Catalog

Ranked causes

1. Creative launch pushed spend into a worse-converting audience (fit: HIGH)
Mechanism: three new creatives entered learning Monday; Meta over-delivers early impressions to cheap, low-intent placements.
Supports: spike begins the same day; recovery by Sunday matches a 5–7 day learning window.
Contradicts: nothing in the inputs — but you have not split CAC by creative yet.

2. Competitor promo raised auction prices Tue–Thu (fit: MEDIUM)
Supports: Tuesday start; CPM data would show it.
Contradicts: the spike started Monday, a day before the promo.

3. +30% budget scale on the top campaign reset learning (fit: MEDIUM-LOW)
Supports: scaling same day. Contradicts: a 30% step rarely resets learning on its own.

Next data cut: CAC and CPM by creative, by day, Mon–Sun. If the three new creatives carry a CAC over $90 on Mon–Wed while legacy creatives stay near $48, cause 1 is confirmed.

Not considered: a tracking gap — check whether the pixel fired normally Mon–Wed before trusting any of this.
Do not: pause the new creatives today. You would destroy the data that tells you which of them is fine.