Hi Reader Last time I told you how our “lazy” variations crushed the bold new ads in the account. What I didn’t say? If we hadn’t figured that out, the whole account would’ve gone off a cliff. I didnt realize how close to a crazy drop we were. It’s easy to think ‘haha lazy’ - and move on. and hard to appreciate how hard it is to build a rock-solid testing system. This is why I see most teams(even well intentioned) bleed out. Because this is what their tests can look like: No structure 20 new...

Hi Reader In 2013, I was running user acquisition for a mobile app called Bingo Bash. Our monthly ad budget? $1.75 million. When I’d just joined, I honestly couldn’t believe it was humanly possible for a single product to spend that much. I thought Bingo was for a tiny niche of middle-aged women. But this was the wild west of mobile growth: when platforms were exploding ...and anything was possible. So we spent. Scaled up. And one ad quietly started hogging a huge chunk of that budget. This...

Hi Reader After I sent that last email about building on winning ads… I got hit with some replies that all sounded kinda like this: “Okay… but what about new ideas?” “What about new formats? New audiences?” And look: I get it. Most marketers hear “optimize what’s working” ….and just assume you’ve stopped trying to grow. But here’s the truth: that is a false dichotomy.... The smartest marketers dont pick... between optimizing what's working and what's new. They build off what works AND go...