> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://adadvisor.ai/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# AdAdvisor Playbooks Skill: BFCM, Product Launch, Lead-Gen, Recovery, Scale

> Multi-week tactical playbooks for Meta (Facebook) ads. Black Friday timeline, new-product launch, lead-gen setup, banned-account recovery, $1k to $10k a day scaling plan, with operational checkpoints.

The **AdAdvisor playbooks skill** ships five named multi-week playbooks for the moments where a senior Meta (Facebook) media buyer follows a defined cadence over weeks. Some situations need a sequence, not a one-shot workflow. The skill auto-loads when you mention the situation, walks you through the relevant phase, and tracks where you are in the timeline.

## When should I use the playbooks skill?

Triggers on phrases like:

* "BFCM", "Black Friday", "Cyber Monday", "holiday campaign"
* "Launch a new product", "product launch", "drop"
* "Lead gen account", "lead form"
* "Banned", "account banned", "account restricted"
* "Recover account", "pixel got banned"
* "Scale from X to Y", "1k to 10k", "ramp plan"

## What are the five AdAdvisor playbooks?

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="BFCM (Black Friday / Cyber Monday). 8-week timeline.">
    Synthesizes Ray Jang (Pilothouse), Andrew Foxwell, Common Thread Collective, Triple Whale, and Motion's 2024 to 2025 BFCM postmortems.

    Why BFCM is structurally different: CPM spikes 50% to 80%, conversion rate spikes 30% to 100% (urgency), creative fatigues in 2 to 4 days instead of 7 to 10, and CPM inflation is unavoidable. The win comes from being prepared.

    Timeline:

    * **T minus 8 to 6 weeks** (early October): audience warm-up. Seed retargeting pools, surface BFCM-specific creative concepts at low spend.
    * **T minus 4 weeks**: structural prep. Build BFCM landing pages, verify pixel, build BFCM-specific custom audiences, pre-build retargeting ad sets (paused).
    * **T minus 2 weeks**: structural freeze. No new pixels, no new campaigns, no audience swaps. Lock in learning.
    * **T minus 1 week**: final creative QA, budgets +30% to 50% for pre-Thanksgiving warm-up.
    * **BFCM weekend** (Thursday to Monday): ramp budget 200% to 400% vs baseline. Hour-by-hour pacing plan. Expect CPM +50% to 80%. Use bid caps if margins are tight.
    * **Cyber Week**: last-chance creative, urgency messaging, abandoned-cart layer.
    * **Post-BFCM** (Dec 1 to 15): cool down. Reduce budgets 30% to 40%. Reactivate new customers with welcome series.

    Budget split during peak: 50% to 70% evergreen plus 30% to 50% BFCM-specific (Ray Jang playbook).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="New product launch. 14-day validation, then scale.">
    The sequence for launching a product Meta has never seen perform.

    * **Pre-launch (T minus 2 weeks)**: TOF video views and engagement to seed retargeting pool with people who have shown interest.
    * **Launch week (Day 1 to 7)**: ASC plus manual prospecting CBO side-by-side (with exclusions). 5 to 8 distinct concept angles: problem-aware, solution-aware, product-feature, founder-story, comparison, UGC testimonial.
    * **Validation (Day 7 to 14)**: identify true winners (3+ days stable CPA). Tight kill rules. At launch you do not have benchmark data, so kill at 3x target CPA with zero conversions.
    * **Scale (Day 14+)**: standard scaling. 20% vertical, expand horizontally.

    Bid strategy: Lowest Cost for first 7 days (max signal collection), then layer Cost Cap once CPA stabilizes.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Lead-gen account setup.">
    End-to-end lead-gen flow.

    1. `list_pages` to confirm the Page has both ADVERTISE and MANAGE\_LEADS tasks.
    2. `create_lead_form` with mandatory privacy policy URL. `follow_up_action_url` is also required (undocumented, but Meta rejects with subcode 1892085 otherwise).
    3. `create_campaign` with `objective='OUTCOME_LEADS'`.
    4. `create_adset` with `optimization_goal='LEAD_GENERATION'` and `destination_type='ON_AD'`.
    5. `create_creative` with `lead_gen_form_id`, CTA = SIGN\_UP, APPLY\_NOW, GET\_QUOTE, LEARN\_MORE, SUBSCRIBE, or DOWNLOAD.
    6. `create_ad`. No `conversion_domain` needed for lead-form ads.
    7. Activate leaf-up.

    Quality filter: require 2 to 3 form fields beyond email to filter junk. CRM-fired CAPI optimization (firing a "Qualified Lead" event from your CRM) is the highest-quality optimization signal.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Banned-account or pixel-outage recovery.">
    1. **Don't appeal repeatedly.** Each rejected appeal makes the next harder. Submit ONE appeal through Account Quality with documentation.
    2. **While the appeal pends**, warm up a backup ad account (always have one pre-built in Business Manager). Move pixel to backup. Restart with low budgets ($25 to $50 a day).
    3. **New-account discipline**: 50% normal budget for 7 days. No flagged creative. Conservative claims. No policy-edge content.
    4. **Identity-confirm everything**: domain verification, business verification, payment method match.

    Pixel-specific recovery: if pixel events stop firing, verify CAPI is still firing via `adadvisor:get_pixel_health`. Campaigns can survive a pixel outage if CAPI is healthy. Then debug client-side. GTM or theme updates often break it.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="$1k to $10k a day scaling plan.">
    Three stages (Disruptive Digital, Pawliw, Theriot synthesis).

    * **Stage 1** ($1k to $2.5k, 2 to 4 weeks): vertical 20% on confirmed winners. Add 1 to 2 broader ad sets. Lock 3 to 5 creatives.
    * **Stage 2** ($2.5k to $5k, 2 to 6 weeks): horizontal scaling (LAL expansions, geo). ASC plus manual with exclusions. Weekly creative production. Track MER.
    * **Stage 3** ($5k to $10k, 4 to 8 weeks): bid-cap diversification (Tichenor method). Target ROAS (Faris method). 10% to 15% brand/awareness layer. 4+ new concepts per week.

    Most operators stall at $5k to $10k because they protect a misleading ROAS instead of optimizing for marginal profit on marginal spend. The skill makes the trade-off explicit at every stage transition: CPA inflation of 10% to 20% is expected. The question is whether marginal revenue exceeds it.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## How does the playbook auto-pick work?

The skill listens for the trigger phrase and walks you through the relevant phase only. It does not dump the entire playbook in one response. At each milestone it checks in and confirms before advancing.

## What anti-patterns does the playbooks skill prevent?

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Running the BFCM playbook starting at T minus 2 weeks">
    The lead time is 6 to 8 weeks for audience warm-up and creative production. If it is too late, the skill does a compressed version honestly rather than pretending the timeline still works.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Launching a new product with 1 creative concept in week 1">
    5 to 8 distinct angles is the minimum for a launch test. The skill enforces this before approving the launch.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Appealing a banned account 4 times in one week">
    Each rejected appeal makes the next harder. The skill enforces "one careful appeal with documentation, then move to backup".
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Scaling from $1k to $10k a day in 2 weeks">
    6 to 12 weeks per the stage plan is the realistic timeline. Faster requires accepting CPA inflation and tightened kill rules. The skill makes the trade-off explicit.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Lead-gen Meta-form leads without a CRM-fired CAPI event">
    Optimization on Meta's "Lead Submitted" event alone leaks quality. The skill upgrades to a CRM-fired "Qualified Lead" event when the CRM is connected.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="'BFCM is just turning the budgets up'">
    Pacing, creative refresh cadence, bid strategy, exclusion logic, post-BFCM cool-down. All part of the play. The skill enforces the full sequence.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## How do I install the playbooks skill?

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Claude Code" icon="terminal" href="/skills/install-claude-code">
    Ships with the full plugin install.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Claude.ai & Desktop" icon="cloud" href="/skills/install-claude">
    Download [adadvisor-playbooks.zip](https://github.com/AdAdvisor/skills/releases/latest/download/adadvisor-playbooks.zip) and upload via Settings, Capabilities, Skills.
  </Card>
</Columns>

## Frequently asked questions

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="When should I start preparing for Black Friday Meta ads?">
    6 to 8 weeks before BFCM (early to mid October). The audience warm-up phase (TOF video views and engagement to seed retargeting pools) needs 4 to 6 weeks to deliver enough signal. By T minus 2 weeks you should freeze structural changes and lock in learning. Starting later means a compressed playbook and less retargeting fuel.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How do I launch a new product on Meta ads in 2026?">
    Pre-launch (T minus 2 weeks): seed retargeting with TOF video views. Week 1: ASC plus manual prospecting CBO with exclusions, 5 to 8 distinct creative angles. Day 7 to 14: tight kill rules (3x target CPA with zero conversions kills), identify winners. Day 14+: standard scaling. Use Lowest Cost for the first 7 days, then layer Cost Cap once CPA stabilizes.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="My Meta ad account got banned. What do I do?">
    Submit ONE appeal through Account Quality with documentation. Do not appeal repeatedly. Each rejected appeal makes the next harder. While the appeal pends, switch to a backup ad account (Business Manager makes this easy if you pre-built one). Restart at 50% normal budget for 7 days with no flagged creative. The playbooks skill walks you through the full recovery.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How do I set up a Meta lead-gen campaign?">
    Confirm your Page has the ADVERTISE and MANAGE\_LEADS tasks. Create the lead form with a privacy policy URL and the (undocumented but required) `follow_up_action_url`. Create the campaign with `objective='OUTCOME_LEADS'`. Create the ad set with `optimization_goal='LEAD_GENERATION'` and `destination_type='ON_AD'`. Create the creative with `lead_gen_form_id` and one of the allowed CTAs (SIGN\_UP, APPLY\_NOW, GET\_QUOTE, LEARN\_MORE, SUBSCRIBE, DOWNLOAD). Activate leaf-up.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="How long does it realistically take to scale Meta ads from $1k to $10k a day?">
    6 to 12 weeks across three stages. Stage 1 ($1k to $2.5k) is 2 to 4 weeks of vertical scaling. Stage 2 ($2.5k to $5k) is 2 to 6 weeks of horizontal expansion plus ASC. Stage 3 ($5k to $10k) is 4 to 8 weeks of bid-cap diversification and Target ROAS portfolio. Faster timelines require accepting CPA inflation and tightened kill rules.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Why is my CPM 50% higher during Black Friday week?">
    Auction competition. Every advertiser is bidding harder during BFCM, and Meta's auction is a second-price auction so CPMs rise across the board. The BFCM playbook expects 50% to 80% CPM inflation during peak. The compensating factor is that conversion rates also spike 30% to 100% due to urgency, so total ROAS can hold or improve if you prepared the audience warm-up phase correctly.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Related skills

<Columns cols={3}>
  <Card title="Launch" icon="rocket" href="/skills/adadvisor-launch">
    Building block for the product-launch and lead-gen playbooks.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Scale" icon="chart-line" href="/skills/adadvisor-scale">
    Building block for the $1k to $10k playbook.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Audit" icon="magnifying-glass" href="/skills/adadvisor-audit">
    Run before starting any playbook to confirm the account state.
  </Card>
</Columns>