Kill Points · Discipline
Thresholds, not gut feel.
Why Gut-Feel Kills Hurt Performance
When you kill an ad because you have a bad feeling today, you are probably killing an ad still in its learning phase. When you keep an ad because you love the visual, you are probably keeping an ad suffering from frequency fatigue. Both mistakes cost ROAS.
01
2.8
Max Frequency: 7 Days
02
0.8%
Min CTR Threshold
03
0.7x
Min ROAS Target
The 4 Kill Thresholds
- Frequency 7D > 2.8: audience exhausted, kill it
- CTR < 0.8% after 5 days: hook is not working, kill it
- ROAS < 0.7x target after 7 days: no recovery expected
- CPM > 130% of account median after 5 days: audience mismatch
Example
We kill 60 to 75% of all creatives within 14 days. That is not failure. That is pipeline discipline. Keeping everything means optimizing shadows.
When You Do Not Kill
Thresholds are thresholds, but context matters. During a seasonal peak you can deliberately exceed the frequency cap. For long-cycle sales (B2B), 7-day thresholds matter less than 30-day trends. With VIP audiences, low CTR is acceptable if ROAS stays high. Thresholds are tools, not religion.
„Discipline beats optimization. Optimization without discipline is gut feel with dashboards.”