Tools / II Optimization
Ad Scale Scatter: plot every Meta ad on spend against CPA.
Plot every ad on log spend by CPA to see what to scale, what to wait on and what to kill. It runs in your browser and nothing gets uploaded.
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About this tool
What Ad Scale Scatter calculates.
Ad Scale Scatter sorts every ad in an account into scale, wait or kill by testing whether its conversions are significantly better or worse than your CPA target predicts at its spend. Each ad becomes a dot on log spend by CPA, so the few ads taking most of the budget are easy to read.
- The formula
- For each ad, expected conversions are spend divided by your CPA target. Conversion counts are treated as Poisson-distributed, so the standard error is the square root of that expected count, and the z-score is actual conversions minus expected, divided by the standard error. An ad is kill when its conversions fall below expected minus z standard errors, scale when they rise above expected plus the same margin, and wait otherwise. The confidence setting picks z: 1.28 (80%, loose), 1.645 (90%, the default) or 1.96 (95%, strict). CPA is spend divided by conversions, and ROAS is revenue divided by spend when a revenue column is mapped. A $200 ad with zero conversions is noise, while a $20,000 ad 20% over target is a real decision.
- Expected input
- Upload an ads export CSV with a header row, up to 500,000 rows. Columns are matched automatically, ignoring case, and you can remap any of them by hand. Three are required. Ad name accepts ad_name, ad name, creative or ad. Spend accepts amount_spent, amount spent, spend, cost or budget. Conversions accepts purchases, website_purchases, omni_purchases, conversions, results, customers, orders, subscriptions, signups, registrations or leads. The optional columns are campaign_name and adset_name, which turn on the keyword filters and the placement drill-down, a date in YYYY-MM-DD for the timeline and the daily CPA trends, and a revenue column such as purchases_conversion_value for ROAS.
- Assumptions and limits
- Everything runs in the browser, and the CSV is never uploaded to a server. Ads are grouped by ad name, so identical names across campaigns merge into one dot. Ads with zero conversions are counted but not plotted, and ads below your minimum-spend filter are left out of the classification. On first load the CPA target sets itself to the account's spend-weighted CPA. Change it to your real allowable CPA before you trust the verdicts.
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