Paid Ads Playbook for AI Viral Labs
Organic virality is great, but sometimes you need controlled experiments. Here is how we structure paid campaigns to buy attention cheaply and funnel it into credits.
1. Start with creator-style creatives
Paid ads should look like organic videos. We run 9:16 clips showing someone entering a prompt, watching the Toxic Score card animate, and reacting to it. Add a simple caption ( Tap to run yours ) and keep text overlays under 15 words.
2. Campaign structure
- Meta/TikTok: one Prospecting campaign with three ad sets (Chaos, Romance, Lore). Each uses interest clusters pulled from SparkToro or TikTok s Creative Center.
- Budget: Start with $50/day split evenly, then shift spend to the ad set with the highest share to session conversion.
3. Landing page
Send paid traffic to a curated section of the hub. For example, the romance ad set lands on a mini grid featuring Crush Match, Flirt Spark, and Love Language. Use UTMs (`utm_campaign=paid-romance`) so `/api/share` logs the source.
4. Optimize for shares, not purchases
We measure ROAS by looking at share-triggered credits: if a paid user shares two cards, they effectively refuel themselves and bring friends. Inside Ads Manager we create a custom conversion for Visited /share?utm_medium=paid" and use that to optimize.
5. Refresh creative weekly
Every Friday we scrape the best-performing organic clips from our Discord community and turn them into ads (with permission). This keeps CPMs low because platforms reward fresh videos.
Further reading