Compare Current vs Last Period Performance

Task Library

Run the period-over-period comparison (SAE Stage 6) that separates real trends from noise, so kill/scale decisions rest on direction, not single data points.

Category: Content Factory – Promote

Use this when closing each week (or month) of promotion – this comparison is the backbone of the Friday MAA report.

Inputs

  • Reporting access across channels (Facebook/Google/YouTube) and site analytics
  • The same-length prior period's numbers (week vs week, month vs month – never mismatched lengths)
  • Target CPA/ROAS and 90-day goals from SAE Stage 2

Steps

  1. Fix the periods: current vs immediately prior, identical length. Note any calendar distortions (holiday, launch, outage) before reading numbers.
  2. Compare level by level across the funnel (Audience / Engagement / Conversion): reach and CPM; engagement rate and watch time; cost per result, conversions, and spend.
  3. Flag every delta beyond ±20% as material. Smaller moves are usually noise at $1/day volumes – resist reacting to them.
  4. For each material delta, attach a cause before drawing a conclusion: budget change, creative fatigue (frequency up, CTR down), audience saturation, seasonality, or a landing page change. Use apply-metrics-decomposition to localize it.
  5. Sort the findings into two lists: working (candidates to scale ≤2× or switch-boost) and not working (candidates to kill). A flat line on a winner is also a finding – fatigue is coming.
  6. Publish the period-over-period table with the cause notes into the weekly MAA report, feeding list-top-3-5-recommendations-for-next-7-days.

Definition of done (QA checklist)

  • Identical-length periods compared across all funnel levels and channels
  • Every ±20% delta flagged with an attributed cause, not just a percentage
  • Findings sorted into working / not-working with kill/scale candidates named
  • Table and notes delivered into the Friday MAA report
  • Linked back to the definitive article and relevant siblings
  • Complies with Blog Posting Guidelines (if it publishes content)

Example(s)

  • Example needed – run the Meta-Article Prompt after first real run. Candidate: a week-over-week readout catching creative fatigue on a long-running boost before cost per result doubled.

File in the zip: skills/content-factory-promote/compare-current-vs-last-period-performance.md. Download the Task Library zip.

Index: Task Library. Article guidelines.

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