Most UA teams manage creative lifecycle by feel. Make creatives, run them, check CPA weekly, kill when it looks bad. Works at 50 creatives per month. Breaks at 500.
The four phases
Launch, Test, Scale, Fatigue. Launch is the first 12-24 hours. Watch CTR. If 6-hour CTR is below half the category average, kill it immediately. Test phase: 2-3 days budget per creative, watch CPI. Scale phase: gradually increase budget, monitor CPA daily. Fatigue phase: trigger replacement.
Fatigue signals
Replace when CTR drops beyond 15 percent and CPC rises beyond 20 percent. AI-generated creatives fatigue in 3-5 days. Human-produced footage lasts 10-14 days. Candy Crush manages 2,573 active creatives. Without systematic lifecycle management, ad spend waste becomes significant.
Keeping pace with category growth
Your category creative volume growth rate sets your output target. Puzzle grew 62.9 percent. Action grew 73 percent. If your team output stays flat while the category grows, your CPI rises. Not because your creatives got worse. Because your share of the category shrank.
