JADE PLUS · WHAT WE'VE LEARNED SO FAR

Google carries the account. Beginners are the only persona that converts. Spanish-language SA is the strongest creative signal we have.

A one-page distillation of ~21 Google runs, ~20 Meta runs, persona tests, creative tests, KOL audit and landing-page tests since January. Read the full brief for evidence and action IDs.

SCOPE Jan – May 2026 ATTRIBUTION Triple Whale lastPlatformClick EVALUATION Mon/Wed/Fri runs
Headline takeaways

Five things to internalize before any other decision in the account.

  • Google is the channel. Meta is a sandbox. Apr 21 incrementality test confirmed Meta at $345/day produced zero lift in Shopify orders. Meta has been held at $50/day since. Google PMax + Search carries the account.
  • Beginner is the only audience that converts. 40 of 135 monthly purchases, $96 CAC. Security, BTC Maximalist, Comp Switch, Privacy at scale, and 8 emotional-variant A/Bs ($980+ spend) all failed.
  • Spanish-language SA is the highest-leverage variable in the account. SA PMax 30d ROAS 2.5–8x; SA Spanish ads hit 5–13x. Account is budget-capped, not creative-capped. $100→$150/day scale is the most-pending decision.
  • The platform pixel lies. Platform 5–8x while TW click sits at 0.9–1.6x and Shopify orders/day stay flat. Every scale decision gates on TW click + store-level order rate, not pixel.
  • Beginner sub-segments beat monolithic Beginner. Trigger Event ($15–48 CAC) and Gift ($25–69 CAC) outperform the whole. Procrastinator and Researcher failed.
Channels

One-line verdict per channel. "Working" means it's earned its current spend; "Not working" means platform metrics overstate it; "Untested" means literal absence of data.

Google PMax — SA
Best channel in the account. 30d ROAS 2.4–8x; Spanish creative 5–13x. Budget-capped at $100/day for 4 consecutive runs.
Working
Google PMax — EU
Structurally soft. EU language variants (German, Italian, Spanish-EU) all failed and paused. French is the lone language anchor; Beginner-Friendly carries it.
Mixed
Google PMax — US
Air-Gap/Privacy and Trigger Event sub-segments are healthy ($15–102 CAC). Beginner-Friendly + Procrastinator are confirmed waste ($518+ CAC). Severe under-delivery from tROAS throttle.
Mixed
Google Search — US
Hit KPI for 4 runs after stripping competitor + 'hardware wallet' negatives, then collapsed in May. Branded queries (~$155/wk, 0 conv) are the new dominant waste.
Mixed
Google App Install — UAC
$0.25 CPI over 6 days in Tier-1 — well under the $1.46 ceiling. Verdict gates on in-app activation, not CPI alone.
Working
Meta
Not a scale channel. $345/day produced zero lift in store orders. Held at $50/day floor as a creative test bed. Audience saturation breach is persistent at freq 3.20.
Not working
Reddit / X (paid)
No Reddit ad data anywhere. A $682 X burst appeared in TW for one week with 0 attributed purchases — outside FB workflow scope, unexplained.
Untested
YouTube (paid)
Embedded in PMax inventory only. No dedicated test on file.
Untested
Organic / SEO
Healthy contributor — never measured incrementally. TW blended 30d 6.4–7.9x vs platform 1.5–2.5x. Paid channels are not the volume drivers they appear to be.
Working
KOL / Influencer
BTC Isla (LatAm, 17.4k subs) is the only proven performer and is being expanded. Bitcoin Audible gated on contract + promo code tracking. WBD scoped down. Several deals scrapped.
Mixed
Email
Infrastructure not yet built. Phase 1 (checkout opt-in) + Phase 2 (sats-back rebate) proposed Mar 2026. Every visitor today disappears with no follow-up.
Not shipped
Personas

Audience personas tested across Meta and Google PMax, plus the Beginner sub-segment split that's powering 2026 creative.

Audience personas
Beginner
40 purchases / $96 CAC in March. Carries every campaign that converts. "Setup / it's easy" is the only proven creative trigger.
Winner
Security
35 purchases / $113 CAC on Meta; 7.3% ATC→purchase (best of any persona). But Security-focused PMax groups died in both EU and US after 4 zero-conv runs.
Mixed
Bitcoin Maximalist
$94 CAC in March but only 2.1% ATC→purchase (4× worse funnel than Security). EU paused Apr 3, US paused Apr 13. Clicks but doesn't buy.
Failed
Privacy
$74 CAC in March, smallest audience. Removed from Meta Mar 31. LP exists; no current paid push.
Niche
CompSwitch
$136 CAC, lowest CTR (1.77%), highest CPP ($441). Negative "you've been burned" framing actively repels. Needs total creative rethink.
Failed
Beginner sub-segments (Apr 13 split)
Trigger Event
$15–48 CAC, 3.5–11x ROAS across 4 runs. Most efficient Google creative signal at current spend.
Winner
Gift
$25–69 CAC most weeks with two $390 spike weeks (Apr 27, May 1). Volatile but holds. CBO will sort.
Winner
Procrastinator
$214–533 CAC. Paused Apr 22.
Failed
Researcher
$198+ CAC, 0 conv multiple runs. Effectively suppressed by CBO.
Failed
Creative — what broke through

Ranked winners and failures from Meta + Google. Spend follows the winners; the failures inform what to stop drafting.

Winning angles
  • "Setup / It's Easy / 10 Minutes" — Hold + Freeze creatives on Meta. ~75 conversions in April at $14–46 CAC. Freeze peaked 9.61x ROAS for 4 weeks straight.
  • Spanish-language SA — 5–13x ROAS. Single highest-leverage creative variable in the account.
  • Trigger Event sub-segment — Google PMax US. $15–48 CAC. Urgency + give-them-the-plan ("10 minutes, $149, done"). No education.
  • Jade Core "Just What You Need" — Meta May. $17–25 CAC, 4.16x → 5.09x → 7.56x ROAS accelerating. Now the load-bearer.
  • Jade Core "Privacy Right" — Meta. $35–51 CAC, 3 runs at KPI. Cypherpunk angle.
  • UGC "Why I Switched" — Meta May. $22–47 CAC; 18x ROAS in original creator-led R19.
  • Portuguese SA PMax — $43–69 CAC over 4 weeks. Second confirmed localization.
Failed angles
  • Security Focused — paused in EU + US after 4+ zero-conv runs each.
  • Competitor Comparison — 0 conversions on $322/30d. EU paused Mar 31; US persisted longer but eventually died.
  • Bitcoin Maximalist — paused EU (Apr 3), US (Apr 13). Both KPI thresholds crossed.
  • Fresh Copy A/B (8 emotional variants) — Ownership, Relief, Anxiety, FearFact, Permission, Inaction, Demystify, Exchange. $980+ spend, 0 conversions. High CTR (2.3–3.1%) with zero purchase intent.
  • Jade Core "Shareable Price" + "For Your Desktop" — 0–1.5x ROAS in May. "For Your Desktop" also violates air-gap brand language.
  • EU language variants (German, Italian, Spanish-EU) — $877/wk at $292 CAC. All paused.
  • Cost-cap bidding — same Freeze creative that did 9.61x in CBO returned 0 conversions at $100–115 caps.
Operational lessons

The mechanics behind the numbers. Each of these has bitten us at least once.

  • Pixel ≠ truth. TW lastPlatformClick is the gate. Meta pixel showed 9 purchases in March; TW click attribution showed 2. Real Meta CTR CAC was $900+.
  • Incrementality > platform ROAS. Pixel KPI without store-level order lift = view-through inflation, not real conversion.
  • Triple Whale blended ROAS is the business metric. Platform ROAS is for creative comparison only. TW blended 30d sits at 5–8x; gross profit $60K+ for 30d.
  • 30d windows can mask or fake improvement. May 1 ROAS "declined" only because strong early-April rolled off. Don't act on 30d alone.
  • tROAS targets are the dominant budget throttle. Three campaigns under-delivering vs budget (US PMax 8–11%, EU PMax 24–26%, US Search 9–18%) because actual ROAS sits at or just above tROAS.
  • Budget concentration beats breadth. Every successful intervention so far has been a pause that freed budget for the proven winner. EU cleanup drove ROAS 2.73x → 4.21x.
  • Branded queries are not free. 'blockstream jade' was the Search hero in April; by May, with non-brand negatives stripped, branded queries became the dominant waste.
  • Audience saturation hits fast at small budget. Meta Jade Core breached freq cap (3.0) within 2 runs of launch. ~130K Beginner cohort recycles every 2–3 weeks at $50/day.
  • Persona LPs beat generic store pages. 2.14× CR lift, 53% lower CPC, 1.77× ROAS with flat CPC — the lift is post-click. Volume dropped 83% in the test; efficiency still needs validation at higher spend.
  • Don't use cable/USB language in public copy. "For Your Desktop" Jade Core ad violated this and underperformed.
What we still don't know

The unresolved questions that would move the most if we answered them.

  • Does SA scale to $150/day hold ROAS? Approval pending for 4+ runs. Highest-confidence move in the account.
  • Will branded negatives in US Search recover the channel or hollow it out? Hardware-wallet negative produced a HURT impact when removed; branded ('blockstream jade') is the next step but may destroy the campaign.
  • Can Meta earn its spend at the floor? Three new angles in test. None has crossed the incrementality bar yet (Shopify orders/day still below 16.0 baseline).
  • Why does Security convert through Meta + persona LP but die in PMax? ATC→purchase is 7.3% (best of any persona). PMax routing must be hitting a different audience or stage.
  • BTC Maxi LP / checkout audit — never executed. The 2.1% ATC→purchase rate is the unsolved leak.
  • Reddit and YouTube paid — completely untested as of May 13.
  • KOL CAC for everyone except BTC Isla — promo code tracking not consistently live.
  • Is Portuguese scalable beyond ~$70/wk? 4 weeks of positive data at small volume. Worth a budget split or its own asset group.
  • Email Phase 1. Not launched. Every visitor today disappears with no follow-up.