Checklist 05 · by Kaspar Vaher · updated 2026-08-14
Brief twenty, not one
One creative is an opinion; twenty are a test. The brief below is the one we run for every creative pack: a 5×4 angle matrix, format rules that respect a 64-pixel icon, and a fatigue schedule written before launch day. It exists because creative decay is arithmetic, not bad luck. On the accounts we track, a classic-push creative loses about half its CTR inside two to three weeks; the brief's job is to make sure something is standing behind it when it falls.
Build the 5×4 angle matrix first
Five angles: problem, curiosity, urgency, social proof, blunt offer. Four executions each. Twenty cells, no favorites. The matrix exists so the test can disagree with your taste on the record, and on our accounts it disagrees roughly half the time.
Write copy to the format's real limits
Plan for roughly 30 characters of title and 40 of description surviving on small Android lock screens, whatever the network form accepts. Front-load the promise into the first four words; ellipses eat the rest at exactly the moment attention is cheapest.
Design icons for 64 pixels, test at 48
One subject, one dominant color, no text inside the icon. If the icon reads at 48px on a cracked screen in sunlight, it reads everywhere. Detail that needs zooming is detail the format deletes.
Make the banner answer the icon
Classic push shows icon first, banner on expand. The pair works as setup and payoff: icon poses the promise, banner shows the proof. Twenty matched pairs, not twenty icons and a shared banner, because mismatched pairs test two variables at once and prove neither.
Localize angles, not just words
Urgency reads differently in São Paulo than in Hanoi, and a social-proof angle needs local shapes: local currency, plausible local names, the right decimal separator. Translation without angle review is how a winning matrix loses a GEO it should have taken.
Stay inside the OS-honesty line
No fake system dialogs, no imitation battery warnings, no counterfeit close buttons. Networks reject them, and since Chrome 144's January 2026 enforcement the engagement scoring quietly buries the senders that run them. The compliance checklist draws the exact boundary.
Write the fatigue schedule into the brief
Every creative ships with a retirement plan: a CTR floor (ours defaults to 0.15% on in-page, higher on classic) and a named replacement from the bench. The VPN account held CTR between 0.24% and 0.29% for eight weeks only because rotation was scheduled, not reactive.
Reserve a refresh bench
A pack of twenty should launch with ten more in reserve or a refresh pack scheduled. Classic-push creatives lose roughly half their CTR inside two to three weeks; a bench turns that decay from an emergency into a calendar entry.
Name files like you will need them at 2 a.m.
angle-execution-geo-version, in the filename and in the tracker's sub2 slot, identically. When a network dashboard shows creative 184 dying, the name should answer which angle died without opening a single file.
What the matrix feeds
Winning cells earn budget through the whitelist process, and their angles feed the next prelander build so promise and page stay matched. The full production version of this brief, with the twenty executions attached, is what €1,150 buys on the pricing page.