Forty items across five categories. The checklist operators run before scaling paid spend, before changing bidding strategy, or any time CPA is trending upward without a clear cause. If you can't tick more than 30, your paid media account has structural leaks worth fixing before you spend the next dollar. Or start with the free Smart Bidding Report.
Read each item. Tick yes or no. Do not negotiate with yourself. A maybe is a no. A partial is a no. The point of the list is to surface the no answers so you can rank them and fix the ones that cost the most.
Most accounts score 18 to 26 on the first pass. The list is calibrated to be uncomfortable. A score of 40 means either you are running an exceptionally well-maintained account or you are scoring generously. A score under 15 means the account has structural issues that will compound with every dollar of additional spend.
The categories run in dependency order. Signal stack feeds campaign architecture. Campaign architecture feeds bidding strategy. Bidding strategy feeds attribution. Attribution feeds creative decisions. If category one is at 4 of 8, fixing category five will not help. Work upstream first. For a scored version in 60 seconds, run the free Smart Bidding Report.
Smart Bidding optimizes against the signals you give it. If the signals are thin, wrong, or missing, the algorithm guesses.
Campaign structure determines how much data each campaign accumulates per month and whether Smart Bidding has enough signal to exit learning mode.
The right bidding strategy depends on conversion volume. Running tCPA without the volume threshold produces a campaign stuck in learning mode.
Without closed-loop attribution, you are optimizing platform-reported ROAS. At B2B deal sizes, that number is often 3 to 5x the actual blended return.
Creative is the biggest lever once the signal stack, architecture, and attribution are working correctly.
The GTMVP $129 Diagnostic benchmarks 32 of the 40 items across 22 modules. A senior operator writes the findings on the items that need judgment. You get a scored list, the gaps ranked by dollar impact, and the operator-written fix for each one. Or start with the free Smart Bidding Report to score your wasted spend.
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See also: paid media account template. 7 expensive paid media mistakes. Series A paid media strategy.