The 8-month arc · May 2025 engagement → CTV Aug 11 2025 → Apr 2026.
The feedback loop was disconnected. The way they measured success was wrong. Acquisition strategies were hitting diminishing returns. Spend climbed +64% MoM yet new-customer CAC blew +55% and one-time CAC blew +142% - Meta CAC held flat at $138 and that was the headline they were tracking. The composed view told the truth: the system needed a strategic pivot.
Operating model reframe delivered. “It was never a Meta problem. It was a mix problem.” Audit → align → bridge. Cash-view (CFO) and accrual-view (CMO) reconciled in one operating model. Vendor measurement became a guide, not a gospel. Triangulation replaced single-source decisioning.
Phase 1 hero · Aug 11 – Oct 5 2025. Halo-forward CAC compressed from a $42.69 pre-CTV baseline to $32.58 over 8 weeks (−24%). Phase 2 (Oct – Dec, 9 weeks of holiday brand-layer cuts) drifted to $41.70. Phase 3 (Dec – Mar, 16 weeks, brand-layer restored at 40% intensity) settled at $40.20. Every week of the 33-week arc held below the pre-CTV baseline. MER trajectory aligns with brand-converted demand landing in highest-retention cohorts.
Plan tomorrow's budget. See CAC move now.
The operator's allocator. Each row is a tactic with the brand's past-3-day average daily spend and the Hill-saturation curve fitted from mix model. Slide a budget. Predicted marginal CAC, blended CAC, and weekly new-customer volume re-compute on the spot. Headroom = scale. Saturated = optimize before adding budget. Over ceiling = pull back.
| Tactic | P3D avg $/day | Proposed $/day | Δ | Predicted mCAC | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand-layer · $15.7K P3D · $15.7K proposed | |||||
| CTV (UA) | $7,374 | - | $106 | Headroom | |
| YouTube / OLV | $1,548 | - | $75 | Headroom | |
| Meta brand-layer | $2,807 | - | $120 | Headroom | |
| TikTok brand-layer | $1,280 | - | $132 | Headroom | |
| Google Demand Gen brand-layer | $2,686 | - | $381 | Above ceiling | |
| Mid-tier · $14.6K P3D · $14.6K proposed | |||||
| Meta mid-tier | $5,277 | - | $356 | Above ceiling | |
| Reddit mid-tier | $800 | - | $182 | Saturated | |
| Snapchat mid-tier | $1,193 | - | $228 | Above ceiling | |
| Google Demand Gen mid-tier | $2,686 | - | $483 | Above ceiling | |
| Non-brand Search mid-tier | $4,655 | - | $429 | Above ceiling | |
| Performance · $18.8K P3D · $18.8K proposed | |||||
| Meta performance | $5,277 | - | $586 | Above ceiling | |
| Google Brand Search | $1,438 | - | $19 | Headroom | |
| Google PMax | $6,825 | - | $799 | Above ceiling | |
| Non-brand Search performance | $4,655 | - | $547 | Above ceiling | |
| Affiliate | $600 | - | $58 | Headroom | |
| PORTFOLIO | $49.1K | $49.1K/day | - | $210.0 blended | flat |
Mix is steady. Marginal moves only.
Stable Baseline POV: marginal change. Worth running for the data, not for the impact.
Method. Each tactic has a Hill-saturation curve txns(spend) = max · spend^k / (spend^k + k_half^k) fitted from 60-90 days of spend × txn data via open-source mix-model fitting. Marginal CAC at any spend level is the local derivative, what the next dollar costs. Predicted Marginal Halo-CAC = spend-weighted average of per-tactic mCAC across performance + mid-tier tactics only (brand-layer TV spend held out of the numerator, all blended txns in the denominator). The halo-forward read of next-dollar efficiency when TV is scaling. Default tactic params are population estimates calibrated to this brand's case-study profile; brand-specific re-fits land at onboarding (day 60+).