TaxAct cuts Meta CPA by 88% and drives 741% more conversions with cost-constrained bidding
THE EPIC WIN
Level Agency identified that TaxAct’s Meta campaigns were spending without a cost definition, and fixed it in a single campaign change that delivered 8x efficiency gains overnight.
CPA reduction
88%
Blended cost per acquisition dropped from $269.67 to $32.96 overnight.
Conversion increase
741%
More conversions in the first 24 hours, from 68 to 572, with no additional spend.
Efficiency multiple
8.2x
Return on ad spend efficiency gained from a single bidding strategy change.
Segments improved
8 of 9
Campaign segments saw CPA reductions of 60% or more. Six saw 80%+ reductions.
THE CHALLENGE
TaxAct competes in one of the most time-compressed advertising environments in digital marketing. Tax season creates a finite window during which consumer tax software brands must acquire customers at scale, in direct competition with heavily resourced incumbents including TurboTax and H&R Block. Every wasted dollar in that window is a filing-season opportunity that can’t be recovered.
TaxAct’s Meta conversion campaigns were generating a blended CPA of $269.67 — a figure that made paid social acquisition economically unsustainable at the volume needed to compete during peak season. Individual campaign segments were operating at CPAs reaching nearly $1,000 per conversion. TaxAct needed a partner who could diagnose whether the problem was structural and fix it before more of the season was lost.
THE ANALYSIS
TaxAct partnered with Level Agency to examine the bidding architecture governing its Meta conversion campaigns. The team found that all campaigns were running on a Maximize Conversions objective, an instruction that tells Meta’s algorithm to generate as many conversion events as possible, with no constraint on what each conversion should cost. Without a cost ceiling, the algorithm had been spending efficiently toward its actual objective: volume, regardless of price.
The data showed individual segment CPAs ranging from $252 to $965, a 4x spread with no floor and no signal telling Meta’s delivery system that this range of costs was unacceptable. The campaigns weren’t failing to convert. They were converting expensively because they’d been built to optimize for conversion count, not conversion value.
The team identified that TaxAct’s campaigns had no cost definition, only a volume mandate. The algorithm was doing exactly what it had been told.
THE INSIGHT
By building a propensity model that could score leads based on their likelihood to apply, and passing those scores directly into Google Ads as conversion values, the team could fundamentally change what the algorithm was optimizing toward. Instead of chasing the cheapest lead, Google’s Smart Bidding would learn to chase the most valuable one.
This shift, from optimizing for volume at the top of the funnel to optimizing for outcomes at the bottom, became the foundation of AIM’s V2 lead scoring strategy.
THE STRATEGY
TaxAct’s team implemented a focused, isolated intervention designed to give Meta’s delivery system the cost signal it had been missing, while maintaining the control necessary to read results cleanly:
- Objective restructure: Maximize Conversions → Cost Per Result Goal — Shifting the campaign objective fundamentally changed the algorithm's mandate: from "find as many conversions as possible" to "find conversions that meet a cost threshold"
- CPA cap set at $110 — Establishing a cost ceiling gave Meta's algorithm a clear definition of an acceptable conversion, forcing delivery toward efficient inventory rather than expensive segments
- Single-campaign isolation — Rather than applying the change across all nine campaign segments simultaneously, Level implemented it on one campaign first — treating the first 24 hours as a controlled proof of concept. This preserved delivery stability in the broader account while the bidding change was validated
- Spend held flat day-over-day — Budget was maintained at identical levels across the comparison period, ensuring that any performance difference was attributable to the bidding strategy change alone, not incremental investment
Within 24 hours, the algorithm had recalibrated, finding conversion volume within the cost constraint rather than at any available price.
THE RESULTS
In the 24 hours following implementation of the CPA cap, TaxAct’s campaign results transformed. Conversions jumped from 68 to 572 — a 741% increase — while the blended CPA collapsed from $269.67 to $32.96, an 87.8% reduction. Spend was held flat. Every additional conversion came from efficiency, not investment.
The gains were consistent across the campaign portfolio. Eight of nine segments saw CPA reductions of 60% or more. Six of nine saw reductions of 80% or more. Segments that had previously operated at CPAs between $200 and $965 are now delivering conversions in the $7–$34 range. The largest single-segment improvement was a 97.1% CPA reduction — from $457 to $13 per conversion.
What TaxAct’s results confirmed: Meta’s algorithm is capable of finding cost-efficient conversions at scale — when it has been given a definition of what cost-efficient means. By adding a cost target to a campaign architecture that had none, TaxAct achieved an 8.2x efficiency multiple, turning a spend structure that had been bleeding budget into one of the most efficient paid social programs in their account.
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