data. Add phrase match for volume. Broad match only with Smart Bidding + clean negative lists. Monitor search terms daily in the first weeks. Set AI Max Text Guidelines before enabling any AI copy features.
Gotchas
Broad match burns budget without negatives
Google matches 'dental implants' to 'dental assistant school.' Without aggressive negative keyword management, broad match is a money fire. Add 'free,' 'jobs,' 'salary,' 'training,' 'school' immediately.
AI Max: independent data says +16% CPA
Google claims 14% conversion lift. A 250-campaign independent study found +13% revenue but +16% higher CPA. 84% of advertisers report neutral or negative results. Not supported by Ads Editor/APIs. Use AI Max Text Guidelines (25 term exclusions, 40 messaging restrictions) to keep AI copy on-brand.
Performance Max is a black box
Can't see search terms, placements, or audiences. Needs 100+ conv/mo to function well. At small budgets, it spreads spend thinly across YouTube, Gmail, Display, and Search with no diagnostics. Daily budget should be 10-15x your target CPA. PMax now auto-generates AI voiceovers from your headlines — copy quality affects audio ads.
Call-Only Ads deprecated
No new creation after Feb 2026. Migrate to RSAs with call assets if you're still using them.
TikTok Ads
Min budget: $30-60/day ($900-$1,800/mo)
Gen Z and Millennial consumer products. Beauty, fashion, food, consumables, fitness. Visual, trend-adjacent products under $120 AOV.
B2B. Expensive products requiring trust (>$150). Corporate tone. Products that aren't visual. Brands that can't produce native short-form content.
1 campaign, 3-5 ad groups, 3-5 creatives per group. 9:16 vertical video only. Hook in under 3 seconds. Consider Smart+ for automated creative selection and scaling.
Spark Ads remain the core weapon: 134% higher completion, 69% boost in conversion rates. Smart+ Web Campaigns report +52% ROAS improvement. Smart+ Catalog Ads: 1.23x higher ROAS vs manual in peak seasons. But source content must feel human-made — the algorithm penalizes anything that looks AI-generated.
Gotchas
Corporate video = wasted spend
The algorithm now actively prioritizes watch time over views and penalizes AI-generated-looking content. Polished corporate video gets 0.4% CTR. Spark Ads achieve 134% higher completion rates and 142% more engagement — but only with authentically native content.
Views don't equal sales
500K views and 0 purchases is not a win. Always optimize for purchase or lead events, not video views. TikTok excels at generating vanity metrics.
Fatigue hits in 2-3 days
Fastest creative fatigue of any platform. Refresh when frequency exceeds 4 or ROAS drops for 3+ days. Smart+ helps auto-rotate creative, but you still need fresh assets weekly. Oracle's algorithm retrain (US) favors niche content and authentic human creators.
LinkedIn Ads
Min budget: $3,000/mo minimum for meaningful results
B2B to specific job titles, $1,000+ annual contract value. Professional services, recruiting, enterprise sales. Only when LTV justifies $60-150+ CPL.
B2C, low-ticket products, anything under $50 AOV, businesses spending <$3K/mo total. LinkedIn's CPL is 5-10x Meta's.
Sponsored Content (single image/video) for awareness. Message Ads for direct outreach. Lead Gen Forms (in-platform) reduce CPL by 25-35%.
Native lead gen forms over external landing pages — 25-35% lower CPL with decent lead quality. Document Ads for top-of-funnel. C-suite targeting costs 2-3x more, budget accordingly.
Gotchas
The only justification is deal size
If your average deal is $500/year, LinkedIn math doesn't work. If it's $15,000/year, the $125 CPL is a rounding error. Document Ads consistently deliver the lowest CPL due to higher engagement.
Your First 30 Days
A practical rollout sequence
- Pick platform based on buying behavior
- 4-6 creatives, simple targeting
- Do not touch for 5 days unless tracking is broken
- Review CTR, CPC, CPA, conversion rate
- Kill bottom 20% of creatives
- Add 2-3 new variations from early signals
- Add secondary platform only if primary is producing
- Start retargeting if 1,000+ monthly visitors
- Do NOT expand if primary is still unstable
- Move budget toward proven winners
- Cut obvious losers
- Establish baseline metrics, document what works
Month 2: Refresh creative, test new angles, increase budget only where efficiency holds (20% increments every 3-5 days), add retargeting layers as traffic grows.
Recommendations by Business
Which platform, which budget
Real Cost of Learning Each Platform
Bottom Line
Start where buying intent exists. Keep setup simple. Let creative do more targeting work. Give the algorithm enough room to learn, but not enough rope to hang your budget. The best ad account answers three questions: Why would someone buy now? Which platform matches that behavior? Can the economics survive paid acquisition?