Paid Media: buying revenue, not clicks
Ecommerce paid media is a portfolio problem: Meta finds demand, Google captures it, TikTok seeds it, YouTube compounds it. The teams that scale profitably manage the portfolio against contribution margin and MER not per-platform ROAS.
Platform ROAS lies. It rewards the last click, ignores organic overlap, and hides the campaigns that actually grew the business. Every mature ecommerce brand eventually rebuilds their reporting against a north-star metric contribution margin per pound spent, tracked through MER and incrementality tests.
This hub covers the four channels that matter for DTC, plus the discipline that ties them together: creative testing volume, server-side tracking, MMM, and honest incrementality.
Guides, playbooks and case studies
Creative-first accounts, CBO vs ABO, Advantage+ Shopping, CAPI and MMM.
P-Max, Standard Shopping, feed hygiene, brand vs non-brand attribution.
Spark ads, creator content, TikTok Shop mechanics, and the UGC pipeline.
In-stream + shorts + demand-gen why YouTube compounds ROAS for months.
How a senior media buyer's week is structured daily, weekly, monthly rituals.
Reels, stories and creator whitelisting the actual Instagram-native creative pipeline.
Statics, UGC, motion the volume and rate you need to keep CPMs sane.
GA4, CAPI, server-side, MMM tools, and how to sanity-check platform ROAS.
The playbook, step by step
- 01Set the north-star
Contribution margin per £ spent, tracked at MER level. Everything else is a diagnostic, not a decision.
- 02Fix tracking
GA4 + Meta CAPI + Google Enhanced Conversions + server-side layer. No optimisation on broken data.
- 03Creative supply chain
20-40 fresh creatives / month minimum for accounts >£30k/month spend. UGC, statics, motion testing matrix, not one-offs.
- 04Channel allocation
Rebalance monthly by contribution margin, not platform ROAS. Incrementality-test the biggest bets quarterly.
- 05Scale
Once winning ads + LTV curve support it, scale in 20% weekly increments never doubling budget overnight.
Frequently asked questions
Meta or Google which first?
Google if you have existing branded demand (search volume for your name/product). Meta if you're seeding demand for a new or category-defining product.
Is TikTok worth it if we're not a Gen Z brand?
Yes if your product has organic-content potential (before/after, demo, unboxing, comparison). No if your value prop only lands with founder-led long-form.
How much creative do we need?
Match your CPM inflation curve. If Meta CPMs are up 30% YoY, your fresh-creative rate needs to be up ~30% to hold ROAS steady.
Do we need MMM at our size?
Under £100k/month spend: skip formal MMM, use holdout tests. Over £200k/month: full MMM pays for itself in one channel-reallocation decision.