With 17+ years hands-on experience and an AI-powered operating system I'll beat your current agencies Meta results (and save you a fortune in fee's)
Work with
I've personally managed Meta Ads for hundreds of brands big and small
You've been here before. Slick onboarding, a big strategy deck, a confident account manager. Then six weeks in, results are flat and the shine has worn off. It's the classic agency story and you're fed up with it.
The experienced person closed the deal. The junior is in your account. Agencies are built to win clients, not to produce results. You're not paying for expertise, you're paying for overhead.
Most agencies report in-platform ROAS and call it a win while your P&L tells a different story. Without proper tracking & attribution, you're optimising toward numbers that don't match reality.
If your agency is churning out hundreds of AI-generated ads and telling you they're "feeding the algorithm" but your results still aren't improving, something has to change. Volume without strategy is just noise.
When the strategy isn't working there's always someone else to blame. This is what happens when your team is fragmented and junior staff are responsible for executive decisions.
Wondering if there's a better way to run your Meta Ads?
Work withTaking "inspiration" from competitors is fine, but the most successful brands on Meta find their own creative voice.
I no longer need a 10-person agency to run exceptional Meta Ads campaigns for clients.
By investing in AI tools that manage agency grunt work I can focus my attention on strategy and creative direction, the work that provides real value to your account.
I'm John. I've been in digital marketing since 2006 and running Facebook ads since 2009, back when you could target by interests and it actually worked. Since then I've spent time inside large media agencies and boutique shops, and ran my own agency for over a decade.
So I know exactly how agencies are built, which is precisely why I don't work that way any more. The old model made sense when production was slow and expensive. It isn't any more. Design, video, research, editing, analysis: all of it is faster now, and the value has shifted from labour to judgement. You shouldn't be paying for a room full of people to do work that one experienced operator with the right tools can do better.
What I've learned in 17+ years on Meta is fairly simple. Creative wins. Not audiences, not hacks, not secret settings. The algorithm reads the signals in your creative and decides who sees it, so the work that moves performance is having a genuine point of view about who buys from you and why, then testing it properly. Media buying amplifies good creative. It can't rescue bad creative.
I work with a small number of brands at a time and I do the work myself. No account managers, no handover, no junior in your account. If I think something won't work, I'll say so. If I'm not the right person for your situation, I'll tell you that too.
Work withEvery account is different, but these are the levers I keep coming back to. If your agency isn't pulling them, they're working from a playbook that expired a few years ago.
Authentic creator content consistently beats polished brand ads. I source, vet and brief creators properly. Real people your audience recognises as one of their own, not actors reading a script.
Reels is where Meta's attention (and cheapest reach) is right now. Ads built natively for the format (vertical, fast, sound-on) earn delivery that repurposed square assets never will.
Meta distributes your ads based on the signals in your creative. A genuinely diverse mix of formats, styles and messages lets the algorithm find pockets of buyers that one “winning template” never reaches.
The ad and the landing page are one unit, because Meta learns from what happens after the click. A slow or mismatched page quietly caps your results no matter how good the creative is.
Most accounts exhaust one angle and call it creative testing. Mapping personas to problems, and problems to messages, keeps a pipeline of fresh hypotheses instead of a folder of random ads.
In-platform ROAS flatters everyone. What matters is whether the ads created revenue you wouldn't have had anyway. Holdouts, MER and honest measurement over vanity dashboards.
The fundamentals hold everywhere. What changes is which number you optimise toward, how long you wait before judging it, and what a good customer actually looks like.
Creative sets the ceiling, not targeting. How I work with ecommerce brands.
First order ROAS caps how far you can scale. Advertising a subscription business.
Installs are the cheap part. Everything else happens after the download. Meta Ads for apps.
No cost of goods means a higher ceiling than most founders use. Selling digital products.
Volume is easy to buy and rarely the problem. Getting leads worth having.
Your buyers scroll in the evening like everyone else. Meta as a demand channel.
A trial signup is a promise, not a customer. Optimising toward activation.
Supply and demand compete for one budget. Balancing a two sided platform.
People join to belong, not to access a resource library. Advertising a membership.
A fixed date leaves no room to learn on the fly. Working to a deadline.
Inside a small radius, frequency governs everything. Advertising locally.
Candidates and clients never move at the same speed. Running both sides.
Every pound answers to trustees as well as the cause. Fundraising on Meta.
Senior Meta delivery without hiring for it. White label work.
If none of those quite describe you, the principles still hold. The full list is here.
What founders say about working with John on Meta campaigns
John does the work himself, which after three agencies felt almost strange. He found problems in our account nobody had mentioned in two years, fixed them quickly, and explained every decision in plain English. Our creative output has never been stronger.
Giles HumphriesFounder, Mindful Chef
What I value most is the honesty. John tells me when an idea won't work and why, rather than nodding along and billing me for it. He's genuinely part of the business now, not a supplier I chase for updates.
Sandra Roycroft-DavisFounder, Slimpod
We'd been told our category was too niche for Meta to work properly. John rebuilt our creative approach around who actually buys from us, and the difference was obvious within weeks. No jargon, no endless meetings, just work.
Jason GrimaFounder, Swallow Co.
Having one experienced person accountable for everything changed how fast we move. Questions get answered the same day, tests go live the same week, and I always know exactly what's being worked on and why it matters.
CyrusFounder, re:sleep
End to end management of your account, from technical setup to creative to landing pages.
Plans customised to your needs, based on management time required, not just your ad spend.
Get your account managed day-to-day by one of the UK's most experienced Meta Ads experts.
Work withMeta Ads training customised entirely to your in-house team.
Fee dependant on team size, experience and support required. Delivered remotely or onsite.
Enquire about trainingNo minimum terms or lock in's once you start working with me. If you're not happy with results you can walk anytime and take everything with you.
Personal contact with me. No account managers, junior "strategists", no sales people. Questions, problems, ideas… just WhatsApp me anytime
Not a cheap option but I'll charge a fair fixed fee and show you the value of what I'm doing. I'm not incentivized to spend more of your money on ads.
Your ad account, pixel, catalogue and every creative asset I produce stay yours. Everything is built in your accounts, not mine, so if we stop working together you keep the lot.
Hiring one person instead of an agency raises fair questions. Here are honest answers to the ones that come up most.
Accounts are built so they don't need daily babysitting to stay safe. I tell you when I'm away, make sure nothing risky is mid-flight, and stay reachable for anything urgent. What you don't get is an agency's version of cover: a junior who's never seen your account keeping the seat warm.
Deliberately few. The whole model depends on me doing the work rather than delegating it, so there's a hard ceiling on how many accounts I can be properly useful to. If I'm full, I'll say so rather than take your money and stretch myself thin.
More people isn't the same as more expertise. In most agencies the senior person you meet in the pitch isn't the person in your account afterwards, which is the whole reason I work this way. You're trading a larger team for direct access to the most experienced person on the job.
Partner access to your Meta Business Manager and ad account, plus read access to your analytics and Shopify or equivalent. Everything stays in your accounts under your ownership. I'm added as a partner, never the other way round.
You'll have a full audit and a prioritised roadmap early on, so you'll know what I've found and what I'd change before anything gets touched. Meaningful performance change depends on your spend, how much creative we can get live and how long the account takes to exit learning. Anyone promising you a number in week one is guessing.
I produce it. Statics, video edits, iterations and variations, using AI for the production grunt work while the strategy and direction stay human. If you already have a creative team or creators you like working with, I'll brief them instead. Whatever gets better ads live faster.
No contracts, no minimum term. You can stop whenever you like and everything (the account, the pixel, the creative) is already yours and stays with you.
Ecommerce, subscription, lead generation and B2B. I've worked across a lot of categories over 17+ years, and the fundamentals hold wherever you're advertising: a clear offer, creative built around a real reason to buy, and honest measurement. If I don't think I'm the right person for your situation, I'll tell you at the enquiry stage rather than three months in.
Notes on what's actually working in Meta Ads. No hacks, no secret settings.
Restricting placements is the most common self-inflicted wound I see in audits. The fix isn't limiting delivery, it's supplying creative that works everywhere it lands.
Creative strategyMost "angle testing" is just new visuals for the same message. A real angle is a specific reason to buy, expressed for a specific type of person.
Creative strategyMeta decides who sees your ad based on signals in the creative itself. Once that clicks, you stop fiddling with audiences and start building creative systems.
Tell me a bit about your account and I'll come back with an honest view on whether I can help, what I'd do first, and what it would cost. No decks, no sales call required.