I’m Barry Hott, and I help brands scale profitably with high-performing paid media strategies, creative testing systems, and conversion-focused insights.

I’ve personally managed over $600 million in paid media spend since 2008, overseeing Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn campaigns for brands like True Classic, Harry’s, Happy V, Lone River, The Perfect Jean, and many more. I specialize in scaling direct-to-consumer and startup brands spending $200K+ per month on ads with strategies grounded in first principles, logic, and contextualized data insights (tracking what the system sees that you can’t).

I’m known for making ugly ads that convert. Clients trust me to optimize every aspect of their acquisition, from raw creative that cuts through the noise to counterintuitive buying strategies that maximize ROI.

Recent brands I’ve helped grow include Happy V, Keeps, Nuts.com, UrbanStems, MoneyLion, Lumin, Cerebral, Wandering Bear Coffee, Mirror, Athletic Greens, and Spartan Race. In 2020, I helped launch Lone River Ranch Water, which was acquired by Diageo in 2021. All three companies I worked with in 2021 were acquired: Lone River, Thesis, and Jump450.

If you’re a decision maker who wants profitable, scalable ad growth, shoot me a DM.

Barry Hott

You don’t need the most beautifully designed pages in the world.

Too many sites and landing pages are overdesigned.

A lot of "ugly" pages win not because they're ugly, but simply because they're easier to read than their prettier counterparts.

A clean white page with black text in a familiar, unbranded, highly-readable font is easier to consume than a beautiful but busy design 99% of the time.

Does this vary by product, audience, and price point? Of course! As with everything else in marketing:

IT DEPENDS.

But if you prioritize the consumer above all, you usually end up in the same place.

What do they expect?
What do they want to see?
What do they NEED to get them to buy?

What wins regardless of the design:

1. Immediate relevance 🎯

2. CLARITY, readability, and scannability 👓

3. Strong relevant copy and storytelling ✍️

4. LOTS OF relevant real social proof in a variety of styles: text, images, videos ⭐

5. Authority + trust 🛡️

6. SPEED 🏎️

7. Reducing friction ⛸️

8. Handling objections 🙋

9. Minimal distractions and undesired exits 🔇

10. A clear offer and path to purchase 🛒

Growing businesses with ugly ads, streamlined execution, and deep consumer empathy.

I worked at an adtech startup 10 years ago and I remember we had a hackathon, and the coolest idea that got built was a chatbot that could answer questions about your ads.

It never really got built out or worked well, but I always dreamed of having something like that so I can just Slack a bot to get a question answered about my ads.

10 years later and Parker from my biz partner Alex Cooper made this dream a reality. Plus, it does so much more!

I'm excited for y'all to try it:

AI & advertising. Helping you make better direct response creatives. Co-Founder @ Adcrate.

Introducing Parker: the world’s first AI Creative Director. Parker allows any brand to produce 10x more viral ads without hiring more people. 

Here’s how it works:

1) Connect your ad account:
Parker analyzes your historical performance and creative data across your ad account.

2) Add Parker to Slack
Tag Parker like a real employee.
Ask questions. Generate briefs. Break down performance.
Parker works inside your team’s workflow.

3) Enable Autonomous Mode
While you sleep, Parker scans TikTok, identifies winning ad patterns, and delivers production-ready concepts directly to Slack—tagging your team with ads to review.

Parker is not another AI ad maker. AI ad tools are wrappers on top of models like Sora, Veo, or Kling. AI avatars are solved.

What no one solves is the research, analysis, and strategic thinking required to create ads that actually go viral.

Parker solves that.

Check it out here: heyparker.ai
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100+ brands including Grüns, Lume Deodorant, and Legends already use Parker to generate more viral ads.

I compiled a list of 100+ AI prompt engineers for hire trained in AI ad creation, including their rates, portfolios, and contact info.

Comment “Parker” and I’ll send it to you. 
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If you’ve read this far from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Everything in my life has lead to this moment:

In 2021, I quit a 100k/yr corporate job with no plan. 

I started an ad creative agency and scaled that business to 45 people and $3m/yr making the best ads in the world for David, Huel, Harry's and 50+ more.

Everything I learned, every ad we ever made trained Parker.

Let's normalize turning off our Meta ads one week per year, just to see what happens to the rest of the business (and to take a vacation).

Every brand should do this.

I help brands and agencies scale through creative performance, brand strategy, operational systems, and AI leverage.

I’m the founder of Adcrate, where we’ve built performance creative for fast growing consumer and digital brands. After running thousands of creative tests, one thing became obvious:

You can grow fast with ads, but you only stay relevant if people understand you and believe in what you’re building.

Most brands hit a ceiling because:

	•	Their message isn’t clear
	•	Their story doesn’t land
	•	Their creative burns out
	•	The founder isn’t communicating the vision clearly enough

My work focuses on helping founders:

	•	Get clear on who they are and why they win
	•	Sharpen their message and story
	•	Build content and creative that keeps working
	•	Use AI to move faster and raise output quality

This isn’t about hacks or volume. It’s about clarity, trust, and execution that compounds.

If you’re building something meaningful and want help sharpening your positioning and creative — reach out.

I work selectively with a small number of founders each year.

ali@adcrate.co

Ali Qureshi

$100k to shut down my business for a week. Best money I spent this year.

We flew our team to Thailand, it's the first time most of them had met in person.

I learned things in a week that hadn't surfaced in months of Zoom calls. 

Clients that were way more time intensive than I realised. Challenges people were sitting on because it didn't feel "urgent enough" to bring up.

Remote is great, but the low priority stuff never gets discussed until it compounds into something that matters.

Beyond the business talk, people who'd only been squares on a screen became real to each other. Relationships that would've taken years over Slack happened in days.

That creates culture, the kind that makes people actually want to work together.

Here's my take:

Remote is the way forward. I'm not going back to offices.

But I'd rather spend $100k on one week where everyone actually wants to be there than 12 months of rent on a space people resent commuting to.

Humans need to meet. The question is how you spend that budget.

Co-Founder @ Adcrate (Performance Ad Agency)

Undiagnosed ADHD founder + Claude Code = unfair advantage.

My brain doesn't do "plan then execute." 

It goes "have idea, need to build NOW, lose interest in 48 hours."

This morning I've built:

- A client scoring dashboard from scratch 
- New onboarding webpage 
- Full social strategy overhaul 
- Started building my own software 
- Deep research on 3 business decisions which I was stuck on for weeks

All before lunch. One app.

Cancelled ChatGPT. It's not keeping up anymore.

I'm not being dramatic: start using these tools properly and you will 10x your output.

Not "learn AI prompting." Not "wait for the right use case."

Just start building with it. Today.

I BEG YOU

Okay Claude Cowork is great. 

Asked it to organise my downloads folder (4000+ files) and it did everything in a few minutes.

Most people found Claude Code intimidating, this is going to be the future for regular users.

Most people are still using ChatGPT for everything.

Not because it's the best but because they don't know what else exists.

I run an agency making 500+ ads a week, AI is in every part of my workflow now.

Image gen, video creation,  writing, research, building my own tools. It's made me a 10x marketer.

My stack doesn't include ChatGPT.

Here's what I use daily, and why.

My AI Stack

This AI ad format keeps showing up on my feed. Had to figure out how they're made.

You've seen them, Pixar style animated characters explaining product benefits.

They're everywhere organically. Almost no one is running them as paid ads yet.

So I broke down the full process:

- How to generate the character 
- How to write the script 
- How to animate it 
- How to edit and ship it

Takes about 10 minutes once you know the workflow.

Comment "pixar" and I'll send you the breakdown.

taplio

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The Battle

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Ali Qureshi

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