I’m Stuart. This site is written from live accounts.
Twenty years working on online acquisition, the last decade of it buying paid media, and still in the accounts every week. Learn Paid Ads is where the calculators, models and notes I use on client work get published, free, with the working shown.
Most paid media education is written by people who stopped running accounts years ago. That’s the gap this site exists to fill.
Twenty years, then. It started in 2005 with my own ecommerce sites, learning what actually sells by spending my own money on traffic, long before it was anyone else’s budget on the line. That’s where the interest in how a click turns into revenue came from. For the first decade the work was mostly organic; in 2016 the focus moved to paid media and has stayed there since, with brands turning over seven and eight figures across ecommerce, DTC, SaaS and digital products. Day to day I run McLeod Media, a founder-led DTC growth partner in Glasgow: paid media, performance creative, conversion and measurement, run as one system and reported on revenue, CAC and contribution rather than clicks.
Most of that work is on consumer brands selling things people eat, drink or take (premium spirits and beverages, food, wellness, everyday essentials), with clients across the UK, US, Canada, Europe and India. The pattern I keep meeting is the same: a brand judging campaigns against a number nobody actually calculated. A 4x target picked in a meeting. A dashboard ROAS taken at face value. A creative test called after nine days.
So the tools here are the ones I build for myself and then hand to clients. No email wall, no course funnel, no signup to see a number. If something on this site is wrong, tell me and I’ll fix it: the arithmetic is on the page for exactly that reason.
Most of the money I’ve watched disappear in ad accounts wasn’t spent on bad ads. It went on decent ads judged against the wrong number.
The work behind the numbers
These are client results from McLeod Media, not results from this website. They’re here so you can judge whether the person writing the calculators has used them on real money.
£36k attributed revenue from £4.1k of spend
A full-funnel launch, acquisition and retention together
A repeat-purchase product at £1.53 cost per purchase
High-consideration product with an AOV over £4,000
Figures are as reported in the platforms and client reporting for those engagements. Different brands, different margins, different periods, which is exactly why the calculators on this site ask for your own numbers instead of promising you someone else’s.
Three things I keep repeating
Cheap clicks that never buy twice are how brands burn cash
Acquisition without retention is a leaking bucket. What happens after the click decides whether the spend ever pays for itself, so the whole route to revenue is the unit of work, not the campaign.
The reported number is not the real number
Platform-attributed revenue is a claim, not a measurement. Until you know your own over-reporting multiplier, every target you set is guesswork wearing a decimal point.
Show the working or don't publish it
Every tool here exposes its arithmetic. If a number can't survive being checked by the person paying for the ads, it has no business driving budget decisions.
What clients say
We were nervous about Meta ads after struggling to make them work. Stuart helped us gain confidence and scale quickly from a tiny budget, all while averaging an 11-12x return on ad spend.
Stuart's professionalism sets him apart in this sector. He really cares about his clients' success and provides a service that is commensurate with the values of honesty and integrity.
Working with Stuart has been a real joy. A targeted cask and equity sale is a new one for us and Stuart has worked with us to get the first communication message spot on.
Platform partners
What’s on this site
Four places to start, depending on what you’re trying to work out.
Tools
Break-even ROAS, creative testing and more, all free.
Open the tools →WritingNewsletter
Fortnightly notes built on the tools’ output, from accounts currently open.
Read the newsletter →ModelsResources
Spreadsheets and reference notes: the working behind the calculators.
Get the models →PeopleCommunity
A small group of operators comparing real numbers. Not open yet.
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