Funnel Stage Variants Ad Creative

Funnel Stage Variants

Shared quality bar: ../references/output-standard.md. All numbers cited here live in ../references/thresholds.md. The point of this skill is continuity. A retargeting ad that argues a different case than the cold ad the viewer already saw restarts the sale instead of closing it.

Use this skill when

An angle has evidence behind it in one audience and the account wants it running across cold, warm and retargeting placements. Also use it when the three stages are already live and each says something unrelated to the others. The angle must already be proven or explicitly labelled unproven. Not for inventing or choosing an angle, and not for a first draft of feed copy, which is paid-social-primary-text-ad-creative. Not for the opening seconds of a video, which is video-hook-lines-ad-creative. Not for Google search assets tied to a keyword set, which is search-headline-set-ad-creative.

Required input

• The winning angle as one sentence, and the copy exactly as it runs today.
• The evidence it won on: window as dates, spend, conversions or link clicks, and the control it beat.
• Audience definitions for each stage, including what the retargeting pool actually did to enter it.
• The offer at each stage, if it differs, and who approved the difference.
• Any claim used in the current copy, with its source.

Analysis workflow

1. Check whether the angle is genuinely proven. Test the supporting read against test.volume_floor, test.min_runtime and test.material_gap before rewriting anything. A win inside test.material_gap is a tie.
2. Extract the invariant: the promise, the mechanism and the proof. These are what must survive all three stages unchanged in substance.
3. Write the cold variant. Assume no prior contact, so the problem is named before the product and the proof carries more weight.
4. Write the warm variant. The problem is assumed known, so the space goes to the mechanism and to the objection that stops people at this stage.
5. Write the retargeting variant, and hold the line that makes this skill worth running. Stage is the one changed element under test.one_change_rule, so four things stay byte-identical across all three: the angle sentence, the main claim in the exact words it runs in today, the single proof, and the conversion action with the destination behind it. Change the opening, the emphasis and the reference to what the viewer already did. Change any of the four and the account can no longer tell a stage effect from an angle effect, because two things moved between the cells it is comparing; the retargeting ad will win, as retargeting ads do, and nobody will know whether the stage or the new argument did it. The offer is the one people move without noticing: a discount added at retargeting is a second changed element, not a stage adaptation.
6. Diff the three variants line by line and produce an explicit changed and unchanged list. Anything in the changed list that touches the promise or the proof is a defect, not a stage adaptation.
7. Check message match at every stage with match.promise_pairs and match.above_fold_rule, because stages often point at different pages.
8. Apply claims.evidence_rule, claims.superlative_rule and claims.restricted_topics to all three variants and mark unsourced factual lines [claim: needs source].

Decision rules

• The supporting result sits inside test.material_gap or under test.volume_floor: the angle is not proven. Write the variants if asked, label the whole set test at low confidence, and say the extension is a bet.
• Retargeting variant changes the promise, the proof or the angle sentence: rewrite. Stage changes emphasis and the reference to prior action, never the argument.
• The offer differs between stages: this is a second changed element under test.one_change_rule and the set stops being a stage test. Either hold one offer across the three, or run the offer change as its own test against a named control and say the stage question has been given up for this round. Decision investigate on which of the two questions the account actually wants answered.
• No stage reaches test.volume_floor on its own conversions inside test.min_runtime: the three cannot be compared on conversions at all. Read them on test.click_floor, state in the output that the answer is click-side only, and cap the whole set at low under the shared scale.
• Cost per acquisition between two stages differing by less than money.relevance_floor: no stage won. Report a tie and leave the budget where it is; a rate difference that does not move cost per acquisition is not a reason to shift spend between temperatures.
• Retargeting pool sitting under delivery.ranking_floor of the campaign's spend: it may have run, but its share is too thin to compare against the cold and warm stages. monitor, and say the comparison between stages is unavailable until the pool gets a comparable share of delivery. Where the pool is under delivery.never_delivered_floor as well, it did not run at all and the finding is allocation rather than the copy.
• Retargeting pool defined by page view alone with no stated action: label investigate, because the copy cannot reference something unknown.
• A stage points at a page missing the ad's main claim above the fold: investigate the page, and hold that stage's variant.
• Fewer than coverage.angles_per_ad_set live angles once these variants ship: say so, because a losing week will not be readable. Three stage variants of one argument are one angle under coverage.angle_distinctness, not three, and an account that counts them as three has just talked itself into a coverage pass it did not earn.
• Any line this skill produced that carries [claim: needs source] is approval_needed, whatever else its verdict says, and the marker is never stripped to make the set look finished. A marked line is not shippable copy: it waits for the named source, or it is rewritten without the claim.

Output format

No verdict line. Three copy blocks, one per stage, each with its audience, offer, evidence label and decision label. Then two lists side by side: what changed between stages and what stayed identical. Then a one-line statement of the strength of the original result in its own numbers. Then the four elements held identical across the three stages, listed literally, so a reader can check them rather than trust them. Then What this could not see, Missing data, Approval gates.

This skill writes copy rather than reading a test or a time series, so it issues no high confidence label of its own. The confidence it does state is inherited from the original result being extended, read on the shared scale in full, and it never rises above what that result carried. Nothing about writing three variants makes the evidence behind the angle stronger.

Practical example

Illustrative and fictional. Advertiser "Halden". Angle: "you are paying twice for the same lead". The cold ad is reported at 1.9% link CTR against a control at 1.7%, over 9 days, 41 purchases across the ad set.

Strength of the original result: 1.9% against 1.7% is about 12% relative, inside test.material_gap, and 9 days is short of test.min_runtime. The angle is not proven and the claim that it won is refused as a tie. Variants are still written, all labelled test at low confidence, and the extension is a bet.

Cold:

Two of your lead sources are selling you the same person. You are paying twice for the same lead. Halden matches inbound records across sources before they reach your CRM. Book an audit.

Warm:

You know about the duplicates. Here is where they start: two sources, one person, two invoices. You are paying twice for the same lead. Halden matches inbound records across sources before they reach your CRM. Book an audit.

Retargeting:

You opened the duplicate check and left it. Nothing has changed since. You are paying twice for the same lead. Halden matches inbound records across sources before they reach your CRM. Book an audit.

Held identical: the angle sentence; the claim "You are paying twice for the same lead" word for word; the single proof; the conversion action and its destination. Changed: the opening line and the reference to prior action only. One offer across all three, deliberately, so the account reads the stage rather than a discount.

Declined:

• "You already know this works for teams like yours", in the retargeting draft. No case evidence was supplied, so it is not written. Its slot goes to the abandoned check, an observed action rather than a claim.
• "Cuts duplicate spend by a third" [claim: needs source]. This was the single proof, so all three ship without a proof line and the set is weaker for it. Any variant carrying it is approval_needed and none goes live with it.

Guardrails

• Never call an angle proven on a result inside test.material_gap.
• Never let the promise or the proof drift between stages.
• Never reference a prior action the retargeting definition does not contain.
• Never invent a case study, a customer or a saving figure.
• Do not change audiences, budgets or ad status in the account.
• Report every line declined at every stage, with the reason.