Process & onboarding
Live in three weeks. Scaling from week four.
Onboarding is a fixed sequence with approval gates — not a vibe. You always know which week you're in, what we're doing, and what happens next.
Discovery call
Before anything is signed: a straight conversation about your brand, your numbers and whether we're the right fit. We take on a deliberately small roster — if we can't move your numbers, we say so on this call and part as friends.
- Your products, markets and margins
- Current spend, results, what's been tried
- What success looks like in 90 days
- Honest fit verdict — both directions
Audit & access
We get read access to everything and produce a written audit: account structure, tracking health, funnel, unit economics and creative history. It ends in a verdict — what's broken, what's salvageable, what's missing.
- Ad accounts, pixel / CAPI, analytics, store backend
- Break-even model per product and market
- Creative library review — tested vs untouched
- Written audit document, delivered Friday
Strategy & creative plan
You receive the full plan before anything spends: campaign architecture, budget plan, the first creative testing matrix and the exact thresholds we'll judge everything against. Nothing is vague, so nothing is arguable later.
- Campaign architecture per product and geo
- Testing matrix — angles, hooks, formats, budget per test
- Kill / scale thresholds, agreed in writing
- Creative briefs issued to production
Launch
Campaigns go live with conservative budgets and tight monitoring. The first days are for data, not verdicts — we let structures exit learning before judging them, and we don't touch what's delivering.
- Launch QA — events firing, policy review passed
- Daily monitoring against agreed thresholds
- No panic edits — learning phase respected
- First weekly report lands Friday
Scale & weekly rhythm
The permanent operating mode: test, read, kill, scale, report. Budget follows proof. Creative is queued ahead of scaling steps so the account never starves. You get the numbers weekly and a call every two weeks.
- Weekly written report — spend, revenue, changes, next moves
- Bi-weekly 60-minute strategy call
- New creative queued before every budget step
- Quarterly roadmap review
What we need from you
A short list, once.
- Access to ad accounts, pixel and analytics (we send a checklist)
- Store or booking-engine backend access, read-only is fine
- Your real unit economics — product cost, shipping, fees
- Brand assets: logos, photography, past creatives if any
- One decision-maker we can reach within a business day
What you get, every week
The same view we work from.
- Written weekly performance report — one page, no fluff
- Spend, revenue, ROAS and CPA against agreed targets
- What changed this week, and why
- What happens next week — before it happens
- Bi-weekly strategy call to challenge the plan
Questions we hear on every discovery call
Straight answers.
What does the retainer cost?
Is there a minimum contract?
Do you guarantee results?
Who owns the ad accounts and data?
How fast until we see results?
What size of brand do you work with?
Week 1, in practice
The audit is a document, not a conversation.
Every engagement opens the same way: read access to everything, one week of work, and a written verdict you keep whether or not we continue. This is a real findings summary, anonymised.
| Finding | Area | Impact | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pixel & CAPI firing un-deduplicated — 71% match rate | Tracking | Optimising on invented data | Critical |
| 14 overlapping campaigns bidding against each other | Structure | Inflated CPMs, split learning | Critical |
| Retargeting window at 180 days, no exclusions | Structure | Paying to reach people who already bought | High |
| Two creatives carrying 91% of spend | Creative | One fatigue event from a bad month | High |
| Merchant Center: 41 SKUs disapproved, “missing GTIN” | Feed | Shopping inventory invisible | High |
| Mobile PDP loads in 4.1s | Funnel | Conversion rate, not impressions | Medium |
| No break-even model — target ROAS chosen by feel | Economics | No basis for any kill decision | Critical |
| 7 findings | 4 areas | 3 critical | Delivered Friday, week 1 |
Week 3, in practice
Launch QA before a dollar moves.
Campaigns don't go live because a calendar says week three. They go live when the events fire clean, the policy review passes and every campaign has a threshold written against it.
Launch QA — Events ManagerDeduplication above 95% and a Purchase match quality above 8/10 before anything scales. Fixed in week one, verified in week three.
→ swipe the panel sideways to see every column
| Campaign | Delivery | Budget | Purchases | Reach | Impressions | Cost per result | Amount spent | Purchase ROAS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
VEL · A+ Shopping — Hero serum Sales · Advantage+ Shopping | ActiveSales | $1,540/day | 3,485 | 1,388,214 | 3,609,412 | $12.02 | $41,900 | 4.40 |
VEL · Retargeting — Engaged 14d Sales · Manual · Custom audience | ActiveSales | $720/day | 2,843 | 186,442 | 1,742,108 | $7.67 | $21,800 | 6.90 |
VEL · Retention — Past buyers · new SKU Sales · Manual · Customer list | ActiveSales | $400/day | 1,876 | 94,318 | 812,540 | $6.45 | $12,100 | 8.20 |
VEL · Prospecting — Creative test lab Sales · Manual · Broad | ActiveSales | $620/day | 961 | 742,190 | 1,214,806 | $17.07 | $16,400 | 3.10 |
VEL · Prospecting — Founder story Sales · Manual · Broad | LearningSales | $260/day | 152 | 61,220 | 98,410 | $13.95 | $2,120 | 3.80 |
VEL · Prospecting — Clinical-proof angle Sales · Manual · Broad | Off — killed day 9Not delivering | — paused | 150 | 118,904 | 196,330 | $27.87 | $4,180 | 1.90 |
| Results from 6 campaigns | $3,540/day | 9,467 | 2,204,908 | 7,673,606 | $10.40 | $98,500 | 5.08 |
Launch QA — Ads ManagerSeparated jobs, conservative budgets, and a written threshold behind every line. The account you see in week three is the account you keep.
→ swipe the panel sideways to see every column
Week 4 and forever
The weekly report, in full.
One page, every Friday. It says what we spent, what came back, what we changed and why, and what happens next week. This one contains a campaign we killed and a problem that wasn't the ads' fault.
Written so you could hand it to an accountant.
No screenshots of dashboards you can't interrogate. No “great momentum this week”. Numbers, decisions and reasons — in the order that matters.
What changed this week
- Scaled Retargeting — Engaged 14d from $560 to $720/day. Seventh straight day above target; re-read Wednesday.
- Killed Prospecting — Clinical-proof angle at $4,180 spent, 1.9x. It had three times break-even CPA to prove itself and didn't.
- Launched two new hooks on the winning body (Variant B routine). Both exited learning Friday.
- Fixed a Merchant Center disapproval on 14 SKUs — “missing GTIN”. Back to serving within 36 hours.
- Flagged: mobile page speed on the hero PDP is 4.1s. That's costing conversion rate, not impressions. Detail in the appendix.
What happens next week
- Step the Hero serum campaign to $1,780/day if Tuesday holds above 4.2x.
- Brief three gifting-angle creatives ahead of the September drop — queued before the budget moves, not after.
- Rebuild the non-brand Search campaign around the four terms that actually converted last month.
- Page-speed fixes on the hero PDP with your developer — we'll send the exact list.
The rules, in advance
Four verdicts, agreed before launch.
These thresholds are written into the week-2 plan you approve. Once they're signed off, they're not up for debate at 11pm on a bad Tuesday — which is exactly the point.
It earns more budget
The structure has held target for seven consecutive days with creative already queued behind it. Budget steps up — never more than 30% at a time.
It stays exactly as it is
Delivering, near target, still inside its learning window. The hardest discipline in media buying is leaving a working campaign alone.
The account is not the problem
Traffic is fine, the page isn't. We stop buying harder and go after the offer, the landing page or the feed instead.
It dies, even if we built it
Spent its full test budget and missed the threshold agreed in writing before launch. No defending, no “one more day”.
Next step
Tell us what you are trying to scale.
A short note about your brand, your market and your current monthly ad spend is enough. We reply within one business day — by email only.