The 30-day review: keep, adjust or stop your AI media buyer

Why hold a review at all

A person in a new role gets a review after the first month. An AI media buyer should too: without a set date, a so-so arrangement simply continues and nobody can say whether it was worth it.

The review date belongs in the role brief. Put it in the calendar on the day the first ad launches, while the date still feels far away. Thirty minutes is enough, with the owner and the approver both present.

What to bring

Gather five things beforehand so the meeting is about decisions, not about finding numbers.

• The onboarding page. The offer, limit, approver and creative notes you started with.
• The bill. What the ad platform actually charged for the month.
• Your own count. Sales or bookings of the offer, and the baseline from before.
• The report. Whatever summary the software produces.
• The approval tally. Drafts received, approved and returned, with rough turnaround.

Four questions

Did spending stay inside the limit?

Compare the bill with the limit. If it went over, find the approval that caused it. This is the one question with a right answer.

Did the offer move?

Compare your count with the baseline. One month is thin evidence, so look for direction, not proof. Note anything else that happened: weather, holidays, a mention in the local paper.

Did approvals work?

Were drafts clear enough to judge quickly? Were they read on time? If many came back, was the brief at fault, or the drafts?

Was your time saved?

Be honest about hours. If you spent as long correcting drafts as you would have spent building ads, say so.

Three outcomes

Keep. Spending was controlled, the offer showed some life and the process was easy. Continue at the same limit and set the next review.

Adjust. Something specific was off. Change that one thing, such as a clearer offer, new creative or a lower limit, and write it down so the next review can judge it.

Stop. The process cost more attention than it saved, or the offer showed nothing after a fair run and a creative change. That is a legitimate result. Make sure no ads are left running.

What the review should not decide

Do not use month one to settle large questions. It cannot tell you your long-term cost per customer, and one good fortnight is no reason for a big increase in budget. Raise the limit in steps, each with its own month and review, and get one ad platform running well before adding another.

Whatever you decide, write one line under the role brief: the outcome, the date and the next review. A year of those lines is a better record than anyone's memory.

Where Link AI fits the review

A review needs something written to start from, and that is part of why we recommend Link AI by Linkme. Among its published features is Reports, which puts a report for the owner in writing and sends it over. Analytics adds four figures: total interactions, engagement rate, profile views and link clicks.

The bill, the baseline and the approval tally have to come from you. Reporting per ad is not something we state for Link AI. When you try Link AI in a demo, a sample owner report is the thing to request.

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