u/Faisalziaanwer

They are at 0.6x Net ROAS - which I clearly put up was NOT just marketing issue. Even a bad ad can atleast pull of a 1x ROAS.

Client got visibly offended. Call ended awkwardly.

Had I closed they would have said - ' Why did you go ahead if not confident?'

No correct answer. Mistake is ONLY on the agency in any case - which is the simplest answer.

"Why is there no growth? - Cuz our agency sucked"...Its a comforting conclusion.

Wanting to brainstorm, understand what other agency owners are focusing on for acquiring customers with AI in the picture.

Lately I’ve been taking a lot of interviews and I have been seeing that candidates have been getting most basic stuff wrong about performance advertising.

When Covid hit, tons of people got into media buying as it was the easiest money to make without any knowledge or barrier of entry. It is showing now.

I reject the candidate if they are not able to answer even one of these questions. I’m sharing it here so in case you are hiring for your company, you have a frame of reference.

Just FYI, I have been running my agency for the last seven years and I have a strong team of 30+ people.

Question 1: Explain your creative strategy to me, that you have been using in your other account accounts in the last six months.

The goal of this question is to assess if the person is in sync with the creative approach post Andromeda, which are working for active customer acquisition. If I even get a whiff of pre-2024 creative terminology, a lot of MOF/BOF talk… I reject the person. My expectation is to hear more about persona testing, creative variations, and formats. Also, if a person can expand upon their creative testing approach, that would be beneficial.

Question 2: How do you test your creatives?

There is no right answer here, there are multiple ways to test, creative just the thought process needs to be logical. However, I reject a person if they just say ‘ test creative on ABO’ - and don’t say anything else.

Question 3: Tell me your strongest case study, something you are proudest about?

The intent of this question is to understand if the candidate has the skills to market their own work or not. Also, if it gives me an idea about the standard, they set themselves against. There have been times when candidates have shared a lousy case study… And expected me to just be OK with that. I also assist the logic and depth in the case study being shared.

Question 4: diving deeper into the case study itself.

I try to figure out holes, and keep them on their toes. Are usual question that I ask is - “ what all activities do you think Lead to this clients growth in your case study”

If the answer is a one or two liner, I know that they are bluffing it.

My expectation would be the person to bring out all the work that they and the brand Team did.

There have been times when people have said “ cost cap is the reason this account scaled”… I usually cross question if they are sure there is no other reason. Because had just been that easy everyone would have done it.

The reason I stress on this specific question is so that I can assess if the candidate is able to reflect back on his own work and find the reason for the growth, which is usually not just media buying related.

Question 5: asking questions outside ads manager dashboard.

In 2026 a true blue Media Buyer is not just someone who runs ads, but someone who understand, creative strategy, landing page testing, CRO strategies, Retention strategy, scripting, everything about AI automations required for making analysis quicker…

So that is it. These few questions really help me gauge and if I do not find the required depth in the answers… I don’t take it ahead.

Last year, one of the clients I worked for almost 3 years… Decided to move on to another agency.

That is totally fair, but the way to do it should be right.

I was removed from the business manager without any notice or even a conversation. 3 years of 100xing their monthly revenue

All we got was a WhatsApp message 1 minute before all access were removed.

Never felt so small and insignificant. I couldn’t sleep for days….because naively I believed that I would at least be treated well, they were one of our initial clients… I still personally managed them.

Such experiences make you our businessman. If you are someone who is freelancing, doing a job, working with a client… always remember we are all replaceable.

The freelancer is replaceable
The agency is replaceable
The employee is replaceable

And for me… Even the clients are replaceable after this incident:)

• Start a business
• Screw around for 6/7 months without figuring out anything, PMF, supply chain, marketing...
• Hire an agency
• See minimal growth in 20 days
• Panic panic panic
• Stop adding funds in ad account
• Ghost first week of next month "
• After careful consideration we have decided to run our ads ourselves"
• Repeat

Any business creators here who create content on Instagram or TikTok?

I recently crossed my first 10K on IG and restart Reddit as well… Just wondering if any other people here who are creating content for customer acquisition and audience building, any learning that I can gather that helps me

PS I have been running an agency for the last seven years and create contact majorly around Marketing, to see, Mehta ads, scaling businesses

Any business creators here who create content on Instagram or TikTok?

I recently crossed my first 10K on IG and restart Reddit as well… Just wondering if any other people here who are creating content for customer acquisition and audience building, any learning that I can gather that helps me

PS I have been running an agency for the last seven years and create contact majorly around Marketing, to see, Mehta ads, scaling businesses

I have been running meta ads for 7+ years now. Have grown from a two people 'team' to a 30+ people team. So there is a lot of experience and context, which was already there to be used.

But my biggest headache/time waster was account audits. Both from a client as well as Sales on boarding perspective. I saw the capacity Claude and the context we had as an agency… I started using it very thoroughly.

In the past three months, we have seen record closing major jolly because of time saved while doing the audits via claude. Obviously, there are glitches and the experience comes to play at that point, you can't blindly trust what an AI tells you. But it surely makes 90% of the work easier this weekend.

I have audited four accounts already with solid documentation of their past two years of data, create a audit, CRO audit, retention audit, benchmarking to our other clients with just using the meta MCP.

When people say AI is taking your jobs, I think it is making technical legwork easier and just saving time. Previously, I used to have my senior Media Buyer do the audits, which was a major headache for them as well. As it was an additional work apart from their usual work.

Are you automate your analysis as well? Would love to get a better understanding of the processes. Others might be using happy to share some deets of mine.

There are a lot of formats when it comes to AI ads. A few that I have tested are these:

🎬 Claymation breakdown
🎭 Pixar character arc
🫀 Body-cutaway mechanism
📱 Lifestyle avatar
🎥 Hyper-real UGC
🎙 Podcast + UGC mashup
🎧 Product podcast
🔊 ASMR brand story
🎤 Street interview
👽 Alien POV testimonial
🏛 Period drama
🧶 Wool diorama
🧱 LEGO office
🍄 Ingredient micro-drama
👨‍⚕️ Doctor explainer
🎵 Rap anthem
🎙 Keynote stage reveal
🧠 Organ POV
📹 Documentary expert

Do you know of any other - I would love to know those too to see and see if they impact ROAS!

I have been seen a lot of advertisers talk about AI slop ad.

In your experience, do their work and if so, what are the best performing formats and practises there?