GROWTHQUEST Media Buyer SOP
Run
0%
Standard Operating Procedure

Hold the green zone.

What's expected of the media buyer across daily, weekly, and monthly cycles, so accounts stay healthy and fresh creative ships every week without anyone chasing it.

Kill losers fast. Scale winners safely. Keep fresh briefs flowing every week. Report clean every month. If an account drifts out of the green zone, that's a same-day problem, not a next-week one.

2.0×
Baseline ROAS
30d
Default window
+20%
Scale per bump
3×
Kill threshold
01 DailyEvery working day, per account · 15–30 min once warmed up 0/4
1

Open the account and read the numbers

30-day · default14-day7-dayDay-by-day
  • Default window: last 30 days for most accounts. Your baseline read on health.
  • Then look at the day before on its own to catch anything the 30-day average is hiding.
  • Check against the Green Zone is ROAS / CPA at or better than the client's target?
  • Seeing a downturn in the trend? Drill down: 30 → 14 → 7-day, and in some cases break it down day by day to see exactly how performance is changing. The shorter the window, the more recent the signal.
  • If healthy: maintain and optimize. If not: this account is today's priority. Diagnose before touching anything.
2

Kill underperformers

  • Hard kill spent 3x the target cost per result (CPR), or the account average if no target is set, with zero results → turn off.
  • Bleeder kill below the client's ROAS floor after hitting the spend threshold of 3x CPR → turn off.
  • Turn off the ad, not the whole ad set, unless the entire ad set is underwater.
3

Scale winners

  • Scale rule increase budget 20% per bump, max once every 2–3 days, so you don't reset the learning phase.
  • Never stack two bumps in one day. Patience beats yo-yoing the algorithm.
  • Scaled and still worse or declining after 3 days? Pull the budget back 10% and let it stabilize.
  • Standout winner that deserves aggressive scaling? Flag it to Ammeil before duplicating into a new ad set.
4

Log insights from winners

  • For each winner, note why it's working: hook, format, angle, audience, offer.
  • Drop these into the account's running notes. They become the raw material for next week's briefs.
  • Watch for early fatigue on winners (rising CPM, falling CTR, climbing frequency). A winner sliding toward the kill line is an insight too.
Daily done =
0/4
02 WeeklyFixed day each week · keeps the creative pipeline full 0/6

The goal is new briefs and new ads every single week. Pick one day and keep it.

1

Pull winner stats

  • Export the week's performance per account from the ad platform and pull the stats.
  • Identify top performers by ROAS / CPA and the patterns behind them (winning hooks, formats, angles).
  • This is the data layer for the briefs you're about to write.
2

Look ahead at the calendar

  • Every week, stay on top of what's coming so creative is produced ahead of the date, not scrambled after it.
  • Client release / drop schedule: check the client's drop or release calendar (e.g. Featherie's release spreadsheet) for upcoming launches, and line up creative and campaigns ahead of each.
  • Significant days: holidays, seasonal moments, and sales events, plus any client-specific dates. Prepare creative and offers around them before they arrive.
  • Reference the Ecommerce Key Dates 2026 for the significant commercial days, what to sell around each, and lead times.
  • Look far enough out to brief, produce, and QA in time. Feed whatever's coming into this week's briefs.
3

Creative strategy inputs

Intake formCreative DNA · DriveMeta Ads Libraryforeplay.co
  • Every brief is built from all four sources, not just one.
  • Client intake form — the brand's own answers on positioning, audience, offers, voice. Start here.
  • Creative DNA (in the client's Google Drive) — personas, awareness stages, angles, hooks, objections. The strategic backbone of every brief.
  • Meta Ads Library — what the brand and competitors are actively running. A long-running ad is usually a winner worth learning from.
  • foreplay.co — saved competitor and inspiration ads for angles, hooks, formats, offers.
  • When angles start running dry, go deeper on competitor and market research to refresh the Creative DNA.
4

Write new briefs — static AND video

  • Turn winner insights + creative-strategy inputs into fresh briefs.
  • Every week ships both: static image briefs and video ad scripts. Not one or the other.
  • Build on what's winning (iterate proven angles) and test new angles from the research.
  • Every brief includes a reference image so the designer has a clear visual target. Use the reference ad you're modeling, or generate one with AI, then embed it directly in the brief. Never hand off a text-only brief.
  • Follow the house brief formats, each with a locked Google Doc structure. Match these exactly:
  • Run every brief through the Creative Brief QA Checklist (in the QA Checklists section below) before handing it off to the designer.
5

Coordinate and QA the final creative

  • Coordinate with the graphic designer / video editor to get the final creative produced from each brief.
  • QA every final creative against the Static / Video Creative QA Checklists (in the QA Checklists section below) before it moves — focal point, resolution, brand compliance, safe zones, specs and aspect ratios, claims, prices, typos, CTA. It must be launch-ready, not a rough draft.
  • Upload the final, QA'd creative to the client's Google Drive folder so it can be shared.
6

Launch

  • Get new ads live every week, or as often as needed to hold the account in the green zone.
  • A fatiguing account needs fresh creative faster. Don't wait for the calendar if the numbers are slipping.
  • After launch, the new ads re-enter the daily kill / scale cycle.
Weekly done =
0/6
03 MonthlyDeliver client performance reports 0/4
1

Deliver client reports

  • One performance report per client, every month.
  • Deadline delivered by the end of the first week of the following month (e.g. the June report is out by the end of the first week of July).
  • Build each report from the GrowthQuest report template. Output is the branded 4-page PDF.
  • Example of a finished report:
2

Every report must contain

  • The data — performance for the month.
  • Insights — what we're reading from the data.
  • Next steps — what we plan to do to help the account and scale further.
  • Client asks — what we need from the client.
  • Top 3 creatives — snapshots of the three highest-performing creatives for the month.
3

Reports show progress

  • Reports exist to show progress. Lead with it.
  • When results are poor, strategically highlight the segments that are working — a winning audience, creative, placement, or week-over-week trend — to show the client real small wins and that the account is moving forward.
  • Never hand over a report that reads as flat or all-negative. Find the progress and frame it honestly.
Monthly done =
0/4
04 The RulesReference · kill, scale, green zone

Kill Rule

ASpent 3x target cost per result (CPR) (or account average if no target set) with 0 results → turn off the ad.
BBelow the client's ROAS floor after hitting the spend threshold of 3x CPR → turn off the ad.
No target cost per result given? Use the account average. e.g. account averages $20/result with no set target → hard kill any ad past $60 spent with 0 results.

Scale Rule

  • +20% budget per bump, max once every 2–3 days.
  • One bump at a time. No same-day stacking.
  • Scaled and still worse or declining after 3 days? Decrease budget 10% to let it stabilize.
  • Aggressive scaling (duplicate winner into a new, higher-budget ad set) only after flagging Ammeil.

Green Zone — account health

  • Baseline target: 2.0x ROAS for any account. At or above 2x is in the green zone. Some clients carry a higher target; when they do, that client's target wins. Never treat below-2x as healthy.
  • Primary: ROAS / CPA at or better than the target above. This is the call on whether an account is healthy.
  • Diagnostic (for finding the why, not the verdict): CTR, CPM, frequency. Use these to spot fatigue early, but ROAS / CPA vs target is what defines green.
05 Account StructureSet every account up the same way
1

Audiences & exclusions

  • Add engaged audiences and customers to the account's audience settings, so Meta has the right signals and we can retarget and seed lookalikes off real intent.
  • Exclude warm audiences from cold prospecting. Engagers, video viewers, site visitors, add-to-carts, and customers all get excluded from cold / prospecting campaigns so cold budget only reaches new people.
2

Naming convention

  • Name campaigns, ad sets, and ads so the account is instantly scannable. Fields separated by |, the same order every time, short consistent tokens, one date format (DD.MM.YYYY, never mixed), Title Case (no random ALLCAPS).
Campaign
Platform | Type | Funnel | Objective | Geoe.g. M | PRO | TOF | Purchase | US
Ad set
Date | Audience | Angle / Persona | Exclusion | Geoe.g. 15.06.2026 | Broad | Self-Giver | Excl. 180d Purchasers | US
Ad
Date | Format | Concept / Hook | Variatione.g. 15.06.2026 | UGC Video | Self-Giver Hook | V02
  • Type: PRO (cold prospecting) · RTG (retargeting) · ASC (Advantage+ Shopping) · AWA (awareness) · TST (test)
  • Funnel: TOF · MOF · BOF
  • Audience: Broad · LAL X% (name the seed) · Int: X · Retargeting XXd · Engaged XXd · Customers
  • Exclusion: Excl. Warm · Excl. Purchasers XXXd · Excl. Engaged XXd
  • Format: Static · Video · UGC · Carousel · Flexible   Geo: US · UK · AU · CA · ROW · Global
3

Turn off AI creative enhancements

  • Meta switches several on by default. Turn them all off so creative renders exactly as briefed and QA'd, never altered automatically.
  • Multi-advertiser ads — off. We don't show our ad inside a shopping module next to competitors.
  • Music, translations / language optimization, and image and text enhancements (filters, brightness, crops, overlays, expansions) — off.
  • Add-ons (site links, catalog items, animation, 3D, "relevant comments", visual touch-ups) — off unless explicitly briefed.
  • Check both the ad-set / ad level (Advantage+ creative) and the account-level creative defaults.
06 Creative Diversity & TestingTest the hype, protect the account

New trends and tactics will always be hyped in the media-buying community. Some are real, most are noise. Test them strategically and cautiously, let the data decide, and never chase hype at the expense of a healthy account. Keep your head on.

1

Creative diversity matters

  • Keep a spread of angles, formats, and hooks live so the account never leans on a single winner. Diversity is what keeps performance durable as creatives fatigue.
2

Account setup and testing stay traditional

  • We diversify the creative, but the account structure and the way we test stay disciplined and proven. Don't rebuild the account around the trend of the week.
3

What wins in one account won't always win in another

  • No tactic is universal. A setup, angle, or format that crushes for one client can flop for the next. Judge every account on its own data, never on someone else's case study.
4

Test cautiously and strategically

  • Introduce new approaches as controlled tests with a clear hypothesis and a contained budget, so a failed test never threatens account health. Protect the proven winners while you probe the new.
5

Let the data speak

  • Give a test enough spend and time to be real, then judge it on the numbers, not on the hype or a gut feel. Keep what the data proves, cut what it doesn't.
07 Escalate to AmmeilDon't sit on these
  • →An account drops out of the green zone and a same-day fix isn't obvious.
  • →A standout winner is ready for aggressive scaling (duplication).
  • →Spend pacing is materially off (account will badly under- or over-deliver the budget).
  • →A client flags a concern, or anything looks off that the rules above don't cover.
08 QA ChecklistsRun the brief QA before handoff, the creative QA before launch
Creative Brief QA — before handoff
0/9
Static Creative QA — before launch
0/12
Video Creative QA — before launch
0/16