Frequently asked questions

A website URL and an email address. Waverunner reads your site, builds a business profile and customer personas, and generates ready-to-run ads from there. Creating an account is passwordless; we email you a one-time code.

Minutes, not weeks. Site analysis and ad generation each take a few minutes; once you fund your wallet, launching a campaign distributes your ads to the channels the same day.

No. Waverunner runs the media itself through our own ad-platform accounts. You never create a Meta Business Manager, a Google Ads account, or anything else. One wallet and one daily budget cover every channel.

Businesses that want performance advertising in one self-serve product: creative, media buying, tracking, and always-on autopilot. Roofers, HVAC companies, landscapers, and other local service businesses use it to run their own ads. Agencies and operators can manage several client businesses under one organization.

Yes. Every account starts with a Personal workspace, even if you first signed up from a team invitation. Team organizations are additional memberships. Switch workspaces from the sidebar anytime; businesses, campaigns, wallet, and API keys stay scoped to the organization you have active.

Yes. Businesses use it as a full performance stack in one product: personas and ads from your website, multichannel buying from one daily budget, first-party measurement on your site, and always-on autopilot. Agencies use the same stack to run campaigns for their clients under one organization. You run the business; we bring visitors and customers at the best price we can get.

Campaigns can run on mobile web and TV today, with mobile apps, audio, and OOH coming soon on the same connection, plus Google (including YouTube via Demand Gen), Meta (feeds and reels), and Reddit. TikTok and Pinterest are also coming soon. Each channel moves from Preparing, to Starting, to Live under one daily budget. On the campaign page, Channels & delivery lists Mobile web and TV separately (plus Google, Meta, and Reddit when selected). When Google is on, YouTube appears nested under Google as delivery status, not as a separate channel to buy. Before launch, selected channels show Starts at launch. Platform performance shows the same selected follow channels as status placeholders until they have delivery to report (never as fake zero Ad views). TV shows Pending activation until video delivery is actually live (a ready TV spot alone is not enough while the campaign is still concentrating spend on mobile web). Mobile web shows Needs attention when it is fully paused on a live campaign; after launch, a channel still finishing setup shows Starting, not Preparing.

Static image ads sized for each platform's ratios, plus video ads in three formats: a broadcast-ready TV spot, a long-form cut, and an animated ad.

Yes. Every creative has a chat editor. Before a campaign launches, edits update the creative directly. After launch, Autopilot manages ads by default: give a reason to refresh, and that creates a new serving version while the previous one stays under Previously served. Choosing Don't serve asks you to unlock ad controls on the campaign page (Ads / Campaign canvas), give a reason, and stops live campaigns from serving that ad; allowing it again does not auto-resume serving. No design tools required.

Analysis, personas, and copy edits are free. Generated ads are priced per unit (image ads $0.38, social video $6, TV spots $12) and paid from creation credit before your wallet: new accounts start with $50, and running campaigns earns 10% of every campaign day back as credit, so active advertisers create at little or no extra cost. Fair-use limits of 20 generation runs and 100 chat messages per organization per day apply.

You do. Ads are generated from your website and your business profile, and you're free to use them in your campaigns on Waverunner.

Ad platforms review creatives against their own policies and occasionally reject one. When that happens you can regenerate or edit the ad and relaunch. Copy edits are free, and regenerated visuals draw creation credit first.

You prepay into a wallet, then each live campaign charges its daily budget once per active day (billed in US Eastern time). That daily budget is a ceiling: the most you authorize that day. There are no subscriptions, no contracts, and no other fees. The daily budget is the whole bill.

No. Waverunner does not guarantee ROAS, leads, or sales. What we stand behind is the Performance Compact: results measured on your own site (with an honest dash when we cannot measure), autopilot that logs every decision, a prepaid daily budget ceiling, ads you can see before you spend, and a weekly digest of what changed.

Five process guarantees already built into the product: results measured on your site, autopilot that logs every decision, a prepaid daily budget ceiling, ads you can create before you spend from the wallet, and a weekly digest of what changed. It is how we make performance knowable and improvable, not an outcome SLA.

A planning aid from your website URL. We classify your market and recommend daily spend and a learning timeline using published WordStream industry Search benchmarks plus our mobile-web reach math. Figures are labeled Estimated on purpose. The brief is not a delivery contract and not a promised return on ad spend. Real results are measured on your site after a campaign runs.

Always on, on a schedule. Audience activation and funnel tuning run every hour. Creative, journey-stage budget, segment, and bidding decisions run daily from your site data, with a larger weekly journey mix pass and monthly holdout readout. On live campaigns, Autopilot retires weak interest segments, promotes reserves, refills the bench when it runs dry, can swap demographic filters when delivery stalls, and can rescue under-delivery without pausing the campaign. Every change is logged, so you are not waiting on a weekly review to see what moved.

You choose a daily budget between $10 and $10,000 per day. Campaigns run open-ended until you pause or end them, or you can set an end date (flights up to 365 days). Wallet top-ups run from $10 to $50,000.

If a launch fails completely on day one, the full day is refunded automatically. If a channel under-delivers on the media portion of your daily budget, that media shortfall is credited back to your wallet automatically. The platform portion of the day is not refunded: it covers creation and platform costs. No support ticket needed.

Anytime. Pausing or ending a campaign stops all future daily charges immediately; the current day's charge stands.

Campaigns pause automatically, so you can never go into debt. Top up (or turn on auto-refill), then press Resume on the campaign. Adding money alone does not restart ads.

Billing stops while it is paused. If interest audiences are missing, use Rebuild reach on the campaign page. Audiences are replanned and ads turn back on when that finishes. Otherwise review delivery and press Resume once ads can serve again.

Auto-refill is opt-in. When your balance drops below roughly 3 days of live campaign spend, we charge your saved card for the amount you chose (minimum $50). 3 consecutive failed attempts switch it off until you re-enable it.

Yes. Pick the whole US, states, a radius around your locations, zip lists, DMAs, or cities for Mobile web and TV. You can change geo after launch. Follow channels stay tied to people who already saw your Mobile web ads.

Yes. Edit the daily budget anytime. Today's charge stands and the new amount applies from the next daily charge; there's no proration.

You can change the daily budget, flight end date (or clear it for always-on), landing page, name, geo, pause/resume/end, and Audience boost without unlocking Autopilot. Ads are Autopilot-managed: unlock ad controls to pause or resume serving; refreshing a creative asks for a reason and creates a new version (older versions stay under Previously served). Allowing a previously stopped ad again does not auto-resume it on live campaigns. Interest and demographic Customize guides on Website audiences apply to the next launch; Autopilot still retires, promotes, refills, and can swap live targeting on its own. Channels, personas, objective, and start date stay locked after launch: start a new campaign if those need to change. Every edit shows up in Change History on the campaign page.

Add one script tag to your site. It's SPA-aware and there are no pixels to configure per channel. Guided installs are provided for Shopify and WooCommerce, and server-side conversion webhooks cover Stripe, Zapier, and custom backends. Form conversions can count successful marketing form submits without a thank-you URL. On Tracking, set what a win is worth so return on spend can show; until then we still optimize for cost per conversion.

Not for counting conversions or cost per conversion. Return on ad spend needs a value. Purchases should send the real order amount. For leads and signups, set an estimate on Tracking (including Form conversions: lead, signup, subscribe); you can edit that estimate anytime. A real amount from track, a webhook, or an order total always overrides the estimate for that same conversion name. We never invent a default dollar amount; without a value, ROAS shows a dash and Autopilot keeps optimizing for cost per conversion.

Last-touch, first-party attribution drives billed results: ad clicks carry a first-party click ID, and a click always beats a view-through. View-through windows are configurable at 7, 14, or 30 days. Assisted conversions show when another channel on the same campaign touched the person earlier (click, household view, or person-resolved view). Assists are reporting-only and do not change wallet charges or ROAS. Autopilot may use a soft credit of recent assists when shifting journey-stage budgets; that never restamps last-touch money. Person-resolved assists need overnight identity matching, so coverage can lag.

Page views, sessions, UTMs, and conversions on your site. Emails and IP addresses are hashed with a salt before storage; Waverunner never stores raw personal identifiers from your visitors.

Yes. The REST API includes a full-organization export endpoint that returns your businesses, campaigns, ledger, and tracking data as one JSON document.

Yes. Campaign reporting includes a read-only insights chat: ask plain-English questions about spend, conversions, CPA, ROAS, and what changed. Answers use the same numbers as your Performance tab. Insights chat explains your data; it does not change campaigns.

Yes. Waverunner exposes an MCP server so assistants you already use can pull reports and manage campaigns with the same tools as the product API, subject to your API key permissions and fair-use limits. See the MCP docs for setup and prompts.