The fintech
that was burning
cash blind.
A Series A consumer fintech was pouring money into broad Meta and Google campaigns with no payback model. We rebuilt attribution from scratch, killed four underperforming audiences, and focused budget on two high-intent segments.
The challenge
The company had raised a Series A and was scaling spend fast — but without a CAC payback model. Every audience looked the same inside the ad platforms, and the finance team was starting to ask questions nobody could answer.
Broad targeting had worked at $20k/month. At $80k/month, it was lighting money on fire. They needed a media strategy that tied acquisition cost to unit economics, not vanity metrics.
What we did
- Rebuilt attribution with server-side tracking and a first-party data layer tied to downstream activation events.
- Implemented a CAC payback model that scored every audience by predicted LTV, not just CPA.
- Killed four underperforming audience segments that looked efficient on click metrics but had abysmal activation rates.
- Concentrated 70% of budget on two high-intent segments and built creative specifically for each.
The outcome
CAC dropped 41% in 60 days. But more importantly, the customers they were acquiring started activating faster and retaining longer. Payback period compressed from 3.2 months to 1.8.
The board signed off on a 2× budget increase in the following quarter. The finance team finally had numbers they could model against.
№009 —
DTC Skincare.
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