Detection: Single creative driving most conversions
Key: creative_concentration_risk
Severity: High
Confidence: 80–90%
What this detection looks for
We flag a campaign as creative-concentration-risk when all of these are true:
- The campaign is active
- It has at least 2 active ads with conversions in the audit date range
- It has at least 20 total purchase conversions in the date range
- One ad is responsible for ≥ 70% of the campaign's purchases
Why this matters
When 70% or more of a campaign's conversions come from a single creative, the campaign's performance is effectively the performance of that one ad. Three things will happen, in roughly this order:
- The audience that responds to the creative will saturate. Click-through rate drops first, then conversion rate, then ROAS.
- The creative will fatigue — frequency rises, novelty decays, performance degrades.
- Meta's delivery system will continue to push impressions toward the
historical winner even after it begins to underperform, which extends the
decline (see also:
false_winner_meta_bias).
A campaign carrying a 70%+ dependency on a single creative is one creative refresh cycle away from collapse. The fix is to build creative depth before the decline begins, not after.
How we calculate confidence
| Condition | Confidence |
|---|---|
| Top ad has ≥ 80% of conversions | 90% |
| Top ad has 70–80% of conversions | 80% |
| Any condition above not met | We don't surface the finding |
How we calculate the estimated monthly cost
The dollar figure on this finding is an exposure, not waste happening today. We estimate the at-risk spend as 50% of the spend served through the concentrated portion of the campaign, projected to a 30-day month.
monthly_at_risk = (concentration_ratio × 0.5 × campaign_spend_in_range) × (30 / days_in_range)
In plain English: half of the dollars flowing through the dominant creative become inefficient when it fatigues. That is the dollar value we surface.
What would change our mind
This finding can be a false positive in a small number of cases:
- The top ad is brand new and the campaign just launched. A newly launched campaign will have an apparent concentration that is just a function of which ad was approved first. We require at least 20 purchases in the date range to reduce this risk, but it can still happen for a campaign that started in the last 7 days.
- The winning creative is evergreen and the brand is built around it. Some brands intentionally run a hero creative for months. If you have refreshed cuts, hooks, or formats of the same hero and they are tracked as separate ads, the concentration may be safe.
- You have a tested creative refresh ready. If you have already produced the next generation of creative and are ready to launch, this finding is informational rather than urgent.
How to fix it
- Identify the top-performing ad and what makes it work (hook, offer, format, audience).
- Produce 3–5 variations that test different hooks while preserving what works. Do not test radically new creative — test adjacent variants.
- Launch the variations in the same ad set so Meta can compare them in the same auction context.
- Once one or two variants reach within 70% of the original's performance, begin redistributing budget. Do not pause the top performer until at least one replacement has matched its conversion rate over 7+ days.
- Set a calendar reminder to refresh creative every 30–45 days even if performance is steady.
What we look at to make this detection
effective_statuson the campaign and on each ad- Purchase conversions per ad, summed across the audit date range. We use
offsite_conversion.fb_pixel_purchaseandoffsite_conversion.custom.<your-purchase-event> - Ad
creative_idandcreative_typefor evidence and methodology attribution
Source
This methodology page is generated from
apps/api/app/services/detections/creative_concentration_risk.py. The
detection code is open for inspection. We do not have hidden rules.