Insights
Notes from inside the accounts.
Short, practical writing on paid media and SEO. What I actually see when I open an account, and what to do about it. Each post is a mini consulting session.
Start here
The writing is organised into series. Each one opens with the article that lays out the whole argument, then works through it a piece at a time.
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Cost per lead
30What a lead should cost, why yours climbs when you scale, and how to work out the number for your own account.
Start with What a good cost per lead actually looks like All 30 articles -
Conversion tracking
30Why your platform numbers disagree with reality, and how to get measurement you can actually make decisions on.
Start with What your conversion numbers are actually counting All 30 articles -
Ad creative
30Hook rate, hold rate, creative fatigue, and how to test ads without fooling yourself about the winner.
Start with Fund the ad set and read what the algorithm chose All 30 articles -
ROAS and ecommerce profit
4What an order really costs you, what return you need to break even, and where reported ROAS stops being true.
Start with What I actually pay to buy an online order All 4 articles
Everything, newest first
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Work out where a sale stops losing money before you agree any target
Break even ROAS is one divided by your gross margin. Here is the arithmetic, the margin range I see across ecommerce clients, and what it changes.
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Your margin answers this question and your industry does not
A good ROAS is decided by your gross margin, not your industry. At 20% to 50% margin, break-even sits between 5.0x and 2.0x. Here is the arithmetic.
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Revenue divided by spend is not money in the bank
Return on ad spend is revenue over cost, not profit. My EU fashion account hit 4.7x in 2022, and margin decided whether that was any good.
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What I actually pay to buy an online order
My cost per purchase across two ecommerce accounts: €14.18 on 1,715 orders and $5.05 on 63,000+ purchases, both full year 2022.
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When the platform edits your ads, you stop knowing what you tested
Automated creative changes your adverts after you upload them, so what performed is not always what you made. Here is what that does to testing.
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Average beat Excellent on cost per acquisition
Google Ad Strength rated Excellent produced the worst cost per acquisition across 20,000 accounts. Average produced the best. Here is what to use instead.
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Google's guidance and the largest dataset disagree
Responsive search ads pit Google's own guidance against 20,000 accounts of independent data. Here is what each says and how to act on both.
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It works, and saying so out loud costs you the gain
AI generated ad creative lifted click-through by up to 19% in one study. Disclosing the AI involvement reduced effectiveness by up to 31.5%.
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What you pay to be seen is partly your own doing
Creative and CPM are connected through response, not through quality scores. Here is the mechanism, and the account where cheap reach cost the most.
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Real research, measured on something that is not your account
Creative drives sales rests on real research measuring supermarket brand advertising on purchase panels. Here is what transfers and what does not.
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The most repeated statistic in paid social is a myth
Sound off video ads are real and the famous 85% figure is a myth from a 2016 blog post. Here is the sourced number to use instead, and what to do.
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One range clears every documented placement requirement
Video ad length between five and fifteen seconds qualifies for every documented Meta placement. Here is why that range is the practical default.
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