Scalability School

In this episode of Scalability School, host Andrew Foxwell is joined by Phil Kiel of Taikun Digital and co-host Brad Ploch to tackle the single most-asked question in the Foxwell Founders community: how do you actually test creative on Meta in 2026? The question was asked over 160 times in just 45 days, making it the undisputed #1 topic among media buyers and brand operators in the community.

The conversation digs into two distinct camps of creative testing, forced spend (ABO) versus letting ads earn spend (CBO) and unpacks the real-world pros, cons, and trade-offs of each. Phil, who runs accounts at significant scale, makes a compelling case for the CBO-first, content-centric approach, arguing that the role of Meta's algorithm is to allocate spend to the best creative, not for buyers to manually dictate it. The episode also confronts the volume trap: the pressure media buyers feel to launch massive quantities of ads every month. Phil's take is refreshing and practical, 8 to 10 solid concepts per month (roughly 40–50 assets) is a solid starting point for most brands, built around strong creative briefs rather than raw volume. The hosts challenge the Twitter/X culture of flex-posting ad launch numbers, arguing the real metric that matters is creative quality and concept diversity.

Key Takeaways:

• Are you forcing spend into creative tests and accidentally funding your worst ads?
• Is the ad set structure in your Meta account actually doing anything, or is it just an expensive folder?
• How many new creative concepts should you be launching per month?
• CBO vs. ABO for creative testing: which one is actually right for your account right now?
• Why launching too many ads may be training your account to spend on losers.
• What does it actually mean to 'let ads earn spend' and how to know when a creative concept has really failed versus just not getting a fair shot.
• Why creative volume is the wrong metric to optimize and what you should be tracking instead.
• What's the difference between a creative concept and an ad asset?
• The one thing you should do today if you're a brand owner paralyzed by creative output pressure.

This episode of the Scalability School podcast is sponsored by NorthBeam and they just launched Northbeam Incrementality. Northbeam Incrementality gives you easy, automated, self-service incrementality tests, while protecting you from the major mistakes so many people make while running incrementality tests. Your MTA handles the daily tactics, your MMM guides the long-term planning, and Incrementality provides the causal truth. It's a closed loop that allows you to scale what works and cut what doesn't. Right now when you head over to northbeam.io/incrementality, they're offering Scalability School listeners 50% off unlimited tests for a year when you join. Just tell them we sent you!

To learn more about Phil Kiel and the Taikun Digital team you can follow him on X https://x.com/PhilKiel or head to https://www.taikundigital.com/

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [email protected]

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

Learn More about the The Hive Haus Creators Community at http://HiveHausUGC.com

This episode is like a Meta scaling "early warning system" masterclass. Andrew, Brad, and guest Kurt Bullock break down why so many media buyers hit a plateau (even when ROAS looks "fine") and how to diagnose it before performance rolls over. The core idea: Understanding CPMR to give you a clearer view of whether you're actually expanding into new pockets of the market or just recycling the same people harder and harder.

They walk through how Meta's rolling reach report works, a sliding-window version that's more useful for ongoing decision-making, how to interpret overlap, and what to do when the numbers signal saturation (creative diversity, different angles/personas, bidding/exclusions tests, quiz-style funnels, etc.).Kurt also shares on the tool he's developed with the Foxwell Founders Community that automates these reports.

Key takeaways -

• What's actually happing if your scaling spend while your rolling reach is flat.
• What comes next when ROAS looks stable… but your net new reach % is dropping
• The difference between rolling reach vs net new reach… and which one will predict your ad fatigue.
• How tracking this metric will help you spot when delivery is getting expensive due to audience fatigue.
• Are your "winning" campaigns winning because they're good… or because they're overlapping like crazy with what's already working?
• The overlap % is the "uh oh" zone of death for reaching Net New Customers
• How you might be leaning too hard on one motivator/angle and keeping Meta from finding new pockets even when launching fresh ads.
• Why whitelisting is known for lowering CPMR and unlocking different ad distribution. -
• Why testing with exclusions is still a good practice for your campaigns.
• If you had one report to tell you "you're fine today, but cooked next month," would you be running it weekly?

To Get the Net New Reach Reporting Tool, head to https://tools.producedept.co/

This episode of the Scalability School podcast is sponsored by NorthBeam and they just launched Northbeam Incrementality. Northbeam Incrementality gives you easy, automated, self-service incrementality tests, while protecting you from the major mistakes so many people make while running incrementality tests. Your MTA handles the daily tactics, your MMM guides the long-term planning, and Incrementality provides the causal truth. It's a closed loop that allows you to scale what works and cut what doesn't. Right now when you head over to https://northbeam.io/incrementality, they're offering Scalability School listeners 50% off unlimited tests for a year when you join. Just tell them we sent you!

To learn more about Kurt Bullock, you can follow him on X https://x.com/KurtBullock

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [email protected]

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

Learn More about the The Hive Haus Creators Community at http://HiveHausUGC.com

In this episode of Scalability School, Andrew and Brad are joined by Daniel Okon, CEO of ACTIV, a growing digital first agency that has also moved to incubating/growing multiple 7 figure brands in the health & wellness space, to decode Meta's "Andromeda" update. Andromeda has created a huge shift in the ad ecosystem where the algorithm (via systems like GEM and Lattice) now aggressively favor true creative diversity over simple iterations.

Daniel breaks down why old scaling methods like duplicating winners or making minor tweaks are yielding diminishing returns. Instead, he introduces a research heavy framework focused on identifying "sub-avatars" (specific customer behaviors or pain points, like "bloating after pizza") rather than broad demographics. The conversation covers the tactical "pull forward" method for extending winning angles into new formats, how to conduct manual research that AI can't replicate, and why your creator briefs should focus on trust and niche authority over brand aesthetics. If you've been stumped by Andromeda, Daniel and the Scalability team do a great job sucinctly explaining the changes and what advertisers need to do to be successful on the platform once again. Key Takeaways:

• Is your ad account suffering because you're confusing "creative volume" with actual "creative diversity"?

• Why Meta's new "GEM" system penalizes ads that look different but mean the same thing.

• How most advertisers are capping their own scale by targeting broad demographics over specific "sub-avatars".

• How the "Spray and Pray" testing method has all but ran out of ink and the "Exploration vs. Expansion" framework that is replacing it?

• How a simple "Q&A" static image can easily outperform a high-production video ad in the new world of Andromeda.

This episode of the Scalability School podcast is sponsored by NorthBeam and they just launched Northbeam Incrementality. Northbeam Incrementality gives you easy, automated, self-service incrementality tests, while protecting you from the major mistakes so many people make while running incrementality tests. Your MTA handles the daily tactics, your MMM guides the long-term planning, and Incrementality provides the causal truth. It's a closed loop that allows you to scale what works and cut what doesn't. Right now when you head over to northbeam.io/incrementality, they're offering Scalability School listeners 50% off unlimited tests for a year when you join. Just tell them we sent you!

To learn more about Daniel Okon and his team you can follow him on X https://x.com/thedanielokon or head to www.weareactiv.com

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [email protected]

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

Learn More about the The Hive Haus Creators Community at http://HiveHausUGC.com

This episode is a practical walk-through of forecasting for e-commerce growth, specifically how media buyers and operators should think about revenue targets, paid spend, CAC/ROAS degradation, contribution margin, fixed costs, and cash flow without building a fantasy plan that assumes everything stays perfectly flat.

Abir (outsourced CMO/operator for multiple e-comm brands) and owner of UpCounting.com breaks down a simple-but-real framework: start with the story in the historical data to build a forecast that's honest about constraints (marketing efficiency, supply/inventory, staffing, cash conversion cycle). Then, turn the forecast into an ongoing operating rhythm where you review monthly performance vs plan, diagnose why you landed where you did, and update assumptions instead of "hoping next month works."

A big theme: most brands hit a "terminal velocity" with their current offer/creative/channel mix. From there you either (1) increase the value you get from customers (LTV/retention, bundles, new products, adjacent audiences) or (2) improve business efficiency so you can reinvest profit to raise your ad spend ceiling—aka the "two machines" model: ads machine + ops/profit machine. Key Takeaways:

• Using more than just "vibes" to justify perfomance when CAC stays flat while spend goes up.

• How to forecast using your actual "terminal velocity" instead of your dream scenario.

• The difference of forecasting from a revenue goal → spend/CAC → contribution margin, Vs. just backfilling numbers to match a target.

• Knowing where your business actually breaks first (marketing efficiency, inventory, cash conversion cycle, headcount, or fixed costs)?

• The fastest way to spot whether growth is coming from new customers vs returning customers and why this changes the whole model.

• How to properly plan for CAC degradation when you begin to SCALE.

• Why tracking this one metric can confirm if extra spend is actively hurting your brand.

• Moving away from just looking at ROAS and moving on to a monthly system for forecast vs actual + "why did this happen?"

• How to know you're investing cash in the right lever and helping raise your ceiling faster.

• How to run the numbers to insure you're holding your internal team to an ROI standard and not just giving the team a free pass.

• OpEx bloat (tools, subscriptions, extra layers of people) and how it is quietly eating your ability to reinvest in growth.

To connect with Abir, you can follow her on x at https://x.com/Abir_CFOofEcom or at https://go.upcounting.com/ To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [email protected] To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

This episode is a tactical breakdown of AppLovin as a scaled acquisition channel—what's actually different vs Meta, what you should change in creative + campaign structure, and how to think about incrementality + reporting so you don't judge it with the wrong yardstick.

Miranda Pettinger, Performance Marketing Manager at 365 Holdings explains how they onboarded to the platform when Meta was underperforming and AppLovin started popping off in buyer circles. They used a Triple Whale onboarding credit to test with low risk, and at the time it wasn't even self-serve (you had to Slack the rep for changes).

The short on "why AppLovin works" is AppLovin's rewarded inventory creates an opt-in attention trade ("watch this 30s ad, get coins"), which changes the psychology from "I'm annoyed by ads" to "I'm choosing to watch this." That makes the creative game feel closer to a 30-second TV spot: you've got time to explain, objection-handle, and sell in one sitting. From there it turns into a playbook with these Keytakeaways:

• 18:30 Bidding / structure: ROAS vs cost-per-purchase, why value doesn't work for some catalogs and how to structure campaigns

• 19:40 DPAs + catalog control: Why DPAs can help if you've got lots of variants and the importance of controlling what products show up.

• 25:50 Measurement reality: AppLovin tends to under-report purchases, especially at scale, so you want to validate with post-purchase survey, MER/traffic lift and/or a 3rd party data tool.

• 29:30 Incrementality / overlap: The Meta+AppLovin overlap and how Meta+Google overlap is likely way bigger.

• 33:55 Creative testing: unlike Meta where "testing vs scaling" can feel walled off, AppLovin can allow new winners to climb fast inside the same campaign, without dumping spend on junk.

• 38:30 End cards: offers matter a lot. How animation helps, and showing variants (colors/metal types) can lift clicks

To connect with Miranda, you can follow her on x at https://x.com/mirandpettinger

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [email protected]

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

This episode is basically a tactical hands-on walkthrough for using AI in creative, without turning your ad account into generic "AI slop."

Will Sartourious, owner of Selfmade.co, an agency that focuses on AI personas and AI performance creatives, joins us to lead us through his AI creative process and the importance of AI adoption in the social creative space. He primarily lumps current AI creative usage into two buckets:

• Type 1: "Clone this ad for me." Fast volume, but you drift into sameness.

• Type 2: Use AI to do the thinking work (research, synthesis, structure), then let humans do the "mushy middle" that differentiates. He's big on building PAM clusters (Persona–Angle–Motivation) so strategists aren't winging it and you can see where your creative gaps are before you ship more ads. From here we get into the nitty gritty of his current workflows:

• Static → GIF/video: why GIFs often beat statics in clean A/Bs, and how to generate animated variants fast.

• Tool split: Will uses Claude for more "creative" thinking, but uses ChatGPT specifically because it reads on-ad copy more reliably critical when your prompt needs to include every word that appears on the creative.

• Prompt iteration loop: generate → inspect output → feed output back in → ask for prompt correction (ex: "the copy disappears—fix it so it stays on screen").

• Midjourney reality check: great for vibes/backdrops and motion experiments, but "sucks at product rendering," so you generate the scene and then swap in the real product using other tools.

We also dive into these Key takeaways

1. How to find the missing creative angles in your account before spending another dollar.

2. Cut out the Middle man: How you can stop using stock photos entirely with AI, without the brand even noticing.

3. The fastest way to turn a winning static into a GIF without opening any editing software.

4. Why including every word of on-ad copy in the prompt matters more than being a "prompt genius".

5. Why this AI tool is a secret weapon for AI creativity (It's literally 10X better than ChatGPT).

6. The feedback-loop method to improve prompts without manually tweaking yourself into madness (we've all been here).

7. The 1 tip that will make your AI people look less "plastic" and more realistic (texture/pores/realism)

8. How Will used Sore to close a client live mid-call and how you can too. Grab Will's notes and see the final products produced during the episode, here.

This episode is sponsored by Northbeam, the marketing attribution platform that we love here at Scalability School. If you're ready to cut through the noise, stop guessing, and actually see which ads are driving your business, book a demo at www.northbeam.io/demo, and tell them Scalability School sent you. Join the club. To connect with Will Sartorious, you can follow him on x at https://x.com/will_sartorius or www.Selfmade.co

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [email protected]

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

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This bonus BFCM episode is a full debrief on what actually worked over Black Friday/Cyber Monday with real numbers, not theory. Zach Stuck comes out of paternity leave to break down his most recent Twitter "Beef" on why most Google agencies have their incentives completely misaligned (especially when they're charging % of spend on branded search). He also goes over how his team engineered a BFCM weekend that drove huge revenue without torching margin.

We walk through this offer that took hourly revenue from ~$50k to $142k and then again to $172k while still holding around 9x MER. We cover the exact structure of the offer, how it affected AOV, and why time-boxing the offer beat running a gift-with-purchase the entire weekend. You'll also hear how they built daily and hourly pacing models out of Shopify and ad platform data so they knew by midday whether they were ahead, behind, or needed to push harder.

From there, we get into the channel and creative side: how much budget actually went into BFCM-specific ads vs evergreen, the retention structure that printed 10x+ ROAS and the specific ad concepts that spent over Black Friday and held strong through Cyber Monday. We even talk about total amount of emails and sms messages that went out on Black Friday alone, and why the list didn't revolt.

If you're a media buyer or e-com operator looking to turn BFCM from "hope and vibes" into a repeatable system, this episode is basically the playbook you'd normally only get inside a private Slack group (like the Foxwell Founders Community).

Key Takeaways:

• What actually happens when you time-box an offer to a single hour on Black Friday.
• How many emails and texts you can really send on Black Friday before you burn your list
• The importance of building a BFCM pacing sheet to know if you're behind and need to push.
• How much budget actually went into BFCM-specific creative vs evergreen ads.
• What a "creative diversity" roadmap for BFCM actually looks like in practice.
• How you can structure a Meta retention campaign that prints a 10x+ ROAS without lying to yourself (or clients) about incrementality.
• How to let creative do the targeting and still keep accounts manageable through the BFCM chaos
• The specific BFCM ad concepts that actually spent $90k+ and worked.

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [email protected]

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

Learn more about Andromeda and GEM as Andrew breaks them down on the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. https://www.foxwelldigital.com/blog/the-new-meta-gem-era-how-andromeda-creative-diversification-amp-organic-signals-are-reshaping-performance-marketing

This episode is basically a masterclass in how media buyers and UGC creators should actually work together, not just pretend to. Courtney walks through her unique vantage point as both a media buyer and a creator: she runs strategy and ad buying for brands from that spend from $3k/month all the way up to $1MM/month in spend, leads the Foxwell Founders "small spenders" cohort, and also produces UGC herself. This dual role lets her see where brands and creators constantly miss each other. Key Takeaways:

• They creative types that are currently working without overcomplicating things.
• Why your best-performing ad doesn't have a great hook rate, but is still printing money.
• Are you over paying creators for "usage rights" you don't actually need? What Courtney believes you should be paying creators for a piece of content.
• The 1 thing media buyers wished UGC creators understood about spend and why some creatives never leave the learning phase.
• How your creative brief might be the #1 thing killing authenticity and performance.
• How performance results could change by evaluating your creators on these two criteria over their logos and case studies.
• Why you shouldn't be asking creators to "go viral" and instead be building a system for consistent, high-quality, testable content.
• The amount of performance you are likely leaving on the table by chasing trends, and other no-nos when working with creators.
• Are you quietly over-indexing on marketing Twitter and case studies—and under-indexing on the nuance inside your own accounts?

This episode is sponsored by Northbeam, the marketing attribution platform that we love here at Scalability School. If you're ready to cut through the noise, stop guessing, and actually see which ads are driving your business, book a demo at northbeam.io/demo, and tell them Scalability School sent you. Join the club.

To connect with Courtney Fritts, you can email her at [email protected]

or in one of the Foxwell Digital Communities: www.hivehausugc.com or FoxwellFounders.com

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [email protected]

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

This episode dives deep into how much your tracking setup actually controls your Meta performance, and why most brands only pay attention to the pixel when things break.

Brett walks through his journey from old-school media buying into early Facebook ads and how that evolved into Tag Hero, a specialist shop focused purely on technical conversion tracking across Meta, Google, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc. He explains why data quality is the real throttle on performance and how you can have the best creative in the account, but if Meta isn't getting clean signals, the algorithm just can't do its job.

Key Takeaways:

• How you can tell if your Shopify → Meta tracking setup is actually "good enough"… or silently leaking conversions.

• If Meta says you're getting 8–13% more events with CAPI, are you actually set up to capture that lift—or just assuming you are.

• The easiest way to verify your pixel and CAPI events are deduplicating correctly instead of double-counting purchases.

• The Event Match Quality scores you should care about, and when a score is good vs a legit red flag

• Why this one tracking perameter is arguably more valuable than email for optimization.

• Why optimizing around a specific EMQ score might just be gaming a number that doesn't move revenue.

• When Shopify's default Facebook Sales Channel App is the right call and when it might be time to graduate to Elevar/Blotout/EdgeTag-style stacks.

• The incremental tracking upgrades that actually pay for themselves after you start spending 6 figures or more a month in ads.

• The truth of what exactly happens when Meta flags you as 'Health & Wellness' brand and depricates your lower funnel.

• How you can still win in health & wellness categories on Meta

• The key steps to confidently rule out tracking as the culprit when your ads stop working so you're not re-building creative for a data problem?

This episode is sponsored by Northbeam, the marketing attribution platform that we love here at Scalability School. If you're ready to cut through the noise, stop guessing, and actually see which ads are driving your business, book a demo at northbeam.io/demo, and tell them Scalability School sent you. Join the club. To connect with Brett Fish over at TagHero, you can DM him at https://x.com/brett_fish or head over to their site: https://taghero.io/ To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [email protected] To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

This episode of the Scalability School podcast tackles why traditional e-commerce dashboards often fail and outlines the precise financial and operational metrics required for driving profitable growth in 7- and 8-figure D2C brands.

The Andrew, Zach and Brad argue that dashboard failure stems from unclear metric definitions along with a failure to capture the full scope of business expenses. They advocate for moving beyond simple platform ROAS to focus on holistic metrics like Contribution Margin (CM) and/or Estimated Net Profit (by subtracting an estimate of OpEx).

A major theme that arose during this conversation was the critical need to separate New Customer (NC) metrics (like AMER and CAC) from blended metrics, as high blended performance can mask a dying new customer acquisition engine. They also stress that for non-subscription brands, LTV can sometimes be a misleading vanity metric that offers poor cash flow guidance. The episode concludes with a deep dive into using operational metrics like product sales breakdown and day-of-week sales efficiency to inform daily media buying decisions, introducing the key creative signal: Spend Velocity.

Key Takeaways

1. How your blended MER target might actually be masking a New Customer Acquisition (NCA) disaster

2. Why dashboards can help ensure your entire team is looking at the same "Revenue" number

3. How to tell if you are wasting budget on the wrong days

4. How to accurately calculat true profitability before the month closes

5. Why this should be your key metric for predicting creative winners within 3 days

6. Why this 1 metric might be hurting your cash flow if you are a non-subscription businesses

This episode is sponsored by Northbeam, the marketing attribution platform that we love here at Scalability School. If you're ready to cut through the noise, stop guessing, and actually see which ads are driving your business, book a demo at northbeam.io/demo, and tell them Scalability School sent you. Join the club.

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email [email protected]

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/