Iteration rate
The number of substantially different ads an account puts into the auction over a period.
Not how good any single ad is, and not how many ads exist in the account. How many genuinely different ones went live, where different means a different hook, format or offer rather than a new headline on the same image.
Why it matters for HVAC
It is the only real defence against fatigue in a small service area, and it is the thing that most reliably separates an account being managed from one being watched. A contractor running four ads for nine months has a creative problem no amount of budget adjustment will fix.
It is also the criterion on this site where you can check an agency rather than take their word, because Meta publishes every ad currently running.
How it is measured
Count distinct creatives launched per account per month, and watch the spread of launch dates. Ten ads all launched on one day in June is a burst, not a cadence.
A worked example
Two agencies both report "ongoing creative testing". One has ten ads live, eight launched on the same day three months ago. The other has five, with the newest two days old. The Ad Library shows both in under a minute, and they are describing different practices with the same sentence.
Those two patterns are real and were observed on this leaderboard. See the agency profiles for which is which.
The limitation
The Ad Library shows ads under the Page that runs them, and for commercial ads it does not name the agency behind a client’s account. So what is visible is an agency’s own advertising, which stands as a proxy. It is labelled a proxy everywhere it appears on this site.
Where this is demonstrated
The Creative production pillar scores every listed agency on what they document here, and gives you the questions that tell you which one you are being sold.