Cut wasted ad spend

You find wasted spend by ranking every ad set by what it costs to get a result, then comparing that cost with what a result is worth to you. An ad set that costs $90 per lead is fine if a lead is worth $300 to you. It's waste if a lead is worth $60.

Kite starts by agreeing on that target with you. If you already have a target cost per lead or a return on ad spend you aim for, Kite uses it. If you don't, it works one out from what it knows about your pricing and how many leads typically become customers, and it shows you the math.

Then it reads the results. In Google Ads, it reads cost, clicks, and conversions for every campaign, ad group, and ad. In Meta Ads, it reads spend, reach, frequency, clicks, and results for every campaign, ad set, and ad. In LinkedIn Ads, it reads spend, impressions, clicks, and conversions for every campaign. Kite lines all of them up on the same measure, so an ad group in Google and an ad set in Meta can be compared directly.

From there, Kite ranks every ad set by cost per result and pulls out the bottom fifth. Say you spend $15,000 a month across 35 ad sets, with a target of $80 per demo request. Kite finds that the worst seven ad sets spent $3,400 last month and brought in nine demo requests between them, at an average of $378 each. Two of them brought in none at all. That's the shortlist it examines next.

An ad set is a loser when it has spent enough to judge and still costs well above your target. Before Kite puts anything on the cut list, it checks that the result is real.

Kite runs these checks on every ad set in the bottom fifth:

• Enough spend to judge. An ad set that has spent less than two or three times your target cost per result hasn't had a fair chance. Kite marks it as too early to call rather than cutting it.
• Past the learning phase. Meta says an ad set needs about 50 results in a week to finish learning who to show your ads to, and results are usually unstable until then. Kite notes which ad sets are still learning and how close they are.
• A steady trend. Kite compares the last few weeks. An ad set that was cheap for two months and spiked last week may have a fixable cause, such as worn-out creative. One that has been expensive since launch usually doesn't.
• Results counted correctly. Ad platforms each count the results they think they caused. When you connect Google Analytics, Kite compares what each platform reports with the conversions your website recorded from that source and campaign. An ad set can look like a loser in LinkedIn because the conversion tag isn't firing on one page, not because it isn't working.

The checks sort the shortlist into three groups: cut it, give it more time, or fix something first. Kite tells you which group each ad set is in and what result would move it.

When an ad set earns plenty of clicks but few conversions, the landing page is often the problem, not the ad. Cutting that ad set throws away an audience that was clearly interested.

Kite separates the two by reading where the drop happens. If people rarely click, the ad isn't landing with that audience. If they click at a healthy rate but rarely convert, Kite reads the page the ad sends them to, the way a visitor arriving from that ad would. It might find that an ad promising a free trial lands on a general homepage where the trial button sits below three screens of text. In Google Ads, Kite also reads each keyword's Quality Score, including Google's rating of the landing page experience, which points to the same answer from another direction.

When the page is the problem, Kite can rewrite it or build a new one for that ad's audience. On a site Kite hosts, it publishes the page once you approve it, and it can publish through a connected content system such as Webflow. Kite then watches the same ad set to see whether conversions recover.

Related use cases

• Improve website conversion: Fix the pages that let paid visitors down, then measure whether more of them convert.

Some of the waste in an account sits inside ad sets that look fine on average. A profitable ad set can still be paying for placements, audiences, or searches that bring in nothing.

Kite looks for these pockets in a few places:

• Placements, ages, and devices. Kite splits Meta results by placement, age group, and device. An ad set that works overall might be making money in Instagram Feed while losing it in Audience Network, the apps and sites outside Facebook and Instagram where Meta also shows ads.
• Frequency. In Meta Ads, Kite reads how many times each person has seen your ad on average. When frequency climbs past three or four while cost per result rises, the ad set is paying to show the same people the same ad again.
• Overlap. When two ad sets aim at nearly the same audience, or two ad groups bid on the same keyword, they compete with each other and push up your own costs. Kite names the pair and suggests which one to keep.

Trimming these pockets often saves more than cutting whole ad sets, because the ad set keeps the part that works.

Related use cases

• Find negative keywords for Google Ads Coming soon Find the searches that spend money without converting and keep your ads off them.
• Refresh your ads based on what's working: Replace worn-out ads with new versions built from the angles that already earn results.

Turn off the ads and ad sets that have spent enough to judge, still cost well above your target, and don't have a landing page or tracking problem to blame. Kite brings those to you as a cut list.

Each entry names the platform, the campaign, and the exact ad set or ad. It shows what that ad set spent over the period, what it brought in, and its cost per result next to your target. It also gives the reason in a sentence, such as "spent $640 over 30 days with no demo requests, past the learning phase, landing page converts well from other ad sets." You can read the whole list in a few minutes and disagree with any line.

What happens next depends on the platform. In LinkedIn Ads, Kite can pause a campaign group, a campaign, or a single ad on its own, because pausing only stops spending. It tells you what it paused and why. In Google Ads and Meta Ads, Kite reads the account and names the exact change, and your team pauses the ad set or lowers the budget in Google Ads or Ads Manager.

Kite records each cut, the numbers behind it, and the reason in your team's knowledge base. If a paused ad set looked promising in a different season, that record is there the next time someone asks.

Cutting wasted spend only pays off if the money goes somewhere better. Pulling budget out of the account entirely saves money, but moving it to your proven ad sets can bring in more results for the same total.

Kite recommends where the freed-up budget should go. It looks for the ad sets with the lowest cost per result that still have room to grow, such as a frequency that's still low and enough results to trust the trend. It names how much to add to each one and how quickly. Common practice is to raise a budget by about 20 percent at a time, a few days apart, so the platform can adjust without resetting what it has learned.

On Meta, the way your campaign is set up changes the move. If a campaign uses Meta's campaign budget setting, Meta shares one budget across its ad sets, so pausing a weak ad set automatically sends its share to the others. If each ad set has its own budget, the money has to be moved by hand. Kite reads which setup each campaign uses and tells you which applies.

In LinkedIn Ads, Kite proposes budget and bid changes with the current and new values side by side, and anyone on your team can approve them. Kite then writes the change to LinkedIn.

Related use cases

• Find which products and ads to scale: Decide which winners can take more budget, using profit after ad costs.
• Shift your marketing budget toward what's working Coming soon Move budget between channels, not just between ad sets.

Kite reads your ad accounts again every week to see whether total results held up after the cuts. The goal is lower spend with the same results or better, and the weekly check is how you know you got it.

You can put this on a schedule. Every Monday, Kite reads last week's spend and results in Google Ads, Meta Ads, and LinkedIn Ads, compares them with the weeks before the cuts, and checks the ad sets that received more budget. The report goes to the Slack channel you choose or to your inbox.

Each finding comes with a next step. If the ad sets that got more budget held their cost per result, Kite suggests the next increase. If one of them started to slip, Kite names it and suggests easing back. If a new ad set has drifted into the bottom fifth, it goes on next week's cut list. Waste builds up again as ads wear out and audiences change, so the weekly check keeps it from creeping back.

Related use cases

• Report on paid campaign performance Coming soon Get every ad platform's results in one report, with an explanation of what changed.
• Get a weekly marketing report in Slack: See ad spend and results next to your website traffic and pipeline every week.