Barton Springs Mill · Fluid IQ Digital
147 ads, 18 months of spend, every top creative visually inspected against its own ROAS. A deterministic rule set for what to make next — not a gut call — plus what it means for Heartwell, the funnel, and where budget should move.
The remaining 19% of spend is smaller one-off ads with no inspected sibling — excluded from the rule set rather than guessed at.
18.38x ROAS on 56 ads / $43.9k spend with no people, vs. 10.53x on 6 ads / $11.1k with hands only. Product-forward shots outperform process/human shots by roughly 1.75x ROAS at this sample size.
7.24x on 5 ads / $8.0k. If a person appears, they should be actively finishing a visible product — hands mid-process with no payoff is the one visual pattern to actively cut.
18.64x on 14 ads / $19.6k — the default angle for new copy unless deliberately testing something else.
Baked good 19.17x (8 ads) vs. wheat berries 12.98x (6 ads) vs. flour bags 16.44x (6 ads). Bags and berries work as supporting/product-ID shots, but a finished loaf, cake, or cookie as the hero converts better.
| Axis | Value | Spend | ROAS | n ads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| people | absent | $43,888 | 18.38x | 56 |
| people | hands only | $11,114 | 10.53x | 6 |
| subject | baked good (finished) | $11,525 | 19.17x | 8 |
| subject | raw bag (flour) | $9,376 | 16.44x | 6 |
| subject | catalog / DPA (feed) * | $8,950 | 22.31x | 29 |
| subject | raw wheat berries | $8,135 | 12.98x | 6 |
| subject | process (no finished product) | $8,048 | 7.24x | 5 |
| subject | mixed (multiple in shot) | $4,630 | 16.06x | 3 |
| subject | bag macro + meme text | $4,339 | 25.51x | 5 |
| angle | technique / how-to | $19,648 | 18.64x | 14 |
| angle | provenance / farmer-story | $11,562 | 14.07x | 9 |
| angle | comparison (meme) | $4,339 | 25.51x | 5 |
* Catalog/DPA posts the second-best ROAS but pulls its image live from the product feed — no creative decision was made. This is a funnel-position effect (bottom-funnel retargeting on warm traffic), not a content signal, and is kept out of the "what to make next" rules below.
25.51x on just 5 ads / $4.3k. This is the single strongest ROAS anywhere in the account, but on a sample this small it's a hypothesis, not a rule. Recommend 3-5 deliberate follow-up variations in the same format before giving it real budget share.
| Category | Pattern |
|---|---|
| Cake | Peaks Sep–Oct: 11.95x (Sep '25) and 19.41x (Oct '25) vs. a flatter 4.8–10.3x Feb–May. |
| Cornmeal | Concentrated Oct–Nov (Thanksgiving): $367→$1,197 spend, 4.63x→7.30x ROAS. |
| Bread | Year-round workhorse with a summer bump — 19.75x in Aug '25, 13.7–15.3x Jun–Jul. |
| Pizza/flatbread | Thin and inconsistent (0.5x–9.9x) — under-tested, not seasonal. |
| Holiday bundles | Degrades through December: 7.60x (Nov) → 3.55x (Dec), consistent with shipping-deadline pressure. |
Actionable read: brief cake creative in August for a September launch, cornmeal in September for the Thanksgiving push, treat bread as the always-on baseline it already is, and don't scale pizza/flatbread on the current sample.
Heartwell is a product line, not a funnel stage — it needs its own TOF-to-retarget path like any other SKU family. Its historical creative (process shots, provenance angle) sits in the account's weaker buckets even though the product converts fine downstream on retargeting. Launch Heartwell TOF with a finished-loaf hero shot and technique or comparison copy, running alongside the existing campaigns as its own line — not folded into one of them.
TOF — finished-product hero, no people, technique or comparison angle, one campaign per active product line. MOF — DPA/retarget on view-content, add- to-cart and site-visitor pools (already the account's proven 22x+ bucket). BOF — existing-customer and cart-abandon retarget with tighter exclusion windows. This matches the account's own historical shape; the fix is what feeds TOF, not the funnel structure itself.
Leave the bottom-funnel retarget line as the account's biggest active spend — it's the proven bucket. Judge the Awareness/ThruPlay line on view-pool growth, not ROAS, since it isn't optimizing to purchase by design. Wheat Berry Mill and Flatbread haven't been re-tested against the strongest classified angle yet — worth a creative refresh test. Heartwell had zero paid spend as of this analysis; a modest test budget, sized to real fulfillment capacity rather than inventory count, is the recommended next move.