I've personally managed Meta Ads for hundreds of brands big and small
Targeting is largely automated now. What's left is having something worth saying to the right person, and testing it properly.
Work withThe accounts I audit tend to have the same shape of problem, and it is almost never the settings.
You're producing more ads than ever and performance is flat, because volume without a hypothesis is just noise with a bigger invoice.
One creative carried the account for months, it has finally died, and there is nothing in the pipeline behind it.
Every test tells you which ad won but nothing about why, so you learn nothing you can apply to the next batch.
Reported ROAS and actual profit have drifted apart, and nobody can explain the gap with any confidence.
Meta decides who sees your ad based on what is in the creative. Once you accept that, the work reorganises itself.
An angle is a specific reason to buy, expressed for a specific type of person. Most brands have one and dress it in new clothes forty times. I map the reasons people actually buy from you, match them to who holds that reason, and build from there. The production is the easy part once you know what you are trying to say.
The same asset rarely earns attention in both. That is not an argument for splitting delivery and hobbling the algorithm, it is an argument for supplying creative that suits each environment and then letting Advantage+ placements do their job. Restricting placements is the most common self inflicted wound I see.
Every test should answer a question you wrote down before you launched it. Hook, angle, format, proof, objection, offer. Do that consistently and after six months you own something valuable: a documented view of what moves your customer, which no agency can take with them when they leave.
In platform ROAS flatters everyone. I want the tracking solid first, then attention on the numbers your business is actually run on, so scaling decisions are made against reality rather than against a dashboard that is quietly generous.
I've personally managed Meta Ads for hundreds of brands big and small
Account structure, tracking, creative and landing pages. You get a prioritised list of what is holding the account back, ordered by what I would fix first.
Tracking and attribution sorted, structure simplified, anything actively wasting money switched off.
Angles mapped, hooks written, a testing plan that produces knowledge rather than a folder of random ads.
Budget follows evidence. Winners get expanded properly, and there is always something in the pipeline for when they tire.
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
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.
Enough to keep testing meaningfully without spreading spend so thin that nothing learns. The right number depends on your budget, not on a figure someone quoted on LinkedIn. What matters more is that each piece is testing something deliberate rather than existing to hit a monthly quota.
Both, for different jobs. AI is very good at production: variations, iterations, statics, edits. It is not a substitute for a real person your audience recognises as one of their own. I use AI to remove the grunt work and put the saving into things that genuinely need a human.
Usually not. Restructuring is the most visible thing an agency can do, so it gets suggested often. Consolidation helps when spend is fragmented across too many ad sets, but a tidy account with weak creative still performs badly. I would look at the creative before I moved a single campaign.
Then the angle matters more, not less. Boring products fail on Meta when the advertising talks about the product instead of the problem it removes. Almost nothing is genuinely uninteresting to the person who has the problem it solves.
Tell me what you're spending, what you're seeing, and where it stops adding up. I'll come back with an honest view on whether I can help and what I'd change first.