A real sample, built from scratch. We never put a client's account data on a sales page, so Thistle & Rye and every number attached to it is fictional, engineered to be specific and internally consistent, not lifted from any real brand.
The four-pillar diagnosis is built to isolate the structural break, not to flag everything at once. A structure failing in all four ways at the same time would be rare to the point of incoherence, so a sample that flagged every pillar would read like a demo, not an audit. This one flags two, clears one, and notes one, because that is what the method produces when it is working correctly.
The Realignment Protocol
Structural Diagnosis
Prepared for Thistle & Rye · sleep-support gummies, DTC
Diagnosis date
Engagement window: 90 trailing days, closed May 2026
Account scope
Meta Ads, single ad account, blended prospecting + retargeting
Monthly spend
$16,400/mo average, trailing 90 days
Brand age
14 months live, founder-led, single SKU line
Executive Summary
Thistle & Rye sells a $34 one-time or $29-subscription sleep-support gummy (magnesium glycinate, L-theanine, chamomile). Over the trailing 90 days the account spent $16,400/mo on Meta and produced a blended ROAS that swung between 1.4x and 2.9x month to month, with blended CAC ranging $38 to $71 against a $42 target. The team's read going in: creative fatigue. They tested 41 new creative concepts across that window. The swings did not stabilize.
The diagnosis found the instability is not a creative-supply problem. It is a Positioning gap (the highest-spending ad talks mechanism to an audience that has not yet been sold on the problem) compounding a Conversion Path break (the ad's own offer promise does not survive to the landing page). Demand targeting is sound. The offer construction is sound. Two pillars are carrying the account's entire volatility, and no amount of new creative fixes either one.
Four-Pillar Diagnosis
Four pillars, each read against Thistle & Rye's own account data, not a checklist run from the outside. Two came back clean and two carried the account's entire volatility. The fixes are ordered by how much each one moves the number, which is not the order they are listed.
Demand
The audience is right. The account's combined interest and lookalike stack overlaps at 82% with the brand's own post-purchase survey population (n = 214 responses, trailing 60 days) that self-reported "trouble falling or staying asleep" as their reason for buying. Prospecting is not the leak, so no targeting change is recommended this round.
Positioning
The account's highest-spending ad, static carousel "TR-Static-014," opens on "Fall Asleep Faster: Clinically Dosed Magnesium Glycinate + L-Theanine." That headline assumes the viewer already accepts sleep gummies as a category and is comparing formulations. But the comment data on that ad (n = 340 comments, trailing 90 days) shows 44% asking a variant of "does this actually work," not an ingredient comparison, which is the language of a buyer who is not yet sold on the category at all. CTR is healthy at 1.9%, above the account's 1.4% median, so the hook is not the issue: the ad is spending well to reach the wrong stage of buyer, and CVR on that same ad sits at 0.6%, half the account average.
The fix is to put a problem-first opener ahead of it, a testimonial-format piece naming the sleep frustration directly ("I'd tried four different sleep gummies before this one") before any ingredient claim, and reclassify TR-Static-014 as a retargeting asset for viewers who already engaged. Cross-referenced as Fix 1 below.
Offer
The $29-subscription-vs-$34-one-time structure and the $10 first-order discount are both sound and typical for the category. The friction here is not in how the offer is built, it is in whether the offer as advertised survives to the page the buyer lands on, which is a Conversion Path problem, not an Offer one. Noted, not flagged, so it is not double-counted below.
Conversion Path
UGC ad "TR-UGC-021" promises "$29, cancel anytime, ships free" in both voiceover and on-screen copy, and it drives 38% of the account's paid traffic. The page it sends to, /sleep-starter-kit, defaults to the $34 one-time price at add-to-cart, buries the $29 subscription behind a three-click modal, and applies free shipping only above $50, which the $34 kit never reaches. The page is not weak, it converts fine for traffic that did not see this ad's promise; it simply does not deliver the version that was advertised. That traffic converts at 0.4% against a 1.3% blend, with 71% checkout abandonment versus 54% site-wide.
The fix is to rebuild that page so the $29 subscription is pre-selected and the shipping promise holds, matching the ad exactly. Cross-referenced as Fix 2, sequenced after the Positioning fix since a wider top of funnel only pays off once the page stops leaking.
Priority Findings
Ranked by how much of the account's instability each one plausibly accounts for, not by which pillar they sit in.
Positioning skips the problem-aware buyer at the top of the funnel
TR-Static-014 talks ingredient mechanism to an audience 44% of which is still asking whether the category works at all. This is the largest single lever: it governs how much of the account's cold spend actually turns into a warmed audience worth retargeting.
The highest-traffic ad's promise does not survive to checkout
TR-UGC-021 carries 38% of paid traffic into a page that quietly changes the price and drops the shipping promise. Whatever Positioning fixes upstream, this page caps how much of that traffic converts.
Sequenced Fix List
In order, with the reasoning for the order, not just the list.
Ship a problem-first opener ad ahead of TR-Static-014
Reclassify TR-Static-014 as a retargeting asset. Build and test one testimonial-format opener naming the sleep frustration directly, no ingredient claim, aimed at cold prospecting. This has to land first because it changes who the Conversion Path fix in Step 2 is even solving for.
Rebuild /sleep-starter-kit to match TR-UGC-021's exact promise
Pre-select the $29 subscription at add-to-cart and remove or absorb the shipping threshold for this SKU. Sequenced second because a wider top-of-funnel from Step 1 is wasted spend if this page keeps leaking 71% of its checkouts.
Re-test creative only after Steps 1 and 2 are live
The account's instinct to test more creative was not wrong, it was early. Once Positioning and Conversion Path are corrected, new creative tests will actually be reading a stable structure instead of compensating for a broken one.
This sample shows the diagnosis, not an outcome. A real engagement does not project a resulting CPA or ROAS here; the written deliverable stops at what was found and the order to fix it. Results depend on execution, which the diagnosis does not do.