Advisory note Meeting Fri 14 Aug 2026 Data pulled 10 Aug

NEXEDGE: how to stop losing money on Meta

The creative is 5× better than the US industry average. The delivery costs 8× the average. And the store still cannot be believed — or possibly paid. Nobody has yet run the good creative on a normal-cost setup, pointed at a page a sceptic would trust. Until that happens, “the ads don’t work” is not a proven statement.

01Where the money went

Both sales campaigns are paused right now. The only thing running is a $1/day page-like campaign.

Spent on sales: $863
Visitors: 239
Add to cart: 15
Customers: 0

Two campaigns, two opposite problems
Metric	July	August	Total
Spend	$299.03	$564.36	$863.39
CPM	$37.50	$149.82	$73.53
Outbound CTR	2.06%	5.47%	—
Website visitors	80	159	239
Add to cart	6	9	15
Real sales	0	0	0

02The number that changes the conversation

Forget CPM for a moment. The only cost that matters is what one website visitor costs.

July — cheap delivery, weak creative$3.74

August — great creative, insane delivery$3.55

Never tried — great creative + normal delivery~$0.75

The two campaigns had opposite problems and landed in the same bad place. July got a decent CPM but the creative turned only 10 of every 1,000 views into a visitor. August fixed the creative — 42 per 1,000, 4.2× better — but delivery cost exploded.

Put August’s creative on July’s delivery cost and a visitor costs about 75 cents instead of $3.55. A 4.7× improvement that has never once been tested.

Proof the cheap delivery is available — same account, same page
Campaign	Platform	CPM
Page-like campaign (live today)	Facebook	$15.12
July sales campaign	Facebook	$31.15
August sales campaign	Facebook	$179.67
August sales campaign	Instagram	$252.60

What this means

The $150–250 CPM is a setting, not a market price. It comes from asking Meta to optimise for Purchase on a pixel that has never seen one, then splitting $100/day four ways so no ad set can ever learn. Same account, same page, same week.

Against the US industry, 2026
Metric	Benchmark	NEXEDGE	Verdict
CPM, wellness	$14–22	$149.82	8× over
CTR, supplements	1.01%	5.47%	5.4× better
Cost per purchase	$45.62	∞	zero sales
Category CAC	$68–84	—	the target

The creative is the best-performing part of this business. The problem sits either side of it: how the ads are delivered, and what happens after the click.

03Does the business work? Yes — but only on the bundle

At $1.00 per visitor, the conversion rate each offer needs just to break even
Offer	Price	Contribution	Break-even CVR
1 bottle	$69	$51.23	1.95%
Subscription	$49/mo	$31.93	3.13%
2 bottles	$109	$80.98	1.24%
3 bottles	$149	$110.73	0.90%

A normal cold-traffic store converts 1.4–1.8%. The bundles clear that. The single bottle does not. At 1.5% conversion and $1 per visitor, a sale costs $67 — profitable on the 2- and 3-bottle, and a $15 loss on every single bottle sold.

Free money, sitting there

The product page still defaults to “One-time, $69” — the one option that loses money. Changing the default variant to the 2-bottle costs nothing and is the cheapest profit fix on this entire list.

04Three things before another dollar is spent

The fake reviews are still live. This is the fifth time.

Raised 24 Jul, 4 Aug, 6 Aug, 7 Aug. Checked again today — it has got worse, not better.

What the site claims today
Page	Claim
Home	“Rated 5.0” + 4 testimonials dated Mar 2025 – Jan 2026
Product	“Excellent 4.9 \| 1,422”
/the-reviews	“4.8/5, 1,200+ verified reviews” — dated back to Nov 2024

The store launched July 2026. The pixel was created 11 June 2026. There have been zero real orders, ever.

The three numbers contradict each other. 5.0, then 4.9 from 1,422, then 4.8 from 1,200+. A buyer who checks two pages catches it.
“Excellent 4.9 | 1,422” is styled like a Trustpilot widget — “Excellent” is Trustpilot’s own rating label. That page does not exist. This is impersonating a review platform they are not on.
In the US, fabricated testimonials on a supplement are an FTC matter and grounds for Meta to pull the ad account. Everything else here is worthless if the account goes.
The stated buyer is a sceptic. The whole positioning is “no hype, no fillers, no shortcuts.” Fake reviews lose exactly that person.

Action — today, costs nothing

Delete every fabricated rating and testimonial, on all three pages.

Confirm a credit card actually works at checkout

The product page shows Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Shop Pay. As of the 7 Aug meeting, “get the credit-card gateway approved” was still an open priority — meaning live checkout was PayPal-only while the page advertised eight methods. That would explain 3 checkouts started, 0 completed. Older American men buying a $69 supplement want to use a card.

Action — before Friday

Place one real order with a real credit card, end to end. If it fails, no amount of ad optimisation produces a sale and the creative budget conversation is premature.

The email safety net is switched off

Unless it changed since the launch QC: all 9 Klaviyo flows are drafts, the popup is a draft, and subscriber sync is unchecked. This category needs 3–4 touches over 3–14 days before someone buys. Right now 100% of the 239 visitors who didn’t buy are gone forever. Turning it on is free.

05Creative QC

The real winners
Ad	Spend	Cost / ATC	CTR
“Came Off TRT. Didn’t Go Back To Nothing”	$113.20	$22.64	6.81%
3D Pixar — “Most men focus”	$50.27	$25.14	10.92%
“Not Ready For TRT”	$135.45	$33.86	5.88%
“I Didn’t Tell Her I Started Taking Anything”	$120.89	$60.45	9.50%

The TRT angle is the whole account: 9 of 15 lifetime add to carts on 32% of the spend. Everything else is noise. The winning ad is clean, premium, headline does the work, product is the hero. It is a good ad. It is switched off.

Where it burned — ~$287, a third of all sales spend, produced zero add to carts
Ad	Spend	Note
UGC — “5 weeks in, my wife noticed”	$68.95	CPM $391.76 — worst in account
“No More 3PM Wall”	$59.54	CTR 0.90%
“She Noticed First”	$45.03	CTR 0.97%
“She Doesn’t Just Miss Date Night”	$32.24	CPM $260
+ 7 more	~$81	—

Check this before Friday

The UGC video appears to show the wrong product. In the Instagram preview the creator is holding a short, wide, black plastic tub. NEXEDGE is a tall amber glass bottle with a black cap. Those are not the same object.

It would explain the result exactly: 9.66% click rate — the hook works — then zero add to carts, because people land, see a different product, and leave. Open the file and check the frame. It takes ten seconds.

This matters far beyond one video, because the plan on the table is to spend $2,000/month buying 15–20 more from the same pipeline.

And 6 ads never served a single impression. Same as July. A third of the “test” never actually ran.

06Trust: how you actually build it

You cannot manufacture trust. You borrow it. Six ways, ranked by what NEXEDGE can do this month.

1Real reviews, honestly earned.Install Judge.me or Okendo. Seed the first 50–100 by sending free product to real men in the target profile and asking for an honest review, clearly labelled as a free sample — exactly what the FTC permits and exactly what the fake reviews are pretending to be. 50 real verified reviews beat 1,422 invented ones, because one caught lie discounts the whole brand.
2Publish the lab results.They already claim “third-party tested” and “we own the lab.” So publish the certificate of analysis as a PDF, with the batch number, on the product page. In US supplements this is the most convincing trust asset there is — and it costs nothing, because they say they already do the testing.
3Put Chris on camera.The brand is faceless, which is the exact profile of a scam store. A 60–90 second founder video — why I built this, here is our lab, here is the certificate — is free to make and is the highest-value asset nobody is producing. “We own the lab” is a rare, strong, checkable claim and it is being wasted.
4Borrow authority.A doctor, urologist, trainer or athlete. One licensed practitioner explaining what tongkat ali does at a clinical dose is worth more than twenty UGC actors. This is the Nugenix/Frank Thomas and AG1/Huberman mechanic, scaled down.
5Use the ingredients as the wedge.LJBoost™ tongkat ali and Manova™ black garlic are branded ingredients with disclosed doses and published studies. That is third-party proof they already own and do not link to. “Two ingredients, dosed properly, here are the studies” kills a sceptic better than another testimonial.
6Fix the guarantee.It says 90 days on the hero, 60 on the product page, 30 in the cart, and Shopify’s rule is 30. Pick 60. Say 60 everywhere. A guarantee nobody can pin down reads as a trick.

07Content: buy angles, not videos

The plan on the table is 15–20 UGC videos a month at ~$2,000. I would not do that, and the account’s own data says why.

$2,000 of UGC against $3–5K of media is 40–65% of budget on production. Normal at this stage is 10–20%.
A $165/day budget cannot fairly test 20 creatives. One creative needs roughly $300–500 to give a readable signal. That is 10–16 a month at absolute best. 20 a month means most get nothing — exactly like the 6 ads that never served an impression. It is the same fragmentation error that killed the ad sets, moved down one level.
Statics produced 13 of the 15 add to carts. The one UGC video produced zero. Too small to convict UGC, far too small to bet the budget on it.

The reframe: the angle decides the result, not the format

Angle	Spend	Add to cart
TRT — tried it, came back	$276	9
Wife noticed	$226	2
Systemic depletion	$171	1
Anti fairy-dusting	$66	1
3PM wall	$60	0

Twenty videos on weak angles is twenty expensive failures. Five on the TRT angle is the test.

What I would commission this month
Asset	How many	Cost	Why
Advertorial / pre-sell page	1	writing time	Biggest lever here
Founder video + the lab	1	~$0	Nobody can copy it
Statics, TRT angle	4–5	low	13 of 15 ATCs came from statics
UGC — real users, not actors	3	~$600	Fix the brief: right bottle, men 38–50
Total	6–8	—	Not 20. All on proven angles

On hiring UGC creators

Billo-style marketplaces at $150–250 a video give you exactly what you got: a stranger reading a script, holding the wrong jar. The better route is slower and cheaper — find 3–5 real men aged 38–50 who match the buyer, send free product, pay a small fee for honest footage after 30 days of real use. The specificity converts (“I’m 44, I run a business, week three is when I noticed”), and the same people give you the real reviews the site needs. Run them from the creator’s own handle where possible — partnership ads beat brand-account content.

The thing nobody has on their list

Every ad points straight at the product page. For cold, sceptical traffic on an unknown $69 brand that is the hardest possible ask. The category evidence is unambiguous: a pre-sell page converts 2–3× better than a product page, and in one documented case the same ads pointed at an advertorial cut CAC nearly in half.

NEXEDGE already has the raw material written — the systemic-depletion story, the anti-fairy-dusting argument, “your bloodwork says fine, you don’t”, the lab ownership. It is a writing job, not a media buy. One page. This is Jia Yi’s highest-value task this month.

08The 30-day plan

Week 115–21 Aug

Fix the store. Zero ad spend.

Delete every fabricated rating and review, all three pages — Chris / dev
Place one real credit-card test order end to end — Faiz
Make the 2-bottle the default variant — Chris / dev
One guarantee length everywhere: 60 days — Chris / dev
Install Judge.me, start honest review seeding — Jia Yi
Switch on the 9 Klaviyo flows, publish the popup — Jia Yi
Publish the certificate of analysis — Chris
Check the UGC video frame — right bottle? — Faiz

Week 222–28 Aug

Build, then launch one clean test

Build the advertorial page, the founder video, and 4–5 TRT-angle statics. Then launch exactly like this:

ONE campaign, ONE ad set not four — all budget in one place so it can learn $100–150/day needs ~50 add-to-carts/week to leave learning Optimise for ADD TO CART not Purchase — the pixel has never seen one Facebook + Instagram feed no Audience Network: 23% of impressions, 0 ATC Destination: the advertorial not the product page Creative: TRT angle only 5–6 ads — the angle that made 9 of 15 ATCs CTA: Shop Now

Verified: the pixel is not caught by Meta’s health-and-wellness restrictions, so Add-To-Cart optimisation is genuinely available.

Weeks 3–429 Aug – 11 Sep

Read it, then decide

Let it run 10–14 days. Roughly $1,500 total. Do not touch it mid-flight — rebuilding resets nothing, and every restart so far has opened higher than the last one closed.

09The three numbers, and the gates

CPM: < $60
Cost per ATC: < $25
Order value: > $100

CPA < $80 AOV over $100 — it works. Scale, and move to Purchase once the pixel holds ~50 purchases in 7 rolling days.

CPA $80–110 Marginal. Push subscription and bundle take-up before spending more.

CPA > $110 On the bundle — the ads are not the problem. It is the offer to a cold US buyer, and that is a pricing and distribution conversation.

Important

This gate cannot be judged honestly until the store is fixed. Fake reviews and a possibly-broken card checkout cap conversion near zero no matter what the ads do. Judging the offer on the current store would convict the wrong thing.

10The strategic point for Chris

Stop trying to win on the first purchase. That is not how this category is built in the US.

First order, done well, roughly breaks even. Benchmark supplement CPA is $45.62 against $80.98 contribution on the 2-bottle.
The money is in months 2 through 12. 12-month LTV in this category runs $300–600. Their own subscription returns $31.93 a month — twelve months is $383 of contribution from one customer.
Hims runs 85% retention on exactly this logic, at 79% gross margin. AG1 reached ~$600M the same way.

So the business works if and only if people re-order. Which changes what gets measured: CAC, subscription take-up and 60-day repurchase — not day-three ROAS.

The honest caveat

NEXEDGE cannot yet afford to play the pure LTV game. There is no cash cushion and zero proven retention. So the sequence has to be: get CAC to roughly break even on the bundle → prove one cohort actually re-orders → then scale, and let months 2–12 be the profit.

Skipping to step three is how supplement brands die with a warehouse full of stock.

11What I could not verify

Whether a credit card works at live checkout today. Badges are displayed; the 7 Aug meeting still had gateway approval open. Must be tested before Friday.
Whether the Klaviyo flows were switched on since the 24 Jul QC. Thirty seconds to check.
Whether the UGC video shows the wrong product. The preview frame strongly suggests it. Open the file and confirm.
Real purchase conversion rate. Zero sales on 239 visitors is not enough data to separate “offer is wrong” from “store is not trusted” — which is precisely why the store must be fixed before the next test.