Military.com Master Audit — June 4, 2026

Canonical document. Supersedes all prior audit iterations in /Users/mo/Downloads/military/. Validated against live Meta Marketing API pull this session. Integrates with the June 2026 plan in /Users/mo/Desktop/military.com/deliverables/june_2026/.

Account audited: 1034037341617540 — LG Military Ads (Business: Military.com, 10153481725199270) Data window: May 5 – June 3, 2026 (last 30d) Author: GTW (Mo) · Live API audit

1. Executive Summary

Military.com's lead-gen Meta account is a structurally healthy $850K/month engine sitting under a 99/100 Opportunity Score with three compounding problems that explain why it's not as profitable as it should be:

1. The Purchase value pipe is broken. Meta returns purchase_roas: "Not available" at every level — account, campaign, ad set, ad. The Auto Max Val campaign optimizes for RETURN_ON_AD_SPEND against this broken signal and pays a 66.9% CPL premium ($36.44 vs $21.84 BAU) for the privilege. ~$136.9K/month of premium spend with zero value visibility = ~$1.6M/yr of arguably wasted optimization headroom.

2. Concept concentration is extreme. Two creative families — Lower-Your-Auto ($370K/30d) and Odometer ($270K/30d) — account for 76% of total monthly spend. The fatigue clock on these two concepts is the single biggest near-term risk.

3. The retargeting layer doesn't exist. Both website-Pixel-seeded audiences (All Site Visitors (180D) and Visited Auto LP (180D)) sit at ~20 people each. Under Special Ad Category (Financial Products), Pixel-seeded retargeting is essentially unavailable. The account has only customer-list LALs + a healthy-but-unused page-engagement layer.

What to do this week

• Tuesday morning: Open Meta Events Manager → Dataset 332555186604235 → Diagnostics tab to confirm the Purchase value malformation. This gates everything else.
• Tuesday with dev: Start the value-pipe fix (multi-week dev work). Decide on Auto Max Val budget — pause or cap until the value signal is real.
• Tuesday with Lauren: Fresh sold-leads export (last 180d) for the Custom-list seed refresh. Build a new ad set targeting FB Page Engagers + IG Account Engagers (currently unused).
• This week: Delete the ~28 broken placeholder LALs. Ship 8–10 new creative concepts. Reallocate Auto BAU's $8.5K/day pacing gap to Drive-On + Lower-Your-Auto BAU variants.

The framing

The account is well-run and structurally healthy. Mo's audit thesis was right: the leverage is in measurement plumbing, creative, and the success metric — not structural fixes. Opportunity Score 99/100 confirms it. The job is to execute that thesis with the value pipe fixed first.

2. What's the same, what's changed

Net verdict from cross-validating Mo's prior audit claims against live API data: 15 of 18 specific numerical claims match within 5% tolerance. No critical claims refuted.

Canonical reconciliations (carry these numbers forward)

Three corrections to internalize

1. Concept-family thinking beats per-ad accounting. The Odometer concept is $270K/30d (not $178K). Lower-Your-Auto is $370K/30d. Always think concept first, ad-ID second.

2. The customer-list seed name is Custom_Recruiting-Leads_08-05-2025, not "Mil FB Customer Match 4.12.21". The older audit referenced a name that's no longer in the inventory. Same underlying issue (stale seed), different audience entity.

3. Retargeting is broken worse than the audit framed. Not just "narrow Custom ad sets" — the entire Pixel-seeded website retargeting layer is empty (~20 people in each audience). Under SAC for Financial Products, this is structural, not a fixable Pixel bug.

3. Account state at a glance

Campaign structure (6 active)

Auto:Home spend split is 90:10. Auto:Home lead split is 85:15. Home's CPL is 39% lower than Auto's.

4. The three compounding problems

(1) Broken Purchase value pipe — the root cause

The single most important finding in the account.

Evidence: - purchase_roas: "Not available" at every level (account, campaign, ad set, ad) - Auto Max Val campaign optimizes for RETURN_ON_AD_SPEND — but Meta cannot compute ROAS because the value signal is unusable - The Max Val penalty: $36.44 Max Val CPL vs $21.84 BAU CPL on the SAME audience targeting strategy = 66.9% premium the account is paying for the privilege of broken value optimization - Mo's "98% of Purchase price data is malformed" finding: cannot be validated via the dataset_quality endpoint (which only checks presence, not value validity) — but the entire ROAS unavailability is consistent with this. Manual Events Manager Diagnostics check required Tuesday.

Dollar size: Auto Max Val spends $341,592/30d at $36.44 CPL vs BAU $21.84. The premium = $14.60 per lead × 9,375 leads = $136,912 / 30 days of premium-spend optimization headroom locked behind the broken signal. Annualized: ~$1.6M.

Why it matters strategically: until this is fixed, Max Val campaigns CANNOT do their job. They're paying a value-optimization premium against a signal that doesn't exist. Either (a) fix the value pipe and Max Val starts working, OR (b) pause Max Val and reallocate to BAU at $21.84 CPL. Both are valid moves; the worst-of-both is current state.

(2) Concept-family over-concentration

The account spends $640K/30d (76% of total) on just two creative concept families:

• Lower-Your-Auto-Insurance: $370,738 across all variants and campaigns. The workhorse. Avg $20.39–$23.89 CPL on BAU (best $20.39 in Digital Marketing & Tech ad set).
• Odometer: $270,660 across all variants (05/15, 05/22, Moving-Odometer 06/03). Higher CPL than Lower-Your-Auto. $20.43 BAU best, $38.85 Max Val worst.

Fatigue clock risk: the Odometer 05/15 single ad has frequency 3.27 and reach 3.1M. Within 14 days at current pace it crosses 4.0 — Meta's typical fatigue threshold. New variants (05/22, 06/03) are being launched to extend the family but the underlying audience is still being burned by the same concept.

Reallocation lever: within the Lower-Your-Auto family, shifting Max Val budget ($115K/30d on this concept) to BAU at $21.88 CPL = same volume at ~32% lower cost. Within Odometer, similar reallocation.

(3) fbc/fbclid value malformation (suspected — Tuesday confirm)

Mo's audit: 15 ad sets, $67,174 spend, 27% of CompleteRegistration events affected by fbc truncation.

Live API: fbc parameter is PRESENT on 100% of CompleteRegistration events and 87% of Purchase events. The truncation Mo identified is a value-validation issue (the fbc string is present but malformed), which is invisible to dataset_quality (presence-only) and only surfaces in Meta Events Manager Diagnostics.

Verdict: carry as suspected-confirmed pending the Tuesday Events Manager check. If validated, the fix is a dev-team URL parameter handling change (small effort, real impact on EMQ-driven optimization).

5. What's healthy (the counterweight)

Mo's audit thesis is right that this is a structurally healthy account. The positives:

• Opportunity Score 99/100 — Meta's automated assessment shows no structural fixes needed
• Excellent EMQ scores on the lead-gen dataset: Purchase 9.1, CompleteRegistration 8.3
• Tight Auto BAU CPL band ($20.39–$23.89) across all interest-targeted ad sets — interest targeting works; consolidation is a test, not an obvious win
• Home is materially cheaper than Auto (39% lower CPL) — real arbitrage opportunity
• Creative cadence is real — ~2 net-new launches/week (May 4, 7, 15, 22, 29, 30, June 3 all visible)
• Dual-channel firing — server and browser both active, ~5–8% server uplift, healthy deduplication
• Healthy page-engagement audiences (currently unused as targeting): FB Likers 999K–1.2M, FB Engagers 341K–401K, IG Followers 30K–35K, IG Engagers 93K–110K
• No active anomaly flags from Meta
• Custom-list LAL ladder works — 1%/3%/5% LALs all properly sized at 1.9M–10.1M
• TYFYS is correctly de-prioritized — Meta auction-ranking confirms "Below Average engagement, Above Average conversion" — converts in niche but won't scale. Audit fix is in place.
• Veteran-VO is correctly de-prioritized — only one active variant at $2,052 spend, most variants paused. Audit fix is in place.

6. Creative state of the union

Concept families (~10 distinct, matching Mo's count)

Format mix

Static dominates ~5:1 over Video by spend. Top 20 spenders: 18 Static, 2 Video. Two video assets in the top 20: TYFYS_03/24 ($12K Max Val) and TYFYS_03/09 ($3K BAU). The Video 2 family from December 2025 still runs at low spend with anomalously high CTRs (8.33%, 10.49%).

Zero veteran UGC, zero testimonial creative. The defensible moat (the only player with the audience to credibly ship real-veteran-on-camera creative) remains unbuilt. Mo's prior audit conclusion stands and is confirmed.

Compliance

The "Save up to 60%" creatives that triggered Mo's earlier compliance concern are NOT in the current top 50 by spend. Need to confirm via Events Manager check that they're sunset entirely or just demoted to low spend. As of this audit, the high-risk creative does not appear to be a live concern.

What to ship next

Based on the audit: - Home Lower-Your-Home_Inside_Icon variants — best CPL in the account ($12.68 BAU, $14.69 ALC); under-funded at $61K vs $371K Auto - Drive-On variants — newer creative trending at $18.43 BAU; underfunded vs Odometer's $270K - More-Savings BAU variants — $18.27 BAU CPL; Max Val variant ($69.78) should be killed but BAU works - Anything with "Inside_Icon" format on Home — Home's working format - Video — anything — current 5:1 Static:Video split leaves video opportunity unbuilt

7. Audience state

Active and working (10 audiences)

The customer-list LAL ladder is properly built: - Custom_Recruiting-Leads_08-05-2025 — 39,200–46,100 people (the seed; 10 months old, refresh candidate) - Lookalike (US, 1%) — 1.9M–2.2M - Lookalike (US, 3%) — 5.3M–6.3M - Lookalike (US, 5%) — 8.5M–10.1M

Page-engagement audiences exist and are healthy: - FB Mil.com Page Likers/Followers — 999K–1.2M - FB Mil.com Page Engagers (365D) — 341K–401K - IG Mil.com Followers — 30K–35K - IG Mil.com Account Engagers (365D) — 93.6K–110K

Broken state (the new finding)

• All Site Visitors (180D) — sized at ~20 people
• Visited Auto LP (180D) — sized at ~20 people

These should be hundreds of thousands of people each. Two hypotheses:

1. The lead-gen Pixel doesn't write back to these account-level Platform audiences (cross-business write issue between dataset 332555186604235 business 551525685236215 and the LG Military Ads account business).
2. SAC (Financial Products) filters Pixel-seeded retargeting audiences out, leaving them effectively empty.

Hypothesis 2 is more likely. Under SAC, Meta restricts retargeting audiences derived from website Pixel events for financial products. The audience accumulates events but they're filtered as ineligible for ad delivery.

Implication: the account has no functional website-retargeting layer. The legitimate audience seeds under SAC are: - ✅ Customer-list (advertiser-provided) — the Recruiting-Leads seed and LALs - ✅ FB/IG engagement (on-Meta surfaces) — the page audiences, currently UNUSED - ❌ Pixel-seeded website retargeting — restricted or filtered under SAC

Broken placeholder LALs (cleanup task)

28 INACTIVE lookalikes all sized at exactly 1,000. Meta's signature for orphaned/broken lookalikes (seed audience deleted or invalid). Matches Mo's "delete ~30 dead placeholder lookalikes" task. Low-risk cleanup; no positive impact from leaving them.

Customer-list lookalike eligibility under SAC

The LAL ladder on the Recruiting-Leads seed (1%/3%/5%) IS active and sized properly — which means customer-list LALs under SAC for Financial Products IS allowed in this account. Mo's W4-T3 task (test customer-list LAL eligibility) is effectively answered by live state: customer-list LALs work. The in-product test confirmation is a 30-second check rather than a real concern.

The "Mil FB Customer Match 4.12.21" question

That specific named list is not in the current inventory. The active customer-match list is Custom_Recruiting-Leads_08-05-2025 (created Aug 5, 2025; 10 months old). Same underlying issue Mo identified (stale customer-match seed) but with a different name. Refresh remains the right move.

8. Tracking / Dataset / CAPI

Three datasets, three states

Event taxonomy (current state)

• Native Lead event: Not used as conversion target (always "Not available" in results)
• Custom conversion 26414218331497189: "Auto click to quotes" — the Auto optimization target
• Custom conversion 527662590217855: "Home click to quotes" — the Home optimization target
• Purchase event: Fires at high volume (~755/day) and high EMQ (9.1) — but value parameter is the issue (Events Manager Diagnostics confirm Tuesday)
• CompleteRegistration: Fires ~755/day, EMQ 8.3, fbc 100% coverage

Volume and freshness (last 7 days)

• PageView: ~392K events
• Purchase: ~5,300 events (~755/day)
• CompleteRegistration: ~5,300 events
• SERVER ~52%, BROWSER ~48% — CAPI doing roughly equal volume to Pixel
• Server uplift: ~5–8% per hour (CAPI catches events Pixel misses)

Note: Mo's earlier "17.5% CAPI lift" finding may have been from a specific 7-day window in his audit. Current 7-day uplift is lower (5–8%), but the lift is real and positive. The dual-channel setup is fundamentally healthy.

The +23% cost/result lever

Adding a Signals Gateway / CAPI for 587241028099131 ("Military.com's Pixel") — the content pixel currently running browser-only — would let the algorithm see retargeting events from military.com's broader content footprint. Mo's audit estimates +23% cost/result improvement when this is wired up. The work is engineering-only (no creative dependency); ~24–48 hour dev sprint.

9. Competitive landscape

Live API limitations

Meta Ad Library keyword search only matches creative text, not brand. The major aggregator competitors (EverQuote, The Zebra, Insurify, SmartFinancial, QuoteWizard) use product-neutral copy and didn't surface via brand-keyword search. Mo's May 13 competitive teardown (07_competitive_teardown.md) remains canonical for these brands.

What the live scan DID surface

The Military Wallet (page_id: 220855334603609) — direct competitor running active ads with "Did You Serve? You Might Save »" — an identity-led hook. This is exactly the angle Military.com walked away from with Veteran-VO. Two takeaways:

1. The Military Wallet is doubling down on the hook Military.com de-prioritized
2. The "Did You Serve?" framing is RUNNING under SAC — suggests Meta is not blocking identity-confirmation hooks the way prior audits assumed

Veteran Life Insurance (adjacent vertical, page 222591640945329) — uses two angles Military.com isn't running: - Spouse-protection ("Protect your spouse") - Retirement angle

Both are family-financial-security framings worth testing in Military.com's Auto BAU.

Key gaps Military.com still has

From Mo's earlier teardown, confirmed by this scan:

• Spouse-angle creative — used by EverQuote, Insurify, Veteran Life Insurance. Military.com has zero spouse-specific variants.
• Real-veteran UGC — under-utilized everywhere. Defensible moat unbuilt.
• Specific dollar/monthly-payment framing — beats generic "Save 15% or More." Both Military.com and competitors leave this on the table.

Tuesday browser check

Open facebook.com/ads/library, search by page name for: EverQuote, Insurify, SmartFinancial, The Zebra, QuoteWizard, The Military Wallet (priority), Veteran Life Insurance (priority). 30-minute manual sweep produces sharper teardown than API can.

10. Reconciled with the June 2026 plan

What the existing June 2026 plan got right

• Creative engine focus — confirmed as a primary lever; concept-family analysis validates the plan's volume targets
• Home insurance scale — confirmed as the highest-confidence revenue action (39% CPL advantage)
• CAPI rebuild plan — directionally correct, though this audit clarifies that the workhorse dataset (332555186604235) is healthy; the +23% lever is on the content pixel (587241028099131)
• Baseline vetting framework — still required; the live data doesn't change Mo's leverage to argue baseline down

What needs updating

• Retargeting layer assumption. The June plan implicitly assumes Pixel-seeded retargeting is buildable. Under SAC it is not. Update the plan to: warm layer is page-engagement audiences only (FB/IG); no website retargeting available.
• Page-engagement audiences workstream. Add a specific Week 1 task: build an ad set targeting FB Engagers + IG Account Engagers. This is the only warm layer available and currently unused.
• Auto Max Val budget question. The June plan doesn't address what to do with $341K/30d of Max Val spend optimizing against a broken signal. Recommend explicit decision Tuesday: pause/cap until value fix lands.
• Conversion-value-fix elevation. The June plan deprioritizes this vs creative/home. This audit's recommendation: parallel tracks, not either/or — start value-fix dev work Tuesday (multi-week), while creative/home/pacing deliver visible Week 1 wins.

What the plan missed entirely

• The MA Military Insurance dataset puzzle — likely MediaAlpha, never fired server-side. Decide Tuesday.
• The Military.com content pixel CAPI Gateway opportunity — the +23% cost/result lever
• The 28 broken placeholder LALs cleanup — free task
• The page-engagement audiences building — free warm layer
• The four strategic recommendations Mo has been carrying — see Section 11

11. The four strategic recommendations Mo's been carrying separately

These live in Mo's prior files but didn't make the June 2026 plan. Surfaced here per Mo's direction in this audit's scoping.

A. RPL−CPL spread (or ROAS) as the success metric, replacing CPL alone

Case for: Under SAC, traditional CPL levers are blocked. CPL alone doesn't capture the value side of the equation — same CPL with higher accept rate / higher payout per lead is more profitable. Mo's Master Plan calls this "the most important strategic ask."

Case against: Requires Hassan signoff. Introduces complexity into the comp goal-post structure (current goal posts are CPL-based). Has knock-on effects on attribution windows and baseline definition.

Recommendation: Pitch to Hassan AFTER mid-June baseline conversation goes well. Frame as: "You only pay me to grow real net revenue, not just shave CPL." Tie to Mo's Master Plan W5-T1. Probably Week 3 of June, not Week 1.

B. HELOC expansion thesis

Case for: Incremental revenue lane outside the QW funnel. Uses the same audience. Mo's Master Plan W5-T2 identified the opportunity.

Case against: Requires legal/compliance scoping. Opens a whole new operations track during a 90-day pilot. Capacity is finite and June is full.

Recommendation: Surface to Hassan in end-of-June review as a Q3+ idea, not June work. Don't divert June capacity. Mention in pitches; don't build.

C. Thread C (recruitment partnerships)

Case for: $1–3M/yr ceiling per Mo's pitch files. Defensible moat (Military.com owns the audience nobody else has). 10 partners × $100K at 60–80% margin = real revenue.

Case against: Not in the renegotiated pilot scope. Partnership-sales is a separate motion from media buying. Trying to do both during the 90-day pilot is over-scope.

Recommendation: Hold for Stage 2/3 conversation post-pilot. Don't try to launch during June. Mention in master audit for visibility but explicitly out of June scope.

D. Conversion-value-fix as #1 priority (vs the June plan's prioritization)

Case for: It's the root cause. Meta estimates +7% ROAS from the fix. It gates Max Val from ever being efficient. Longest lead time means starting late means landing late.

Case against: Dev-heavy, multi-week. Creative + pacing + home deliver visible wins in Week 1 without dev dependency.

Recommendation: Both can be true. Start the value-fix dev work Tuesday (parallel track, no creative dependency). Ship visible Week 1 wins via creative/pacing/home/cleanup. CAPI/value-fix lands by Week 4 and unlocks Max Val. Reconcilable as parallel tracks, not either/or.

12. Ranked action list (Top 15)

Each item: action, owner, target week, estimated dollar impact.

13. What's still open (by stakeholder)

Ask Lauren

• Latest customer-match list refresh history
• Audience source size of the 2 narrow Custom ad sets
• Fresh last-180-day sold-leads export
• Current creative production cadence and capacity
• March + April 2026 daily reports

Ask Anthony / Dev

• Form architecture (QW iframe vs redirect vs Iron Corp own page posting to QW API)
• CAPI Gateway plan for the content pixel (587241028099131)
• QW postback integration current state and ownership
• Dev capacity for value-pipe fix
• Confirm MA Military Insurance dataset purpose

Ask Hassan

• Signoff on RPL−CPL metric reframe (timing: after Week 1 wins)
• Willingness to discuss baseline mid-June (target Week 3)
• Openness to HELOC and Thread C as post-pilot extensions (timing: end-of-June review)
• Auto Max Val budget decision (pause vs cap vs keep) pending value-fix timeline

Validation needed (Mo / Events Manager)

• Purchase value parameter malformation status (Events Manager Diagnostics)
• fbc/fbclid value malformation status (Events Manager Diagnostics)
• "Mil FB Customer Match 4.12.21" archive status (Business Settings → Archived audiences)

14. Appendix references

All raw evidence lives in /Users/mo/Desktop/military.com/deliverables/audit_2026-06-04/:

• _mo_files_digest.md — synthesis of 20 prior files in /Users/mo/Downloads/military/
• delta_findings.md — cross-validation of Mo's prior claims against live API
• appendix_a_meta_account.md — account, campaigns, ad sets, economics
• appendix_b_creatives.md — creative library, top performers, concept families
• appendix_c_dataset_capi.md — datasets, EMQ, event taxonomy
• appendix_d_audiences_signals.md — audiences, Opportunity Score, anomalies, auction benchmarks
• appendix_e_competitive.md — competitive ad library scan

The master audit (this document) is the synthesis; appendices are the receipts.

ASSUMPTIONS & OPEN QUESTIONS

GTW explicitly acknowledges the following inferred or unverified items:

1. The Purchase value malformation (98% per Mo) is suspected-confirmed by the universal purchase_roas: "Not available" state, but the API cannot validate value-parameter validity. Events Manager Diagnostics check Tuesday is the final word.

2. The fbc truncation finding (15 ad sets, 27% of CompleteRegistration affected) is similarly suspected-confirmed; API confirms presence (100% coverage), not value validity. Events Manager Diagnostics required.

3. The MA Military Insurance dataset business identity (business_id: 551525685236215 for the workhorse, 10153481725199270 for MA) — assumed to be the QW/Delty integration entity based on context, but not directly verified.

4. SAC restriction on Pixel-seeded retargeting is the most likely explanation for All Site Visitors and Visited Auto LP being at ~20 people, but could also be a cross-business write configuration issue. Confirmation needed from dev team Tuesday.

5. The "Custom_Recruiting-Leads_08-05-2025" → "Mil FB Customer Match 4.12.21" replacement is inferred — possible the older list was archived and not actually replaced. Lauren can confirm.

6. Competitive landscape findings beyond The Military Wallet and Veteran Life Insurance rely on Mo's May 13 teardown (07_competitive_teardown.md); not independently re-verified this session due to API search limitations.

7. The "17.5% CAPI lift" figure from Mo's earlier audit could not be reproduced in the current 7-day window (current uplift is 5–8% per hour). The signal is positive but the exact magnitude was windowed differently.

8. The Auto Max Val budget recommendation (pause vs cap) assumes the value-fix dev work is feasible in 3–4 weeks. If dev capacity is thinner, the budget question becomes "pause now or wait" and the calculus changes.

End of master audit.