Paid media works when the account is optimizing toward an event that reaches revenue, creative is judged on cost per that event, and the funnel behind the click can convert. Most underperforming accounts fail one of those three, and it is rarely the bidding.
These are the playbooks I use to judge and run paid accounts, plus the case studies where the numbers moved.
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Paid media & performance · September 3, 2026 · 9 min read
You have paid for ads for a year and never logged in. Five checks, thirty minutes, no expertise required, and the questions to ask instead of accusations.
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Paid media & performance · July 16, 2026 · 4 min read
Ad platforms automated bidding and targeting. Creative is the lever you still control. How FX Replay scored 1,000+ variants against revenue.
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Paid media & performance · August 10, 2026 · 8 min read
Customer acquisition cost benchmarks from eight industries, first-party: a $2 app install to a $2,100 signed merchant, and what each number bought.
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Paid media & performance · August 13, 2026 · 10 min read
How I built a private lender's Google Ads account from zero: campaigns split by intent, negatives as the compliance line, forecasts before funding.
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Paid media & performance · August 12, 2026 · 6 min read
A bidding tool cut cost per install 23% and added 11,000 installs. After its $8,000 fee the year finished $2,400 behind. How to price any marketing tool.
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Case study · August 11, 2026 · 8 min read
An agency spent $48,000 a month for eight months with zero attributed subscribers. What changed in 90 days when FX Replay took paid media in-house.
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Case study · August 7, 2026 · 5 min read
DoorDash's flagship segment paid nearly 3x per lead. A starved segment bought them for a fraction. A case study in reading a paid account by its segments.
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Case study · August 4, 2026 · 7 min read
A California health fund needed statewide English and Spanish signups. Cost per registration fell from $35 to $2.40 in six months. The full playbook.
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Paid media & performance · August 3, 2026 · 8 min read
At YouMail I built a search program on fifty dollars a day. How a hard budget forces a cleaner, more honest Google Ads account than abundance would.
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Case study · July 31, 2026 · 7 min read
See how a mens personal-care brand put its whole year on Q4 and took 46% of annual online revenue in it. Read the holiday playbook.
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Paid media & performance · July 28, 2026 · 7 min read
A DSCR lender wrote off its Google Ads leads as junk. The leads were fine, the response was slow. The speed-to-lead system that fixed it: SMS, claim, call.
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Paid media & performance · July 18, 2026 · 4 min read
FX Replay's affiliate program grew past 4,000 active partners returning about $5 in revenue per $1 of commission. How it was built and tracked.
Read the article →Check three things: which event the account optimizes for, whether creative is scored on cost per that event, and whether spend moves when the numbers move. Reporting polish is not one of the three.
It depends entirely on what was bought. First-party acquisition prices run from $2 for an app install to $2,100 for a signed merchant. A benchmark only counts when it names the event.
In-house once spend is large enough that a full-time buyer costs less than the agency fee and the account needs daily judgment. Until then, an agency with the right optimization event can work.
I write about what actually moved the numbers. If any of it maps to what you're facing, let's talk.
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