Budget your ad spend from margin, not hope

Most stores set an ad budget by gut and hope sales show up. The disciplined way runs backward: margin and payback tolerance set a hard CAC ceiling, and that sets the budget.

Guessing an ad budget is how stores overspend into unprofitable CACs, or underspend and stall. Work backward instead: contribution margin plus your payback window gives an affordable CAC. Affordable CAC times target new customers is the budget ceiling. AI does the arithmetic from your numbers and hands the ROAS floor to marketing.