This episode is a tactical deep dive into two of the biggest measurement questions in DTC right now, capped off with Zach Stuck joining to break down how MarsMen sets ad budgets off forecasted recurring revenue.

The first half is a real client case study on Meta's Incremental Attribution (IA). Brad walks us through an apparel brand, with an AOV just over $100, strong organic and influencer traffic, and $150-200K per month in spend. A conversion lift study at the start of the year showed their one-day click ROAS almost perfectly matched their true incremental number, so 1DC became the account's benchmark. When they tested IA head-to-head against one-day click (each with its own holdout), IA looked terrible in week one, then dramatically better in weeks two and three, and the lift study combined with Triple Whale MTA data validated the win. Then Meta changed its click attribution definition in March (only outbound clicks now count as clicks, with profile clicks and comments moved to "engaged"), and IA performance deviated hard from one-day click, Triple Whale, and product-level MER. IA also stopped responding to bid adjustments. The takeaway: they reverted to one-day click, with a plan to retest IA in three to six months as Meta feeds the model more conversion lift data.

The second segment covers creative cohort spend analysis: breaking down each month's spend by the month the ads were launched. If most of May's spend is running through ads launched last year, your new creative isn't earning spend and something is broken in the pipeline. If nearly all spend is from ads launched in the last 30 days, you are over-reliant on a few recent outliers. Splitting the view by evergreen versus promo ads shows whether new creative is compounding month over month, which is what actually earns the right to scale spend. Zach adds Homestead's layer on top: tracking "breakthrough" ads ($2K spend in 7 days at target) versus scaled ads every month.

The final segment is Zach on how MarsMen scales: if you can forecast next month's recurring revenue, you can spend into that full amount, as long as your blended MER covers OPEX and your new-customer ROAS holds at target. He walks through the cash-flow traps (90-day subscriptions deferring revenue, promos shifting cohort behavior), MarsMen's rebuilt forecast model that applies retention curves at the individual customer level, daily new-customer targets by channel, and a reactivation play: offering discounted one-time purchases to list subscribers who never converted because they didn't want a subscription, which he estimates is worth hundreds of thousands per month.

Key Takeaways

• Why Meta's Incremental Attribution passed a conversion lift test, only to then fall apart three weeks later.
• How you can REALLY spend 100% of next month's forecasted MRR on ads this month, and when that math breaks.
• The one thing that might be the real reason as to to why your account performance suddenly shifted after March 2026.
• The percentage of this month's ad spend that should come from ads you launched this month, and what it means if the answer is almost none.
• Is your "dead" email list quietly hiding hundreds of thousands in monthly revenue?
• Why one-day click beats seven-day click for brands with heavy organic traffic, and how to know which one your account should trust.
• What a "breakthrough ad" actually is and why your creative team should be measured on them every month.
• Caution: How adding a 90-day subscription offer can put your cash flow at risk 60 days later.
• Should subscription brands hold email, SMS, and organic to daily new-customer quotas the same way they do paid?
• Is the creative volume game dead, or are the people abandoning it just measuring hit rates wrong?

Chapters

• 02:32 — Should you test Meta's Incremental Attribution in your account?
• 07:30 — How do you design a fair test of one-day click vs. Incremental Attribution?
• 11:32 — What did Meta's new click attribution definition change, and why did it break results?
• 14:02 — When should you turn Incremental Attribution off and go back to one-day click?
• 26:30 — How do you run a creative cohort analysis to see if your new ads are earning spend?
• 35:31 — How does a subscription brand use next month's MRR to set this month's ad budget?
• 46:02 — How do you turn a "dead" email list into six figures of monthly revenue?

This episode of the Scalability School podcast is sponsored by NorthBeam and they just launched Northbeam Incrementality. Northbeam Incrementality gives you easy, automated, self-service incrementality tests, while protecting you from the major mistakes so many people make while running incrementality tests. Your MTA handles the daily tactics, your MMM guides the long-term planning, and Incrementality provides the causal truth. It's a closed loop that allows you to scale what works and cut what doesn't. Right now when you head over to www.northbeam.io/incrementality, they're offering Scalability School listeners 50% off unlimited tests for a year when you join. Just tell them we sent you! To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [email protected] To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck Learn more about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com Learn more about the The Hive Haus Creators Community at http://HiveHausUGC.com Made With AI