When to let an optimizer kill a creative
The thresholds ProfitMind uses to decide a TikTok or Meta creative has gone stale, and the four-signal rule that prevents premature kills.
Article sections
The four signals behind an optimizer kill
A profitable creative can sour inside hours. ProfitMind treats a creative as stale only when ALL FOUR signals fire together over the prior 72 hours: lag-adjusted CPM up ≥ 30 %, frequency-curved CTR down ≥ 35 %, hook-rate down ≥ 25 %, and the rolling ROAS dropped more than 1.0 × below your floor. Any single signal is not a kill — it is a flag, and a reallocation to a sibling ad set carrying a fresh UGC cut.
Why the deadband prevents premature kills
The greatest harm a rule engine can do is to over-react to a 24-hour drop. The deadband — the ROAS range just under the floor where the agent accepts freeze rather than shift — gives a creative 48 hours to recover from a single bad day before the kill branch activates. Without that buffer, the agent churns through winners and erodes the very ROAS it is trying to defend.
Why the kill is metric-only, not creative-only
Killing a creative is irreversible for the campaign. ProfitMind tags but does not delete the asset — the dashboard marks it paused, the agent redirects the budget to a sibling, and the operator can revive it from the report list. That separation lets a manager override the rule engine if the operator knows something else is going on, which is the same pattern the case studies below illustrate.