# Levi Steede

Levi Steede is the founder of Adfluent, a paid social agency for ecommerce brands. Their work focuses on building creative systems to test and scale Meta ads that bring in new customers.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/levi-steede/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/levisteede
- LinkedIn followers: 7,993
- Topics: paid-ads, b2b-marketing, demand-generation, creative-testing
- Based on 14 dated posts, latest 2026-09-30

## Summary

Levi Steede is most useful for building creative systems to test and scale Meta ads for ecommerce brands.

- Best for: A low seven figure DTC ecommerce brand scaling Meta paid social through an agency.
- Not for: A brand wanting a one-off sponsored post or creator placement.
- Check first: Confirm agency engagement, pricing, minimum spend, deliverables, filming arrangements, turnaround times, and case studies.

### Takeaways

- Creative diversity means reaching new demand, not making more hooks.
- An account has two jobs: create demand and capture it.
- Every ad should launch with a hypothesis and feed the next round.

## Main ideas

- **Creative diversity means reaching new demand, not making more hooks**: Steede argues that most brands treat creative diversity as a production task: more hooks, a new creator, new edits, new captions. If ads still address the same macro persona, pain point, promise, awareness level and core desire, they call it fake diversity and link it to flat spend — the account is fishing in the same pond. Real diversity changes one of four things: who the ad addresses (persona or job-to-be-done), why they would act (desire versus fear, speed versus certainty, convenience versus status), where they sit in awareness and objection state, or what is promised. Visual and structural differences can affect how Meta classifies ads under separate entity IDs, but they are a distribution mechanic; the goal is incremental reach. Volume belongs to the same argument: launching only two or three ads a week starves the system of signals, but different hooks on one idea produce volume without new demand.
- **An account has two jobs: create demand and capture it**: Steede splits paid social into demand generation — cold ads that name a problem the viewer has not fully articulated, with no product pitch — and demand capture — ads that convert existing intent and therefore show low cost per acquisition and strong return on ad spend. Most accounts they audit repeatedly do the second job and call it strategy. The failure mode: cutting demand generation when performance dips. Capture numbers look strong for a few weeks, then stall because the pipeline has no top. Steede also observes that unaware and problem-aware messaging is underused relative to product-aware ads, even though the larger pools sit there.
- **Partnership ads borrow trust a brand ad has to earn**: A brand ad asks someone to trust you; a partnership ad borrows trust already established with a creator's audience. Steede argues this matters most when every DTC brand is competing for the same attention and consumers are sceptical of polished scripts and AI-written angles. They report that creator-led partnership ads carry a disproportionate share of spend in many accounts. The process: recruit creators, track which audiences respond, then whitelist top performers' content as Meta partnership ads for cold traffic. The channel needs runway; trying to build it during a peak week leaves no time to earn trust.
- **Every ad should launch with a hypothesis and feed the next round**: Steede's agency sells a three-part system: a foundation phase that learns the brand's numbers, category and customers, down to why each person buys; an engine where every ad launches with a clear hypothesis and every result informs the next round of creative; and a scale phase that extends winners across formats and micro-personas inside an account structure built for Meta's Andromeda algorithm. The point: most brands think they need new ads when they need a better way to decide which ads to make. The agency handles ads management, creative strategy, filming, launching and reporting; the client approves concepts and keeps inventory current.
- **Start new clients by iterating on proven creative before shooting anything new**: Steede describes a deliberate change in how the agency onboards clients. The old default started with original UGC, which meant weeks of planning and production before an account produced any learning. The new default starts with proven creative — the client's own working material or a close analog from a similar account — and invests in new footage once there is signal. The principle is unchanged; the tradeoff is faster learning through iteration at the cost of immediate originality.
- **Raw, native, story-led ads beat polish**: One lesson Steede draws from a year of spend: the best-performing ads often look raw and native, and storytelling remains the most scalable skill in paid media. Consumers are more sceptical, and polished scripts and similar angles are everywhere, so authenticity can matter more than production quality. The point aligns with their partnership-ad argument: creator-led content cuts through that scepticism.
- **In creative strategy, pay for judgment rather than prompting**: Steede argues that AI has produced a wave of average creative strategists who prompt tools to rank customer-review and survey insights and generate scripts with a hypothesis attached, yet earn around €4,000–6,000 a month for work that requires little thinking. By contrast, designers and editors earn less while contributing across the production process. They endorse hiring a strategist who can assess where an account is underleveraged, verify that with a growth strategist, then write the hypothesis, copy and design the whole ad. Buyers should stress-test whether they are paying for strategy or another AI subscription.

## Work to read

- [A short self-introduction and agency overview](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/levisteede_adf-data-creative-scaling-system-activity-7510965773025181697-Qk_v)
- [How the ADF Data × Creative Scaling System works](https://www.instagram.com/p/DdbrfJyMyzm/)
- [Demand generation and demand capture are two different jobs](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/levisteede_most-dtc-ad-accounts-i-audit-are-running-activity-7453344510044131329-Tpn5)
- [True versus fake creative diversity](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/levisteede_creative-diversity-is-one-of-the-most-misunderstood-activity-7431978765645225984-Jy1p)
- [Five lessons from €52M in tracked revenue](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/levisteede_5-lessons-from-generating-52m-revenue-in-activity-7432703562612224000-6G96)
- [Starting new clients with iterations instead of a UGC shoot](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/levisteede_for-a-while-whenever-a-new-client-came-one-activity-7506613927275905024-iZ0d)
- [A Black Friday partnership-ad playbook with affiliate recruitment](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/levisteede_7-proven-partnership-ad-strategies-that-convert-activity-7509137548427026434-aTQv)

## Brand relationships

- **Adfluent** (owned_business)
- **UpPromote** (mention)
- **Stefan Georgi RMBC2** (mention)

## Partnerships

Levi Steede's partnership work runs through Adfluent, the paid social agency they founded, rather than through one-off sponsored posts. Their posts describe the route a brand takes: a free growth audit first, then a full-service engagement in which Adfluent handles ads management, creative strategy, filming, launching and reporting, while the brand supplies product, approves concepts and keeps inventory updated. The entry point is a direct message or a link in bio to apply for a growth audit; the audits are limited to brands that meet the requirements. A second strand is partnership or whitelisted creator ads: Steede describes taking creator and affiliate content and running it as Meta Partnership Ads through the creator's own handle, which they position as a way to borrow existing trust instead of asking cold traffic to trust a brand ad. Ask about pricing, minimum spend, deliverables and turnaround, which are not stated in the posts. The offer described is an agency service relationship, not a creator sponsorship package; the posts do not say whether there is a published offer to pay Steede personally for sponsored posts.

## Alternatives

- Nativ Yanko: Choose Nativ when the main problem is building cold-audience ads that persuade new customers, and the team wants a detailed account of how research leads to a specific script. In a collagen example, Nativ describes researching the ad account, ingredients, competitors, and personas, then building a mini-VSL around a customer’s skepticism, a distinct solution mechanism, and relevant proof. The post also says to assess new-customer acquisition rather than rely on blended ROAS. That gives a brand a concrete route from audience insight to an ad concept.
- Waleed Bin Wasim: Choose Waleed when the immediate need is diagnosing why a Meta account struggles to scale despite campaign changes. Waleed describes auditing a hair-care brand’s ads, finding that only about a quarter targeted new customers, and reframing the problem as a missing creative funnel across awareness levels. The work can help a brand check whether its creative speaks to people beyond those already familiar with the product.
- Jim Schroën: Choose Jim when the priority is producing creator-led UGC ads for DTC brands or exploring whether affiliate and creator content can also support product discovery. Jim’s post describes creating UGC ads and proposes that creator and affiliate content may be cited by AI tools when they recommend products. This is more relevant if the campaign centers on creator content and affiliate reach than on expanding an existing Meta account’s creative testing system.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/