How Maxma Helped Creatify AI Unlock 20-50% Better Incremental CPA While Scaling Spend

About Creatify AI

Creatify AI is a hyper-growth AI startup helping over 15000 Brands and Agencies worldwide create winning ads with AI. After raising a $15.5M Series A (Oct 2025), the team is turning paid media into a growth accelerator.

Executive Summary

Creatify AI was ready to scale paid media, but conflicting signals across platform attribution, UTM tracking, and KPI trends made it unclear what was truly working. Maxma deployed always-on causal attribution—powered by our proprietary, ongoing marketing mix model (MMM)—and unified all attribution sources into a single side-by-side view within 2 weeks. We also helped the team understand why the numbers differed so they could rebuild confidence. With always-on causal attribution, the team now runs a tight weekly test → measure → scale loop anchored on real business impact.

In under 30 days, Creatify

• 4X scaled pMax while lowering incremental CPA by ~40%
• Improved true incremental CPA 20%–50%+ across the broader portfolio while scaling spend
• Uncovered top-of-funnel opportunities that tracking-based attribution missed

The Challenge

Creatify was ready to scale spend to drive new customers, but decision-making was blocked by conflicting signals:

• Ad platform attribution
• UTM-based tracking
• Topline KPI trends

…were each telling a different story, making it unclear where to double down (and what to cut).

For example, when the team dialed up budget on Google pMax, the platforms reported strong performance—but topline KPI trends didn't show a corresponding lift, leaving them unsure whether to keep scaling or pull back.

The Maxma Solution

Always-on Causal Attribution in 2 weeks

Maxma deployed proprietary causal attribution—powered by our ongoing Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and MMM ↔ attribution integration—in under two weeks.

• Week 1: Quick data onboarding via ad platform + database integrations
• Week 2: Past-year insights live in the dashboard
• Week 3+: Weekly updates for the prior week

Unified View Across Attribution Sources

Maxma further brought causal attribution, platform-reported attribution, and UTM tracking into a single side-by-side dashboard so the team could compare results on an ongoing basis. Maxma also helped the team understand why the numbers differ across sources. By making those gaps clear and explainable, the team built confidence in the causal readout as the primary source of truth—while keeping the other views easy to monitor as guardrails.

The Outcome

With Maxma in place, Creatify now operates in a tight weekly test → measure → scale rhythm anchored on true incremental impact—so the team can move quickly, validate what’s working, and scale without guesswork.

In less than 30 days:

• 4X spend in pMax while reducing incremental CPA by ~40%
• 20% - 50%+ reduction in CPA on true incremental performance across the wider portfolio while scaling spend
• Revealed top of funnel opportunity where both platform and UTM attribution reported minimal conversions due to tracking limitations.

Scaling Google pMax for Real Impact

One concrete example of how this played out is how the team scaled Google pMax with discipline and confidence. In the team’s previous attempt to scale pMax: the platform CPA looked great, but real outcomes didn’t follow. What Maxma found Causal attribution flagged pMax with spiking incremental CPA, despite favorable platform-reported CPA.

Spend increases were flowing into mobile-heavy inventory that appeared to convert poorly, even when the platform attributed conversions.

Action Taken

Starting by excluding mobile inventory, the team tightened pMax with clear guardrails, while separately testing audience signals and creative inputs to improve true incremental performance. Once incremental CPA stabilized at a healthy level, scaling was done in controlled weekly steps, using Maxma to track incrementality and monitor marginal CPA on the saturation curve.

Result (30 days)

• 4X pMax spend
• Reduced incremental CPA by over 40%

Next Step

Additional validation with a structured test vs. holdout incrementality test powered by Maxma before scaling even further

Final Takeways

When performance signals get noisy, and ads platforms push advertisers to “trust the black box” and hand over more control. The advantage goes to teams that anchor decisions on unbiased true incremental impact, then use it to make platform automation work for them—not the other way around.