Accountable ad spend
Paid media is unforgiving, and doubly so in regulated and crypto categories. Platform policies shift, audiences are sceptical, and most budgets leak. I run campaigns that are measured, compliant, and tied to outcomes you can see in the business.
- Paid advertising management covers Google Ads, Meta advertising, conversion tracking and attribution, and ongoing bid strategy optimisation.
- Paid advertising for crypto and regulated products has to meet strict Google and Meta policies that change frequently, and I manage campaigns to stay within them.
- A paid advertising engagement sets up campaign architecture and conversion tracking in the first two weeks, then monitors live campaigns daily in the early phase.
- Paid advertising management is priced as a flat monthly retainer or a percentage of ad spend, with no markup on the ad spend itself.
- On the Bitmain engagement, paid advertising returned 3.2× on ad spend after the account rebuild.
Why most paid campaigns burn budget
Paid advertising in crypto, fintech and regulated categories carries more restrictions, more compliance risk and more sceptical audiences than almost any other vertical. Most advertisers treat it like ordinary PPC and wonder why campaigns get flagged or budgets disappear without results.
- Platform compliance
- Google and Meta have strict, frequently changing policies for crypto and financial ads. One wrong claim and the account gets suspended.
- Budget without strategy
- Spending on ads without conversion tracking, proper attribution or a clear cost-per-acquisition target is just subsidising the platforms.
- Impression vanity
- Millions of impressions get reported as success, but only conversions pay the bills.
- No optimisation loop
- Set-and-forget campaigns decay fast. Without daily monitoring and weekly optimisation, return on ad spend drops and cost per acquisition climbs.
Who is paid advertising for?
Companies that want accountable spend, with every pound tracked and every conversion measured.
Fintech and financial services
High-value conversions and strict ad policies, where compliance and precision matter more than reach.
B2B SaaS and tech
Enterprise and developer audiences on Google and LinkedIn, where intent is high and conversion values are significant.
Crypto and Web3 products
Compliant, high-intent campaigns that drive qualified traffic without getting the account flagged.
High-value conversions
Deposits, demos and sign-ups that justify premium cost per click. Every click needs to count.
Time-sensitive launches
Drops, activations and product launches that need to deliver quickly.
Teams scaling organic
Using paid to capture high-intent queries while organic rankings build underneath.
What does paid advertising include?
Each workstream is designed to move a specific metric, not to pad a report.
Google Ads
Search, display and YouTube campaigns built around the terms your audience types when they’re ready to act. Proper account structure, ads that earn clicks, and optimisation toward conversions rather than impressions.
Meta advertising
Facebook and Instagram campaigns targeted at the audiences most likely to convert. Creative direction, audience segmentation, testing and ongoing optimisation. Every pound accounted for.
Tracking and attribution
Paid media without proper tracking is money spent in the dark. I set up conversion tracking, attribution models and reporting so you know exactly what your spend produces.
Bid strategy and optimisation
Continuous testing of bid strategies, audience segments, ad copy and landing page combinations. The goal is lower cost per acquisition and higher return on ad spend, month over month.
How does the work run?
Four phases with real durations. Nothing here is a proprietary framework. It is the order the work has to happen in.
Diagnose
If you have campaigns running, I audit account structure, targeting, bidding and conversion tracking. If you’re starting fresh, I assess the competitive landscape and the platform compliance requirements. Either way the foundation has to be right.
Foundation
Campaign architecture designed around your objectives, budget and audience: keyword selection for search, audience segmentation for social, ad copy, landing page recommendations and conversion tracking.
Amplify
Campaigns go live with close monitoring. I watch performance daily in the early phase, adjusting bids, pausing underperformers and scaling what works. This is where the data starts telling us what to do next.
Compound
Once the data is in, optimise hard. New ad variations, refined audiences, adjusted bid strategies, expansion into the best-performing segments. Paid media compounds when the feedback loop is tight.
How much does paid advertising cost?
Most work starts with a fixed-fee audit. Scope moves the number, not seniority: you get me either way.
Audit and roadmap
From £3,000
I look at what you are running now, find what is structurally broken as opposed to merely underperforming, and hand back a prioritised plan you could execute without me. Most engagements start here.
Ongoing retainer
From £4,000
Strategy plus execution across the channels that matter for your stage. Two or three disciplines working together rather than all five at once.
Advisory
£450 per day
For teams with people in place who need someone senior to pressure-test the plan, review the work, and say the unpopular thing.
What results has paid advertising produced?
Real numbers from one engagement, not a projection. The full write-up states the measurement basis for each.
- Organic traffic across the US and EU, over six months
- +124%
- High-intent keywords reaching the first page of Google
- 40+
- Return on ad spend after the account rebuild
- 3.2×
The technical depth and speed Oliver brought were game-changing. In six months we jumped from invisible to dominating key searches, and our ad spend is now one of the highest-ROI channels company-wide.
Questions people actually ask
Including the ones about money.
Written by
Oliver Carding
Marketing consultant in Manchester. Previously Head of Marketing at Improbable and Senior Digital Marketing Lead at eBay; founded CoinJournal and CryptoKaiju. Career, press and references.
Other services
Most engagements use two or three together. A strategy sets the direction; the rest do the work.
Digital marketing strategy
Audience research, channel planning, go-to-market, and measurement frameworks. The decision-making layer that tells you what to do, in what order, and how you’ll know it’s working.
Search engine optimisation
Technical SEO, keyword strategy, content optimisation, and authority building. I fix the structural problems that stop search engines finding you, then build the visibility that compounds over time.
Content marketing
Content strategy, thought leadership, newsletters, and distribution. The aim is content that answers the questions your buyers actually have, in places they’ll actually find it, rather than volume for its own sake.
Social media management
Channel strategy, community management, content publishing, and paid social on the channels your audience already uses: X, Discord, Telegram, and LinkedIn.
Digital transformation
Replatforming, measurement infrastructure, and the way a marketing team actually runs. Most problems that look like strategy problems are plumbing problems: the tracking is wrong, the site can’t ship a page, and nobody agrees what a lead is.
AI consultancy
Where AI genuinely improves a marketing team’s work and where it is theatre. Workflow design, tooling, quality standards, and the judgement to say when the honest answer is “don’t”.
AI search visibility
Answer engine optimisation. Being the source an AI cites when someone asks it a question in your category. That is a different job from ranking, and increasingly the one that decides whether you get considered at all.