Creative volume: winners needed, times thirteen to twenty

Decide how many winning creatives you need live at once. For most small accounts that is two or three.

Multiply by thirteen if you are optimistic. Multiply by twenty if you are not.

Two winners needs twenty-six to forty attempts. Three winners needs thirty-nine to sixty.

Divide by the number of months you are willing to wait. That is your monthly creative target.

Two winners inside a quarter is nine to fourteen creatives a month. Roughly three a week.

Write the answer down before you argue with it. The number is what it is, and the arguing is a separate job.

That is the whole calculation. The rest of this page prices it and checks whether your budget can carry it.

Published benchmarks put the share of ad creatives that become winners at roughly 5 to 8 percent. The source is Motion's analysis of 550,000+ Meta ads.

That is between one in thirteen and one in twenty. It holds across accounts run by people who are good at this.

So six creatives a month is not a taste failure. It is an under sampling problem.

At six a month you expect a winner somewhere between month two and month four. You cannot tell which of those you are in until it happens.

At fifteen a month you expect one most months. That is the difference between a process and a hope.

Getting better at writing ads does not move the multiplier. It moves which end of the range you sit at.

So the villain is the counting rather than your taste. That is worth saying out loud to whoever thinks the creative is the problem.

One filmed take of up to three minutes batches for 100 credits. Export costs 20 credits per output minute.

So a forty second finished ad is about 113 credits. A thirty second one is about 110.

Fifteen ads a month is roughly 1,700 credits. Basic is $39.99 a month for 2,500 credits, which covers that with room.

Thirty ads a month is roughly 3,400 credits. That is Premium at $79.99 for 5,000.

A top-up is $15 for 1,000 credits. About nine more ads when a month runs long.

The 300 free credits need no card. They cover two finished ads, which is enough to see the workflow before you plan around it.

Notice what is missing from that list. There is no per-seat charge, no rendering tier and no minimum term.

Production is rarely the binding constraint. The binding constraint is how much media spend each creative needs before you can read it.

Work out your own floor. Take the impressions you need for a decision. Divide your monthly budget by the cost of reaching them.

That gives the maximum number of creatives you can meaningfully test this month, whatever your production capacity is.

If that number sits below the formula's target, you have two levers. Raise the budget, or accept a longer time to a winner.

Making more ads than you can read is a way of feeling productive while learning nothing. It is the most common failure this calculator produces.

So run the formula twice. Once for the creatives you want. Once for the creatives your budget can read.

Take the lower of the two. The higher one is a plan for a budget you do not have.

If the readable number is under six, raise spend before you touch production. Production is not what is limiting you.

When the budget does arrive, the production half is already solved at about 113 credits an attempt.

Every export is a 9:16 MP4, ready for TikTok, Reels, Shorts and Meta. A horizontal placement is outside this arithmetic.

One source take runs up to three minutes. A longer demonstration gets filmed in parts and batched separately.

Somebody has to go on camera. That is the single input the cheap route needs, and there is no way around it.

A small budget changes the target rather than the method. If you can read two creatives a month, make two.

None of those four move the multiplier. They tell you to change the budget rather than the tooling.

What the tooling changes is the price of an attempt. Here the fifteenth costs the same as the first: about 113 credits.

Almost every other production route gets more expensive the more of it you use. That is the arithmetic this one is built to break.