Jake Abrams

I help 7-9 figure DTC brands with revenue & CAC | I write The Process, a newsletter about modern growth marketing | Sold 100K+ personal cooling devices

Consumer Marketing & Growth Leader.  

Brands I've worked with:

Caraway
Jones Road Beauty
Skylight
Canopy
Insurify
Naked Wines
Rugiet
Sundays For Dogs
Momofuku
Sunday Lawn Care

100+ others

Book a discovery call in the featured section below 👇

Founder

The lean DTC growth marketing partner that I wish existed when I was an in-house marketing lead. 

At Odyssey, we help 7 & 8-figure DTC brands increase revenue & ROAS by finding the right combination of:

- Messaging
- Audience targeting
- Media channel allocation
- Creative

https://www.growodyssey.com/

Comfrt Clothing, Frost Buddy, and Underbrush are all using the same strategy to consistently go viral on TikTok while building massive creative pipeline.

Some marketers call it "nichemaxxing." I've created a 19-page playbook to help you deploy the exact same strategy for your brand.

Here's what's inside the Brand Nichemaxxing playbook:

- 4-tier content matrix from AI to hero content
- PDA framework for building micropersonas
- Full tech stack: Higgsfield, Genviral, Octo, Snowball, Discord, etc...
- Creator outreach templates that actually get replies
- Cost structures for every creator tier
- Winner selection framework for scaling organic to paid

The idea is simple: own the interest graph first, then amplify with paid.

Most brands do it backwards. They spend on ads before they understand what resonates.

This playbook walks you through 6 phases: niche definition, account setup, content architecture, creator recruitment, production rhythm, and measurement.

Get the 19-page playbook for free. No email gate. Just take it and use it.

1. Follow me
2. Like this post
3. Comment "playbook" and I'll send you the link.

Nichemaxxing across paid & organic social for 8-9 figure consumer brands | Writing about AI & advertising | Sold 100k+ personal cooling devices

This AI agent analyzed 12,500+ customer reviews and support tickets for an 8-figure DTC brand, created its own documentation for overcoming objections across hundreds of SKUS, then just started doing it...directly on the PDP.

Using AI like this can mean the difference between a 2.8% CVR and a 1.7% CVR. 

Essentially an agent that lives on your site, is trained on your catalog and every meaningful customer touchpoint, that can answer every question in 20 seconds or less.

These agents can handle conversion killers like:

Product fit: "Will this luggage fit in Delta's overhead bin?"
Comparisons: "Hard shell vs soft-shell for business travel?"
Technical specs: "Does it have 360° spinning wheels?"

I'm giving away the an 8-minute Loom video showing use cases for this type of agent, plus a guide to setting this up on your Shopify site in 15 minutes.

To get the video and guide:

1. Connect with & follow me
2. Comment "agent" below
3. I'll DM you the link

#DialogPartner

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The smartest people at Meta will tell you to build ads around motivators, not just micropersonas. 

I like this shift to motivators, because it forces you to start the creative process from a better spot.

Personas make you think about demographics. You end up with a bulleted list about a fictional human named Sarah who likes yoga and shops at Whole Foods. Nothing about that tells you what makes Sarah pull our her credit card and spend $150. 

Motivators do, though. 

When I do creative strategy now, I start by mapping out the actual motivators behind someone would buy or be interested in a brand. 

So for Sarah, maybe it's "I need an outfit that works for the December holiday party."

Then for each motivator, you map one core benefit that delivers the solution. That way, you build the creative around that feeling, not around "Sarah."

Then I do it for another motivator. And another....

By the time you've worked through 4-5 of them, you've got a full portfolio of creative assets, each built around a different reason to buy. Different themes, different visuals, different emotional angles. All for the same product.

That's the part people miss, I think. You're not trying to reach different types of people. You're trying to speak to different reasons to take action. A single product can have five completely different ads that all make total sense.

I feel like that's how you scale creative without running out of ideas or making yourself crazy with format multiplication.

Turn 35 today. Sheesh.

Here are 35 takeaways I have from the last 6 years as a "non-business" person building a business with 30+ people:

1. Expect daily disappointment
2. It's ok to be demanding if that's the clear standard
3. The ideas in your head are smart
4. Respect the audience's attention
5. Show undeniable proof
6. Work with challengers
7. Build systems for 50x output
8. Stay on the forefront of technology
9. Extreme bias for action
10. Creative generalists win now
11. Get over fear of speaking to your phone
12. AI + bad taste = epic fail
13. Rip structures, use original thoughts
14. Incentives drive everything
15. Pretty much everyone is winging it
16. Overcome initial content creation friction
17. Grow your own accounts first
18. Authenticity on Zoom is a superpower
19. Daily follow-ups with blockers, Mr Beast style
20. Work should feel like video game
21. Non-business people build differently
22. Ideas die without proper execution
23. Attention is the most sacred currency
24. Charge more than feels comfortable
25. Comfortable teams ship mediocre work
26. Systems unlock exponential output
27. Tech resistors always lose
28. Speed + direction = unfair advantage
29. Generalists are more important than specialists
30. Loom videos beat meetings
31. Tools don't fix shitty taste
32. You can only get so far ripping other's ideas
33. It's ok to start ugly
34. Practice what you preach, or else you're a fraud
35. Build leverage before you need it

---

Feel free to follow along as I document the path to building a $10M+ agency in 2026 by helping 50+ brands manifest the next era of paid social.

https://lnkd.in/epcpxd4V

I built a 250-video visual script library application in a day with Replit, Airtable, and Gemini. 

So I recorded an 8-minute Loom video outlining the entire process. 

I'm not an engineer. I did run marketing for a coding bootcamp, and maybe that experience helped me overcome the fear of "being technical."

Here's what I cover in the Loom video:

- Why my Airtable database was useless until I made this
- How I used Replit to put a visual frontend over raw data
- The hover-to-play feature that made this actually usable 
- How it auto-analyzes any TikTok or Dropbox link in ~60 seconds
- The prompt I use to extract hooks, transcripts, and full scripts
- How we use it to rewrite winning ads for new brands
- The N8N nightmare I replaced with this

I've been in marketing since 2013 and run a creative agency working with 50+ brands. This is the internal tool I wish I had years ago. 

Want the full 8-minute Loom walkthrough?

Follow or connect with me
Like this post
Comment "Build" 

And I'll send it over.

---

Repost for priority access.

I know an AI agent that sat on a DTC brand's PDP for 2 weeks, captured every question from shoppers, then showed the brand exactly why visitors weren't converting.

Using AI like this can mean the difference between a 2.8% CVR and a 1.7% CVR.

Essentially, this is an agent that lives on your product pages, answers questions in real time, and logs every conversation as a data point. After 2 weeks, you have a clear picture of what's blocking purchases within an easy-to-understand dashboard. 

These agents can handle conversion killers like:

- Compatibility: "Is this compatible with my device?"
- Confusion: "What's the difference between X and Y?"
- Fit: "Will this actually work for me?"

85% of this feedback normally dies in chat logs. But agents like this can turn that data into an actionable CRO roadmap.

I'm giving away a step-by-step Notion document that explains exactly how to set up this system on your PDP’s… 

So you have AI handling conversations, running an analysis on why people didn't buy, and delivering that to you in a dashboard with visualizations.

Works for any Shopify brand doing $1M+. Free to install, takes ~15 minutes.

To get the Notion doc:

1. Connect with and follow me
2. Comment "insights" below
3. I'll DM you the link

#DialogPartner

One of our creators just hit 50k views on a single TikTok.

She has 6,500 followers. She's paid ~$500/month for ~25 posted TikToks plus bonuses based on views her content drives.

This creator is an actual customer. She had a real transformation with this product. The proof is undeniable in the video she posted, and that's why it worked.

You can't script something like this. You can't hire a generic UGC creator to fake it. You can't recreate it in Higgsfield.

She's in our Discord community, where we're sharing tips for going viral and building a community around helping people earn by sharing their authentic stories.

It's all real. No generic content or fake testimonials.

This is the nichemaxxing strategy for 2026.

Massive communities of real people within a specific niche who you coach to go viral on TikTok. Everybody wins.

You have to be doing this as a brand in 2026.

The creative bottleneck doesn’t exist in 2026.

Learn:

Claude
Octo
Wispr Flow
Snowball

Combine with:

Exceptional creative taste
Operational psycho-ness
Next-level communication skills

Might sound harsh, but you gotta figure it out or you'll get left behind.

It takes you way too long to write scripts, and it's not your fault. 

It's because you keep having to re-feed the context to your creative strategy copilot every single time, and that's extremely annoying to do. 

Instead, run use this 3-part architecture that I custom built out for my agency:

First, work backwards from a format you already know worked. Have Gemini analyze the entire video. 

Second, you pull that context into Claude, which already has project files about everything you need to know about the brand you're writing for.

Third, your Claude needs a set of overarching skills that sit within your Claude organization that tell it how to write like your agency or you. 

When you do this, the output is actually good. It's not a shitty first draft. 

Because Claude already has the direction...what made the original format work, how to write like the brand, and how to be good at creative strategy. 

That's the architecture.

I recorded a quick video walking through exactly how I set this up. Watch it if you're tired of re-explaining your Claude how to write like your brand or write like a real creative strategist.

Here's the embarrassing truth that a lot of "AI is replacing everything" bros haven't talked about honestly...

Making good AI video content at scale is actually kinda hard.

Getting prompts right is a skill. It takes time to develop. You have 8-12 seconds per scene. Iteration is slow. A lot of the output you get early on is going to be unusable and you're going to waste a lot of time. 

Compare that to certain types of content that are just genuinely faster to shoot on your phone.

For example: I've been making 7 talking head "yap" videos per week for my own TikTok that I've grown to 27k+ followers. I just pick up my phone and speak for 60-90 seconds. And then it's done.

Why would I spend the time to clone myself and try to recreate something with AI tools that will always feel slightly off, when it doesn't save me any time or cost? Plus people will hate me for AI-ing myself. 

How about if you're Comfrt Clothing, and your top performing TikTok affiliate videos are just Gen Z-ers in their bedrooms taking selfie videos? They just show off their hoodie, show off a few features, and add a caption. That's a 15-minute shoot on an iPhone.

There is no AI workflow that beats that for speed, cost, and authenticity.

So before you burn 20 hours crafting an AI workflow for videos that are easier to just shoot with your phone... ask yourself if it's actually worth it.

A Matthew McConaughey & Timothée Chalamet interview recently went viral, in which McConaughey said that the moral plea against AI is not strong enough and will lose out to the economic incentives.

No lies told there. 

But here's what might actually slow it down:

Everybody hates "AI passed off as real" content.

No major brand I know would unleash an army of AI influencers right now who are pretending to be real. That nuance is everything. The brand risk is enormous.

Maybe that changes in 10-15 years when Gen Z and Gen Alpha are the primary consumers and the cultural relationship with AI-generated content has shifted.

Impossible to actually know.

But in the next year? 

AI takes over certain categories, but humans retain control of most categories.

Because authenticity and emotional connection is still what builds brands. 

Faking it has massive consequences.

DTC brands, I would STOP making $300 UGC videos and immediately firing them into your ad account.

This used to be a logical strategy. But in 2026, you're missing the bigger opportunity.

I've worked with 100+ consumer brands, and so many are spending 100% of their time "creating content for paid", and 0% of their time deploying it organically first.

If your ad account is full of unspent creatives, do this instead:

- Scrape your customer reviews for content ideas using Motion (Creative Analytics) or Claude
- Scrape organic TikTok for winning angles using Snowball
- Talk to your ad account data using Octo
- Identify good creators with Meta creator marketplace
- Set up a Discord to manage and motivate them

Then:
- Get creators on performance deals where they post to their own accounts
- Build your own network of slideshow & faceless accounts
- Deploy every creative test organically first
- Prioritize putting paid spend behind content that earned organic views

Test this for 30-60 days.

You'll see massive improvements in creative volume & winning creatives while reducing wasted ad testing spend. Plus you'll build a massive halo that lifts your entire business. 

Let that drive which content deserves your paid budget.

You're stuck at $250k/month in Meta spend because you don't understand exactly what's happening inside the system you're feeding money into. 

Let me break down the 4-model architecture running your ads:

ANDROMEDA
This is the retrieval engine that scans tens of millions of ads to find candidates for each impression.

GEM
This is the ranking superbrain that takes Andromeda's pool and decides which ad wins the impression.

LATTICE
This is the consolidation layer that connects multiple ranking models and shares learnings across Feed, Reels, and objectives.

SEQUENCE LEARNING
This helps model user behavior over time. Not just one impression, the full sequence of actions before and after.

How they work together:
→ Andromeda retrieves 
→ GEM + Lattice rank 
→ Sequence learning personalizes.

What this means if you spend $250k+ / month as an 8-9 figure brands:

- Creative diversity is how you deliver ad candidates
- More variants = more signals = better matching
- The AI handles distribution, you handle inputs

You need operational willingness to hit quality + quantity + differentiation b/c that's what the entire system runs on.

I built my first real vibe coding app with Airtable, Replit, and Gemini. 

Process was:
- I built out this big Airtable databse
- Gemini analyzes any video and put the analysis in Airtable
- I created a front end for this using Replit

You can hover over the videos, and they auto play. You can open them up, and get the script. .You can even copy a prompt that you can preload into Claude
to do a rewrite of that video for your specific brand.

The prompt auto checks the project files in Claude that tell it how to write like that brand, and then it does a rewrite and gives you all this extra helpful context.

This was a massive game changer for my process of:

- Working backwards from a format
- Adapting it for the brands that I'm working with
- Applying my creative taste to edit the content in a human way afterward

"Content creators are toast, AI is going to replace all of you."

Here's why I believe this take is fundamentally wrong...

I run an AI-native creative agency. I use AI every single day. And I genuinely believe AI is one of the most important shifts happening in our industry.

AI will infiltrate certain categories and never touch others.

Any animation that is not Pixar-level, top 5%...is probably gone. Why pay $5,000 when you can prompt and tweak something that is relatively comparable?

Same with word walls, cinematic story ads, static creative, memes, and product renders.

But then there's content where the entire f*****g point is that it's real.

Pull up Comfrt Clothing on Kalodata. They're doing $10M+ per month on TikTok Shop. Look at their top 10 revenue-driving videos. None of them are AI. Almost all are real micro and mid-level influencers.

Because the content that works on TikTok is "I am a real person who bought this thing and here's what I think."

The second that's AI, the whole thing falls apart. 

At the end of the day, authenticity has always been the driver of building the best brands.

That didn't change just because it got cheaper to fake it.

Brands that have hired ex-Odyssey team members:

Gruns
Hexclad
AG1
Trip

I don't believe there is a better place to learn modern creative strategy, as long as you're hellbent on joining the top 1% of humans at this skill. 

We're hiring again for a critical position to help us deliver on our goal to elevate 8 & 9-figure consumer brands into the top 1% of their category for creative diversification & distribution. 

Apply here: https://lnkd.in/eYex6PPW

To apply: send a Loom video showing proof of two things:

1. A TikTok Shop you've managed...walk us through the results & what you did personally to grow it.

2. A Discord creator community you've managed...show us the server, your activity, and how you kept it engaged and growing.

"Do you get brands from posting on TikTok?"

I don't even know what to say back, cause I don't think of things that way. 

All I think about is:

- The thoughts in your head about marketing are actually smart
- If you pair them with the right hook, people will pay attention
- Just keep putting that out there, into the world
- They will find the right people
- When they're ready, they will just reach out
- I have a better chance than someone they never saw in their feed

That's literally it.

Let's say you need to build 10+ affiliate programs from scratch.

The goal: onboard 30+ micro-influencers per brand within 15 days.

Here's the setup:

Target: creators with 5k-50k followers already posting in each brand's niche (not random people)

Half the brands sell on TikTok Shop. Half don't due to business model constraints.

Compensation structures vary by creator:
• Commission-only + free product
• Retainers for high volume (30 posts/month) + view bonuses
• Retainers + sales commissions

Requirements:
• Full content buyout for ad rights across all platforms
• Dead simple process for sparking and partnership ads
• Ability to manage multiple programs simultaneously

Nice to haves:
• Payment management
• Dynamic creator payments based on CPM model

What's the 10/10 tech stack for this for < $2,500 / month?

Is it:
• Just Upfluence
• Just Aspire
• Just SARAL - The Influencer OS
• Refunnel + a CRM like Streak 
• Social Snowball ☃️ + a CRM like Streak 
• Superfiliate + a CRM like Streak 
• Some other combination
• Something else entirely

You need operational efficiency here. 

What have you used at true scale that actually works?

Upfluence

Aspire

SARAL - The Influencer OS

Refunnel

Streak

Social Snowball ☃️

Superfiliate

Jack Dorsey fired 40% of Block staff "because of AI."

Here's exactly what to do next if you're afraid of being next...

18 random thoughts from growing my TikTok from zero to 26k+ followers in a few months.  

- I kinda think you're a fraud if you make content for a living but are unable to grow your own social accounts
- Every thought-out LinkedIn post is a script for TikTok
- Unscripted TikToks become more LinkedIn Content
- Just fire off that "hot take"

- Audio quality matters more than camera quality
- Just buy the RØDE mic, it's awesome
- Making your own videos is best way to become a better CS
- Every CS should try to grow a TikTok, even it's a faceless account

- The hook is everything
- The hook should be oddly specific: use keywords and numbers
- TikTok "categorizes" you, and it becomes easiest to get views in that category
- The random thought in your head is good enough for TikTok, as long as you have a specific hook

- It's easier to get views on TikTok than LI w/o resorting to "lead magnets"
- It's possible to work out and make 3 TikToks during my kid's naptime
- People will watch and comment even if it's just a talking head video
- Your audience is on TikTok b/c everybody is on TikTok

- TikTok drives real business opportunities
- I had 3 leads comes through last week who discovered us on TikTok

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Scaled 135+ DTC Brands In 5 Years Using Creative-First Ad Testing | DM “ASPIRE” to get a personalized 15-min teardown | Meta Ads | Google Ads | TikTok Ads

You ever stare at your ad account and just think: “I don’t even know what to test anymore.”

Yeah. That.

You’ve got a product that works. Revenue’s solid.

But growth? Flat. 

ROAS is too tight. Creative’s gone stale. And scaling spend feels like lighting money on fire.

I’ve seen it too many times. Founders, CGOs, CMOs, stuck refreshing dashboards, waiting for something to pop... while still being the only one in the room thinking about tomorrow.

That’s where I come in.

No frameworks. No fluff. Just hands-on help fixing what’s broken in your growth system—fast.

At Aspire Digital, we’ve worked with 135+ DTC brands. Directly generated $22M+ in revenue by spotting the real problem, not the obvious one.

That “why isn’t this scaling?” feeling? I get it.

Me and my team plug in, find the cracks, rebuild what matters i.e. creative, audience, structure, and get your growth engine running smooth again.

No more recycling last quarter’s best ad. No more random tests. No more guessing.

Just strategy that sticks. And ads that hit.

If that sounds like what you need, DM me “ASPIRE.”

I’ll send over a quick 15-min Loom teardown of your current setup on what’s working, what’s costing you, and what I’d do first to fix it.

Let’s get you unstuck.

Michael Mulraney

Broad targeting isn’t “spray and pray.” Broad is a signal test.

Precision targeting has been replaced by predictive delivery on Meta in 2026.

Broad audiences let Meta’s AI find high-intent users, and micro-audiences just cap your upside. 

Most people hate broad because it exposes the truth fast. If your creative and signals are weak, broad will find you the cheapest attention.

Here’s the part you're probably missing:

Meta is no longer targeting-first, it’s a creative discovery engine. 

Broad delivery is the default. 

Your hooks, formats, and messaging now do the work audiences used to do. 

So broad becomes a lie detector.

‣ If the offer is clear, broad finds buyers faster 
‣ If your conversion signals are clean, broad stabilizes sooner 
‣ If you stack interests and over-segment, you limit learning and call it “control”

The move now is boring (but works):

1. Start broad and let performance signals guide delivery. 
2. Optimize toward meaningful conversion events only.
3. Stop feeding Meta actions you don’t actually want. 

If broad “doesn’t work” for you, it’s not the audience.

It’s your creative inputs getting graded, and you’re failing the test.

DM me if that's the case because we've got a fix for that too.

I'm going to say something that will annoy media buyers:

Your campaign structure is NOT why you're not scaling.

TRUST ME, I know.

I used to debate everyone on why CBO is better than ABO, and how "you need to separate your broad from your interest targeting." 

And I want to be clear... structure does matter.

Keeping testing, scaling, and retargeting in separate campaigns matters. Budget isolation matters. Not mixing cold and warm audiences matters.

That's the floor. You need to be standing on it.

But I've audited accounts with textbook-perfect structure that couldn't crack $15K/month in spend.

And I've seen structurally imperfect accounts doing $200K/month because the creative was exceptional.

I have never... seen it work the other way around.

Perfect creative in a messy structure will find buyers but perfect structure with weak creative will burn budget.

The media buyers who talk about structure more than creative are telling you exactly where their skill set ends.

Structure is the foundation. You need it solid.

But you don't scale a business by having a better structure than your competitors.
You scale it by having better creative, better messaging, and a faster system for finding out what works.

The ceiling is always creative. Stop optimising the floor.

I reviewed 12 DTC ad accounts this month. 9 of them had the same problem... and it wasn't their targeting.

Every single one was drowning in UGC.

8, 12, sometimes 20 creator videos running at once.

Different faces. Different tones. Different products, even.

But strip away the aesthetics and they all said the exact same thing:

"I love this product. It changed my life. You should try it."

That's not creative diversity. That's the same ad in 20 different outfits.

Here's what NOBODY wants to admit:

UGC is a format. Not a strategy.
The format doesn't convert. The MESSAGE does.

And right now, the DTC world is so obsessed with authenticity as an aesthetic (the shaky cam, the casual delivery, the "real person" energy), that brands have forgotten to brief creators on what actually needs to be communicated.

What problem does this solve?
For who, specifically?
Why now, and not a competitor?

A polished ad with a sharp message will beat a "real" video with a vague one every time.

📌 Bonus Move: Gift-With-Purchase Arbitrage
Use items that look premium but cost little.
High perceived value.
Low real cost.
Massive impact on AOV and profit per order.

Platforms change. Algorithms change.
Human psychology doesn't.

Every few years the industry convinces itself that everything is different now.

"Meta ads don't work like they used to."
"TikTok changed everything."
"The algorithm is impossible to figure out."

But if you zoom out, the fundamentals haven't moved.

People still stop for things that feel relevant to them.
People still buy when a message makes them feel understood.
People still respond to clarity more than cleverness.

The platform decides where the ad shows.

But the creative decides whether the person cares.

That's why the same brands tend to win everywhere.

They win on Meta.
Then they win on TikTok.
Then they win on whatever platform comes next.

Not because they mastered a new algorithm. Because they understand something more durable:

Attention follows relevance.

And relevance is a psychology problem, not a platform problem.

The brands chasing platform hacks are always starting over.

The brands building strong creative systems keep compounding.

Every time you let Meta “optimize” your copy, you train your brand to sound like everyone else.

You ever turn on Meta’s AI rewrite feature and think, “sure, let it improve it”?

What you don’t realize is it’s also rewriting your voice.

Every ad I see that’s been auto-rewritten ends up sounding like every other ad.

Smooth. Safe. Forgettable.

That’s why I turn it off every single time.

Not as a preference.

As a rule.

Because that rewritten copy isn’t approved by you.
It isn’t aligned with your brand guidelines.
It’s new, made-up text that can say things you’d never sign off on.

But the bigger issue is what it removes.

It strips the personality that made the ad connect in the first place.

And once you sound like everyone else in the feed, it doesn’t matter how much you spend.

No one hears you.

If you want your ads to perform, keep the human voice in.

Write like you actually talk.

Be specific to your brand.

Keep the edge.

In DTC, sameness is death; if you choose bland, don’t act surprised when you get ignored.

graphical user interface, text, application

I'm about to piss off a lot of agency owners on here...


12-month contracts aren’t for your brand's “stability.”

It's a slow-motion trap.

You sign. They stall.

By month 3, your Slack goes quiet.

Annual contracts don’t protect your brand.

They protect:
‣ Bloated teams
‣ Mediocre work
‣ Agency churn rates

That's why we do it differently:

60 days to prove it.

After that? Month-to-month.

If you stay, it’s because results are real... not because the contract says you have to.

Thoughts?

Volume beats perfection on Meta. Every time.

Meta rewards momentum, not polish. 

One “perfect” ad loses to 10 strong variations (real variations not minor changes).

And in 2026, you feel that gap faster because the platform rewards creative volume, and it helps keep performance stable. 

Here’s the playbook:

‣ Ship creative weekly, not monthly 
‣ Test multiple variations per concept (AND multiple concepts) 
‣ Always be testing new creative even if your ads are crushing it

Perfection is what you chase when you don’t have a system.

If you need perfect to hit publish, you’ll always lose to the brand that ships 10 ads while you’re still polishing one.

Volume Beats Perfection on Meta Ads in 2026

Meta isn’t “one algorithm.” It’s 3 machines making 3 different decisions.

Here’s the simplified version:

𝟭. 𝗔𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗹.
It pulls from millions of ads and builds the shortlist of what could be shown to a specific person.

𝟮. 𝗚𝗘𝗠 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿.
GEM (Generative Ads Model) predicts which ads are most likely to drive a conversion and ranks them.

𝟯. 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿.
It decides where in the customer journey your ad should appear and which placements/formats give it the best chance of success.

The ad someone sees is the result of all three working together.

This is why “account structure” has become less important than people want to admit. 

And it’s why obsessing over tiny targeting tweaks is usually a waste of time. 

Your leverage is the data you feed the machine.

If your data is 3 ads that all say the same thing, Meta can only find so many buyers.

"We tried Meta and it didn't work."

I hear this constantly. And every time, I ask the same questions.

What was your product price point?
What was your landing page conversion rate?
How many creatives did you test?
Over what time period?
What was your daily budget?

The answers are almost always the same.

$28 product. 0.9% CVR. Three ads. Six weeks. $50/day.

That's not a Meta problem. That's a math problem.

With a $28 product, you need a near-perfect funnel just to break even on first-time purchases. Three ads gives the algorithm almost nothing to learn from. 

Meta didn't fail you. The conditions weren't there for Meta to succeed.

Paid ads are an accelerant.
They pour fuel on whatever is already working. 

If your offer is weak, your page converts at under 1%, and your margins don't support a real acquisition cost... more spend just burns faster.

Before you blame the platform, ask yourself: Would this business grow if I drove 10,000 targeted strangers to it tomorrow?

If the honest answer is "probably not"... fix that first.

Meta works. But it doesn't fix broken businesses.

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"Meta ads are dead."

I've been hearing this for more than five years.

In that same time, I've scaled 100+ brands using Meta Ads.

After the iOS update, everyone said Meta is dead.
After the Andromeda update, everyone said Meta is dead.
After Q4 performance drops, every single year like clockwork.

And yet.

The brands we work with just had their best January in years.

Here's what I've noticed about who says "Meta is dead":

It's almost always someone who ran the same three ads for six months, watched performance decline, didn't change anything, and concluded the platform was broken.

The platform wasn't broken. The strategy was stale.

Meta has 3 billion users and $165 billion in annual ad revenue. It is NOT dead.

But it is harder than it used to be.

Because the bar for creative quality is higher. The volume of competition is higher.

The sophistication of the algorithm means lazy account structures get punished faster.

"Meta is dead" is what people say when they don't want to admit their approach stopped working.

The question worth asking isn't whether Meta works. It's whether your creative testing system is fast enough to keep up with a platform that rewards brands who move first.

If it's not... that's fixable. But blaming it on "Meta is dead" won't fix it.

Are you a wellness brand and still creating ads like this?

“Helps with stress.”
“Supports sleep.”
“Better energy.”

Remember: generic claims get generic results.

Apothekary didn’t get to $35 Million by doing that... they got there by "owning words."

One of their best-performing ads was built around a single term.

CORTISOL.

Because it names the enemy in one word and instantly pulls in the right person.

They did the same thing with “soberish.”
That one word gives people an identity to step into.

And when customers start using your language, you stop competing on creatives.

Stop trying to sound persuasive.
Start trying to sound ownable.

When you own a word, you own a mental shelf in the customer’s head.

I see so many eCom founders stuck in this Region-Beta Paradox

Their current agency is “fine.”

They keep things stable, don’t break anything, send reports, maybe even squeeze out incremental lifts.

But in the back of their head they know the truth.

The account isn’t getting better.
It’s just not getting worse.

That’s the Region-Beta Paradox.

Big pain forces action; small pain traps you.

A mediocre agency is the perfect trap.

Results are stable enough to avoid panic, but flat enough to cap growth.

So you rationalize it.

‣ “At least they’re not breaking anything.”
‣ “We’ll switch after this launch.”
‣ “Maybe it’s just the market.”
‣ “It’s not worth the disruption.”

Meanwhile you've wasted 6 months that could be spent restructuring, learning and scaling spend to 2-3x to where it currently is.

BTW... I get it, trust issues are real.

But it's not change that you should fear.

It's the cost of indecision.

QUICK TEST (to see if this applies to you):

If your current agency can’t show a clear testing roadmap, what they learned last month, and what they’re doing differently this month, you’re not buying growth. You’re just paying to avoid a hard decision.

Here's our EXACT creative testing framework that helped us SCALE 135+ brands on Meta Ads.

We split the account into 3 jobs.

1. Main Scaling Campaigns (Including Cost Cap Campaigns) 
This is where proven winners live and the majority of budget goes.

2. Retargeting
This is where you convert the demand you already created.

3. Creative Testing Campaign
This is the engine that feeds the winners into scaling.

Inside testing, we separate two completely different types of work.

Net-new concepts: new angles, new messaging, new creative types, new design approaches, new offers, even landing page tests.

This answers one question: “Is this direction worth betting on at all?”

Then comes the part most brands skip...

Iteration tests: product color variations, headline wording, background changes, hook, body, CTA, music.

This answers a different question: “Now that the concept works, what version scales?”

Losers get treated like losers.
Turn them off, log why, and move on.

Winners get promoted immediately.
Move them into scaling, then keep iterating from the winner, not from scratch.

If your testing doesn’t have a clear path to scaling, you’re not testing.
You’re just collecting expensive data.

Want this in a visual diagram? Comment "FRAMEWORK" and I'll send it over.

Posting UGC every day isn't a creative strategy.


It's creative anxiety.

There's a version of "ship creative fast" that actually works... testing new concepts weekly, building a system that produces ideas consistently, using data from each test to inform the next one.

And then there's what most brands are actually doing:

Briefing a new creator every week because last week's video "didn't perform."
Churning through content without a testing framework to know what's actually working.
Calling it volume when it's actually just noise.

The algorithm doesn't reward how much you post. It rewards what it learns from what you post.

If you're producing a new UGC video every day without a system to track what each one proves... you're just confusing the algorithm.

Every creative you launch should answer one question: what concept are we testing, and what would winning look like?

If you can't answer that before the creator hits record... the video isn't a test.

Start making more intentional content. And then learn the difference between creative velocity and creative volume (I explain this in the top comment).

One compounds. The other just costs more.

Your Ads Aren't the Problem (and neither is the algorithm!)

Everyone's tweaking campaign structure and perfecting creative visuals in 2025.

And yeah, creatives matter. A lot.

But here's what gets overlooked every single time:

Your actual offer.

I see it constantly. Companies with gorgeous visuals promoting the most boring, generic offers imaginable.

The exact same thing everyone else is selling.

You can paint a piece of garbage in pretty colors, but at the end of the day... it's still GARBAGE.

Attractive visuals help. I'm not saying they don't.

But if you want to multiply your campaign performance instead of just adding to it, ask yourself:

When's the last time you created an offer so unique and intriguing that people would feel stupid saying no?

How can you compound that with visually attractive ads that really pop?

That's how you game Meta's algorithm.

Stop blaming the platform. Start fixing your offer.

Ad costs rising is not a reason to stop advertising.

On Meta, cost-related metrics are rising, and CPM is up year over year in the latest benchmarks. 

That does not automatically mean you should pull back on advertising. 

The uncomfortable truth is... if you can afford to stay in market when things get harsh, you often become more visible because a lot of competition pulls spend. 

Now layer in how Meta works in 2026:

Short-term volatility is normal, CPM and CPA swing more under AI delivery, and consistency beats constant optimization. 

So the move isn’t “hope costs drop.”

The move is to stay present and feed the machine better inputs. 

Here’s what that actually looks like.
 
‣ Ship creative weekly and in volume because Meta rewards momentum, not polish 
‣ Stop treating daily swings like a crisis; watch trends over longer windows 
‣ Clean up signals and optimize for real outcomes, not random events 
‣ Avoid unnecessary edits that reset learning 

The brands that win don’t “wait for Meta to be cheaper.”

They keep showing up while everyone else blinks.

I just audited an ad account with 147 campaigns.

Every single one was named:

“𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝟭/𝟮/𝟯 - 𝗖𝗼𝗽𝘆”

Trying to find a winning ad felt like finding a needle in a landfill.

This is what kills scale.

Not bad creative.

Not weak targeting.

Just sloppy naming that makes optimization impossible.

After hundreds of ad accounts, here’s what I’ve learned:

Your naming system is your scaling system.

Here’s the one we use to turn chaos into control:

𝗖𝗔𝗠𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗚𝗡 𝗟𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗟

Format: [Strategy][Objective][Target]_[Date]

‣ PROS_CBO_BROAD_1024
‣ SCALE_ASC_TOP10_1024
‣ RETARG_CBO_30DAY_1024

Tells us the job, the target, and the launch date... in one glance.

𝗔𝗗 𝗦𝗘𝗧 𝗟𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗟

Format: [AudienceType][Demographic][Interest/Lookalike]

‣ BROAD_25-45F_US
‣ INT_30-50M_FITNESS
‣ LAL_35-55F_PURCH1%

We can filter by gender, age, region, interest.... instantly.

𝗔𝗗 𝗟𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗟

Format: [CreativeType][Angle][Copy#]_[Variation]

‣ IMG_SAVETIME_COPY1_V1
‣ VID_SOCIAL_COPY2_V3
‣ CAR_FEATURES_COPY1_V2

You can track every angle, format, and variation without digging.

Want to see how all your videos are doing?

Search: VID_

Want to know if “Save Time” beats “Save Money”?

Search: SAVETIME

Want to scale your best-performing copy?
Search: COPY1

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺:

‣ “Save Time” angles beat “Save Money” by 34%
‣ Static images outperformed videos by 2.3x ROAS
‣ Copy 2 variations won 70% of tests

No guesswork. No debate. Just data.

𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗨𝗧𝗠𝘀:

‣ Campaign Source: Facebook
‣ Medium: Paid Social
‣ Name & Content: Pulled directly from your structured naming

𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗱𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘆:

‣ Filter by angle
‣ Sort by creative type
‣ Promote the top performers
‣ Cut the rest without hesitation

𝗥𝗨𝗟𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗕𝗬:

✅ Use clear, consistent naming
✅ Always include dates
✅ Never use spaces
✅ Number everything

❌ Don’t change systems mid-campaign
❌ Don’t duplicate ads without renaming
❌ Don’t let your naming convention get longer than your copy

This is what will happen when you implement the naming system

Month 1: You’re more organized
Month 2: You spot patterns faster
Month 3: You optimize in hours, not weeks
Month 6: You scale like a machine

Most advertisers name ads for today.

Smart advertisers name them for next quarter.

Because when you can instantly see what’s working across 100+ campaigns,
you stop guessing... and start scaling.

What naming system do you have in place for your campaigns?

The brands producing the most UGC are often learning the least from it.

I swear I scroll through most DTC ad libraries and I'll see the same pattern... EVERYTIME.

Dozens of creator videos.
New content every week.
Sometimes every day.

On the surface, it looks like a strong creative engine.

But when you look closer... it's just noise.

Different creators.

Same script.
Same message.
Same angle.
Same promise.

The brand thinks they're testing creative because the faces keep changing.

But the idea never does.

So the account learns nothing.

Meta doesn't care how many creators you hired.

It cares whether each ad teaches the system something new about your buyer.

A new problem.
A new angle.
A new belief shift.

Without that, you're just feeding the algorithm more versions of the same signal.

Amazon didn’t scale your brand... Meta did!
And Amazon took the credit.

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗜 𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴:

‣ A DTC brand starts scaling through Meta
‣ They launch on Amazon
‣ Suddenly Amazon sales spike

Everyone celebrates. But no one asks why?

So we ran the numbers.

When we 3x’d Meta spend for one client...

Their Amazon revenue jumped... without touching Amazon ads.

‣ Not $1 more on Sponsored Products.
‣ No DSP.
‣ No strategy shift.

Just spillover.

Turns out, customers saw the product on Meta,

but chose to buy with Prime.

If you only look at platform dashboards, you'll miss this.

Amazon doesn't drive demand.

It catches it.

And if you're not mapping Meta impressions to Amazon revenue,

you’ll waste thousands trying to scale a channel that’s just riding coattails.

Worse?

You’ll keep paying Amazon for customers you already paid to acquire.

If you’ve launched on Amazon in the last 12 months...

this is already happening.

𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗢𝗦𝗧 if you're seeing the same shift

I can guarantee that your current agency only touches one (or maybe two) of these pillars and call it "performance marketing."

1. Offer

If people don’t immediately understand what you sell and why it matters, the account will never scale. You will just pay more to convince less.

2. Funnel

If the path from click to purchase leaks, “better ads” just send more people into a bucket with holes.

3. Full-funnel ad structure

Cold, warm, and hot buyers are not the same person. If your account talks to everyone the same way, you force your cold ads to do all the persuasion.

4. Creative strategy

Don't test “new creatives.” Test hooks and angles that map to real pains, desires, and objections.

5. Testing, tracking, iteration

If you are not upgrading the account every week with controlled tests that are tracked, you're just relying on a hope-and-prayer.

6. Profit-based decisions

ROAS can look great while the business is getting worse. If you are not optimizing for CAC, MER, and LTV, you are building a revenue machine that can’t keep money.

If your ads feel “random,” it’s usually because these pillars are failing.

Your “Meta ad problems” are NOT ACTUALLY Meta ad problems.

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