Paid media budget and ad campaign resources

Paid media works when spend follows unit economics: set a CAC ceiling from LTV, pick channels that fit your motion, and shift budget until the next customer costs about the same on every active channel. The Paid Media Budget Allocator runs that math, and the playbooks cover channel strategy and campaign build.

Covers: Channel mix, budget allocation, campaign structure, ad creative, demand generation.

Learn the method

Demand Gen & Performance Marketing Playbook — A focused channel mix and CAC-driven experiments across two or three channels.
Paid Media Budget Allocation Playbook — Set a CAC target from LTV and allocate spend to equal marginal CAC.
Digital Advertising Playbook — Channel and funnel architecture, a creative testing system and an optimisation cadence.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Playbook — Tier accounts, map buying groups and measure pipeline, not MQLs. (from Sales & Pipeline)

Run the numbers

Paid Media Budget Allocator — Split ad spend across 16 channels with diminishing-returns math and a marginal-CAC solver.
Marketing Decision Guides — Which channel first, which marketing hire, which tools now: a few questions each, then a clear answer and where to go next. (from Go-to-Market & Growth Planning)
Marketing Budget Calculator — Size annual marketing spend by stage, business model and motion, then see a channel split. (from Analytics, Experiments & Budget)

Build it

The MMM-Lite Starter Kit — A runnable media-mix model, data schema, incrementality template and decision rules. (from Analytics, Experiments & Budget)
The Campaign Brief — Decide the one number, the one audience and belief, and how you will judge the campaign - before any money is spent. (from Go-to-Market & Growth Planning)
The Marketing Budget Planner — Size, allocate, track and forecast spend with a CAC ceiling from your own unit economics. (from Analytics, Experiments & Budget)

Run it with your AI agent

Paid Search Account Audit — Audits a search account against its own target: tracking, waste, starved winners, pages. Fixes ranked by spend.
Paid Media Budget Allocation — Split ad budget across channels to hit a CAC target.
Ad Creative Testing — Sizes a creative test before it runs, and refuses to name a winner the data cannot back.
Incrementality & MMM — Design and read holdout, geo and lift tests, or a media-mix model. (from Analytics, Experiments & Budget)
Marketing Budget Planning — Set the total budget and allocate it across functions. (from Analytics, Experiments & Budget)
Creator Partnerships — Pays creators for the buyers they reach, not their follower count, and judges the result on what it sold. (from Social, Community & Creators)

Read the research

How Early-Stage Startups Should Use Digital Ads: A Practical Guide to Meta, Google, TikTok & X
LinkedIn Ads for B2B Startups — Check fit, run a capped test, target accounts, split spend between brand and lead capture, and measure by pipeline.
Meta Ads for Startups — Facebook and Instagram ads after the privacy changes: check fit, send clean data, test creative and measure with a lift test.
Retargeting for Startups — Retargeting adds a real but modest lift that dashboards overstate: set a holdout, cap spend and check consent.
Marketing Budget Benchmarks by Stage 2026 — What companies spend on marketing by stage, type and GTM motion, reconciled across major surveys. (from Analytics, Experiments & Budget)
The AAJ Benchmark Library — Every benchmark AAJ publishes, with its primary source, sample size and the date it was last verified. (from Analytics, Experiments & Budget)
Demand Creation vs. Demand Capture: The Shift Smart B2B Marketers Are Making (from Go-to-Market & Growth Planning)
How Much Should a Startup Spend on Marketing? Budget Ranges by Stage (from Analytics, Experiments & Budget)
Incrementality Testing for Startups: Prove Your Ads Actually Work (2026 Guide) (from Analytics, Experiments & Budget)
MMM-Lite: Marketing Mix Modeling for Startups (No Data Science Team Required) (from Analytics, Experiments & Budget)
Which marketing channels should a startup start with? — Start where your first segment already looks, pick channels whose cost fits your deal size, and test one or two against a pass mark you set in advance. (from Go-to-Market & Growth Planning)
How to Do ABM as a Startup (Without Enterprise Budgets, Tools, or Teams) (from Sales & Pipeline)

Work with AAJ

Growth Audit