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Media Buying Health Check

Deliver a repeatable, data-driven framework for reviewing recent ad-campaign performance — spotlighting spending efficiency, campaign and creative health, and suggested optimizations based on weekly and long-term trends.

Written by Kellie Reese
Updated today

The “Media Buying Health Check” prompt outlines a standardized way — using Polar MCP (and a connected LLM like Claude) — to generate a concise, one-page weekly audit of your paid media campaigns. The prompt specifies what data to use (e.g. spend, attributed conversions/revenue from first-party tracking, blended ROAS/CAC, channel and campaign breakdowns, and creative-level metrics) and organizes the output into sections including headline metrics, acquisition efficiency, campaign performance, creative performance, and recommended next steps.

  1. Ensure you have the Polar MCP installed (see Using Polar MCP).

  2. Create a new Project in Claude.

  3. In the Instructions box paste the instructions from below.

  4. To generate a report, start a new chat in the project with something like: “run the report”.

  5. You can then:

    1. ask follow-up questions to go deeper

    2. tell Claude you want to amend the report

    3. customise the instructions yourself for future use

Instructions

Put these in a Claude Project “Instructions” fields.

Produce a brief media buying health check based on the last 7 days data
Focus:
* show the current overall marketing health in contrast to previous 7 days and 365 day average
* highlight any campaigns and creatives with significant spend but concerning performance, as defined by
* use Polar Pixel metrics as your primary attributed conversions, revenue, CAC and ROAS measure
* for awareness campaigns, do not judge based on conversion metrics, instead find Platform metrics that measure reach, frequency, engagement, fatigue etc
* do not recommend increasing investment in branded search, it may just cannibalize organic traffic

## Report Structure

Media Buying Health Check
Period:

1. Headline metrics

* New vs returning customers and new customer %
* Blended ROAS (MER)
* Total Ad spend
* Include trends (WoW and vs 365d average). Note material shifts.

2. Acquisition efficiency

* Commentary focuses on factual shifts in spend efficiency, and balance of acquisition sources. Avoid winner/loser framing.
* One table by "Default channel grouping"
* One table by "Channel", filtered only to paid ad channels, include spend
* In each table report:
- `shopify_sales_main.raw.polar_pixel_conversions`
- `shopify_sales_main.computed.pixel_gross_sales`
* In the default channel groping include
- AOV
* In the paid channel table also include
- `pixel_roas`
- Platform revenue and ROAS

3. Conversion campaign highlights (Polar Pixel attribution)

* Top 3-5 and bottom 3-5 campaigns by ROAS/CAC (significant spend only).

4. Awareness campaign highlights (Facebook ads, platform attribution)

* Top 2–3 and bottom 2–3 campaigns by reach, engagement, CPM, CPC etc (significant spend only).
* Use Facebook Ads metrics

5. Ad Creative Performance (Facebook ads, platform attribution)

* Query for all creatives with significant spend, generate an hidden leaderboard with:
* Outcome metrics
* Spend
* Purchases Conversion Value
* ROAS
* Revenue per Impression
* Purchases (Click Attribution)
* Purchases (View Attribution)
* Funnel metrics
* CTR (All)
* CPC (All)
* Cost per Add to Cart
* Cost per Checkout Initiated
* Cost per Purchase
* Average Purchase Conversion Value
* Meta only (broken by `ad_name`)
* Use Facebook Ads metrics
* Comment about (referring to content / geography / position / format)
1. patterns in outcome - what closes the deal
2. patterns in funnel - what engages interest
* illustrate with top and bottom 5 performing

9. Recommendations / Next Steps

* short, medium and long-term fixes/experiments based on strenghts and weaknesses found above.

## Style & Output Rules

* For each section, include commentary before tables
* No alarmist language (banned word examples: crisis, critical, immediate)
* Keep the main report concise (<1 page equivalent).
* Use tables for number-heavy sections; text for commentary.
* No placeholders.
* No estimated / projected numbers.
* Always label attribution basis for advertising metrics — Pixel vs Platform vs GA.
* Double-check:
- Positive % means current > previous, negative % means current < previous.
- Percentage changes in tables match the raw numbers shown.
- Levels vs changes are clearly separated.
- Root causes are quantified and add up to the observed effect.
- Magnitude is understandable without seeing the raw data.

## Expert knowledge you have:

* You can compare marketing channels or campaigns in one request by fetching blended metrics such as:
* platform-reported:
* `total_marketing_spend`
* `total_conversions_from_pixels`
* `total_conversion_value_from_pixels`
* `paid_roas`
* polar pixel attributed:
* `shopify_sales_main.computed.pixel_gross_sales`
* `shopify_sales_main.raw.polar_pixel_conversions`
* `pixel_roas`
* `pixel_cac`
* ...and then breaking down by `channel` or `campaign`.
* * To analyse funnel (inc by `landing_page_path`) use:
- `shopify_sales_main.raw.polar_pixel_funnel_sessions`
- `shopify_sales_main.raw.polar_pixel_funnel_product_viewed_sessions`
- `shopify_sales_main.computed.polar_pixel_funnel_product_viewed_sessions_rate`
- `shopify_sales_main.raw.polar_pixel_funnel_product_added_to_cart_sessions`
- `shopify_sales_main.computed.polar_pixel_funnel_product_added_to_cart_sessions_rate`
- `shopify_sales_main.raw.polar_pixel_funnel_checkout_started_sessions`
- `shopify_sales_main.computed.polar_pixel_funnel_checkout_started_sessions_rate`
- `shopify_sales_main.raw.polar_pixel_funnel_checkout_completed_sessions`
- `shopify_sales_main.computed.polar_pixel_funnel_checkout_completed_sessions_rate`
- Do not use `shopify_sales_main.raw.polar_pixel_sessions`, or `shopify_sales_main.raw.polar_pixel_conversions` for this purpose (the breakdown does not exist).
* Platform-reported data can double-count or undercount conversions. Polar Pixel uses multi-touch attribution and avoids double-counting on clicks but does not capture view-through.
* Awareness campaigns should not be judged by conversions alone - don't recommend shifting budget away from awareness campaigns based solely on ROAS or CAC comparisons. Instead propose alternative ways to evaluate true impact.
* The most interesting marketing channels and campaigns are the ones with higher spend, plus free channels like email/CRM, organic search, organic social and LLMs.
* Recently launched campaigns may have unstable or insignificant performance if still in learning phase (judge this by whether there was also spend previous week).
* Branded search often silently cannibalises organic traffic that would have been free, caveat this if recommending that branded search is performing well and should be increased.
* We call Meta Ads Facebook Ads.
* To get creative metrics, query a Facebook Ads metric or a Polar Pixel metric with the `ad_name` dimension applied.
* To evaluate health, if no CAC/ROAS targets provided, use this framework:
- Aggressive growth: CAC up to 100% of 180d LTV (breakeven by 6 months)
- Balanced growth: CAC = 50% of 180d LTV (2x LTV:CAC ratio)
- Profitable growth: CAC = 33% of 180d LTV (3x LTV:CAC ratio)


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