Separate platform, creative, and measurement issues before touching budget. Fix attribution, refresh fatigued creative, and run a disciplined two-week reset instead of panic-cutting spend.
Every April for the last three years, performance marketers in India have watched ROAS slide for two weeks and then panic. The pattern is now predictable, and so is the fix.
Diagnose before you optimise
Before you touch a budget, separate platform issues from creative issues from measurement issues. Most teams skip this step and end up over-correcting in the wrong place.
- Platform. Auction prices, policy changes, audience shifts.
- Creative. Frequency, hook fatigue, format saturation.
- Measurement. Attribution windows, iOS opt-in, server side gaps.
The attribution layer
If you are still relying on default 7-day click attribution, you are leaving 20 to 30 percent of conversions unattributed. Move to a blended view that combines platform data, GA4 data path, and post-purchase survey data. None of these are right alone. Together they are honest.
Creative fatigue is real
Hook fatigue starts at frequency 2.4 in our data. If your top ad has been running for 21 days, it is almost certainly the reason ROAS is sliding. Refresh hooks weekly, formats biweekly, full concept monthly.
Rule of thumb
Budget should follow new creative inside the first 72 hours, then re-balance based on third-day cost per result, not first-day ROAS.
A two week reset
- 1
Day 1 to 3. Pause anything above frequency 3. Ship 6 new hooks.
- 2
Day 4 to 7. Hold budgets flat. Read CPA, not ROAS.
- 3
Day 8 to 14. Scale winners by 20 percent every 48 hours.
Adith Krishnan
Co-Founder & COO, Kula Digital
8+ years building marketing that is measured in revenue. Indian and global teams. Written from the studio in Coimbatore.