SAMPLE — FICTIONAL — NOT A CUSTOMER RESULT

Ad Budget Decision Review — complete fictional practice

One invented case from inquiry and re-scoping through written review, QA, simulated invoice, and value review.

This case is entirely invented. Example Glow Beauty, Avery Example, all evidence, calculations, process records, and simulated responses exist only to demonstrate the case system. The case is not an anonymised customer result, benchmark, invoice, payment, or indication that another business should expect the same conclusion. The separate prepared-by and reviewer information describes Swaroop Rao and is not part of the fictional case.

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Prepared for: Example Glow Beauty — Fictional United States DTC beauty brand
Decision owner: Avery Example, Fictional Growth Owner
Contact route: avery@example.com
Prepared by: Swaroop Rao, Founder, SpendProof
Decision: Should Example Glow Beauty run a two-week 10–15% Meta spend step before considering the full 30% increase?
Service target: Three business days after exact brief acceptance and complete usable evidence

Completed by Swaroop Rao

Swaroop has spent ten years working on decisions where reported growth, store economics, and operating constraints did not tell one clean story. His experience includes judging marginal return and converting conflicting evidence into a bounded action. Every SpendProof review is personally completed by him. See Swaroop's decision work.

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One-page decision summary

Unresolved — Test before committing

Decision

Run the bounded two-week Meta step before considering the full increase

Main reason

Attributed averages do not establish marginal return on the next dollar

Largest risk

The full increase could cross contribution breakeven while platform averages still look healthy

What to do now

Run the accepted 10–15% two-week step on a clean post-promotion window

What not to do yet

Do not commit the full 30% increase or rely on unproven lifetime value

Monitoring

Weekly marginal contribution, blended MER, promotion status, and new-versus-returning mix

Stop condition

Stop if marginal contribution reaches the agreed breakeven boundary

Review point

After two clean fictional weeks

Qualification and re-scope

Original inquiry

Increase monthly Meta spend from $45,000 to $58,500 starting next week.

Proposed by: Fictional media agency
Amount affected: $13,500 per month
Deadline: Before the fictional launch week
Trust gap: The agency recommendation relies on platform-reported average ROAS and an assumed longer-term customer value contribution
Useful outcome: A clear proceed, stop, or smallest-safe-test decision

Fit finding — not a verdict

$13,500 affected, more than 15% of monthly paid-media spend, across several weeks.

Fail-closed gap: The supplied 90-day summary does not establish the lifetime-value contribution assumed by the original recommendation.

Re-scope: Assess a two-week 10–15% step using first-order contribution; do not use missing lifetime-value proof.

No view on whether the move is supported was given during qualification. Fit identified only for the re-scoped decision.

Accepted Decision Brief snapshot

Revision	2
Exact decision	Should Example Glow Beauty run a two-week 10–15% Meta spend step before considering the full 30% increase?
Period	Same fictional last-30-day evidence plus a two-week resolving test
Evidence boundary	Redacted same-period exports and screenshots for store revenue, channel spend and claims, margin inputs, promotion, and the supplied 90-day repeat summary
Repeat-purchase rule	The re-scoped decision uses first-order contribution. The supplied repeat summary is context only and cannot support a lifetime-value claim
Deliverable	One-page decision summary plus full written reasoning
Delivery clock	After this exact revision is accepted and the agreed evidence is confirmed complete and usable
Price and payment	$399; Invoice at complete written delivery; due within three business days
Re-scoping	A material change requires a new numbered brief, explicit re-acceptance, and new evidence-completeness confirmation

Evidence register

Every entry comes from the one fictional fixture and states its period, classification, and limit. Evidence is complete for the re-scoped decision, not for the original lifetime-value-dependent recommendation.

ID	Source and period	Class	Fictional value	Limit
E1	Fictional Shopify net-revenue export Same 30-day fictional window	observed	$360,000 after refunds and discounts	Store-recorded sales anchor, not channel attribution truth
E2	Fictional Meta Ads export Same 30-day fictional window	observed	$290,000 attributed revenue on $45,000 spend	Average attributed return; does not establish marginal return
E3	Fictional Google Ads export Same 30-day fictional window	observed	$95,000 attributed revenue on $18,000 spend	May overlap with other channel claims
E4	Fictional email platform summary Same 30-day fictional window	observed	$120,000 attributed revenue	May overlap with paid-channel claims
E5	Fictional margin worksheet Same 30-day fictional window	assumption	53–57% contribution margin before ad spend; 55% midpoint	Customer-supplied practice assumption, not audited
E6	Fictional promotion calendar Same 30-day fictional window	observed	20% bundle promotion active for 18 days	Distorts the baseline for a non-promotional period
E7	Fictional 90-day repeat-purchase summary Prior fictional cohorts	unknown	Repeat mix is directionally material but incomplete	Insufficient to establish the lifetime-value contribution assumed by the original recommendation

Full reasoning

Material disagreement

Channel claims total $505,000 against $360,000 of store-recorded net revenue

Commercial implication

At a 55% contribution midpoint, breakeven marginal ROAS is approximately 1.8×

Plausible range

1.8× downside, 2.8× base scenario, 4.0× optimistic scenario; none is presented as a forecast

Strongest counterargument

The prior Meta average may indicate enough headroom for the full increase

Response

The average is attributed, promotion-affected, and not the marginal return on new spend

Correction boundary

One bounded correction for a specific material mismatch with the accepted brief

Actionable Unresolved outcome

Missing evidence: Measured marginal contribution from the bounded test on a clean window
Safe interim action: Keep the existing budget except for the accepted 10–15% test step
Smallest useful test: Two weeks with a pre-agreed contribution stop boundary
Review date: After two clean fictional weeks
Monitoring: Weekly marginal contribution, blended MER, promotion status, and new-versus-returning mix
Stop condition: Stop if marginal contribution reaches the agreed breakeven boundary
Supports larger move: Marginal contribution remains clearly above breakeven across the clean test
Rejects larger move: Marginal contribution reaches breakeven or the clean-window economics weaken

Questions, non-claims, and limits

Questions for the agency or internal team

Which order set and attribution windows sit behind each channel claim?
How will the step test isolate the return on the next dollar?
Which contribution inputs can be monitored consistently?
What exact signal triggers the stop rule?

What this review does not claim

No true channel ROAS is established
No revenue, profit, or campaign outcome is guaranteed
No missing lifetime-value proof is constructed
New lifetime-value or deep cohort construction
Attribution rebuild or one true ROAS
Campaign implementation or management
Account access, passwords, or customer-level personal data

QA, delivery, invoice, and outcome boundaries

Truthful critical QA

Swaroop Rao completed a separate critical pass as the same person who authored the fictional review. No independent human review is claimed.

Exact accepted revision and evidence boundary
Arithmetic, provenance, period alignment, and exclusions
Unresolved action, monitoring, stop rule, and change evidence
Repeat-purchase fail-closed boundary
No unsupported customer, founder, payment, or outcome claim

Simulated process only

Simulated written delivery only. The complete written artifact, not acknowledgement, handoff, invoice, or payment.

SAMPLE — NOT A REAL INVOICE

$399; Within three business days of simulated written delivery. No tax treatment is asserted in this sample. No payment route; this is not payable.

The fictional questionnaire validates capture fields only. It is not customer evidence, testimonial permission, case-study permission, payment, or value proof.

Have one live decision to pressure-test?

Founding Decision Review — $399 for the first two accepted Decision Briefs. Complete written delivery follows exact brief acceptance and complete usable evidence; payment is due within three business days after delivery.

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SAMPLE — FICTIONAL — NOT A CUSTOMER RESULT. The fixture is the only canonical fictional identity and evidence source for this web sample, generated PDF, sample invoice, and synthetic case-flow validation.