Divergent Media

The team had no control over how long a record stayed in an audience. Pools diluted over time, and performance on beauty campaigns swung between peaks and valleys as a result.

Household expansion was also missing. Devices get shared, so the person showing intent often wasn't the account holder. On CTV, the mismatch got worse.

Pricing charged per segment, which pushed the bill toward $5,000 a month. The only way to afford it was to group everything into one audience, and that erased visibility into which segment actually performed.

The proving ground was a national multicultural beauty brand whose products work for very curly, coarse hair types only. Meta has no way to target that buyer directly, and lookalike audiences don't capture a physical trait, so spend kept leaking to people outside the market.

Working in Claude against the Watt Signal Graph, Brandon resolved the identities of the client's core shoppers, then composed an audience of in-market buyers demonstrating the same behavioral patterns and attributes: expressed intent toward the competitive set, and consumption of media outlets that index to the audience, including BET and Ebony.

Meta CPO dropped from $269 to $58 in the first month — a 78% reduction, verified through Northbeam.

Google matched: CPO fell from $162 to $36, the same 78%. Same audience composition, second channel.