FiftyStrong · Meta · validation test

Three days in, the quiz funnel is working

$106.85 has bought 95 completed quizzes at $1.12 each — three to seven times cheaper than the plan assumed. One of the two creatives is doing most of the work, and the largest remaining leak is not in the ads at all.

Aug 7 06:16Aug 9 ~14:50 PT act_1761459111652871 1 campaign · 1 ad set · 2 ads Optimising on Lead

Headline

Everything below is lifetime-to-date for the only campaign that has ever run on this account.

Spent

$106.85

2.4 days live · using only 81% of the $50/day budget

Quiz completions

95

The Lead event — she answered every question and hit the paywall

Cost per completion

$1.12

3–7× better than the $3.33–$7.50 the copy spec assumed

Paywall taps

8

$13.36 each — a painted door, so read it as intent, not revenue

The read: demand is not the problem. Women 48–65 in the US click these ads at 8.6% of impressions and finish a 25-question quiz three times out of four. Both of those numbers are well above what the plan budgeted for, and they held steady across three days without any audience fatigue — frequency is still 1.24.

Two things are worth acting on. Ad A beats Ad B by 67% on cost per lead, and the gap is statistically real rather than noise. And exactly half the women who land on the quiz never tap a single answer — a bigger pool of lost leads than anything the creative test can recover.

What the test still cannot tell you is whether this is a business. Eight paywall taps against a door that does not open is an intent signal, not a conversion rate. That number needs roughly another $650 of spend before it means anything.

The funnel

Five pixel events fire between the impression and the paywall. Bars are on a log-ish visual scale so the small steps stay readable; the percentages are the honest step-to-step rates.

Impression → paywall, all spend to date
Impressions
2,813
Outbound clicks
241
8.6% of impressions
Landing page views
253
she reached the quiz
Quiz starts
126
49.8% of landings — the leak
Quiz completions
95
75.4% of starts
Paywall taps
8
8.4% of completions

Landing page views exceed outbound clicks slightly because Meta counts the two differently — it is not a data error, and the practical read is that essentially every click arrives.

Funnel step counts, rates and cost per step
StepCountRate from priorCost each
Impressions2,813$37.98 CPM
Outbound clicks2418.57%$0.44
Landing page views253105%$0.42
Quiz starts (Q1 answered)12649.8%$0.85
Quiz completions (Lead)9575.4%$1.12
Paywall taps (InitiateCheckout)88.4%$13.36
Purchases0no payment form exists yet

The quiz itself is in good shape. Three out of four women who answer the first question walk all the way through roughly 25 screens to the paywall — that is a strong completion rate for a quiz this long, and it means the questions, the pacing and the loader fix are all holding. The problem sits one step earlier.

A vs B

Both ads ran in the same ad set against the same audience, so Meta allocated between them on live performance. It gave A 59% of the budget.

A · Says Who · 15s B · Workout Programme · 70s
Where the two ads separate

Outbound click-through rate

A10.17%
B6.30%

Cost per quiz completion — lower is better

A$0.94
B$1.57

Landing → completion, once she is actually on the quiz

A36.8%
B39.4%

Video watched to 100%

A29.3%
B4.5%

The third pair is the one that changes the decision. Once a woman is on the quiz, B's traffic converts slightly better than A's. B is not attracting worse people — it is simply getting far fewer of them to click. That is a hook problem, not an audience or offer problem.

Metric A · Says Who · 15s B · Workout Programme · 70s Gap
Spend$63.00$43.85Meta chose 59 / 41
Impressions1,6711,142
CPM$37.70$38.40same auction price
Outbound CTR10.17%6.30%+61%
Landing page views18271
Quiz starts9135
Quiz completions6728
Cost per completion$0.94$1.57B costs 67% more
Landing → completion36.8%39.4%B marginally ahead
Paywall taps71too few to trust
Average watch time10s of 15s17s of 70s
ThruPlays467344

Is the gap real? Yes, on both measures. The click-through difference is far outside noise at this sample (z ≈ 3.6, p < 0.001), and even the harder test — completions per impression, which is what you actually buy — clears the bar (z ≈ 2.25, p ≈ 0.02). The paywall-tap split of 7 vs 1 does not clear it and should be ignored for now.

Who it reached

Targeting is deliberately broad — US, women, 48–65, no interests, Advantage audience off. So the age and placement splits below are Meta's choices, not yours.

Cost per completion by age band
AgeSpendShare CTRCompletionsCost each
45–54$12.2011%9.88%6$2.03
55–64$50.6247%15.84%49$1.03
65+$44.1041%16.31%40$1.10
All$106.85100%15.18%95$1.12

The buyer is 55 and up. The youngest band costs roughly double per lead, and Meta has already routed 88% of spend away from it without being told to — which is the argument for not touching the age settings. It is an argument for writing copy to a 60-year-old rather than a 49-year-old.

Facebook vs Instagram
PlacementSpendShare CTRCompletionsCost each
Facebook$87.3482%15.90%79$1.11
Instagram$19.2718%12.10%16$1.20

An 8% cost difference on 18% of spend. Not worth a placement exclusion — leave both on and let the auction keep the option open.

Day by day

Three days, only one of them complete. August 8 is the only full, fully-attributed day — and it is the best one.

A · Says Who B · Workout Programme Dashed = incomplete day, under-attributed
Cost per quiz completion, by day
$2.50 $2.00 $1.50 $1.00 $0.50 $0 Aug 7 Aug 8 Aug 9 partial full day partial $2.34 $1.02 B $1.30 $0.97 $0.75 A $1.33

August 7 is B's worst day and the campaign's most expensive — that is the learning phase, and it corrected within 24 hours. August 9's uptick is largely an artefact: with a 7-day click window, conversions from today's impressions are still landing, so today's cost per lead always looks worse than it will settle at.

DaySpendImpressions ClicksCompletionsCost each
Aug 7 · from 06:16$41.171,09114327$1.52
Aug 8 · full day$40.521,01818449$0.83
Aug 9 · to ~14:50$25.1870610019$1.33
Total$106.852,81342795$1.12

Note the delivery, not just the cost: a $50 daily budget spending $41 and $40.52 on its two full days. The ad set is under-delivering by about a fifth, with frequency at 1.24 — so this is a cold pixel finding its footing, not an audience running out.

What to do next

Ordered by expected effect on cost per lead, largest first.

  1. Fix the first quiz screen before touching anything elseThis week

    253 women landed on the quiz. 126 tapped an answer. The other 127 left without touching it — more lost leads than the entire A-vs-B gap is worth. Moving that first-screen engagement from 50% to 65% takes cost per lead from $1.12 to roughly $0.86 on the same spend.

    Screen one is "Fitness that works with your body, not against it — where are you right now?" with four image cards. Worth testing: fewer cards, a lighter first question, or matching the screen's promise more directly to the line she just clicked in the ad.

  2. Pause B, but keep the 70-second conceptToday

    B costs 67% more per lead and the difference is statistically real. Pause it and hand the budget to A.

    Do not bin the asset. B's traffic converts better than A's once it lands, and it holds 17 seconds of attention against A's 10. The failure is entirely in the first three seconds. Recut B's opening against A's hook and run it again.

  3. Raise the budget to $100/dayThis week

    You are 3–7× better than the plan's cost assumption, frequency is 1.24, and the ad set is only spending 81% of the $50 it already has. Broad US women 48–65 is nowhere near exhausted.

    Double it, hold everything else fixed, and read cost per lead after 48 hours. If it holds near $1.10 you have a scalable top of funnel and the question moves permanently to the paywall.

  4. Get more creative into the testThis week

    One winning ad and one loser is not a creative programme. A is a 15-second hook that works — the useful next question is which part of it works. Cut three variants that each change one thing (opening line, opening frame, the claim), and run them against A in the same ad set so Meta arbitrates.

  5. Leave targeting, placements and age aloneNo action

    45–54 costs double, Instagram costs 8% more — both true, neither worth acting on. Meta has already moved 88% of spend to 55+ on its own, and narrowing would shrink the pool to save about $12. The age finding belongs in the copy brief, not the ad set.

  6. Do not read the paywall number yetHold

    Eight taps at $13.36 is the number that eventually decides whether this is a business, and right now it is unreadable — the sample is too small, and the door is painted, so a real card field will cut it substantially. It needs roughly 50 taps, about $650 more at current rates, before it means anything.

Method & caveats

What the numbers are and where they can mislead.

Source
Meta Marketing API, ad account 1761459111652871, lifetime to date. Pulled 2026-08-09 ~14:50 PT.
The "Lead" event
Fires when she reaches the paywall having answered every question — not an email capture. It is deliberately stripped of her archetype, so no physical-condition inference reaches Meta.
Attribution
7-day click, 1-day view. Anything from the last 48 hours is under-counted and will improve on its own. August 9 in particular should not be judged.
Sample size
95 leads is enough to call the A/B creative gap. It is not enough to call paywall-tap rates, age-band differences beyond the obvious, or anything about revenue.
Rounding
Day-level figures sum to $106.87 against a lifetime $106.85, and impressions to 2,815 against 2,813. That is Meta's per-row rounding, not a discrepancy.
Not included
No TikTok data — FiftyStrong has no TikTok ad account yet, only Reelly does. No purchases, because no payment form exists.