What we've learned making the ads
Practical notes on Meta and Google ads for D2C brands doing £1–5m: how many ads to run, which types work, how to plan personas, and what the platforms won't tell you about attribution.
How Many Meta Ads Should a D2C Brand Run Each Month?
The number is 30–50 for a brand spending £10k–£100k a month, and it goes up from there. Why Meta's delivery system needs volume, what fatigue looks like, and how to get there.
ReadAd creative · 8 min readThe 10 Meta Ad Types That Work (Because We Made Them)
Show don't tell, output benefit, founder story, objection, us vs them and five more: the ten structurally different Meta ad formats we run every persona through, with why each one works.
ReadPlanning · 6 min readAudience Personas for Meta Ads: Two Positions, One Product Purpose
Interest targeting is dead; the ad is the targeting. How we define five granular personas per brand, give each a problem and an outcome, and turn that into a hundred ad briefs.
ReadSeasonal · 7 min readThe Three-Phase Black Friday Playbook for Meta Ads
How we run Black Friday for D2C brands: paid-purchase list building from October, rotating offers through November, and never launching anything new on the day. £2m in a quarter for Chinti & Parker.
ReadPricing · 5 min readWhy We Charge 10% Commission Instead of a Retainer
A retainer pays an agency the same for four ads as for forty. Commission on the revenue the ads generate pays for the next ad. How the model works, what it costs at different spend levels, and who it's wrong for.
ReadAttribution · 6 min readIs Google Ads Actually Adding Anything on Top of Meta?
Brand search, PMax and Shopping all claim the sale. So does Meta. A practical way for a D2C brand to work out what Google really adds, and what to do with the answer.
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