Driven 9 figures in attributed Meta ads revenue for clients - Now building ecom brands in the PH - Also helping personal brands at PBHQ
DWY Personal Brand
Joined March 2016
- Tweets30.8K
- Following1.1K
- Followers34.8K
- Likes32.8K
Mark William retweeted
The single worst person to approve your ad creative is…
You.
You want sleek aesthetics, perfect lighting, and clever wordplay.
While your customer is scrolling on the toilet while their toddler screams in the other room.
They do not care about your brand guidelines.
They care if your product solves the annoying problem they felt ten minutes ago.
Test the ugly ad.
The one you feel slightly embarrassed to run is usually the one that prints.
The single worst person to approve your ad creative is…
You.
You want sleek aesthetics, perfect lighting, and clever wordplay.
While your customer is scrolling on the toilet while their toddler screams in the other room.
They do not care about your brand guidelines.
They care if your product solves the annoying problem they felt ten minutes ago.
Test the ugly ad.
The one you feel slightly embarrassed to run is usually the one that prints.
Simply ask a question to your finance lead:
"What is our Cash Conversion Cycle?"
If it takes 60 days to collect repeat cash from customers, but you have to pay your inventory supplier in 30 days:
Scaling on front-end losses will bankrupt you even if your LTV is theoretical gold.
Front-end cash is oxygen.
Every ecom guru tells you: "Break even on the front-end, make all your profit on the back-end."
That works great when interest rates are zero and VC money pays your inventory bills.
In the real world:
If you are losing money on every first purchase, you are bleeding cash while waiting 60 days for customer repeat orders.
If cash runs out before repeat orders hit, you go bust.
Structure your offers to generate positive cashflow on day zero.
Treat back-end LTV as growth fuel, not your life raft.
Mark William retweeted
Do not make budget decisions based on demographic breakdowns inside Ads Manager.
You look at your breakdown and see:
25-34 age group has a $18 CPA.
55-64 age group has a $42 CPA.
Most media buyers immediately create a new campaign targeting only 25-34 year olds.
And they'll see their CPA jump to $38.
Why?
Meta already extracted the cheapest available 25-34 buyers from the larger pool.
When you isolate that demographic into its own ad set, you force Meta into a smaller auction auction slice with higher CPMs.
Of course in some cases this works. But in most cases, it's better to let the algorithm balance the distribution for you.
If your Klaviyo bill is $5K a month, switching to @omnisend could save you up to $21K a year.
(Omnisend says you'd pay up to 35% less than on Klaviyo. $5K x 12 months x 35% = $21K.)
But should you switch tools this close to Black Friday?
Their team rebuilds your automations, segments, forms and templates for you (free on paid plans), and it's done in 5 days.
My worry would be sending your biggest week of the year from an account that's only a few days old. I'd want a few weeks of normal sending on the new setup before Black Friday volume hits it.
- If you can start in October, the move's done in about a week, and you still get a few weeks of normal sends before Black Friday. I'd do it now.
- If it's already November, I wouldn't. Wait until January, when it's quiet.
Don't let "we'll switch after Q4" turn into another full year of paying the bigger bill.
🤝 Paid partnership
Here's the link if you want to try it: your.omnisend.com/Mark
Use code MARK for 30% off your first 3 months (on a paid plan).
Do not make budget decisions based on demographic breakdowns inside Ads Manager.
You look at your breakdown and see:
25-34 age group has a $18 CPA.
55-64 age group has a $42 CPA.
Most media buyers immediately create a new campaign targeting only 25-34 year olds.
And they'll see their CPA jump to $38.
Why?
Meta already extracted the cheapest available 25-34 buyers from the larger pool.
When you isolate that demographic into its own ad set, you force Meta into a smaller auction auction slice with higher CPMs.
Of course in some cases this works. But in most cases, it's better to let the algorithm balance the distribution for you.
Mark William retweeted
Every ecom brand is about to have access to the same AI.
Same capabilities.
Same automations.
Same efficiencies.
Within 12 months, it's table stakes.
It'll write everyone's copy. Build everyone's briefs. Analyze everyone's data.
So the advantage won't be who uses it.
It'll be who's best at what AI can't do.
- Read the room when your customer is about to churn.
- Know when to push your team and when to back off.
- Make the call when the data points in two directions.
- Build the kind of trust that makes someone buy again without being retargeted.
Moats are still built on trust. Not technology.
The future of ecom isn't less human.
It's more intentionally human - in exactly the places AI can't go.
One true breakthrough creative concept can carry an entire ecom brand for an entire quarter.
We have had ad concepts spend over a million dollars at a fairly high ROAS (relative to the account) by only changing the lead or 3-second hook.
When you find a concept that hits a universal nerve in your market, milk it for every dollar.
Branch it, tweak it, translate it, and run it everywhere.
Slashing 30% off your front-end offer to make your ads convert is lazy marketing.
Here is what you actually do:
- You wipe out your net margin.
- You attract discount hunters who will not buy at full price.
- You ruin your customer LTV.
Instead of cutting price, increase perceived value:
- Add a free physical gift that costs you $2 to manufacture.
- Bundle 2 complementary products with a slight tier discount.
- Offer free expedited shipping over a specific threshold.
Protect your margins.
Add value instead of subtracting price.
Mark William retweeted
The best ad copy is never written in an agency's conference room.
It is stolen directly from Reddit comment threads.
Go to r/skincareaddiction, r/running, or whatever subreddit fits your niche.
Search the problem your product solves.
Sort by "Top - All Time."
Read what real human beings type when they are complaining at 2 AM.
Take their exact emotional words and use them as your ad hooks.
Direct response is listening, not guessing.
The best ad copy is never written in an agency's conference room.
It is stolen directly from Reddit comment threads.
Go to r/skincareaddiction, r/running, or whatever subreddit fits your niche.
Search the problem your product solves.
Sort by "Top - All Time."
Read what real human beings type when they are complaining at 2 AM.
Take their exact emotional words and use them as your ad hooks.
Direct response is listening, not guessing.
When hiring a media buyer for your business, do not look for "creative geniuses" or self-proclaimed marketing gurus.
Hire for two traits:
1) High attention to detail (spreadsheet literacy, naming conventions, data discipline).
2) Intellectual curiosity (they genuinely want to know why Ad A beat Ad B).
Teaching someone how to click buttons inside Ads Manager takes 4 days.
Teaching someone how to care about naming conventions and tracking accuracy takes forever.
Every ecom guru tells you: "Break even on the front-end, make all your profit on the back-end."
That works great when interest rates are zero and VC money pays your inventory bills.
In the real world:
If you are losing money on every first purchase, you are bleeding cash while waiting 60 days for customer repeat orders.
If cash runs out before repeat orders hit, you go bust.
Structure your offers to generate positive cashflow on day zero.
Treat back-end LTV as growth fuel, not your life raft.
Mark William retweeted
If your Meta ad account has 40 active campaigns, 60 ad sets, and 14 different retargeting exclusions:
You do not have a sophisticated media buying strategy.
You have anxiety with a budget.
Consolidate the spend.
Let the machine find buyers.
Put your energy into better offers and faster creative testing.
Facebook likes it simple.
A good test of account health:
If you had to hand your ad account to a stranger tomorrow morning, could they understand your strategy by looking at it for 5 minutes?
If the answer is no, your account is built on superstition, not systems.
Consolidation forces clarity.
If your Meta ad account has 40 active campaigns, 60 ad sets, and 14 different retargeting exclusions:
You do not have a sophisticated media buying strategy.
You have anxiety with a budget.
Consolidate the spend.
Let the machine find buyers.
Put your energy into better offers and faster creative testing.
Facebook likes it simple.
If your Meta ad account has 40 active campaigns, 60 ad sets, and 14 different retargeting exclusions:
You do not have a sophisticated media buying strategy.
You have anxiety with a budget.
Consolidate the spend.
Let the machine find buyers.
Put your energy into better offers and faster creative testing.
Facebook likes it simple.
Don’t wait for sales to drop before you start the next thing. By the time it’s obvious you need a new hero, you needed it six months ago.
Mark William retweeted
Seeing similar things. The weekend was just horrible across the board.
Something is seriously off with Meta traffic right now.
We're seeing conversion rates drop by as much as 30–40% across parts of our portfolio over the last 3 weeks.
And it's not just e-commerce.
DTC, B2B, lead gen. Different industries. Same pattern.
Here's the weird part:
CPMs? Fine.
CTRs? Fine.
Add to carts? Fine.
Initiated checkouts? Fine.
Actual conversions? Falling off a cliff.
The brands struggling the most have one thing in common:
They're NOT running aggressive promotions.
Meanwhile, brands that have been pushing offers through Labor Day, Prime Day, and now Halloween?
They're doing just fine.
We've seen similar behavior around major shopping events before, but I don't remember seeing it at this scale or for this long.
And after speaking with other Tier 1 advertisers, I'm hearing very similar stories.
Which makes me think something bigger is happening.
Two possibilities:
1. Meta is making significant backend changes, as they frequently do, with very little communication about how those changes affect delivery and traffic quality.
2. We're seeing broader macroeconomic or consumer behavior shifts that are starting to affect even Meta's ability to find high-intent buyers.
And that second possibility is particularly interesting.
Meta has historically been exceptionally good at finding people who are ready to buy, even when the broader market isn't doing particularly well.
But right now, something isn't adding up.
I don't know which explanation is right. Could be a combination of both.
What I do know is that this isn't isolated to a few underperforming accounts anymore.
What are you guys seeing?
In Omnisend's 2026 report, automated emails made $2.87 per email sent. Campaign emails made $0.18.
Most people read that as "flows are 16x better than campaigns".
I'd break it apart first. Most flows fire after someone has already shown intent (signed up, viewed a product, added to cart). Of course they make more per email.
What matters more is how many people get into your flows in the first place.
e.g. your abandoned cart flow can only email shoppers you can identify. If a big chunk of your add-to-carts come from people who never gave you an email, the flow never even sees them.
So before Black Friday, I'd compare 2 numbers:
- how many people got the first email in your abandoned cart flow last month (if you've connected Claude to @omnisend, you can ask it)
- how many add-to-carts didn't end in an order over the same period (in Shopify, or wherever you track it)
If that gap is big, closing it is probably worth more than any copy tweak you'll make to the flow.
🤝 Paid partnership
Here's the link if you want to try it: your.omnisend.com/Mark
Use code MARK for 30% off your first 3 months (on a paid plan).