Shubham A.

Instead, double down on creative formats, angles, offers, and landing pages.

• Most new customers still arrive through evergreen winning angles, so effort is better spent maximising those than starting fresh.
• New landing-page tests make sense when they are seasonal or tied to a product launch, and contingency offers should be ready in case something goes wrong.

The post lists concrete moves for each area: add sale callouts to evergreen winners; run scaled evergreen ads in their own campaigns and let the site carry the offer message; revisit the top angles from the previous two Q4s; add gifting angles aimed at the buyer or someone in their life; match offer duration to how long promo ads need to run; and make existing landing pages seasonal instead of building new ones.

A later post applies the same priority during the sales window.

• Shubham A. attributes the slower results advertisers often see in the first half of November to purchase timing: buyers hold off until the last possible day.
• The effect, they say, shows up in conversion rate and historical trends.
• Rather than panic, advertisers should be ready to steer spend upward, a payoff for audience warming and account structure built earlier in the year.

Read original

Even a slight disconnect throws buyers off and leads to poor returns.

• Each stage has a different job: educate rather than sell at the top of the funnel; lean on testimonials, product demos, benefits, and social proof in the middle; and address objections at the bottom.
• But separate campaigns for each funnel stage no longer make sense because Meta's targeting broke that setup.
• Instead, tailor copy, creative, and landing pages within consolidated structures such as ASC.

The stage breakdown names specific formats and concerns.

• Top of funnel leans on listicles and advertorials for problem-aware, unaware, and solution-aware audiences.
• Bottom of funnel addresses pricing, shipping, quality, and risk, testing discount-led, urgency-led, and objection-debunking messages against each other.

Read original

Taking whatever content a client supplies and relying on existing product pages no longer works.

• Agencies that control these inputs are more likely to be treated as growth partners, retain clients, and outperform those that leave the work to the client.
• The same logic applies when brands assess their own capability gaps.

Three capabilities to keep in-house or source through external partners: direct-response creative that converts, pre-sell pages that print money, and sourcing and scripting UGC videos on demand.

Read original

A brand already testing whitelisting usually starts with ads that performed on its main page rather than net-new creative, so the whitelisting page tends to expose winners. Shubham A. says the approach works about eight times out of ten, but can mislead when a media-buying team uses whitelisting to test new material instead of proven ads.

The post centres on one observable pattern: ads running under whitelisting pages. A bonus tip points to longevity as a signal of what may already be working.

Read original

DTC needs less, in their view, of polished slide decks and hour-long calls described as productive. That preference for execution over reporting theatre shapes the tactical advice: run fast tests, own production, and make decisions close to the work.

The post asks readers for their own view, framing the claim as an opinion about what DTC needs more and less of rather than a measured result.

A later career post echoes the same preference, describing a lean, fast-moving team with autonomy, few approval layers, and budgets scaled hard during promo periods.

Read original

One announces a start as paid media manager at True Classic.

• A later post announces a departure from the director of paid media role at Freebird, describing a lean team that made bigger, bolder decisions quickly, with full autonomy and an ask-for-forgiveness-later attitude.
• Ask for verification of the scale figures, which Shubham A. states in the posts.

The Freebird post says Shubham A. helped grow the business into a nine-figure company, managed more than $100 million in spend while running the entire paid media engine, and scaled budgets hard every promo period. It names colleagues credited with that period and closes by promising news about what comes next.

Read original · Original 2

It helps answer whether a message is persuasive for the person seeing it, rather than merely promotional.

Shubham A. separates ad messaging into three jobs: teach people still learning about a problem, use demonstrations and social proof for people weighing solutions, and address practical objections for people close to buying. They caution that these stages don’t require separate campaigns; the message and landing page can do the tailoring.

For brands planning a campaign

For a Q4 campaign, check whether each creative and its landing page answer the same buyer question. Test educational, proof-led, and objection-focused messages without assuming each needs its own campaign structure.

This helps a brand decide what to stabilize before Q4 traffic and competition rise.

For November and December, Shubham A. argues for building on historically successful creative, offers, angles, and landing pages rather than relying on untested changes.

• They suggest adapting evergreen winners with seasonal sale messaging, reviewing earlier Q4 results, and preparing backup offers.
• The advice is specific to the high-pressure holiday period, not a general case against testing.

For brands planning a campaign

Use prior Q4 and evergreen results to choose which assets to scale, then make seasonal edits where the product fits. Keep contingency offers ready and reserve new landing-page tests for launches or seasonal needs.

It’s useful for understanding their approach to competitor creative research without treating an observable ad as confirmed success.

Shubham A. proposes checking a brand’s whitelisted ads—including creator-led and generic pages—and giving longer-running ads extra attention as clues to what may already be working. They warn that this isn’t foolproof: a media team could be testing new material through those pages, so the activity can mislead.

For brands planning a campaign

Treat long-running whitelisted ads as research leads, not proof of performance. Compare their message, format, and offer with the brand’s other visible ads before using them to shape a Q4 creative test.

It helps a brand assess whether its bottleneck is media management or the creative and page work feeding the campaigns.

Shubham A. argues that paid-media agencies need access to services that directly affect ad performance, including direct-response creative, presell pages, and sourcing and scripting user-generated videos. Closer control of these inputs, they say, can improve execution and make an agency more of a growth partner than a media buyer alone.

For brands planning a campaign

When assessing support for a Q4 push, ask who will produce and iterate the ads and presell pages—not just who will manage spend. Clarify which capabilities are in-house and which depend on outside partners.

In this career update, Shubham A. says they stepped away from their director of paid media role at Freebird after helping grow the business into a nine-figure company and managing more than $100 million in spend. They describe a lean team, fast decisions, and high autonomy as defining parts of the experience.

For brands planning a campaign

This post offers context on the scale and operating environment Shubham A. describes. Before considering them for peak-season work, ask about their current role, availability, and specific responsibilities for the proposed project.

Reinforce creative formats, angles, offers, and landing pages. Put sale callouts on evergreen winners, run scaled evergreen ads in their own campaigns and let the site carry the offer message, repurpose angles that worked in the previous two Q4s, add gifting angles aimed at the buyer or someone in their life, keep contingency offers ready, match promo length to the paid-media plan, and make existing landing pages seasonal rather than starting fresh.

Reuse prior-year winners with seasonal messaging, give proven evergreen ads their own campaigns, and align offer duration with how long promo ads need to run.

New landing-page tests are allowed when they’re seasonal or tied to a product launch.

For brands planning a campaign

For a Q4 brief, expect a plan built on proven creative and offers rather than untested concepts. Ask what share of budget goes to scaled winners versus tests, and whether contingency offers and promo-length planning are in place before the peak period.

Examples: Source 1

Shubham A. attributes the slowdown to purchase timing, with buyers holding off until the last possible day, and says the effect shows up in conversion rate and historical trends.

• The advice: don’t panic.
• The ability to steer spend upward is the payoff for audience warming and account structure built earlier in the year.

For brands planning a campaign

Expect in-season management that adjusts spend rather than rebuilding campaigns mid-period. This suits brands tempted to cut budget when results soften early, provided the account already has a tested structure to lean on.

Examples: Source 1

Top of funnel should educate rather than sell, using listicles and advertorials tailored to problem-aware, solution-aware, and unaware audiences.

• Middle of funnel should highlight testimonials, product demos, benefits, and social proof.
• Bottom of funnel should address objections around pricing, shipping, quality, and risk, testing discount, urgency, and objection-debunking messages.
• Shubham A. adds that separate campaigns for each funnel stage no longer make sense because Meta’s targeting broke that setup.
• They recommend tailoring copy, creative, and landing pages within consolidated, AI-driven structures such as ASC.

Segment by funnel stage through creative, copy, and landing-page variants inside consolidated campaign structures rather than separate stage-based campaigns.

For brands planning a campaign

For a DTC brand, expect creative briefs organized by funnel stage and buyer awareness rather than audience targeting, and a preference for consolidated campaign structures over stage-siloed ones. This shapes how the brand should brief creative volume and landing-page variants.

Examples: Source 1

They argue that relying on whatever content a client provides and existing product pages no longer works.

• The three capabilities an agency should have in-house or through external partners are direct-response creative that converts, pre-sell pages, and on-demand UGC video sourcing and scripting.
• Agencies that control these services are more likely to be treated as growth partners, retain clients, and see better performance than those that leave the work to the client.

Bundle creative production, pre-sell page building, and UGC sourcing and scripting with media buying, either in-house or through named partners.

For brands planning a campaign

If a brand is weighing an agency or contractor arrangement, this describes an offer that pairs media buying with creative and landing-page production. Ask which services are in-house, who writes the UGC scripts, and how pre-sell pages are produced.

Examples: Source 1

A brand already testing whitelisting usually starts with ads that performed on its main page rather than net-new creative, so the whitelisting page tends to expose winners.

• A bonus tip: check which whitelisting ads have been running longest.
• Shubham A. estimates the method works about eight times out of ten and says it can mislead if the media-buying team takes a different approach.

The method can point in the wrong direction if a brand’s media-buying team uses whitelisting to test new creative instead of proven ads.

For brands planning a campaign

Expect competitive research grounded in what brands are actually running, including creator-led whitelisting. For a brand preparing a peak-season push, this offers a way to benchmark creative and angles against live competitor activity before committing spend.

Examples: Source 1

DTC needs less polished slide decks and fewer long calls, the post says. The same preference appears in a career post describing a lean, fast-moving team with autonomy and few approval layers, where budgets were scaled hard during promo periods.

For brands planning a campaign

Expect a hands-on operator who favors fast tests and direct execution over long reporting cycles. If a brand needs detailed reporting or heavy process, discuss that up front.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

They said they ran the entire paid media engine, helped the business grow into a 9-figure company, and managed more than $100m in spend. This was a departure notice, not an ongoing employment relationship.

View example

The announcement did not detail specific campaign work.

View example

One post argues that relying on a single winning ad is risky and that the job is to keep a pipeline of hooks, angles, and formats in testing. That aligns with Shubham A.'s push to reinforce winners while keeping contingency creative and offers ready.

Ujla Shakoor's posts are more reflective, including a career-pause-and-reset post focused on direction rather than tactics. The material here covers creative-testing risk and account fragility; Shubham A. focuses on peak-season sequencing, funnel-stage messaging, and which services a media buyer should own.

Read original · Original 2

Ian Lenny's five-step account audit covers creative testing, account structure, and exclusions. Their creative-department post argues that brands should build production capability rather than rely on a single in-house team or agency, aligning with Shubham A.'s argument that media buyers should control creative, pre-sell pages, and UGC.

Ian Lenny takes a broader view of creative operations and how a brand should organize production, while Shubham A. focuses on in-account execution and seasonal planning. Lenny's audit is diagnostic; Shubham A.'s posts prescribe what to do in a given period.

Read original · Original 2

The argument that automation still needs a strategist to decide what to test and when to scale matches Shubham A.'s view that owning the key inputs matters more than operating settings.

Ali Chaudhary steps back to frame fundamentals, such as why boosting is not a strategy or how Advantage+ changes the media buyer's role. Shubham A. works closer to the calendar and account, offering concrete peak-season, offer, and landing-page instructions.

Read original · Original 2

The posts describe the pattern directly: a winner gets scaled from $1K to $10K, CPA climbs, ROAS drops, and the whole account feels it because it was built around one hook, angle, and message.

• The proposed response is a testing pipeline — different hooks, angles, customer problems, and formats — so the next winner is already in test when the current one tires.
• That suits a Q4 account with one or two proven creatives that needs more resilience before peak spend.

The tradeoff is less Q4 operational depth.

• Ask for a peak-season calendar, contingency offers, landing-page rules, and in-season spend guidance.
• Ujla Shakoor offers a clear creative-diversification argument, but less detail on running the November–December period itself than Shubham A.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The five-step audit sorts by spend volume, checks whether account structure isolates tests, asks who should be excluded to protect incrementality, and reviews creative testing and whitelisting.

• The companion post argues DTC brands need a distributed creative department rather than one in-house team or agency, with modular vendors for remote product shoots, editing, UGC, licensed influencer content, and content calendars.
• That fits a Q4 need where the brand must diagnose why spend is not scaling or stand up testing capacity quickly.

The tradeoff is that this is upstream work.

• The posts focus on account diagnosis and creative-production structure, not a specific Q4 calendar, offer strategy, or peak-season landing-page guidance.
• Ask for those details if the brand needs help executing an already-tested Q4 plan; Shubham A.'s peak-season reinforcement advice may be more relevant.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The posts frame spend as a customer-acquisition system rather than a promotion: business goal, offer, audience, creative, funnel, measurement, optimization.

• The second post argues that as Advantage+ automates execution, the media buyer's job becomes deciding what to test, which angle makes sense, whether the problem is audience, creative, offer, or funnel, what the numbers say, and when to scale or stop.
• That fits a Q4 need where the team can operate the account but needs better decision rules before committing peak budget.

The tradeoff is Q4 specificity.

• The posts are strategic and current, but do not lay out the peak-season sequence.
• Ask for a November–December offer calendar, landing-page rules, and a creative-format inventory if the brand needs execution detail; Shubham A.'s posts are more directly applicable to that need.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2