Why your Q4 ads look broken when the page is the problem

Hey,

Bit of advice against my own interest to start with.

If the ads have gone sideways this quarter and you’ve been quietly thinking about moving agency, my instinct is to leave it until December. Six weeks out the switch costs more than the agency does. Account access takes a week, the new team spends a fortnight learning what the last lot knew, and your learning phase resets just as auction prices climb.

I ran that past one of the media buyers I admire and he pushed back, fairly. It only holds if what you’ve got is working. If an agency has already failed to scale you, or there’s no real plan in place, then sitting tight is the expensive option. Later than ideal isn’t the same as too late.

The way I look at it, revenue is three numbers multiplied together.

If the thing holding you back sits in one of those, fixing it is your biggest next move and the rest is noise.

Your media buyer owns sessions. We own the other two. Push both at the same time and there’s no ceiling on it. Most brands only ever push one.

So the real question is which of the three is stuck?

I’ve been on calls with 24 paid media agencies since the summer, partly to work out who we’d recommend and partly because I’m nosey about how they operate. Same few things keep coming up, from the agency side as much as the brand side.

Spend scaled, the audience got colder, and the page was still built for people who already knew the brand. The ads didn’t break, the page stopped matching who was landing on it.

The agency is paid to hit a ROAS number while you’re protecting contribution margin. Those pull apart quickly once spend goes up.

And nobody owns the handoff. They own the click, you own the site, so the bit in between belongs to nobody and thats the thing that should be designed to the selling.

Easy check to run this week. Revenue per session is just those last two multiplied, RPS = CVR × AOV, so put it next to your ad spend over the last 90 days. If spend went up and RPS came down, sessions are fine and the page isn’t keeping up. If both came down together and nobody has a plan for why, that’s when moving is worth the pain.

Good agencies will tell you when it isn’t their problem, by the way. If yours has ever said fix the page before you give me more budget, hang onto them and give me a shout instead. Landing pages, sales funnels, any sort of CRO, that’s the side of it we turn around. My cal is here if you want to grab a slot: https://calendly.com/ecomluxx/30-minute-meeting-w-conal-misc

Anyway, if you get to December and still want a change in Paid Media, reply to this and I’ll tell you who I’d actually send you to. Six of those 24 I’d put in front of a client without thinking twice. Costs you nothing, I just make the intro.

Hope the run-up to the money-making days is going well, and if you need help with anything, you know where to find me.

Cheers,
Conal

An insider look at the mechanics used by your biggest competitors and how to leverage this not-so-secret secret sauce this quarter. Scaling is simpler than you think. These days we’re all being distracted by the shiny new tools/ Back to bascis guys!

Until Next Week!

Conal Brady
Ecom Luxx

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