Paid Media Plan

1. Read the setup profile, business economics, evidence, current account state, and relevant industry template as optional input.
2. Define objective, customer, offer, conversion, value, constraints, geography, regulated category, time horizon, and success criteria.
3. Evaluate channel roles and exclusions from first principles; do not require every supported platform. For a channel outside the twelve-platform contract, load ads/references/additional-platforms.md and return a research lead unless its current buying, eligibility, measurement, and creative evidence is present.
4. Specify campaign architecture, audience strategy, creative system, budget and pacing, measurement, experiments, policy controls, and operating cadence.
5. Phase prerequisites before launch, learning, optimization, and scale.
6. Assign every action an owner, timing, dependency, guardrail, evidence, success measure, and rollback or exit condition.
7. Return canonical JSON and render the requested human plan.

A plan is advisory. It becomes an account change only through launch or optimize mutation gates.

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Supporting file: assets/agency.md

Agency paid-media planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid.

Required gates

• Context gate: identify the client, business model, objective, conversion definition, geography, currency, data window, budget authority, and active platforms separately.
• Evidence gate: use only client-approved inputs and current official source IDs; keep assumptions, stale evidence, and cross-client comparisons explicit.
• Privacy gate: isolate every client's credentials, exports, audiences, creatives, reports, run directory, and retention policy.
• Regulatory gate: identify the client's category and jurisdictions, then obtain the required platform, privacy, and specialist review before proposing regulated activity.
• Capability gate: distinguish export analysis, authorized reads, drafts, and disabled writes for each client and platform.
• Approval gate: record the client owner, agency owner, creative approval, budget ceiling, mutation authority, verification plan, and rollback path.

Planning questions

• Which business outcome does the client own, and how is it reconciled downstream?
• Which client facts, claims, audiences, assets, and account permissions are approved?
• Where do tracking, CRM, consent, feed, and offline outcome definitions disagree?
• Which platforms are eligible and measurable for this client's objective and geography?
• Which responsibilities belong to the client, agency, platform, or another vendor?
• How will findings, approvals, incidents, and changes remain client-specific and auditable?
• What would cause the plan to stop for missing evidence, privacy, policy, or authority?

Candidate considerations

• Compare platform roles from current client evidence rather than a standard agency mix.
• Consider a small, reversible learning plan with client-defined guardrails.
• Separate internal quality review from client-facing reporting and account execution.
• Preserve unsuccessful hypotheses and contradictory evidence for the next planning cycle.

Output guardrails

• Return options, tradeoffs, owners, assumptions, source IDs, and verification steps.
• Do not provide universal allocations, unsupported targets, automatic account-action rules, or cross-client performance promises.

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Supporting file: assets/b2b-enterprise.md

B2B enterprise paid-media planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid.

Required gates

• Context gate: document the offer, buying process, decision roles, target accounts, sales ownership, regions, contract motion, conversion definition, and data window.
• Evidence gate: ground account selection, channel fit, claims, and proof in approved CRM, account, research, and current official source IDs.
• Privacy gate: confirm lawful use, minimization, matching terms, retention, and access controls before using account or contact data.
• Regulatory gate: identify applicable industry, employment, credit, privacy, disclosure, and regional constraints and route uncertainty to qualified review.
• Measurement gate: define how ad interactions connect to account progression, pipeline, revenue, and sales feedback without presenting influence as causation.

Planning questions

• Who participates in the decision, and what evidence does each role need?
• Which accounts and segments are approved, reachable, sufficiently populated, and current?
• What distinguishes awareness, consideration, evaluation, purchase, and expansion signals?
• Which offers and proof assets have owner approval and substantiation?
• How will marketing and sales handle routing, follow-up, suppression, and disagreement?
• Which platform capabilities and formats are currently eligible for the account and locale?
• What observation window matches the buying process and the available outcome latency?

Candidate considerations

• Consider role-specific or stage-specific hypotheses only when the supporting context exists.
• Consider account-level measurement alongside person-level signals without merging identities.
• Use platform and search roles as hypotheses, not a fixed hierarchy or budget mix.
• Treat content, event, demo, and sales-conversation outcomes as distinct evidence classes.

Output guardrails

• Return qualitative options, dependencies, source IDs, owners, and measurement questions.
• Do not prescribe platform shares, audience sizes, bid strategies, attribution windows, pipeline ratios, or performance targets.

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Supporting file: assets/ecommerce-creative.md

E-commerce creative planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid.

Required gates

• Context gate: identify the product, offer, audience, funnel stage, placements, locale, inventory state, margin context, rights-cleared assets, and approved claims.
• Evidence gate: resolve live copy and asset requirements through current official source IDs and label all practitioner patterns as hypotheses.
• Rights gate: verify ownership, consent, likeness, trademark, music, testimonial, endorsement, and synthetic-media permissions before production.
• Regulatory gate: identify product, pricing, promotion, environmental, health, age, and regional disclosure requirements and route uncertainty to qualified review.
• Capability gate: record provider operations, accepted inputs, privacy behavior, cost boundary, and verification path before generating or editing any asset.

Planning questions

• Which product facts and differentiators are verified and material to the audience?
• Is the concept for discovery, evaluation, purchase, retention, or another approved job?
• Which creative formats are currently eligible for each requested placement?
• What source material proves price, availability, comparison, review, or testimonial claims?
• How should product accuracy, brand consistency, accessibility, and copy zones be reviewed?
• Which variables can be compared without changing audience, offer, and measurement together?
• What would make an asset unusable because of rights, policy, evidence, or catalog mismatch?

Candidate considerations

• Consider product demonstration, context-of-use, proof, education, comparison, or story concepts only when the required facts and rights are supplied.
• Separate message hypotheses from visual treatments and placement adaptations.
• Preserve a control asset and document each meaningful variation.

Output guardrails

• Return unscored concept questions, source IDs, rights status, validation needs, and owners.
• Do not prescribe platform priority, asset counts, aspect ratios, durations, allocations, or performance claims from this template.

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Supporting file: assets/ecommerce.md

E-commerce paid-media planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid.

Required gates

• Context gate: document product economics, fulfillment, inventory, seasonality, customer type, geography, objective, conversion value, return behavior, and approved budget ceiling.
• Evidence gate: use current catalog, margin, order, analytics, experiment, and current official source IDs; distinguish platform-reported revenue from reconciled business value.
• Feed gate: verify product identity, availability, price, destination, policy status, and update ownership before relying on catalog-driven activity.
• Regulatory gate: identify product, pricing, promotion, endorsement, privacy, age, and regional obligations and obtain qualified review where needed.
• Mutation gate: keep campaign, feed, price, audience, and budget changes as drafts until exact approval, idempotency, verification, and rollback evidence exists.

Planning questions

• Which products, categories, regions, and customer states are in scope?
• How are contribution, returns, discounts, shipping, tax, and repeat value represented?
• Which acquisition and retention outcomes can be reconciled outside ad platforms?
• Which platform capabilities fit the catalog, intent, creative, and measurement evidence?
• What audience use, suppression, consent, and retention boundaries apply?
• Which creative and landing claims match the current product record?
• What uncertainty could make a budget or product recommendation misleading?

Candidate considerations

• Consider catalog, search, discovery, retargeting, and retention roles as hypotheses.
• Compare new-customer and repeat-customer outcomes without blending their economics.
• Use reversible experiments and account-defined guardrails rather than universal rules.

Output guardrails

• Return qualitative choices, tradeoffs, dependencies, source IDs, and measurement plans.
• Do not prescribe channel shares, bid strategies, creative volumes, pacing thresholds, or return targets.

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Supporting file: assets/finance.md

Financial-services paid-media planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid; not legal, investment, credit, or compliance advice.

Required gates

• Context gate: identify the exact product, provider role, audience, jurisdiction, license status, objective, conversion definition, and accountable compliance owner.
• Evidence gate: register and verify current official source IDs from platforms and regulators for the product and region before stating eligibility, targeting, disclosure, or claim rules.
• Regulatory gate: block the affected plan section when current legal or platform evidence, required certification, disclosure text, or specialist approval is missing.
• Fairness gate: review targeting, exclusions, optimization inputs, and creative for protected traits, proxies, vulnerability, deception, unfairness, and accessibility concerns.
• Data gate: minimize financial and identity data; document consent, purpose, access, matching, retention, suppression, and incident handling.
• Approval gate: retain the compliance decision, approved copy, source IDs, owner, scope, expiry, and re-review trigger.

Planning questions

• What regulated product and provider relationship is actually being advertised?
• Which claims, rates, fees, risks, comparisons, and examples are approved and current?
• Which audiences, regions, placements, and optimization signals are eligible now?
• How will required disclosures remain clear in every requested field and format?
• Which conversion events avoid sensitive inference and reflect a legitimate business outcome?
• How will complaints, adverse outcomes, policy changes, and source expiry stop the plan?

Candidate considerations

• Consider education, product explanation, trust, and qualified-intent hypotheses only after the evidence and review gates pass.
• Keep platform eligibility separate from legal permissibility and commercial suitability.

Output guardrails

• Return questions, approvals, source IDs, unresolved risks, owners, and stop conditions.
• Do not prescribe product eligibility, disclosures, targeting, bids, allocations, returns, or financial outcomes from this template.

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Supporting file: assets/generic.md

General paid-media planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid.

Required gates

• Context gate: identify the business model, offer, audience, objective, conversion, geography, budget authority, data window, active platforms, and decision owner.
• Evidence gate: use account evidence and current official source IDs; label missing, stale, practitioner, contested, and contradictory evidence.
• Measurement gate: define the business outcome, attribution limits, reconciliation source, outcome latency, guardrails, and observation window.
• Regulatory gate: identify category, privacy, consent, targeting, claim, disclosure, endorsement, and regional risks and route uncertainty to qualified review.
• Capability gate: separate export, read, draft, and write behavior; unsupported or unauthorized operations remain unavailable.
• Mutation gate: require an exact preview, approval, idempotency, verification, audit, blast-radius limit, and rollback before any account change.

Planning questions

• What decision should the plan enable, and what evidence would change that decision?
• Which audience need and offer claim are supported rather than assumed?
• Which platforms and placements are eligible, measurable, and operationally supportable?
• What does success mean in the business system rather than only inside an ad platform?
• Which inputs are missing, inconsistent, stale, sensitive, or outside authority?
• What reversible experiment could distinguish the leading hypotheses?
• Who owns creative, landing, tracking, policy, budget, sales, and follow-up work?

Candidate considerations

• Compare channel roles, audience approaches, messages, and measurement designs as options.
• Keep health, evidence confidence, regulatory exposure, and opportunity separate.
• Prefer a provisional or needs_input result over invented precision.

Output guardrails

• Return options, tradeoffs, assumptions, source IDs, owners, and verification steps.
• Do not supply universal channel mixes, bid strategies, thresholds, targets, or guarantees.

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Supporting file: assets/healthcare.md

Healthcare paid-media planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid; not medical, privacy, or legal advice.

Required gates

• Context gate: identify the provider, service or product, audience, jurisdiction, care setting, objective, conversion, accountable privacy owner, and clinical reviewer.
• Evidence gate: verify current official source IDs from platforms and regulators, including hhs-tracking-guidance-official when its scope is applicable.
• Privacy gate: determine whether pages, events, URLs, forms, audiences, or vendor flows could disclose protected or sensitive health information; block uncertain tracking uses.
• Clinical-claim gate: require approved indication, evidence, limitations, risk language, and qualified review before using outcome or comparative claims.
• Regulatory gate: identify category, region, certification, targeting, disclosure, accessibility, and emergency-content requirements from current official evidence.
• Capability gate: keep sensitive data out of unsupported providers, prompts, reports, logs, and account operations.

Planning questions

• What service or product is offered, to whom, by which authorized entity?
• Which claims are approved, understandable, balanced, and supported?
• Which conversion events are useful without exposing health status or treatment interest?
• Which targeting or creative concepts risk sensitive-trait inference or exploitation?
• How will consent, vendor access, retention, deletion, incident response, and review work?
• What should happen when a user may need urgent or professional care rather than an ad?

Candidate considerations

• Consider education, access, service explanation, and trust hypotheses only after the privacy, clinical, regulatory, and platform gates pass.
• Separate marketing measurement from medical outcomes and never infer diagnosis.

Output guardrails

• Return questions, source IDs, approvals, unresolved risks, owners, and stop conditions.
• Do not prescribe eligibility, targeting, tracking, claims, bids, allocations, or outcomes.

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Supporting file: assets/info-products.md

Information-product paid-media planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid.

Required gates

• Context gate: identify the product, instructor or publisher, audience, objective, fulfillment, pricing context, refund terms, geography, and conversion definition.
• Evidence gate: substantiate credentials, curriculum, testimonials, outcomes, comparisons, availability, and offer terms; use current official source IDs from platforms and regulators.
• Endorsement gate: apply ftc-endorsement-guides-official when relevant and document consent, typicality, material connections, edits, and required disclosure.
• Regulatory gate: identify education, employment, income, health, finance, age, privacy, and regional risks and obtain qualified review for high-stakes claims.
• Measurement gate: separate lead, attendance, purchase, refund, completion, and downstream outcomes instead of treating funnel progress as customer success.

Planning questions

• What does the product actually teach or provide, and what does it not provide?
• Which audience need is supported by research rather than personal-attribute inference?
• Which proof is verified, representative, consented, and presented with limitations?
• Which offer, refund, renewal, access, and support terms need clear disclosure?
• Which content or event can demonstrate value without manufacturing urgency or fear?
• How will refunds, cancellations, complaints, completion, and quality feedback inform review?
• Which platforms and placements are currently eligible for the category and locale?

Candidate considerations

• Consider education, demonstration, instructor perspective, curriculum, or learner-story hypotheses only when evidence and rights are supplied.
• Treat lead magnets, events, purchases, and later outcomes as distinct measurements.

Output guardrails

• Return qualitative options, proof gaps, source IDs, owners, and measurement questions.
• Do not prescribe funnel shares, platform priority, urgency, income outcomes, bid rules, or performance targets.

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Supporting file: assets/local-service.md

Local-service paid-media planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid.

Required gates

• Context gate: document the service, service area, hours, capacity, seasonality, licensing, objective, qualified outcome, budget authority, and escalation owner.
• Evidence gate: verify current service, location, availability, price, offer, review, license, and platform facts through approved inputs and current official source IDs.
• Regulatory gate: identify local licensing, call recording, consent, accessibility, emergency, home-service, and category requirements and route uncertainty to review.
• Measurement gate: define qualified calls, forms, bookings, completed work, cancellations, duplicates, spam, and offline reconciliation without a universal call-quality rule.
• Capability gate: verify current location, call, lead, schedule, and audience features for the account and region before including them in a plan.

Planning questions

• Which services and places can the business actually fulfill now?
• What distinguishes an inquiry, qualified opportunity, booking, and completed service?
• Which claims, offers, reviews, credentials, and availability statements are approved?
• How do business hours, dispatch capacity, response time, and seasonality affect demand?
• Which search, local, social, or remarketing roles are eligible and measurable?
• Which exclusions are supported by query or lead evidence without overblocking demand?
• How will consent, call handling, routing, follow-up, and customer data be governed?

Candidate considerations

• Consider intent capture, local awareness, service education, and seasonal hypotheses according to current evidence and operational capacity.
• Connect media recommendations to lead quality and fulfilled work, not clicks alone.

Output guardrails

• Return qualitative options, source IDs, operational dependencies, owners, and checks.
• Do not prescribe radii, schedules, qualification durations, channel shares, bids, automatic account-action rules, or lead-cost targets.

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Supporting file: assets/mobile-app.md

Mobile-app paid-media planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid.

Required gates

• Context gate: identify the app, stores, operating systems, regions, business model, audience, objective, approved in-app outcomes, release state, and budget authority.
• Evidence gate: use current store, platform, measurement, privacy, and current official source IDs; treat operating-system and attribution behavior as time-sensitive.
• Privacy gate: document consent, age handling, device and account identifiers, event minimization, partner access, retention, deletion, and regional restrictions.
• Measurement gate: distinguish store view, install, registration, activation, purchase, subscription, retention, refund, and reconciled value without treating install as value.
• Capability gate: verify current deep-link, store-page, attribution, audience, creative, and campaign eligibility for each platform and region.
• Regulatory gate: identify category, child safety, health, finance, gaming, subscription, disclosure, and store-policy risks and route uncertainty to qualified review.

Planning questions

• Which post-install outcome represents real user and business value?
• Which events are reliable, consented, deduplicated, and comparable across systems?
• How do onboarding, paywall, product quality, store listing, and deep links affect the plan?
• Which creative claims match the current app experience and store metadata?
• Which acquisition and re-engagement audiences are eligible and privacy-safe?
• How will delayed, aggregated, modeled, or missing attribution be disclosed?
• What would cause a campaign or measurement proposal to remain provisional?

Candidate considerations

• Consider intent, discovery, store, social, and re-engagement roles as hypotheses.
• Compare cohorts and downstream value only when definitions and windows are compatible.

Output guardrails

• Return qualitative choices, data gaps, source IDs, owners, and verification needs.
• Do not prescribe platform shares, event-volume thresholds, bid strategies, attribution windows, retention targets, or value ratios.

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Supporting file: assets/real-estate.md

Real-estate paid-media planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid; not fair-housing, licensing, or legal advice.

Required gates

• Context gate: identify the advertiser role, property or service, buyer or seller job, geography, listing status, objective, qualified outcome, and accountable reviewer.
• Evidence gate: verify listings, locations, prices, availability, credentials, claims, and current official source IDs from platforms and regulators.
• Fairness gate: block targeting, exclusions, delivery inputs, or creative that lack current evidence and qualified review for housing and protected-class requirements.
• Regulatory gate: obtain current fair-housing, licensing, disclosure, privacy, consent, feed, and platform-category review for every applicable jurisdiction.
• Feed gate: establish listing ownership, update source, status reconciliation, stale-item handling, image rights, and destination accuracy.
• Measurement gate: distinguish inquiry, qualified lead, appointment, application, transaction, and offline reconciliation without inferring protected traits.

Planning questions

• What is being advertised and which licensed entity owns the representation?
• Which listing or service facts are current, approved, and consistently displayed?
• Which audiences, locations, placements, and optimization inputs are eligible now?
• Could copy, imagery, exclusions, or delivery create discriminatory steering or exclusion?
• How will listing changes, complaints, consent, lead routing, and data retention be handled?
• Which platform capabilities and creative formats have current source coverage?
• What specialist approval is required before the plan can move beyond a draft?

Candidate considerations

• Consider listing discovery, service education, market context, and brand hypotheses only after fairness, evidence, feed, and policy gates pass.
• Keep buyer, seller, renter, investor, and service-provider outcomes distinct when lawful.

Output guardrails

• Return questions, source IDs, approvals, fairness risks, owners, and stop conditions.
• Do not prescribe targeting radii, audience traits, platform shares, bids, schedules, lead targets, or legal conclusions.

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Supporting file: assets/saas.md

SaaS paid-media planning questions

Status: qualitative, unscored planning aid.

Required gates

• Context gate: identify the product, market, self-serve or sales-assisted motion, buyer roles, objective, approved conversion, contract context, and budget authority.
• Evidence gate: use current product, pricing, CRM, revenue, account, experiment, and current official source IDs; substantiate security, integration, comparison, and outcome claims.
• Measurement gate: define how anonymous visits, leads, trials, opportunities, purchases, expansion, churn, and reconciled revenue connect without collapsing funnel stages.
• Privacy gate: document consent, business-contact use, account lists, matching, product telemetry, retention, suppression, access, and regional requirements.
• Regulatory gate: identify sector, employment, credit, health, AI, privacy, disclosure, and comparative-claim risks and obtain qualified review where needed.
• Capability gate: verify current platform, audience, format, measurement, and account eligibility before making them part of a plan.

Planning questions

• Which buyer problem and product capability are verified and meaningful?
• Which conversion reflects the business motion rather than a convenient platform event?
• How do buyer roles, sales follow-up, implementation, and outcome latency affect measurement?
• Which product, customer, security, service, and comparison claims are approved?
• Which intent, account, retargeting, or educational hypotheses have sufficient evidence?
• How will existing customers, employees, competitors, and ineligible regions be handled lawfully?
• Which product or sales changes could invalidate the media plan?

Candidate considerations

• Consider intent capture, account education, product demonstration, proof, and remarketing roles without assuming a fixed platform hierarchy.
• Separate product-qualified, marketing-qualified, sales-qualified, and revenue outcomes.

Output guardrails

• Return qualitative options, evidence gaps, source IDs, owners, and measurement design.
• Do not prescribe channel shares, bid strategies, attribution windows, quality scores, pipeline ratios, or performance targets.

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Supporting file: ads/references/additional-platforms.md

Adjacent advertising channels

Reddit, Pinterest, Snapchat, and X are first-class Claude Ads platforms. This reference covers channels outside the twelve-platform product contract. It is a discovery aid, not an assertion that an integration, placement, price, audience, or measurement feature is currently available.

Applicability gate

Before recommending an adjacent channel, record:

• the business objective, geography, audience, budget ceiling, and test horizon;
• current inventory and account eligibility from an official dated source;
• the buying route, fee model, minimum commitment, and cancellation terms;
• the measurement path, attribution limitations, consent requirements, and a channel-independent success measure;
• the creative formats actually accepted by the selected publisher or exchange;
• whether Claude Ads has an executable adapter, export contract, or only advisory guidance for the channel.

Without this evidence, return a research lead rather than a budget allocation. Do not borrow CPM, CPC, CPL, reach, demographic, or conversion assumptions from a different market or inventory type.

CTV and OTT

Potential buying routes include publisher-direct, platform-managed, and programmatic inventory. Treat each as a different product. Verify publishers, device coverage, geography, skippability, frequency controls, brand-safety tools, household identity, reporting latency, and lift-study eligibility before planning.

CTV may fit an upper-funnel or incremental-reach hypothesis when the advertiser has appropriate video, a defensible reach or lift measure, and sufficient test control. It is not inherently unsuitable for response objectives, and a fixed monthly-spend threshold is not evidence of fit.

Software directories and review platforms

Potential surfaces include software category directories, comparison sites, and review platforms. Verify whether the product is sold as media, sponsorship, lead-generation, or another commercial arrangement; definitions of a qualified lead and duplicate/refund rules often matter more than the headline price.

Consider a test only when category intent, review quality, deal economics, routing, consent, deduplication, and downstream revenue measurement are clear. Never infer minimum review counts, lead prices, or deal-value thresholds without current platform terms and the advertiser's own close-rate economics.

Other publisher or retail-media opportunities

For any publisher, marketplace, retailer, creator network, or emerging ad surface:

1. register the official product, policy, specification, and measurement sources;
2. classify availability by account, market, objective, placement, and buying route;
3. map export or API fields before comparing performance with another platform;
4. run a bounded experiment with owner-approved spend and stop conditions;
5. keep announced, beta, premium, managed-service, and wait-listed capabilities unscored until account evidence confirms access.

Claude Ads remains read-only by default. An adjacent-channel recommendation never creates mutation authority or implies a live connector.