Engineer first. That's the whole trick.
I trained as an automotive engineer and worked for Ford and Delphi in the UK. You don't ship a part until you know why the last one failed. I run ad accounts the same way.
My email signature at my longest client has said Chief Marketing Officer since 2022. It isn't in my contract. It's what the job turned into.
I invoice before I start. I learned that one the expensive way. And I don't answer on weekends: those belong to my wife and our two kids. Monday to Friday, you get an answer the same day.
The longer version$34.5M
in Meta sales for one US jewelry brand since 2020, on $5.77M of spend
$12.15M
from SMS, 2022 to 2025, on $187K of sending cost
$3.05M
from email in the last 12 months, on $13K of platform cost
9.8x
the purchases for a Romanian K-beauty retailer since I took over, at 6.06 ROAS
Three dashboards. One person pays.
It's Monday. The agency report says 4.2 ROAS. Shopify says sales are flat. Your accountant asks where the $60,000 went.
It isn't your fault. Every platform grades its own homework. Meta counts a sale if someone scrolled past your ad yesterday and bought today. Your agency counts it too. Your bank doesn't.
In 2024 I put Google Analytics next to Meta for a client. My conclusion fit in two words: "Everyone lies." That's why every channel I run gets its own promo code. Then we can see which one actually brought the money.
2019: a chatbot nobody believed in.
A US pearl company was selling $362K a year online. Nobody in ecommerce was selling through Messenger at that scale, so that's what I tested. $5,355 in ads came back as $64,427. ManyChat asked if they could publish it as a case study.
Then I took over all of paid social. Then SMS. Then the email list, which I started by deleting 40,000 people who had stopped opening. It made $3.05M in the last twelve months.
2022 was ugly. iOS 14 broke tracking for everyone and ROAS fell to 4.30. It's in the chart because it happened. Every year since, it has gone up.
The owner is happy around $2,000 a day of ads. My job isn't to spend more of his money. It's to make that $2,000 work harder every year: 7.82 so far in 2026.
Client P&L sheet (2019 to 2025) and Meta Ads Manager (2026, Jan 1 to Oct 19, 2026, screenshot). Meta-attributed sales; attribution windows follow Meta's defaults for each year.
Ten recolors of one ad are still one ad.
Meta reads every ad to decide who sees it. Change the color and it shows the same ad to the same people. Change the idea and it goes looking for new buyers. Here are eight different ideas from brands I don't work for, each still running after months.
Customer photo
Us vs them
Looks like a post
Before and after
Question or quiz
How it works
Founder letter
IllustrationMeta Ad Library, scan of 28 Sept 2026. Brands I don't work for. All 952, sorted by concept and explained.
"Does it only work for pearls?"
Fair question. Different country, different buyer, different currency. I took over this retailer's ads in December 2025. Same months, this year against last: purchases went from 1,347 to 13,161, at 6.06 ROAS against a breakeven of 3.5. Store revenue in GA4, which counts every channel, was up 33% in the first half.
Meta Ads Manager, account totals, Jan 1 to Oct 18, 2026 vs 2025. GA4, Jan 1 to Jun 16 2026 vs 2025.
And before these two: 35+ Meta ad accounts since 2019, across jewelry, skincare, fashion, restaurants, gyms, dental, wellness and events.
- Purchases, 2025
- 1,347
- Purchases, 2026
- 13,161
- ROAS, 2026
- 6.06
- Breakeven ROAS
- 3.5
The first month is boring on purpose.
There's no universal account structure. I run accounts with structures that contradict each other, and both make money. What doesn't change is the order of the work.
Diagnose
Ads, store, GA4, email, SMS. I read the reviews and learn the product as if I had to sell it door to door.
Fix what's measured
Pixel and server events, deduplication, and your breakeven ROAS from your real margins. Every decision runs on that number.
New ideas, not reskins
New customers come from a new buyer, a new occasion, a new format. Not from the same ad in another color.
Scale on your numbers
Budgets move when the money says so. Retention gets built alongside, because the second order is where the margin is.
The tractor rule
Every account has one ad that looks average on the dashboard and pulls the whole account behind it. Most media buyers kill it on day four because the ROAS isn't pretty. I call it the tractor, and I leave it alone.
From his inbox, unprompted.
"Adrian is part of the family!"
"Great work as usual!"
"Thanks for the research and honest input."
"Thank you for continuing to push!"
Three ways in. Prices on the page.
What it costs, before you ask.
Free
Fit call
30 minutes, by application. We find out if I can move your numbers. If I can't, you hear that from me, on the call.
Apply$1,000
The audit
Everything I'd do in month one, written down and yours to keep. If you don't think it was worth the money, you get it back.
See the auditFrom $5,000/mo
Monthly
I run your Meta account myself, with the whole business in view. Email, SMS, creative production or leading your team are quoted on the call, in writing. Five brands at a time, month to month.
What's included