How Do I Know Which Campaigns Are Wasting My BudgetUpdated 5 days ago

Identifying budget-wasting campaigns requires looking beyond surface-level performance metrics — and asking a more direct question about each campaign: how much is it actually costing to generate one real purchase, and is that cost sustainable given the product margin?

Here is how I identify budget-wasting campaigns during the 90-day audit:

Cost per purchase above the profitable threshold — every campaign's cost per purchase is compared against the maximum profitable acquisition cost calculated from the product margin. Any campaign consistently exceeding this threshold is wasting budget.

High frequency with low conversion rate — retargeting campaigns showing ads to the same people too many times without converting them. Frequency above 4 to 5 impressions per person without a corresponding conversion rate means the audience has moved on and the spend is producing no value.

Zero purchases in the last 30 days:

• A campaign that spent budget in the last 30 days but produced zero purchases is not in a learning phase — it is simply not working
• This is the clearest possible signal that the budget allocated to this campaign is being entirely wasted

Top-of-funnel campaigns spending more than bottom-of-funnel — awareness campaigns consuming disproportionate budget while conversion campaigns are underfunded limits the total purchases the account can produce from the same overall spend.