Ceresant Solutions®

Leading development of BrainDash, the first school-wide mental illness risk management platform combining clinical biomarkers with AI-powered prevention. Our comprehensive solution helps educational leaders:

::: Deploy evidence-based screening and early intervention at scale
::: Monitor real-time risk factors through validated clinical assessments
::: Demonstrate measurable outcomes in student mental health programs
::: Transition from crisis response to prevention-focused wellness

Building strategic partnerships across independent schools while developing expansion pathways into public education and healthcare markets. Advancing UN SDG 3.4 through scalable prevention technology."

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Rocket Factory

Developed to support mid-market Revenue Responsible executives who want to build a sustainable revenue engine and increase board confidence, Rocket Factory is a C-Level advisory focused specifically on their unique pains and needs. Founded by Revenue Whisperer Todd Feldman, Rocket Factory helps the revenue responsible identify opportunities, build relationships, enhance skills, and define and deliver on their revenue goals quickly and efficiently.

President and Revenue Whisperer

Pavilion

Executive Member

Startup Virginia

Mentor

Four Ten Commerce

Fractional Chief Marketing Officer services addressing the needs of companies who seek to drive growth by connecting attributable marketing and business transformation activities. Four Ten Commerce evolved into what is now known as Rocket Factory.

Principal (Fractional Chief Marketing Officer / CMO & Chief Digital Officer / CDO)

Virginia Credit Union

Largest Virginia State-Chartered/Top US credit union with over $3.6B in assets.

Oversaw all integrated marketing and communications, e-commerce, and membership development strategy with a focus on department innovation to create efficient performance and measurable impact. Led internal teams and external agencies to drive brand, acquisition, engagement, conversion, and retention through effective planning and execution.

Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

Vice President, Marketing

AAXIS

Recruited to dual role to serve as trusted client advisor and lead all marketing activities for company. Conceived, built, developed, and scaled new strategic digital transformation consulting practice targeted at companies looking to find a way to more effectively reach their customers where they shop and purchase.

Vice President, Marketing and Strategic e-Commerce Services (Management Consulting)

Art Technology Group

Leading ecommerce platform provider.

Recruited to new global consulting practice charged with providing strategic analysis, guidance, and leadership to top enterprise e-Commerce groups by working to connect business goals and objectives to the ATG/Oracle Commerce Suite. Partner with customer C-level management teams to drive ROI through implementation of cross-channel commerce strategy and process.

Global Principal e-Commerce Business Consultant (Oracle Consulting)

Circuit City

Various Roles (Circuit City Direct)

The Dan Ryan Group

Founder & CEO

The mental health crisis is overwhelming institutions.
Schools are battling absenteeism rates and learning culture.
Health plans are drowning in costs.
Families are flying blind until it’s too late.

Most solutions show up after crisis. I’m building what comes before.

I’m the founder and CEO of Ceresant Solutions, where we’re developing BrainDash—the first AI-powered platform for mental illness risk detection. We start in schools, helping leaders act before students fall through the cracks. But the infrastructure we’re building supports predictive prevention across education, healthcare, and beyond.

Our first market is K–12. In partnership with the Virginia Association of Independent Schools, BrainDash combines clinical biomarkers, real-world signals, and intelligent pattern recognition to identify invisible risks before they escalate into crises. Schools utilize it to protect student well-being, reduce attrition, and give families confidence that their children are seen and supported.

I bring a 30-year track record in innovation and growth strategy.
	•	Founded one of the first independent sports media startups
	•	Led GTM for a $500K startup that scaled to $23M in 3 years
	•	Delivered over $1B in revenue impact across healthcare, finance, telecom, and government

What unites it all is this: I apply emerging technology to real-world problems that matter.

Specialties: Predictive Prevention, Applied AI in Education and Healthcare, Clinical-Grade Risk Modeling, Go-to-Market Strategy, Digital Transformation, Data-Driven Growth, Human-Centered Tech Innovation

Brands Served: AARP, Aerielle, AOL, Atlantic 10 Conference, Armstrong Flooring, AT&T, Comcast, Circuit City, Conde Nast, Ford, Gevalia, Guitar Center, Kraft, Lego, Oracle/ATG, Penn Medicine, PhillySports.com, Subaru, Tylenol, USPS, WorldGate

Todd Feldman

Managing Partner @ Brick | Ads & Creative for 100+ DTC brands - $300m+ in sales | I write content about paid ads, performance creative & e-commerce

We scale 7 to 9-figure DTC brands using a creative-first, full-funnel approach that blends paid ads, landing pages, and performance-driven creative.

Brick isn’t a bloated agency juggling 50 clients. 

We’re a boutique team of senior strategists, creatives, and media buyers working closely with a small group of brands we genuinely believe in.

Everything we do is grounded in research, strategy, and execution. No juniors, no handoffs, no fluff.

We’ve driven over $400M in trackable revenue for some of the fastest-growing DTC brands. Our work has been featured in Entrepreneur, Social Media Examiner, and other leading publications. More importantly, 92% of the brands we work with hit all-time revenue highs in under 90 days.

If you're spending on ads but not seeing consistent growth, we can help. 

We focus on fixing the bottlenecks that are holding your brand back—whether it's creative fatigue, poor landing page performance, or inefficient account structure.

Message me “GROWTH” or check the link in my featured section to see how we work.

Toby W.

Scaling Meta ads is WAY HARDER when your account is a mess.

If your campaigns aren’t structured properly, you’re wasting money every single day.

I built a Meta Ad Account Framework that fixes this.

Like this post + Comment ‘Meta’ and I’ll send it over.

{We must be connected}

Toby Waller

I help eCom brands scale past $25M/yr with Ads + Retention. $450M+ in revenue | Moto, Leica, Kodak, Drake + 200+ more.

Most brands have at least 1 of these 3 creative bottlenecks that stop them from scaling their meta ads:

1️⃣ Not knowing what to test next
2️⃣ Not knowing how to test it
3️⃣ Not knowing how to turn test results into new winning creatives

I put together The Ultimate Creative Guide to fix all 3.

This guide breaks down the entire creative testing process - from generating data-backed ideas to structuring tests effectively and analyzing results to create high-performing ads.

By the end, you’ll have a proven framework for consistently producing top-tier ad creatives that drive conversions.

Want the guide?

1. Like this post
2. Comment ‘CREATIVE’ and I’ll DM it.

{Must be connected}.

Scaling META to $1M+ per month requires precision, not guesswork.

After deploying 9-figures in ad spend, I’ve built a Meta Scaling Blueprint

It covers:

📌 How to scale without spiking CPAs
📌 The best budget adjustment method
📌 Key metrics to track

Want it? 
 
Like this post & Drop ‘Scale’ & I’ll send it over.

We’re on the hunt for a world-class Senior Meta Media Buyer to join our team at Brick.

You’ll be working with some of the most recognised and fastest-growing DTC brands in the world, managing millions in ad spend and helping scale brands through creative-first paid media.

This role is not for beginners.

We’re looking for someone who:

• Has deep Meta Ads expertise
• Is comfortable managing large budgets and complex accounts
• Thrives in fast-paced, high-performance environments
• Can translate data into clear strategic decisions
• Understands that creative & post-click is the biggest lever in performance

You’ll be working closely with our strategy, creative and growth teams to push accounts forward every single day.

If you’ve scaled serious ad spend, love solving complex performance problems, and want to work with ambitious DTC brands, we’d love to hear from you.

Comment “Buyer” or DM me and I’ll share more details.

Creative is now the PRIMARY targeting mechanism on all major ad platforms.
This isn’t a hot take… It’s reality ⇓

→ Meta’s ASC (Advantage+ Shopping)
→ Google’s Performance Max
→ TikTok’s Smart+ campaigns

All three use your creative as the targeting signal, not your manual audience selections.

The algorithm reads:

• Who engages
• Who watches
• Who clicks
• Who converts

And then finds more people like that.

Which means…

If your creative lacks depth, range, and persona clarity...
your targeting lacks depth, range, and persona clarity.

This is why we built our internal Creative Variety Matrix at Brick.

The graphic below is a simplified, front-end version of the much deeper backend system we use with partners.

Most brands think scaling means:

“Find a winning ad → increase budget.”

That worked in 2018.
It does not work in 2026.

Today, scaling requires structured creative expansion.

The 3 Dimensions We Scale Across

1️⃣ Content Type
Image
Carousel
Short-form video
Long-form video

2️⃣ Polish Level
Native / “Ugly” / UGC
Chameleon (blends into feed)
Branded / high production

3️⃣ Persona
This is the multiplier most brands ignore.
Instead of making 10 ads for “everyone,”
We build creative clusters around distinct buyer profiles.

Each persona gets:
Content type ×
Polish level ×
Angle.

Now you’re not launching random variations.

You’re building a creative ecosystem.

Why this matters:

• Meta rewards diversity in delivery
• Fatigue slows dramatically
• CPAs stabilise at scale
• ASC & PMax get stronger targeting signals
• Budget increases stop breaking performance

Most accounts plateau because they try to scale spend without scaling signal.

And modern platforms reward signal depth.

Creative variety, when structured properly, becomes a competitive advantage - not just a testing tactic.

Most brands kill ads too early.

Not because they don’t work…

But because they don’t understand why they work.

I broke down 3 static ads from Hume Health that refused to die. 

Hume Health

Different angles.
Different psychographics.
Same product.

Here’s the bigger lesson:

Winning creative isn’t about making “better ads.”

It’s about building a system.

• One ad that sells to past pain
• One ad that sells to ego + identity
• One ad that dominates a niche community

3 emotional entry points.
1 product.
Full market coverage.

Most brands rely on one angle and call it testing.

The brands that scale past $25M/year build psychographic coverage.

If you want your ads to last, stop asking:
“Is this creative good?”

Start asking:

“Who is this for - emotionally?”

Steal the framework inside the carousel 👇

Hume

This $4B company doesn’t run complicated ads.

They run simple ones.

And that’s exactly why they work.

Most brands try to win with:

• More features
• More claims
• More design
• More “polish”

hims & hers does the opposite.

They lead with:

👉 A shared frustration
👉 A seasonal anxiety
👉 A reframe of the status quo

No aggressive before/afters.

No over-explaining.

No feature overload.

Just emotional truth + smart positioning.

A few things worth stealing:

1️⃣ Start with the feeling, not the fix.
If your audience has heard the phrase before (“Your blood work looks fine”), you’ve already won attention.

2️⃣ Let typography do the heavy lifting.
Strikethroughs. Corrections. Visual tension.
The design itself tells the transformation story.

3️⃣ Compete against the default, not a competitor.
“5x more than routine bloodwork” is stronger than naming a brand.
Position against the status quo.

The biggest mistake I see eCom brands make?

Trying to prove they’re better.

Instead, show people what they’re missing.

If you’re running static ads right now, ask yourself:

Are we leading with emotion?

Or are we leading with features?

Big difference.

Hers

We started working with this health brand at the beginning of 2026.

Here’s the YoY comparison:

• Revenue: $4.53M (+61%)
• AOV: $125.40 (+14%)
• Conversion rate: +34%
• Sessions: +7%

No new channels.
No viral product.
No “one big unlock.”

Just better execution across the fundamentals.

Operators fall into the trap of thinking scale comes from one big idea.

In reality, it’s small, often ignored optimisations stacked together that compound.

Here’s what actually moved the needle for this brand 👇

1️⃣ Fixing fundamentals before scaling spend

Before increasing budget, we:

– Deep audited creative (angle gaps, objection blind spots, avatar depth)
– Restructured the ad account for cleaner testing + faster feedback loops
– Audited the site for clarity, proof, and friction
– Implemented stronger attribution (Triple Whale, KnoCommerce)
– Built a proper creative analysis workflow

Most brands try to scale with brute force.

Scale happens when you obsess over the fundamentals.

2️⃣ In health, trust > production quality

Overproduced ads underperform in health.

Raw founder content.
Educational iPhone breakdowns.
UGC that feels real.
They convert better.

Why?

Health purchases are trust-driven.

But authenticity only works when:

– Creators sound like themselves
– Claims are clear
– Objections are addressed directly

Clarity > aesthetics.

Especially in health.

3️⃣ Offer engineering lifted AOV

Scaling past $2M/month required structured offer testing:

• Bundles built around use-case
• Subscribe & save optimisation
• Threshold incentives
• Value-add bonuses instead of discounts

$100 + added value

Beats

$80 with margin erosion.

4️⃣ We optimised for contribution, not ROAS

Serious scale comes from knowing:

• CAC thresholds
• Contribution margin
• Payback window
• LTV:CAC

Once you understand those, you stop guessing.

You know when you can push.

You know when you need to pull.

5️⃣ Scale is compounding

Better creative depth.
Better offers.
Better structure.
Better data clarity.

Individually small.

Collectively massive.

There was no “magic tactic.”

Just disciplined stacking of the right levers.

Not sexy.

Extremely effective.

---

If you’re running a health brand and want a second set of eyes on your setup, I’m happy to take a look.

No pitch.
No obligation.

Just an honest audit of where the leverage probably sits.

In 2025, we scaled a fashion brand from $150k to $1.2m/month.

The bottleneck wasn’t creative volume.
It wasn’t CRO.

It was creative depth.

When we audit fashion brands spending £50k–£500k/month, we see the same pattern:

• Same formats
• Same messaging
• Same angles
• Different colours

That’s not testing.
That’s rotation.

The top-performing brands we work with are obsessed with creative diversity.

Not more ads.

More angles.
More formats.
More avatars.

So I pulled together 100+ high-performing fashion ad concepts - the exact types driving scale right now.

If you want the swipe file:

Like this post + comment “Fashion” below, and I’ll send it over.

Most brands kill their best ads too early.
In reality, your best creative has 10x more life in it than you think.
Here’s how you extract it:

For video ads:

• Test new hooks (change the text overlay or reshoot the first 3 seconds)
• Swap in different opening lines while keeping the rest identical
• Use the same script with different creators
• Change the B-roll (especially powerful with AI voiceover ads)
• Adjust pacing (speed up or slow down key moments)
• Cut down to the core message or extend with additional proof
• Swap in different testimonials

For static ads:

• Winning visual + new headlines
• Winning headline + new visuals
• Animate winning statics

For native-style ads:

Use AI tools to swap the main subject across different demographics while keeping the rest of the ad identical.

The key rule:
Change one variable at a time.

This is how you squeeze far more performance from every creative winner.

Most brands see an ad work and immediately move on to building something new from scratch.

The sophisticated approach treats creative iteration like a controlled experiment.

And that’s where the real scale comes from.

We have 2 final slots available for brands to join us for Q2.

If you're looking to scale paid acquisition with a more structured creative testing system:

I'll leave a link in the comments 👇

Your customers already told you how to scale.

You're just not listening.

Most brands install a post-purchase survey…

…ask “how did you hear about us?”

 …and call it a day.

That’s leaving money on the table.

Post-purchase surveys aren’t for attribution.

They’re for leverage.

When structured properly, they unlock:

• Better ad hooks (real language buyers use)
• Stronger offers (what actually tipped them)
• Higher LTV (why they come back)
• Clearer positioning (why you vs competitors)
• New product ideas (what they want next)
• Margin protection (discount sensitivity insights)

The key is asking questions that ladder into strategy.

Every high-value survey falls into one of 6 buckets:

1️⃣ Attribution (but smarter - time to convert, influence layering)
2️⃣ Motivation (what problem were they solving?)
3️⃣ Objection (what nearly stopped them?)
4️⃣ Retention (what would make them reorder?)
5️⃣ Competitive (what alternatives did they consider?)
6️⃣ Expansion (what else do they want from you?)

The moment after purchase is the highest-truth point in your funnel.

Intent is fresh.

Emotion is active.

The real reason is still conscious.

Most brands guess at creative angles.

The best brands read what buyers already told them - and reflect it back in ads.

Meta will get noisier.

First-party insight compounds.

If you want the full framework (200+ question examples broken down by use case), comment “SURVEY”, and I’ll send it over.

What got you to $10M won't get you to $50M.

And most brands don't figure that out until growth has been flat for 2 yrs.

When we audit and consult with brands around $10M that have plateaued, the pattern is almost always the same. 

The founding playbook: early brand awareness, a strong launch offer, a tight subscription base... did exactly what it was supposed to do. 

It got them here.

But somewhere along the way, the strategy stopped evolving. The team kept executing the same plays because they worked before. 

The acquisition engine never got rebuilt for the next stage. And the subscription base that was masking the problem slowly stopped being enough.

The uncomfortable truth is that most plateaued brands aren't suffering from bad execution. 

They're suffering from comfort.

Nobody wants to question the thing that built the business. But there's a difference between what's driving growth and what you're just used to doing.

The audit question we always start with:

If you stripped out your existing subscriber/repeat buyer revenue, would your new customer acquisition actually sustain this business?

Most brands don't like the answer.

If you're at 8-9 figures and growth has been flat, the problem probably isn't your ads. 

It's that the strategy underneath them hasn't been pressure-tested in years.

If that sounds familiar, we do a limited number of audits each month. 

Link in my profile.

Something I've noticed while auditing ad accounts recently.

There are two types...

The ones that are scaling, and the ones that are busy.

The busy ones all look the same.

150 ads a month. Full Slack channels. Weekly production calls. An organised shared drive. A learnings doc that hasn't actually changed how anything gets built.

And the account hasn't moved in three months.

The problem isn't output. It's that most of what gets produced isn't testing anything. 

It's content. And content and creative testing are not the same thing.

A real test has a question before it goes into production. 

One variable isolated. 
A hypothesis. 
A clear definition of what a result actually means.

What most brands have is a brief that says "let's try a UGC version" and a learning doc full of opinions.

The fix isn't producing more. It's asking better questions before you brief anything.

What don't we know about this audience? 
What's the gap between our best performer and everything else, and what does it actually tell us?

Build the creative to answer that. 

Ship it. Read it properly. Let it change the next brief.

That's it. That's the whole system.

The brands I've seen scale fastest on Meta aren't the ones with the highest creative output. 

They're the ones who know exactly what they're trying to learn each week - and build around that.

Volume is a crutch.

Brands brag about creative testing…

…but avoid the one test that actually unlocks scale:

Price.

Most brands obsess over:
Creative angles
Audience targeting
Campaign structure

And never touch the most powerful variable in the system: pricing.

Why this matters.

Let’s say you’re selling a supplement at $79.

Current state:
Price: $79
COGS: $18
Conversion rate: 2.8%
CAC: $52

Media contribution: $79 − $18 − $52 = $9 per order

You’re profitable, but capped.

At around $150K per month in spend, CAC starts to break and scale stalls.

Now test $89.

Price: $89
COGS: $18
Conversion rate: 2.4%
CAC: $60

Media contribution: $89 − $18 − $60 = $11 per order

That’s a 22% increase in contribution per order.

Same product.
Same traffic.
More room to scale.

Higher media contribution lets you:
Bid more aggressively
Tolerate higher CPMs
Target broader audiences

Now push it to $99.

Price: $99
COGS: $18
Conversion rate: 1.9%
CAC: $68

Media contribution: $99 − $18 − $68 = $13 per order

At $150K per month in spend:
$79 price → ~$26K total contribution
$99 price → ~$29K total contribution

Fewer orders.
More profit.

Most brands never test this because they’re scared.

They’d rather tweak creative endlessly than touch the variable that actually decides how far they can scale.

End of week wins 👇
Our Head of Google, David Shelton, just dropped performance updates from two recently onboarded CPG brands...

Both came to us in similar positions:

Under-structured accounts.

Low efficiency.

Untapped intent.

Brand 1 -(starting almost from scratch on Google)

First month after rebuilding properly:

• +173% increase in click volume + traffic

• +15% lift in AOV

• +48% increase in ROAS

• Meaningful incremental revenue built immediately

Not from increasing spend.

From fixing structure, feed optimisation and tightening intent capture.

-----

Brand 2 -(had been running Google but struggling with ROAS)

Without increasing spend:

• +28% ROAS

• +21% purchases + revenue

• +13% new customers

• +16% AOV

• -20% CPC

Again - efficiency driven.


------

On the retention side, Brad Neil (our Head of Email) wrapped the week by completely re-architecting a partner’s Klaviyo setup.

We:

• Rebuilt high-impact flows from the ground up

• Tightened segmentation based on real buyer behaviour

• Refined offer positioning inside campaigns

• Cleaned deliverability and send logic

Result:

Significant incremental revenue lift - without increasing send volume or discount dependency.

That’s the part most brands miss.

Scaling isn’t about “more”.

It’s about better architecture and synergy across paid + retention.

Proud of the team.

If your Google account is plateauing or your email channel feels like it’s just ticking along, there’s usually a structural unlock sitting there.

We started working with this CPG brand at the beginning of 2026

And I'm posting this because it shows how scale actually happens.

$4.37M in roughly 54 days (up 60%)

No single “unlock”.

Most brands think scale comes from one big idea.

In reality, it's small, often ignored optimisations stacked together that compound.

Here are some of the biggest I see consistently 👇🏼

1. Testing and scaling in the same place

A brand finds a winner, increases budget… and performance falls apart.

Why?

Because testing budget + scaling budget creates chaos.

You can’t tell if results dropped due to fatigue, bad tests, or a learning reset.

Fix:

Separate testing from scaling entirely.

Tests prove themselves fast. Winners graduate to efficiency-focused campaigns.

2. Overproduced creative kills performance

The most common mistake: ads that look too polished.

Founder iPhone videos and raw UGC consistently outperform studio-quality content.

Why?

Because authenticity beats production value.

UGC only works if creators sound like themselves. 

Give them an angle, not a script.

And don’t underestimate text overlays:

Clear, bold claims beat subtle lifestyle visuals every time.

Clarity > aesthetics.

3. Your offer is stale

If you’re running the same offer you launched with, you’re leaking revenue.

Brands scaling past $3M/month constantly test:

 • Bundles to lift AOV
 • BOGO structures
 • Threshold offers
 • Time-limited bonuses

Adding perceived value beats cutting price.

$100 + $40 bonus > $80 discount (and your margin stays healthier).

4. The metrics most brands ignore

ROAS is a vanity metric.

Serious scaling happens when you have clarity on:

• LTV:CAC ratios
• CAC Thresholds
• Contribution margin
 
If you don’t know these, you’re optimising blind.

Once you do, decisions get simple:

You know when you can push, and when you need to pull back.

You allocate capital where unit economics justify it.

5. Scale comes from compounding, not breakthroughs

Brands that scale don’t chase silver bullets.

They stack small wins:

 • Better structure
 • Better creative systems
 • Smarter offers

Individually small. Collectively massive.

Bottom line:

Scaling isn’t about one magic tactic.

It’s about tightening the 10–15 levers that quietly determine performance.

Not sexy. 

Extremely effective.

This furniture brand has been one of the hardest accounts we've scaled.
It’s tested us in ways no other client has.
Here's the 30 days👇 (after finally cracking it)

Total revenue: $601,371 (+18% MoM)
CVR: 2.2% (+8%)
✅All above our pre-determined KPI's

But getting here required us to throw out our entire playbook and rebuild from scratch.

Here's what nearly stopped us - and what eventually worked 👇

1️⃣ The purchase cycle demanded a different kind of patience

Furniture converts in weeks, not days.

The frameworks that work at lower ticket sizes assume faster feedback. 

Here, by the time the data matured, we'd already made decisions based on incomplete signals.

Fix: extended attribution windows, weekly cohort reviews instead of daily reads, and trusting the process longer than felt comfortable.

2️⃣ Such a High AOV forced us to rethink everything

Not just creative. Not just targeting.

Everything - from the ad creative to the landing page experience to how we thought about retention and repeat purchase.

The bar for every touchpoint is higher. The margin for mediocrity is zero.

3️⃣ The creative that works elsewhere failed completely

Raw UGC. Talking heads. "Real people" testimonials.
All of it underperformed.

Furniture is an identity purchase. People aren't buying a sofa. They're buying a version of their home.

Once we shifted to aspirational lifestyle creative - room-in-context, design-led, emotionally driven - performance changed.

4️⃣ The offer structure was wrong for the category

Discounting an $1000+ piece of furniture. It signals quality problems, not value.

We pulled back on blanket discounts entirely. Replaced with: financing messaging, white-glove delivery framing, and room-bundle incentives.

Perceived value went up. Conversion rate followed.

5️⃣ We had to accept a longer payback window

This brand's LTV:CAC doesn't resolve in 30 days. It resolves in 6 months.
Once we reframed the economics - and got client alignment on that - we stopped making short-term decisions that were sabotaging long-term scale.

We now know this brand can hit $1M/month. 

We know exactly which levers to pull to get there.

The work that got us to this point wasn't glamorous. It was dismantling what we thought we knew and rebuilding it for a category that doesn't forgive shortcuts.

That's the real unlock, not a tactic. 

Not a creative hack. Just the willingness to start from first principles and do the work properly.

Running a high AOV brand on Meta and hitting a ceiling?

Happy to take a look at what's actually blocking you

Drop me a DM.

I just wrapped up an audit for a beauty brand spending $100K/month on ads and made a concerning discovery...

Their static ads were performing terribly:

Unique CTR: 1.31%
CPM: $10.11
CPA: $178

The culprit?

Product-obsessed creatives that look like every other beauty ad.

Same glossy product shots.

Same perfect models.

Same "revolutionary formula" claims.

Here's the problem with product-focused ads on Meta and Google: 

they scream "THIS IS AN AD" and users scroll right past them.

After analyzing 200+ top-performing beauty ads, we found that the best-converting creatives don't just showcase products, they tap into specific customer motivations.

Our Creative Matrix Worksheet revealed 7 concepts they're completely missing:

Testimonial Ads (real people sharing authentic results)
Lifestyle Ads (showing the product in everyday contexts)
Problem → Solution Ads (addressing specific pain points)
Comparison Ads (clear differentiation from competitors)
Ugly Ads (organic-looking content that doesn't feel polished)
Authority Ads (leveraging press mentions and accolades)
Before & After Ads (visual proof that creates desire)

The beauty brands scaling profitably on Meta and Google right now are the ones testing across ALL these concepts, not just product shots.

Most beauty brands we audit are only using 1-2 of these concepts in their ad arsenal.

No wonder CPAs are through the roof.

We're confident we can turn their ad account around with these adjustments + our Brick-by-Brick Framework to systematically test each concept.

When brands follow our framework, they typically see CTRs double and CPAs cut by 30-50% within 45 days.

The lesson? Stop making ads that look like ads.

If your CTRs are below 2% on Meta, you're paying a massive "boring tax" on your ad spend.

Running $50K+/month on beauty ads but struggling with rising CPAs?

Let's chat.

“Our main issue now is delivering on the growth you guys are generating.
 I don’t know what you’re doing… but f* it’s working.”

That was a message from a client last week.

We started working together 12 months ago.

Since then:

• $33M+ in gross sales
• +26% YoY growth
• CVR% up 10% 
• AOV up 10%

But the reality is…

There wasn’t a single “silver bullet”.

No viral ad.

No one optimisation that changed everything.

Just dozens of optimisations compounding over time.

Things like:

• Restructuring the ad account to scale spend more efficiently
• Building a much deeper creative testing pipeline
• Using customer reviews and research to inform new ad angles
• Improving landing page conversion paths
• Tight feedback loops between media buying, creative and retention teams
• Expanding the creative variety in the account
• Doubling down on what customers actually respond to

None of these changes are particularly sexy on their own.

But stack them together for 12 months…

…and the results compound.

That’s how most brands actually scale.

Not with one breakthrough.

But with consistent, methodical improvements across the entire growth engine.

----

We’ve got one client slot left for March.

If you’re doing $2+ a year and looking to scale paid acquisition properly

Feel free to drop me a message - we'll see if we're a fit!

A client hit $20M last quarter - up 337%.
The driver wasn't creative.
We rebuilt their strategy around 8 things most brands ignore ⤵

Here are 8 underrated areas we obsessed over that helped achieve this scale:

1. Advertorials:

Stopped only sending cold traffic straight to PDPs.

Built pre-sale pages with storytelling and social proof first.

Flow: Meta Ad → Advertorial → PDP.

CPC and CPA dropped significantly. Works especially well for higher AOV products that need education before the buy.

2. Whitelisting every creator:

Run ads through creator handles pointing to your landing pages.

CPCs on Meta dropped consistently vs brand handles.

One shoot day = 15 touchpoints across the funnel.

3. PDPs optimised for paid traffic

Most brands waste 40% of above-the-fold space.

Moved hook, CTA, and value prop to the top. 

Answer the 5 questions every shopper has in the first scroll:

> What it is
> How it benefits them
> Why you
> How it compares
> Shipping/returns

4. Internal content creator:

Faster than agencies. More reliable than freelancers.

Real-time content tied to launches and customer feedback. 

More brands should hire for this role.

We helped them leverage their internal creator more effectively

5. Review collection system:

Built a process to catalog and syndicate reviews everywhere.

More reviews = more efficient CAC.

Mined them for angles too - the top 5 most-mentioned benefits became the next batch of ads and landing page copy.

6. New customer offer structure:

Built irresistible first-order offers that make it stupid-easy to try the product.

Your goal is a test-drive. 

Make the first order a no-brainer.

7. Volume creative testing cadence:

Creative still matters - but volume and variety testing is what separates brands that find winners from brands that wonder why nothing scales.

Less than 10% of ads scale, so the math is simple: test more, find more winners.

Stopped overthinking production. 

Sometimes the best ads are shot in under a minute.

8. AI agents for grunt work:

Set up agents to handle research, competitive intelligence, and pattern recognition.

Scans Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube comments for trends. Tracks competitor ads. 

Pulls themes from reviews and support tickets.

The team moves faster when AI handles the bottleneck tasks.

None of this is glamorous. 

All of it compounds.

What's one unsexy area you keep deprioritising that would probably move your numbers?

taplio

The Battle

Todd Feldman

Toby W.

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taplio

The Battle

Todd Feldman

Toby W.

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Toby W.'s LinkedIn Performance

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