Long-form thinking,
written by operators.
We write because we have to think, and we publish because we think it might be useful. Essays as record of how we approach the work — not blog posts as content marketing. No 400-word listicles, no SEO filler. Things you might actually want to read.
Recent essays.
The high-spend monthly review, done properly.
A monthly review of a six-figure ad budget should not be a dashboard tour. It should interrogate the blended scoreboard, the marginal dollar, measurement integrity, structural hygiene, and next month’s allocation — in that order. The agenda we actually run.
Performance dropped: a systematic method for finding out why.
Performance drops trigger a predictable panic: bids get changed, campaigns get restructured, budgets get shuffled — all before anyone has established what actually happened. We work a fixed diagnostic order instead: measurement, market, platform mechanics, then the account. In that order, for a reason.
Questions to ask before hiring an ads agency.
Agency selection is usually a pitch-deck beauty contest. Here are the falsifiable questions — about measurement, incentives, ownership, creative, and reporting — that reveal whether you are hiring an operator or a marketing department.
The first 90 days: how we approach a foundation rebuild.
The interesting work in paid media, the bid strategy and creative testing and audience expansion, only compounds once the foundations are right. So our first 90 days on any account are deliberately spent on the unglamorous work first. Here is the sequence.
Managing Google Ads at $100k a month and beyond.
The tactics that grow a $20k account are not what governs a $200k one. At scale the job shifts to marginal-return allocation, incrementality, and structural discipline — and the failure modes get more expensive. What management actually looks like at six figures a month.
Why most Google Ads audits miss the real issue.
Most accounts we audit have great-looking dashboards and broken foundations. The interesting issues are never bidding strategy or keyword choice. They are upstream of those — in measurement, attribution, and architecture decisions made years ago and never revisited.
In-house vs agency: the honest comparison.
In-house teams win on context and focus; agencies win on cross-account pattern exposure and infrastructure. The honest cost math, where each model breaks, and the hybrid most scaling brands converge on.
Landing pages: where paid media is actually won or lost.
Every efficiency gain inside the ad account is capped and local. A conversion rate improvement on the landing page compounds across every channel, every campaign, and every future click at once. Most teams still optimize in the wrong order.
What good looks like: our standards for a healthy paid-media account.
Most advice about paid media is tactical and contradictory. Far more useful is a clear standard for what a healthy account looks like structurally, so you can measure any account against it. This is the checklist we hold our own work to.
How to choose a performance marketing agency.
Most agency selection is a pitch-deck beauty contest. The falsifiable questions to ask instead — about measurement, incentives, access, and reporting — and the red flags that predict regret.
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