Northbeam just dropped their April 2026 numbers and the headline is ugly: median CAC is up 9.7% year over year. Ad spend tracked nearly identically, up 9.6%. So brands are spending more and getting exactly the same volume of customers for it. On paper, efficiency held. In practice, you went …
If your Google Ads Channel Performance Report looks like this, is there any need to run PMAX?
So we’ve all pretty much defaulted to PMAX as the default choice for our Google Ads campaigns. Google won in the end. I’ve got a question for you, though. When one channel is carrying the entire weight of your paid performance, handing budget control to an algorithm that spreads it …
The Real Reason Your Meta Ads Stop Scaling
The algorithm isn’t the problem. Your pipeline is. When I run my one-day Growth Unlocked session with a client there’s a reason behind why I’m hired – to fix increased CAC. Always a challenge, as we all want lower acquisition costs, but on your route to ad-independence you first of …
The Ecomonomics of Scaling Meta Ads: Lazy Scaling & The Challenge of Dilution
Why pushing more budget into a winning ad set is one of the most expensive mistakes a founder can make on Meta. You or your agency finds a winning ad set. I’m talking the sweetspot when the creative lands, the targeting is tight and the unit economics make sense. So …
CAC Is Not the Problem. It Is the Signal.
If your CAC is rising and your first move is to open Ads Manager, you are already on the wrong path. That is not a criticism. It is just the default response. I get it. Your customer acquisition costs goes up, so you go to the thing that feels most …
Why scaling growth has to be incremental and what happens to brands that skip the work?
I’m going to caveat everything I’m writing today by saying I HAVE BEEN THERE. I know and appreciate the desire to scale an ecommerce business at speed. To add those extra zeroes to the revenue figures is a huge accomplishment and milestone. However. Most ecommerce founders think about scaling wrong. …
Fix First: Why getting more traffic into a broken store is the most expensive mistake in ecommerce
Late afternoon, as part of my daily writing routine, I take one takeaway from my day’s work and write an article as a lesson for founders… and every founder I speak with wants more traffic… so let’s dig down into why traffic may not be the growth fix you’re looking …
Your Ecommerce Growth Machine Runs on Human Truth
Why emotive selling and customer insight are the fuel every ecommerce system depends on You’ve built everything correctly and still sales aren’t growing at pace. Why? You’ve done the hard work. The tracking is clean. The data flows correctly from purchase to platform. Your Google Ads campaigns feed on quality …
One Month of Optimisation Work: How It Creates a Different Kind of Ecommerce Growth
In this article you will learn how a focused month of optimisation work can start to unshackle your store’s sales revenue from your ad spend Does It Feel Like Your Ecommerce Growth Is Chained to Ad Spend? You know how this works because you’ve lived it…. Growth comes from spend. …
Will RetentionX Change the Way You Work in Ecommerce Growth? 5 Key Growth Questions Answered
Five questions every ecommerce founder needs answered. One platform that answers all of them. There is a version of running an ecommerce brand where you make decisions with confidence; Most founders do not operate in that version. They operate in the version where data lives in three different tools, nobody …
Ecommerce Founders… This Is Why Your CAC Is Inconsistent and What You Can Do About It
The shark-tooth graph on your ad account is not random. It is a signal. Here is how to read it, respond to it, and build a machine that is less dependent on it. Why Does Your META CAC Graph Look Like Shark Teeth? The CAC Graph You Keep Coming Back …
What Is Google Data-Driven Attribution? (And why the model your Google Ads account uses matters more than you realise)
Is Your Google Ads Attribution Model Distorting Account Performance? Every Google Ads account is making a decision you may never have consciously taken. Somewhere in your settings, a rule is being applied. A rule that decides which of your ads gets the credit when a customer buys. Let’s dig down …