A new ecommerce company that sells raincoats for dogs leverages Facebook to drive product sales. The company serves a variety of videos and static images and only targets people who previously visited their website. The company historically spends $50,000 per quarter and always hits its ROAS goal of 3x.

Last quarter, the company aggressively tried to grow its business and tripled spend. At the end of last quarter, they compared performance between the previous two quarters and noticed the following differences in performance metrics:

ROAS decreased by 40%

Average frequency increased by 50%

CPMs increased by 60%

Reach increased by 10%

Cost per click decreased by 15%

Allocation of budget between creative formats remained the same

An analyst needs to run a test to identify how to scale spend efficiently. Which variable should the analyst test first?

A. Creative (Video versus Static)

B. Audience (Retargeting versus Acquisition)

C. Bidding strategy (Cost Cap versus Lowest Cost)

D. Optimization (Purchase versus Traffic)