Marketing Operators

“It’s not a test. It’s diversity for the Meta algorithm.” 

Can running more landing pages hurt your ability to make decisions? 

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty) dig into landing page optimization strategy, conversion rate optimization for Meta ads, and when structured testing is the wrong tool entirely. They cover what Jones Road learned from overdeveloping pages and what a disastrous A/B test on a new offer taught Ridge about how Meta allocates spend. 

They examine the operational cost of landing page sprawl, how to structure a site-wide theme A/B test without introducing too many variables, and whether DTC brands at scale should slow down product launches or double down on them. AG1’s move into creatine opens a broader conversation about the limits of single-SKU subscription businesses along with where product expansion makes sense. 

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

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Aftersell 

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Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel 

Operators Newsletter 

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“We used to try to win every day. Now we’re willing to sacrifice entire months.”

What does it mean to optimize ad spend when there’s no universal answer?

Michael Ting (GM of DTC, JAXXON) joins Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) and Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) to challenge one of the most common assumptions in ecommerce email marketing and paid media: that there is a single optimized ad spend. There isn’t. The better question is what you’re trying to achieve and over what time horizon.

Michael walks through how JAXXON uses cost per email signup to make confident budget decisions, spending aggressively into slow seasons and monetizing that list when it matters most. The conversation also covers decision quality frameworks, doubling AB testing velocity, and how daily performance reporting builds operator instinct over time.

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

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Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel 

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators 

Operators Newsletter

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“The digital deliverables have outpaced production company knowledge.”

How do you build a repeatable content creation process without hiring a full agency?

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) break down how they approach content production across every budget level; ranging from $50k brand shoot days to $100 iPhone clips that outperform everything else in the ad account.  

The episode covers the full content production stack: multi-team shoot briefing, on-set creative strategy, and the in-house studio advantage. The trio also gets into clipping, AI-generated UGC, and whether dead internet theory is already shaping how products go viral.

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

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Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators 

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel 

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/

“We’re not hiring less because of AI. We just expect each hire to be more productive.” 

Is AI shrinking your marketing team, or just changing who belongs on it? 

Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) and Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty) get into how two of the most operator-driven brands in ecommerce are rethinking their AI marketing team structure heading into the second half of 2026. 

They cover which roles are compressing, which are expanding, and what it actually looks like to build a leaner growth team that outputs more. Cody breaks down the CRO program he runs with one person that used to require six. Connor explains why HexClad hired more people after building an AI-powered seeding system, not fewer. And both share how they think about headcount requests now, and what they make teams prove before saying yes. 

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

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Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5 

Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators 

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel 

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/

Can Meta and TikTok Shop be combined into a single playbook? 

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty) are fresh off the Meta Performance Marketing Summit and cover what the event signaled, where paid social is heading, and what most brands are still sleeping on. 

They explain Meta betting big on product feed enrichment as the foundation for better AI-generated creative, and how GMV Max is quietly powering TikTok Shop’s top brands. The duo also reveals creators driving 60% of shop revenue, the Meta ads catalog, and TikTok Shop affiliate flywheels. 

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

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Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators

Operators Newsletter

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“There’s going to be a world where you just tell them your product and your business goals and they do the rest.”

What does Meta’s AI push mean for ecommerce brands trying to win on paid social right now? Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) recorded this episode live at Meta’s Performance Marketing Summit 2026 where they break down everything Meta announced: AI infrastructure to catalog-powered creative and what brands need to do about it immediately.

The conversation covers Meta’s shift toward catalog-first ad infrastructure and why clean product data is now table stakes, not a nice-to-have. They dig into how the media buyer role is converging with creative strategy, what a 24-hour full-funnel launch looks like in practice, and why the brands building creator ecosystems today are setting up a major moat for catalog creative tomorrow.

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“You don’t have to be first to be the best.”

What does it take to scale a brand from $20M to $140M in just 12 months?  

Luka Kvatchrelishvili (CMO, True Sea Moss) joins hosts Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) and Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) to break down how he took a bootstrapped, product-led superfood brand … and scaled it into a nine-figure DTC powerhouse. Luka shares his path from practicing law in Georgia to drop shipping foosball tables to leading a 33-person marketing team.

The conversation digs into how Luka diagnosed and fixed True Sea Moss’ data infrastructure before touching a single ad, and how a surge in creative volume gave way to a more methodical, outcome-driven testing system. He also gets into the halo effect between Meta spend, Amazon, and retail performance; the power of the LTV-to-CAC cohort report; and how True Sea Moss went from Telegram groups and Trello boards to a marketing-led operation scaling toward half a billion.  

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

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Saras Analytics

https://bit.ly/9OP-Ytdesc 

Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/

What does a content flywheel look like when it’s firing on all cylinders? 

Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) and Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty) break down how their teams structure content creation end-to-end: from micro-creators and TikTok Shop affiliates to high-production studio shoots and ambassador programs. Both hosts bring their own playbooks to the table to compare notes in real time. 

They cover the three core buckets of a paid ad account, why scripted UGC is losing ground to raw “yapper content, how to negotiate more deliverables without doubling creator rates, the TikTok Shop affiliate flywheel, and why building an in-house production playbook is one of the highest-leverage investments a brand can make. 

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

https://motionapp.com/thumbstop-pulse/creative-benchmarks-2026?utm_campaign=marketing-operators&utm_medium=sponsor&utm_content=creative-benchmarks-2026&utm_source=marketing-operators-podcast

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/

Are you measuring new reach on Meta the right way or just guessing? 

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) dig into the tactics + measurement frameworks driving their paid media strategies right now. 

The conversation spans Meta’s incremental attribution rollout and what the data shows. They cover signal engineering with conditional pixels, the case for non-purchase optimized campaigns on YouTube, and why building a deliberate testing roadmap matters more than chasing every new ad tech feature. Plus, behind the scenes on Jones Road’s biggest creator partnership came together. 

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

https://motionapp.com/thumbstop-pulse/creative-benchmarks-2026?utm_campaign=marketing-operators&utm_medium=sponsor&utm_content=creative-benchmarks-2026&utm_source=marketing-operators-podcast

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/

Drawing on over a decade of experience on the brand, HoldCo, and agency sides of DTC, Andrew Faris (Founder, AJF Growth) joins Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty) to discuss what it takes to build and scale an ecommerce brand across every stage of growth. 

The conversation covers what advice from larger operators can get wrong for smaller brands and why AOV may be the most underrated metric in subscription businesses. They explore how to think about the atomic units of an offer, the real trade-offs between in-house and agency media buying, and why the message is the most underrated growth tactic in ecommerce today. 

This episode is brought to you by AppLovin. Get access to the Operators channel expansion playbook, online masterclass, and up to $5k in ad credits here: https://www.9operators.com/paid-growth 

Or, skip the waitlist and launch your Axon by AppLovin ads today with our Operators-exclusive link: https://axon.ai/en/9operators