Hey everyone, just wanted to share how we go about creative testing across multiple accounts and industries. We’re spending about ~$2M a week, so I figured I’d lay out how we approach it, the metrics we use, and how we iterate.

How We Think About Creative Volume

A good north star for how many creatives you should be running per week is:

📌 Weekly spend ÷ Average CPA

This works best for accounts spending at least $3,000 to $4,000 a week. Any lower than that, and it’s harder to get a stable CPA, let alone scale testing properly. Even at those levels, it’s tricky, but this gives us a solid benchmark.

Example – Hair Care Brand

For one hair care brand spending six figures a month, we estimated they’d need around 1,500 creatives a month based on their CPA. Obviously, that’s not realistic for most brands. So instead, we use:

💡 Target CPA × 0.7 = Creative volume goal per month

This keeps things practical without overloading production.

Creative Mix

Generally, we aim for:

• 30–40% static
• 60–70% UGC/video

The idea isn’t just to crank out variations of the same thing—it’s about testing different angles, different messaging, different executions.

How We Assess Creative Performance

Once the creatives are live, we track a few key metrics.

What We Look At

🔹 Hook Rate (3-Second View Rate)

• 15–20% = Decent
• 30%+ = Exceptional

🔹 Hold Rate (Watch Time Beyond the Hook)

• 5%+ is really solid, but only if…

🔹 Click-Through Rate (CTR)

• 1%+ on average.

Obviously, this varies by account. We’ve got some brands that smash these numbers but have high price points, so conversion rates suffer. Others might have lower engagement but convert way better. That’s why it’s always case by case.

At the End of the Day, CPA is King

You can have the best engagement metrics in the world, but if the CPA is trash, it doesn’t matter.

We always assess creative by:
1️⃣ What’s the CPA?
2️⃣ How stable is it over time? (Does it hold, or does it fatigue quickly?)

Tracking shelf life is just as important as performance—if something works, we need to know how long we can keep running it before it dies.

How We Use This Data

We track everything using long, complicated naming conventions (yeah, they get messy), then pull it all into a monthly report.

• That report tells us what’s working, what’s not, and what to double down on.
• It also helps us spot trends—like if female creators are consistently driving lower CPAs, better hook rates, and higher CTRs than male creators. If that happens, next round, we’ll lean way more into female creators and get even more specific (certain styles, messaging, etc.).

This way, we’re not just guessing when it comes to creative production—we’re iterating based on what the data actually tells us.

How Do You Approach Creative Testing?

That’s our process, but I’d love to hear how others go about it. How do you assess performance? What metrics do you swear by? Anything you’d change about our approach?