The Live-Spend Test is a six-gate checklist for evaluating agentic AI marketing tools before they touch real budget: execution, approval, audit, compounding, substrate, and proof. A tool must clear all six — five out of six is a fail.
Definition
The six gates: Execution (the agent makes the change itself, not recommendations), Approval (a named human approves every change), Audit (full trail from signal to outcome), Compounding (learning accrues to your account and is inspectable), Substrate (it orchestrates platform-native AI like PMax and Advantage+ across platforms rather than fighting it inside one), and Proof (sourced, pilot-grounded evidence plus willingness to run a scoped proof period on your accounts).
Why it matters
Agentic tools quietly disappoint in six different ways, and each gate catches one of them. Because the test is vendor-agnostic on its face, it drops straight into an RFP — and forces every vendor in your eval to answer the same six questions instead of demoing around them.
In agentic execution
Adlyse publishes the Live-Spend Test and holds itself to it: agents execute across Google, Meta, TikTok, and Microsoft Ads; every change gates through human approval with a full audit trail; and intelligence compounds per account. Full breakdown in the blog post 'How to Evaluate Agentic AI Marketing Tools' at /articles/how-to-evaluate-agentic-ai-marketing-tools.
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