Diminishing Returns
Saturation and efficiency.
The Scaling Wall
Every paid channel has a wall. The first dollars buy your cheapest, most ready-to-convert audience. As you spend more, you reach into colder, costlier demand and each extra dollar returns less.
This is diminishing returns. Ignoring it is the single most common way profitable accounts become unprofitable.
The Response Curve
Plot conversions against spend and you get a curve that rises steeply, then flattens. The slope of that curve is your marginal return: how many customers the next dollar buys.
Profit is maximized where the marginal return still covers your target CAC, not where total volume peaks.
Spend Customers Marginal CAC
$10k 200 $50
$20k 350 $67
$30k 450 $100
$40k 510 $167
Curve flattens -> each step costs more.All lessons in this course
- Unit Economics of Ads
- Diminishing Returns
- Channel Diversification
- Scaling Playbook