I've spent almost $1 billion advertising on FB since '08 and this is something I see advertisers getting wrong all the time: 🛑 Stop focusing on FB CPMs (and CPCs)! They don't matter that much. ❌ Turning off ads due to high CPCs or CPMs can be turning off top performers. 🧵👇

Hey internet friends, meet my new son!

Most traffic is due to congestion, not accidents

I spied on my mom while she shopped to buy something on her phone. What I witnessed was a study in real-world ecom buying behavior, user experience, discounting, and marketing attribution:

You probably don't want to hear this, but you need to: Stop wasting time on FB audience testing You don't need much more than 3 ad sets: 1 broad 1 lookalikes of purchasers (10%!) 1 relevant interests That's it. Focus on your ad creative, that's what really matters.

I've been working in marketing for over 15 years. Here are some of my fav tools that I could've only dreamed of back then and everyone should be using now:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME, CHATGPT?! C'mon @OpenAI @sama

Big day! I signed the lease and got the keys to my new big boy office space.

If The Real Bag Dogs of New York was a TV show, I'd watch it @AnimalPlanet @dog_rates #rbdony #subwaydogs #subwaydog

Stop making DTC ads that your marketing team likes. Your customers are not marketers.

$600k+ stolen in 3 days Hackers spending in ad accounts they broke into. I've heard several stories like this and a brand I work with was recently attacked I've been working on FB ads for 14 years and this is the worst I've seen.

In every org, there are more opinions about marketing than other functions because people are exposed to advertising their whole lives and they think it's easy.

When we learned that we vacationed at the same resort as @justinbieber, we understood the assignment. @Sailrockresort How did we do?

Oh wow, an actually helpful Ads Manager feature telling me how much I can increase budget without going back into the learning phase. And it's waayyyy more than 25%! Mine's 69% here👀 (Do we think that's the budget increase threshold now or is that just a funny coincidence? cc @codyplof)

How to deceive consumers, violate FTC laws, and get sued like crazy with one TikTok. Everything is illegal: the fake story from a fake AI person, the misleading claims, and the undisclosed affiliate link. This 30-second lawsuit magnet took 15 minutes to make and could generate: - 10M+ misled consumers - Minimum 6 figures in fines ($50k in FTC fines per violation!) - Class-action lawsuits from misled buyers - 6 figures in legal fees trying to explain why "it's just a "joke" If you're really lucky, maybe even a federal wire fraud charge if the DOJ decides to make an example out of you (up to 20 years in prison! Wow!) Hope that ~5-figure revenue was worth it because your 6 or 7 figures of fines and legal bills are coming fast.

5 tips that can help you pocket an extra $11,287 every month simply by increasing the amount of numbers in your tweets by >182% A (parody) thread 👇

Stop comparing your brand to Nike, Coke, Apple, etc. Their marketing playbook isn't going to work for your brand. Those are established brands and most people have experienced their products.

Hott take:

Hackers often hijack Meta ad accounts to run scam ads. Now there’s a new safeguard in Business Manager: Domain Security. You can pre-approve which domains your ads are allowed to link to. Any ad with an unlisted URL now requires admin or trusted user approval. No reason not to set this up immediately: find it in Business Manager Security Center 🔐

KANYE DID NOT SPEND $7 MILLION TO RUN THIS SUPER BOWL AD. Regardless, this plan was genius, and here's why: 1. It was a local ad, not national and he paid waaaaaay less than $7M national price to air. 2. He shot an authentic ugly $0 ad. It stood out immediately and had a good call to action. It was chaotic and everyone who didn't see wants to see it. 3. He mentioned how expensive it was to run the ad, making people assume he paid the full $7M. 4. He's getting the same amount of free publicity as if he had actually spent the full $7M. Probably getting hundreds of millions of views across the internet. 5. The ROI of this strategy is waaaay better than whatever anyone's calculated based on the $7M because he probably spent closer to $1M. (He even got me to tweet about it 🙃) Say what you want about Kanye, but overall, this was a brilliant plan and execution. Also, anyone reporting the $7M amount is a terrible reporter, gullible, wants to believe it's true, and/or is being outright paid to make you believe so.

I just got my 4th call from Meta TODAY, my ~10th this week. I usually ignore them, but I actually picked up out of frustration and barked at the guy "this is the 4th call I've gotten from Meta today, if my ad accounts aren't on fire, what could possibly be so important?" The guy was kind and told me this was his first call of the day. I apologized and explained my frustration: There's a system at Meta that gives my phone number to a "Meta Marketing Pro" and doesn't track or coordinate the fact that I'm getting calls from different Marketing Pros for the dozens of ad accounts I'm in. Meta: IF YOU KNOW MY PHONE NUMBER IS TIED TO ALL OF THOSE ACCOUNTS, MAYBE JUST HAVE ONE PERSON CALL ME. What an incredible and thoughtless waste of Meta resources and my time. The last thing I need is to hear about "best practices" from some "pro" who's spent less time in Ads Manager in his life than I have in a day. 😤

Very exciting news: I've joined @eatrotten_ as Head of Growth where I'll be driving performance creative, media buying, and more. Since leaving @ranchwater after the acquisition, I've been itching to get back into this kind of ownership, and using this side of my creative brain, and I've already got a bunch of things cooking after just one week with the team. I've been missing this feeling! I'm sooooo pumped to be working on a badass weirdo nostalgic brand with a delicious product. This is gonna be huge! Official launch is next week, but if you want to be the first to try it (and save 20%), check out our presale now: eatrotten.com If you love gummy worms or fruit snacks, you're gonna love it! If you're a creator or if you know any creators who would be interested in making rotten/freaky content for us, especially if this branding is your vibe, please don't hesitate to reach out! #FeedYourFreak

The point of trains is to take more cars OFF the roads. Self-driving cars put more cars on the already jammed roads. Maybe it will only carry 100k people at first, buuuut that's still a lot of people. And then, over time (5-15 years) it will serve more as the area develops, which is how transit works.

With Meta's category restrictions already taking effect for some brands and looming for many other brands, there's still so much uncertainty around it. I wanted to share my understanding in case it's helpful. This might be obvious for some, but a couple of people I've explained this to found it very helpful, so I wanted to drop it here: My understanding of the issue is that Meta doesn’t want to collect data that could imply a user has a specific medical condition. If a visitor visits a product page that explicitly mentions a medical condition, then takes an action like adding it to their cart or purchasing, that behavioral data would be tracked and used to optimize future ads. The issue? That data could reveal private health information about the user. Like whether they have arthritis, high blood pressure, hair loss, or another specific medical condition. 🚫 Example of What Meta Wants to Prevent Imagine John suffers from arthritis. 1️⃣ He clicks on a Facebook ad for a joint pain supplement that says it “treats arthritis.” 2️⃣ He lands on a product page explicitly discussing arthritis relief. 3️⃣ He adds the supplement to his cart and completes checkout. Now, Meta (and advertisers) have data suggesting that John likely has arthritis (a medical condition). This is exactly the kind of sensitive health data Meta wants to avoid collecting—because tracking it (and allowing advertisers to effectively target from that) could violate privacy laws like HIPAA & GDPR. By blocking tracking on sensitive health-related websites, Meta is reducing the risk of storing and using health data without user consent. ⚠️ How to Stay Compliant & Avoid Restrictions To ensure your brand remains compliant, focus on messaging that doesn’t trigger Meta’s health data restrictions: ✅ Avoid Naming Specific Medical Conditions – Instead of “Relieves Arthritis Pain,” say “Supports Joint Comfort.” ✅ Focus on Symptoms, Not Diagnoses – “Struggling with stiff, achy joints?” is OK. “Arthritis pain relief” is risky. ✅ Be Careful with Your Entire Website – This isn't just about your ad landing pages, it's about organic/direct traffic too as the pixel/CAPI is still tracking those actions on the site. Under Meta's new policies, if you don't update your site to be compliant, Meta will block tracking of certain actions on websites classified as “sensitive health topics” to prevent collection of that sensitive data and preventing advertisers from targeting users based on inferred medical conditions potentially violating privacy laws. I understand some advertisers are looking to get around this restriction via using custom events. (And seemingly Meta reps are gently (unofficially) suggesting this 😅) While custom events can potentially get around this, it also is technically against Meta's terms/policy to do so and could open your account to more severe punishments from Meta and open your business up to other larger potential legal issues (but I'm not super clear on that legal threat, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice!). I hope this is helpful to understand how what Meta is doing, why, and how to adjust your site accordingly! Please let me know if I missed something or if you interpreted any of this in a different way.

Year 1 of parenting: survived!😅

FB campaign structure that has been crushing for me for the past few years of spending hundreds of millions of dollars, finally revealed:

Dear internet, I need your help, my wife is pregnant with our second child 🎉, we're having a boy, his last name will be Hott, what should we name him?

The best marketers test against their own beliefs.

Gotta love seeing a new CMO come in and: Light the biz's existing marketing playbook on fire Bring in their dusty-ass 3+ year-old playbook they stole from their last big name brand Fail Shrug Move on to the next biz. Rinse. Repeat.

People understand numbers 🤷‍♂️

Ah, I've been wanting to address this one for a while. I'm excited to dig in: Content relevance. It's become harder to serve more relevant ads to newer/colder users who aren't as relevant to your brand/product. Stick with me, this is a weird one... Remember when IG used to be for seeing our friends lives/content? We mostly consumed content from people we knew and wanted to see content from/about. Ads stuck out back then and were easily skippable because they were clearly not friends. Then the feeds started to shift towards more celebs, influencers, brands, aggregators, etc, we were following and we began having a higher tolerance/need for relevant content to our interests, not just wanting to see the most recent stuff from just our friends. Ads still stuck out a lot and were easily skippable, but ones that looked/felt more relevant prevailed Thennnn TikTokification hyper-relevance happened and we all started consuming content we weren't subscribed to. Over time, users have gotten more accustomed to this and the algos have learned exactly what makes us tick. The algo is so good now and users are so accustomed to relevant content that nearly every piece of content served to you gives you a dopamine hit, including ads! People are skipping content (and ads) less than ever before because they're being served more highly relevant content (and ads) than ever before. The expectation has increased and will only continue to increase. Throughout all of the prior periods, ads were easier to sniff out and skip, but now, (good) advertisers are making more relevant ads and the algo is delivering them to the most relevant users. The incrementality problem has become a larger one because when a brand has a large following of people who already know/like their brand/product, the ads that are more relevant to those users might be more brand/product related. But those aren't the ads that work best to bring in newer/colder audiences because they're not as relevant to them. As many advertisers have consolidated advertising (overall a good thing), it's made it harder for advertisers to discern what works and scales better for colder audiences because the warmer audiences are the ones that convert best. Simple example: an ad that shows the brand/product in the first frame will be relevant primarily to people already in-market and aware, and might get those people to convert, but it's not as relevant to people who don't already know/care about your brand/product. So it might appear to perform well in the account, but might not be as incremental/scalable as other ads. We can't see the ad journey users take to get to a conversion now, but I assume it involves multiple touches from a variety of ads, many of which never even get a click. Meta doesn't need a click to know they watched and are perhaps now more interested in the brand/product than before. Btw, external 3rd party tools have no way to see/track this, so many ads Meta wants to spend on will have awful apparent CPAs and ROAS and lead many advertisers to manually shut them off. The problem is how many advertisers study "winning" ads, iterate on them, recreate them, and continue making ads similarly relevant to those same warmer audiences. It's a very hard and potentially expensive cycle to break out of. From a media buying and creative standpoint, a lot of what worked a few months ago might not work anymore. I've seen many brands plateauing or hitting a growth wall lately and I believe this is why. Advertisers need to be aware of this hyper relevance issue and get comfortable building new content and concepts that break out of existing relevance molds. We need to know what works well for users who aren't already on our sites and engaging with our content because the system doesn't care. The system just wants to get you the most "conversions" it can and the system knows who is already most relevant and in-market, so it's going to target them with the easiest thing it can.

I can't believe I keep finding FB ad accounts not using the "existing customers" and "engaged audience" segments. If you don't use these already, PLEASE START USING THEM. They give you FREE additional data and context about your advertising. If someone else runs your ads for you, please make sure they have these set properly.

I took a car into the city from Brooklyn. Once I got into lower Manhattan saw how bad the traffic was, ditched the car for the subway. Driver thanked me for not having to go all the way. Saved him and me 30 painful minutes.

Have you been to Japan and taken Shinkansen? Autonomous driving is reeeeeally far from that level of efficiency, speed, and scale. I agree the future of transportation (and cities/commuting for that matter) are largely going to change, but personal automobiles are unlikely to be the grand solution you're talking about. For autonomous vehicles to work at scale, it would require everyone to get more comfortable with tiny personal autonomous vehicles and want less giant trucks. Good luck with that in America 😅

Unhinged. Jeez, this is just... infuriating and uncute and intrusive

I've been in marketing for nearly 20 years, and I'm skeptical of 97% of performance claims and case studies I see. Why? I've debunked too many. The ones that seem too good to be true are always too good to be true.

Free money glitch for FB advertisers 💰: 1. Find your "fatigued" ads from the past ~12 months. (Ads that spent a lot but then stopped spending or were turned off due to performance) 2. Duplicate them and change the copy. 3. Set it live. 4. Profit. 💰

Meta officially recommends advertisers make "lo-fi" ads. 😏

I just audited an account working with a well-known agency. Their Meta dashboard looked great. ROAS was solid. Agency was happy. But the business wasn't growing. Here's what I found: Spending ~25% of budget on existing customers Getting ~40% of sales FROM existing customers This is a massive red flag most marketers miss. Meta was being lazy and so is the agency. The existing customers are being targeted in the "prospecting". When you don't exclude recent visitors and existing customers from prospecting campaigns, you're telling Meta: "Go ahead, take the easy route." And Meta will absolutely take that invitation. Instead of finding NEW customers, it keeps targeting people who already know your brand. Your "prospecting" ads aren't actually prospecting and you never learn what works for cold audiences. Cost caps are based on easy warm conversions and never open up enough to target enough colder users. Growth stagnates. The fix is simple: Exclude recent website visitors and existing customers from prospecting campaigns. Yes, your ROAS might look "worse" initially. But here's what actually happens: ✅ You learn what creative works for cold audiences ✅ Meta finds genuinely new customers ✅ Your business grows instead of recycling ✅ You build a foundation for real scale Platform data always makes the platform look good. If your ROAS looks great but your business isn't growing, you're probably just getting efficient at selling to people who were already going to buy. That's just expensive remarketing disguised as prospecting. Stop letting Meta (and your agency) be lazy. Set boundaries.

FB can very quickly figure out who is relevant to your ads even without a pixel. Their system optimizes around attention and other metrics we advertisers don't understand or have access to. Target via your creative. Make ads that your future customers easily relate to.

There's rarely loyalty from brands towards agencies even when the agency truly helps the brand scale. I've seen so many great agencies directly responsible for scaling brands get tossed aside because: A. The brand thinks they're big enough to deserve a "better" agency. B. The brand gets an unbelievable pitch from another bigger agency promising the world. C. Then new marketing hire (or acquiring company) wants to bring in their friend's agency. D. The brand wants to bring things in-house. E. The brand poached an essential employee from the agency. Or some combination of these. Instead of being thanked, the agency gets screwed and there's nothing they can do about it. People wonder why agencies charge so much: it's because they can't keep equity in what they've built/grown for their clients.

Stop breaking the law in your ads and websites (and anywhere else)! I put together a thread of @RobertFreundLaw's most valuable threads so far to help keep you and your brand out of court! Bookmark these:

Everyone keeps saying ad performance is down and DTC sales are soft this month. It’s not just you. It’s the economy. I didn't believe it at first, but this is real and significant. The government shutdown has a bigger impact than you realize. It froze confidence and cash flow. Here’s what’s really happening: 🏛️ About 900,000 federal workers have been furloughed, and another 700,000 are working without pay. 🫰 40 million Americans (~12% of the population!) rely on SNAP benefits that could stop if the shutdown drags on. 🏥 Another 24 million people are at risk of higher health care costs if ACA subsidies expire. 🏗️ Millions more federal contractors and small business employees are going unpaid or have projects paused. That’s a huge chunk of your customers with tighter budgets, higher anxiety, and less attention to anything outside of immediate needs. When people are worried about paychecks or benefits going away, they don’t care about your new shoes, skincare, or supplements. They don’t click ads. They don’t spend freely. This isn’t a creative problem. It’s not a media buying problem. It’s an income and confidence problem that hits every DTC brand at once. We’re watching what happens when a big share of the population freezes discretionary spending all at the same time. So if your ROAS is down, spend is down, costs are up, or your conversion rate suddenly dropped, zoom out. Your ads/site/brand didn’t break. The market did. And right now, it’s shut down.

Stop trying to compare interests vs lookalikes vs broad performance. It doesn't matter! Use them all and allocate spend based on performance (or let CBO do it for you). They're all different and great to run together. BUT overall, all roads lead to broad. . . 🧵👇

Too many marketers get hired because of the big brand name on their resume despite having never contributed real value to the company.

I combined all of it. It sounds like I'm dumping them: "I'm sorry, I'm figuring this out as I go. I made this mistake and I'm scared. This is about me, not you. I love you. Err, I like you. But, I'm struggling and I can't afford this right now. I'm proud of you." Is this right?

The worst part about BFCM by far is always how our non-marketer/ecom friends and family don't understand what this week is like for us. Everyone else is off from work and having fun while we're stuck by our computers and phones, working long hours. I really appreciate seeing the community doing what we're doing. It makes me feel more normal. Part of me never wants to go through this ever again, and the other part of me lives for the rush. However you did yesterday, remember to take a minute to step away, take a breath, and relax a bit today. We all deserve that.

Just shot this for a potential ad. Thoughts?

I’m in the arena, making ugly ads

There is no faster way to learn advertising than making ads yourself, launching them into the world, and watching them fail.

Want to make better social ads? Stop studying your competitors. Start understanding trends on TikTok and IG Reels.

Make ads to get people to buy, not to win a design award.

It's still an issue of too many vehicles, not enough road.

This shot alone would've cost $30k+ and taken a full team weeks of planning to execute. I whipped this up with AI in minutes and this could be on TV right now.

Ok, I have to vent here. Here is a loud voice in the marketing community sharing a brand's lowest performing TikTok in months and saying "This is growth marketing. Absolute smash" And then other marketers swooping in to pile on and celebrate it as well. Y'all. If we can agree that organic views are an indicator of content's success and scale, and that good content getting more views is good for the brand/business, then we have to acknowledge that this piece of content is worse than almost anything else Tecovas has posted to TikTok in months. This doesn't mean it's a bad video, it's just a textbook example of how content might not be a good fit for that platform... We can also see that this video got tons of views on YouTube (but I technically can't tell if it's organic or they promoted it). TikTok: Subscribers: 121k Views of this video: 8k (Lowest viewed video in months.) YouTube: Subscribers: 25k Views: 573k (Highest viewed video in years. I agree, it's totally a great video and it belongs on YouTube or TV. I'm never going to stop anyone from running pretty content like this organically on social. Even as an ad, I'd still want to test it because I love testing against my biases and I want to see how they do, but I wouldn't expect them to outperform my uglier stuff on those platforms. I'm not knocking the Tecovas team or their content! In fact, I'm actually complimenting them for doing such a fantastic job making so much other appropriate content for TikTok. They're nailing it! Seriously, go check out their other TikTok and IG content, they're putting on a clinic. I'd rather see us celebrating their other great relatable, scalable content. There's so much they're doing that other brands can and should be learning from and replicating! I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who has run very similar aesthetic ads for Lone River Ranch Water. Those ads were great on TV and unskippable placements, but I'm very aware of how they performed on social compared to our social native assets. If your brand is of a certain scale, by all means, please go make lovely beautiful ads like this! Yes, me, the "make ugly ads guy" is saying you can go make pretty ads and run them on TV, YouTube, or other placements where consumers want and expect to see that style of content (or where they can't skip it 😅) and it will probably benefit your business significantly... BUT do not expect them to perform well or be relevant to your audiences on TikTok or IG/FB, especially not as an ad. I can already hear people saying "but but but you're just a dumb performance marketer, your goal shouldn't always be immediate conversions, what about brand awareness?!" Ok, let's talk about that. Regardless of your campaign objective, consumers still want and expect to see certain styles of content on the platforms they're on and you should be building for that. Do you really think just because you change your ad campaign objective to brand awareness, that will change how a user perceives your ad content? Consumers don't know or care what objective you're running, they just understand what's relevant to them and what's not. They don't want your polished ad jammed into their eyeballs on TikTok. I've run the brand lift tests enough to know how more platform-relevant content wins at driving incremental ad recall, brand awareness, favorability, and action intent. It doesn't matter if your goal is conversions or awareness, if your ads fail to effectively get relevant attention, they'll fail to achieve your goals. If you want your ads to perform at scale, make ads relevant to the audience, placement, and platform it will be shown on. Don't make ads for other marketers. Make ads for your audience. Don't make ads other marketers like (unless you know it drives performance at scale). Finally, I think a good point @TaylorHoliday is trying to make here is how launching new products is good and something worth focusing on. I agree with that.

I probably spent 6+ hours on my latest newsletter and finally sent it this morning, 5 days late. Got this response 24 minutes after it sent. I needed this:

3 years ago, this tiny office felt like a huge risk. I had just left my safe agency job. I had a newborn baby. I wasn't sure what was next. And I wasn’t sure I could justify the expense. Working from my couch or sharing an office with a newborn wasn’t going to cut it. I needed a space where I could focus and do my best work. It was tiny. Smaller than a jail cell. I jokingly called it “solitary confinement.” But especially with ADHD, I quickly realized I needed this space. Working from home is nice, but having a (nearby) dedicated space of your own? Huge upgrade! The cost of rent faded into the background as I started doing better work, making more, and growing faster than ever before. Now, instead of pinching pennies, I’m thinking: Where can I spend more to make more? I've outgrown this space, and upgrading to something 10x bigger doesn’t feel like a risk at all. It feels like the next step. Excited to share what’s next from the new space. Goodbye tiny office. You served me well 🫡

Brand: "please make us an authentic video that is fun and does not appear like an ad..."

Hey, remember that time someone stole my April Fool's post and posted it for real?

I posted "get off your ass and go shoot ads" 2 weeks ago. @ashvinmelwani replied "any advice for a brown male selling collagen to 35-year-old women?" I said "You don't have to put yourself in the ad, just take a picture of the product on your desk, in your kitchen, or your bathroom. Take a picture of the box delivered at your door. OR video yourself saying 'hey, I'm the cofounder and CMO of Obvi, I'm making this ad because I wanted to tell you about...' Stick some post-it notes on your products. BOOM: ADS!" Here's the result: #MakeUglyAds

Want to be a top .01% Meta advertiser? Bookmark this: Beyond media buying and creative, here's a sample of website reports/things to check daily for changes/trends/anomalies/issues that could help better understand ad performance changes: Shopify (have these all in one dashboard): - New customer sales over time - Total sales by channel - Conversion rate over time - Checkout conversion rate over time - Sales by discount codes (seeing the top codes by spend and if/when they’re turned off) - Sessions over time - Sessions & sales by landing page Also: - Website A/B split tests - Lead capture popup performance and tests - Percent of checkout orders with a subscription - Log of any changes made by any other teams (email, dev, CRO, SEO, search ads, etc) The better you track and understand all of these, the better you'll understand how and why most "random" shifts in performance aren't random at all. What else do you check every day outside of ad and creative performance?

I captured one of the greatest moments of my life and I was able to do it handsfree thanks to my new Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. I was able to be in the moment with my dad as we celebrated the series-winning grand slam for the Mets while also capturing it. This technology is incredible and underrated. A few thoughts: 1. It's incredible to playback moment from this FPV, it's like replaying a memory. 2. It will be interesting to see if and how more people adopt this kind of wearable camera. 3. Content shot like this is already relatable, and can work in ads, but I wonder how much more relevant and common it will get as more people use wearable cameras. 5. I'm eager to shoot ads with these, especially since "faceless" ads have been crushing lately (h/t @alexgoughcooper) 6. This technology is still new and will only get better. I'll be very interested to see what other future wearable cameras/devices come to the market. (Oh and this message is not sponsored or affiliated with Meta or Ray-Ban in any way, I bought the glasses with my own money)

What's your favorite service/app for creating editing videos for ads? I'll go first: CapCut

Performance ads can drive more brand value than brand ads can drive performance value. Discuss...

This is a big deal for Meta advertisers. I’m seeing Incremental Attribution reporting live in many ad accounts. And I expect some shady agencies are about to get exposed. Unsurprisingly, incremental results usually fall between 1-day and 7-day click, no matter your attribution setting. And there’s very little relationship to 1-day view conversions. If you’re optimizing to 7dc1dv and calling that performance, you’re in for a reality check. The gap between reported conversions and actual incremental ones might be bigger than you think. One of the biggest red flags is accounts using 7dc1dv without excluding existing customers. The difference between 7dc1dv and incremental in these cases can be huge, showing how non-incremental it really is to target your own customers with view-through-optimized campaigns. And somehow, Meta shipped this with zero fanfare. No announcement. No popup. No bolding/highlight. This is the kind of change that should come with flashing lights. It completely changes how we interpret ad performance. Have you seen this in your account yet? Anything surprising? (Only works for results from this month forward.)

I left my great job at an amazing agency to take a break and reset. I was burnt out. I needed a break from Slack, clients, small tweaks, corporate tedium, and having to explain my decisions. I'm taking a couple weeks to relax, get my life in order, and figure out what's next.

Stop making ads. Start making relevant content that sells. The gap between these is growing.

Is there a German word for that feeling when you lose a client to another agency and still have access to the account so you can watch their ad performance tank? Agenturdesasterfreude?

Attention Meta advertisers: Learn how to control your ad targeting, view reporting breakdowns, and set specific UTMs for Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC) with this helpful guide:

If you're running paid social ads, your organic content impacts performance more than you probably realize. Users click your profile to learn more about your brand and scan the most recent posts. If ad performance improves or dips, check your recent organic content.

After yesterday's outage, based on past experience with similar issues, I would expect Meta to pay out refunds in 4-8 weeks, but if you want to increase the likelihood of a refund for you and for everyone, you must report the issue to Meta reps and/or support. To make it simpler for you, I've put together instructions, screenshots, and what you can say to support. Please bookmark and share this! Meta does not read these tweets or care what's happening in the community. The only way Meta can understand the scope of this issue is if we all report it. If you have a rep, complain and demand a refund. If you don't have a rep, please go through the support channel. The only way Meta can understand this issue is if we all report it. Paste in this bit (or something like it) here: "My campaigns overspent their budgets and seemed to ignore their cost caps yesterday due to a confirmed widespread Meta ad delivery outage, causing campaigns to spend more than expected and did so extremely inefficiently, causing me to lose money." You should then see this option to "claim refund for ad spend": Then you choose your ad account, and pick "other ad issue" You'll then be able to write another message, where I would just paste the same blurb from earlier and then include this screenshot of the Meta Status Page: Start the chat with support where you should confirm your ad account ID and again paste the same blurb from above, and I would also include something like this: "I understand that spend and performance can naturally fluctuate, however this was a widespread outage that caused significant financial losses for every advertiser I know. I expect my accounts to be refunded for the amounts of overspend and inefficient spend." Start uploading any screenshots of evidence of your bad performance. If you have multiple accounts, you might want to provide all of the account ID's in case they can help for more than just one. Then politely answer any questions support asks and remember that they probably are not as familiar with Meta ads as you are and are likely not aware of the outage yesterday. Hopefully you'll get to a point where they ask for the amount you are requesting for a refund. If you have estimates of what you think was lost, share that amount, but don't be greedy, use a realistic estimate based on recent past performance. This is our best chance at getting the refunds we deserve. I hope you found this helpful! Please repost or share this with your peers, and if you don't already follow me or @MetaBizStatus (the automated account I set up that reports Meta outages), please do!

Greetings from Brooklyn dad life

Huge ASC update coming soon! You'll be able to define your "engaged customers" in addition to your existing customers using custom audiences in your ad account settings. This means you'll be able to see reporting breakdowns for new, engaged, and existing customers by using the "audience segments" breakdown. These breakdowns are really exciting because it gives advertisers the best look into the black box of how the system optimizes budgets to hot, warm, and colder audiences. I'm eager to see what (if any) controls will be offered at this engaged customers level. I'm also very interested to see how advertisers will use this segment differently. -Are "engaged customers" people who visited your site in the last day, the last 14 days, or the last 180 days? -Maybe it's not visitors and it's only users who took actions like added to cart. -Maybe it's users who engaged with your page in the last day? The answer is probably some combination of some of these, but it will be a fun topic for media buyers in the coming months. I wonder if beta testing of this has been causing so much turbulence on Meta lately or if this is unrelated.

"The algorithm didn't like that ad." No. The *audience* didn't like that ad.

If I can effectively spend $600k+ in a month with just 2 Facebook campaigns, so can you.

Do not make changes to your website without informing whoever is running your ads. Any change to your website needs to be tracked and reported to the media buyer.

Clever ads: Marketers love 'em Consumers ignore 'em

Negative comments on ads can be a signal that your ads are working well. It confirms two things: 1. You got people to pay attention 2. You made people feel something

I used to like 4x5 as a catchall for all video ads and 1x1 for statics, but I'm generally doing 9x16 with a built-in 4x5 or 1x1 safe zone. Images: 9x16 with a 1x1 safe zone Video: 9x16 with a 4x5 safe zone The goal is to make the most compatible ad across as many placements possible, but I avoid placement customization as much as possible. I occasionally stray from 9x16 if wanted/needed and to test against my own beliefs/biases. What are you using and seeing work?

I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs. I will not turn off ad tests early due to high CPMs or CPCs.

Name a DTC brand you look to for ad inspiration.

4. The free shipping threshold fundamentally works, but works best when it's easier and worthwhile for the customer to cross the threshold. Try suggested upsells in the cart to get customers to easily add something that helps cross the free shipping threshold without shopping.

RIP to the millions of dollars and hours of productivity lost today due to FB's ad pausing bug 💸

I took another call from a Meta "Marketing Pro" and it was completely useless for me. I asked if he could tell me about the new 1-day engaged-view option in 'compare attribution settings' and he had no clue what I was talking about. I don't understand why Meta's own employees (or whatever these "Pro's" are) don't know as much about their own platform as DTC Twitter. It's not that hard. In what way are these "Pro's" at anything aside from getting advertisers to spend in ways that are more beneficial to Meta's agenda/revenue? It sucks how little training and resources Meta gives to these people and still call's them "Pro's". It literally makes me trust the entire Meta org even less.

Great creative can make terrible media buying look great. Great media buying cannot make terrible creative work.

Innovative design by Meta's AI. I really enjoy the 3/4 zip + belly button access zip combo.

Obsess over the first frame of your ads. Obsess over the top of the frame of your ads. Obsess over the first word(s) people will see/hear in your ads. Make it relevant and make it matter to your audience.

To win in modern advertising, you need to think like a con artist. No, I don't mean that you should break any laws! I mean, you need to be a chameleon. You need to know how to blend into your surroundings. If you fail, your audience will know and you'll stand out for the wrong reasons, getting ignored/skipped by users' subconscious ad blockers. I actually think of advertising as pulling off an elaborate cognitive heist. You're bypassing filters, borrowing trust, and guiding perception without resistance. Oceans 11 Catch Me If You Can American Hustle Matchstick Men These movies feature heists/cons and focus on the nuance of looking and feeling the part to sneak past people unsuspected, earn people's trust, and get away with it all. Study them to understand how and why the small details can matter to your audience. Your ability to be a con artist or chameleon can be what makes or breaks your ads.

License plate official. I'm that guy.

Hiring an experienced "creative strategist" who understands creative and performance is virtually impossible. Plenty claim they do, but few can walk the walk.

New FB ads feature 🎉 I haven't seen this before in FB, but I'd recommend anyone who has it available in their Experiments page to activate it: Free ongoing monthly or quarterly Brand Lift Monitoring. I've run many brand lift studies and I strongly recommend them to get an additional understanding of your ads' brand impact beyond directly attributable sales. This new feature seems like a great way to set it and forget it so you can always have brand lift running in the background and never need to keep manually recreating new ones. While you won't get super granular info about what ads are working best, being able to track changes in brand lift over time is extremely valuable and can help you evaluate and validate whether the ads you're running and changes you're making are benefiting or hurting your brand over time. You can find it in your Experiments tab if it's available for your account (I've found it in most of my accounts) Have you tried this yet? If this is interesting to you, I'm thinking about sharing some results and insights from past brand lift tests with my newsletter (link in bio)...

13 tools you need to get you through this BFCM and Q4:

Some big news... I've been in this social ad game a really long time, since 2008. As I've learned and grown over the years, I've loved sharing valuable tips with fellow marketers and I've been floored by how many of you have found success from the simple principles of making ugly ads and other nuggets I've shared. So many people have asked me "so when are you going to launch your course?" and to be honest, I've never really seen myself as a course guy. Over time, a lot of really smart and supportive close friends have encouraged me to put something out there for everyone to learn from. Since I can't work with every single marketer and brand 1 on 1, the best thing I can do is to put together something everyone can benefit from. So, here I am, extremely excited (and a bit nervous) to announce my upcoming course... Introducing: Building Ads with Barry Struggling to create high-converting ads that scale? Ad account begging for fresh creative, but don’t know where to start? Confused and misguided by tons of info on making good ads? If this sounds like you, this is the most important thing you’ll read all year! Here’s why… The bar for getting attention is higher than ever. The bar for keeping attention is higher than ever. The bar for getting people to act is higher than ever. ...But with the right system, you can make authentic, relatable and relevant ads that get attention. Make them quickly. And not just make great ads, but keep making great ads. But here’s the thing… People hate ads. In my first live course, I’ll share the exact system I use to make ads people don’t hate. Join me to learn how! 👉 Building Ads with Barry™ 1. Stuck for creative ideas? Become an Ad Creation Machine. Creatively exhausted? No ideas or inspiration? CEO’s bad idea? Meta Ads guru’s newest hack failed? Team confused by ad-making info overload? This course will transform you into an Ad Creation Machine. I’ll show you how to start with empathy for the consumer: think how they think. Speak how they speak. Consume what they consume. The ads will write themselves. You’ll learn my proven brainstorming techniques, including the simple yet powerful post-it note method. By the end of the course, you’ll be able to rapidly generate an abundance of (AI-Enhanced) ad concepts and iterations, ensuring you never run out of creative fuel. 2. “I’m struggling with making ads that scale.” You can’t sleep because of how much time and money you’re wasting on creative production, polishing ads, but still, your accounts are underperforming. In Building Ads with Barry™ you’ll learn how to create ads that get attention and drive action from cold audiences. Ads that don’t look or feel like traditional ads, making them more relatable and relevant to consumers. These are the ads people don’t hate. You’ll go from struggling with performance to building a variety of winning ads that can scale and work together effectively. 3. Media buying: There’s a lot of bad guidance out there. My media buying brain is based on studying billions in ad spend and managing over $600 million personally. You’ll tap into my media buying brain LIVE - no gimmicks, no hacks, just deep-seated yet simple principles. You’ll uncover how the system works and how to get it to work better for you. I’ll show you exactly what I look for in ad accounts. You’ll develop an understanding of WHY things work and don’t work. You’ll make confident decisions and apply changes in ad accounts to squeeze more performance for your business. Here’s how and why I can help you overcome these challenges… Remember when Facebook ads were only in the right column? That's when I started running ads. Since then, I've managed over $600 million in social ad spend for brands like AT&T, Toyota, Kraft, and Microsoft and more recently focused on direct-to-consumer social growth advertising, creative, and CRO for some of the biggest startup names in the world like: True Classic, AG1, Lumin Skin, Harry’s, The Perfect Jean, Tushy and more! The course features special guest teachers leading live workshops: @DenneyDara and @alexgoughcooper . Course program: Everything you need to become an Ad Creation Machine. ✅ WEEK 1: STRATEGY – No BS Audience Research and Creative Strategy (AI-Enhanced) ✅ WEEK 2: CREATIVE – Creating Ads People Don’t Hate ✅ WEEK 3: MEDIA BUYING – How the System Works and Getting the System to Work Better for You ✅ WEEK 4: PERFORMANCE – How to Optimize Performance How it works: Building Ads with Barry™ starts February 3 and runs for 4 weeks. Instead of a passive video course, expect a best-in-class interactive learning experience with me and 100+ fellow marketers. 🎓 Learn directly from me in 20+ hours of LIVE workshops, Q&A sessions, and exclusive recordings across 4 weeks - starting February 3, 2025. 🎓 Join 100+ marketers in weekly feedback sessions, ad critique circles, and hands-on projects to improve your ad performance. 🎓 Master 4 core modules: Strategy, Creative, Media Buying, and Performance Optimization - with content not found on YouTube. 🎓Get $1,000+ in bonuses including templates, a 12-month access to all materials, and a LinkedIn-verified certificate. Let’s wrap it up. After the course you’ll: Generate winning ad concepts rapidly. Create authentic, relatable ads that grab attention. Scale your successful ads effectively. Boost your ad account performance with confidence. If you’re ready to create high-converting ads that scale, join now. I don’t know what your’re waiting for! 😄 Early bird pricing: December 2-13. Save $500 – pay only $990 (before the price goes up to $1,490). Limited to 50 spots at this price. I'm so pumped it's finally happening. As you can see, it’s not just me. 😉 👉 Join Building Ads with Barry™ now via the link in my bio!

I've been in ads for years and this is the first time this has ever happened to me

Not throwing shade at @codyplof here, but this is a privileged and biased take that doesn’t apply to most people reading it. While Cody’s take is worth considering, it’s important to note his position: A variety of agencies have probably offered Cody heavily discounted (or perhaps free) services because agencies want to say they worked with him and Jones Road and/or to hopefully get promoted by his sizable audience on Twitter, newsletters, and podcasts, so they can win more business. Any agency working with Cody will likely provide him top-tier service so he can speak highly of them. Agencies leveraging big-name clients for credibility is an age-old strategy. The average brand (or follower of Cody’s) does not have the luxury of this kind of leverage to command multiple agencies to get preferred flat fees and top-tier teams from those agencies. Agency teams, particularly the flat fee ones, are less motivated to do great work for your average brand. They have no incentive or motivation to go above or beyond for most clients. Flat fee agencies make more money by doing the bare minimum contractually necessary using formulaic approaches and doing just enough to prevent the client from firing them. If you have a smaller brand and budget, your brand will not receive the same level of attention as Jones Road Beauty. If you’re going to use a flat fee agency, your best bet to get the most out of them is by giving them lots of direction and close monitoring since they’re not motivated to do more than what’s contracted. In my experience, while this gets the best bang for your buck, this sucks for both sides ^ The agency feels micro-managed, and the client feels like they have to provide all the ideas and push everything along. Further, flat fee agencies are less inclined to disagree with you and fight for what’s right. They’re more inclined to just do what you say. Many clients want this anyway, but it is rarely what's best for them. It creates an echo chamber that causes stagnation over time. A good agency should be motivated to challenge your thinking, pushing for diversity in ideas rather than simply agreeing with everything you say. Healthy debates often lead to breakthroughs in strategy. You should want your agency to disagree with you, not just do what you say. In marketing, diversity of ideas will always win, and yes-men will always lose. Good % of spend agencies require less hand-holding because they are mutually incentivized to help scale your business. This still requires proper guidance and goal-setting by the brand. You shouldn’t let a % of spend agency take complete control of your budgeting and goal setting unless you deeply trust them, and even then, you should be careful and work closely with them critically. I agree with Cody that media buying on its own probably shouldn’t be on % of spend (or if it is, at least a very low %). Media buying combined with other valuable expertise and execution in creative, CRO, and other valuable scale levers can certainly be worth paying % of spend. I’ve seen agencies transform and scale businesses. % of spend makes sense for creative because it aligns incentives in that they should create ads that scale effectively, not just make more ads more cheaply. Scaling your ads and your business should be the goal. % of spend isn’t perfect or infinitely scalable, but it’s a good proxy and is better aligned to getting great results when working with the right partners. (Also, they don’t get paid as much if they don't do great work.) A flat X% of spend doesn’t always make sense, and I recommend setting spend level % tiers or renegotiating the deal over time. Agency partnerships are best when everyone wins and everyone is happy. If you’re not satisfied, say something about it and try to fix it. Also, remember that agencies generate significant value for your business that your business keeps and they (typically) don’t get equity in your business. You can fire them at any time while keeping the value they generated from their expertise and creativity. That’s why good agencies charge a lot and they should. Note: While I called out Cody for being biased, I’m also biased! I own a piece of Adcrate, a performance creative agency that charges on % of spend. I also do media buying and creative/CRO strategy and execution for % of spend. (It’s the only way you can work with me aside from my hourly consulting rate.) I’ve been in the industry for over a decade and have worked on both sides of the equation in various contract structures. There’s no correct answer between flat fee and % of spend agencies. From my experience, I typically recommend % of spend, but there are plenty of decent flat fee agencies and plenty of mediocre or predatory % of spend ones. It’s hard to choose the right agency for your business and you should weigh your options carefully. % of spend might work for you or flat fee might, it really depends on how what your business needs. Be wary of any deals that sound too good to be true. My best advice is to make sure your incentives are aligned. You’ll rest easier knowing the agency can make better decisions on your behalf if when you win, they win and vice versa.

Your job isn't to increase CTR, your job is to grow the business.

How to beat 90% of Meta advertisers: 1. Optimize for the most valuable goal that gets enough conversion data (typically Purchase) 2. Don't turn off ads based on any individual ad-level metrics, including CPA, ROAS, CPM, CTR, CPC, etc 3. Study the ads the system spends the most on. Empathize with the consumers who saw it in their feed, clicked, and took action to better understand what about it might be working. 4. Make more ads like those ^, but different

Y2K for marketers

I'm sorry, but if you don't have any ad sets excluding recent visitors then you're going to struggle to make ads for colder audiences and grow your business. The bigger your business gets, the bigger this problem becomes.