Writing
A paid media audit is a diagnostic, not a report. Here is how to run one properly, covering tracking, structure, creative, and economics, and how to prioritise what you find.
First-party data matters more than ever in paid acquisition. Here is what it means in practice, from customer match and lookalikes to feeding real conversion data back into your bidding algorithms.
Doubling your Google Ads budget does not double your conversions. Scaling paid search is a structural problem as much as a spend problem. Here is how to approach it without losing the efficiency you built.
Most B2B companies optimise their Google Ads towards the wrong conversion event. Offline conversion tracking fixes this by closing the loop between CRM outcomes and campaign optimisation. Here is what it involves and why it matters.
Attribution tells you which campaigns got credit. Incrementality tells you which campaigns caused results. The gap between those two things is often where your biggest budget mistakes are hiding.
Creative is now the main lever in Meta Ads. The targeting does less differentiation than it used to. Here is how to build a creative testing framework that consistently finds what works, and why most testing approaches fail.
Most paid acquisition problems that look like ad problems are actually landing page problems. Here is how to identify them, what to fix first, and how to test your way to a meaningfully better conversion rate.
LinkedIn Ads are expensive and the reason is structural. Here is what you are actually paying for, when the economics work, and how to reduce waste without cutting the reach that makes the channel useful.
Performance Max is Google's most aggressively promoted campaign type. It works well in specific contexts and causes real problems in others. Here is an honest account of when to use it, when to avoid it, and how to control it.
Return on Ad Spend benchmarks get passed around as if they mean something universal. They do not. Here is how to calculate the ROAS that actually matters for your business model, and when ROAS is the wrong metric entirely.
Hiring a freelance paid media consultant for the first time comes with uncertainty. Here is how these engagements actually run, what you hand over, what you get back, and how to tell if it is working.
Bad attribution does not announce itself. It shows up as dashboards that look fine and decisions that do not move the needle. Here is how to diagnose it and what to fix first.
B2B SaaS performance marketing is not the same job as DTC. The attribution problem is harder, the funnel dynamics are different, and the wrong hire will cost you months. Here is what actually matters.
The instinct when CPA is too high is to cut and reallocate. Often there is a structural problem that campaign culling will not fix. Here are the three real levers and how to use them.
The narrative that Meta Ads is broken is wrong, but the channel has genuinely changed. Here is how to approach it now, from CAPI setup to creative strategy to measurement that holds up.
Companies hire performance marketers at the wrong time, for the wrong level of seniority, or with the wrong brief. Here is a framework for getting it right, including when a freelancer is a better answer than a full-time hire.
Most scale-ups arrive at Google Ads having already made the same handful of mistakes. Here are the five I see most often, from Smart Bidding without data to account structures that break at scale.
The job title has become vague. This is my honest account of what a freelance performance marketing manager does day to day, how engagements typically work, and what you should expect to pay.
Most companies go looking for a paid ads agency before they have figured out what they actually need. Here is an honest comparison of what you are buying in each case, and when each option is the right one.
Not all conversions are equally trustworthy. For too long Castlytics showed raw revenue regardless of signal quality. Here is why I changed that, and what it took to commit to showing a lower number.
A quick note on what this blog is about: the projects I am building, things I find interesting in advertising, product management and entrepreneurship, and the occasional personal bit.