The daily checklist I use to manage D2C brands at scale

Every morning at 9:30am IST, before I open any ad manager, I run the same checklist. It takes about 20 minutes. It catches 90% of the problems before they become expensive.

The checklist

1. Slack alerts from overnight (2 min)
The Agent OS sends fatigue alerts, budget warnings, and anomaly flags to Slack while I sleep. I scan these first. If something fired, that brand gets priority.

2. Spend pacing, all brands (3 min)
Am I on pace for the monthly budget? For each brand, I check: yesterday's spend vs daily target. If any brand is more than 15% over or under pace, I flag it.

3. ROAS check, platform vs Shopify (5 min)
I never trust platform-reported ROAS without cross-checking Shopify. For each brand: what did Meta say? What did Google say? What did Shopify actually show in orders? The gap tells me how much inflation I'm dealing with.

4. Creative health (3 min)
Any creative running more than 10 days with declining CTR? Any frequency above 3.5? Any CPM spikes? The fatigue detector agent catches most of this, but I eyeball it for anything it might have missed.

5. Underperformers (3 min)
Any ad set that spent a meaningful amount yesterday with zero purchases? Kill it or wait one more day, depending on click-through data.

6. Opportunities (2 min)
Any campaign significantly above target ROAS with budget headroom? That's a scaling candidate. I note it for the weekly review.

7. Client-facing notes (2 min)
Anything the client needs to know today? A creative that's working exceptionally well, a product that's out of stock and I need to pause ads for, a budget milestone approaching.

Why a checklist?

Because at 9:30am with multiple brands and four platforms, your brain cannot be trusted to remember what to check. The checklist means I never skip a brand. I never forget to check pacing. I never miss a creative that's been running too long.

Boring? Absolutely. That's the point.