Google Ads
Search, Shopping, Performance Max and YouTube, structured around intent and measured against real outcomes.
- Search, Shopping and Performance Max
- Query quality and negative keywords
- Offline and value-based conversions
Performance marketing agency
Paid attention, turned into customers.
We plan, buy and manage Google Ads, Meta Ads and custom media, then build the creative and landing pages that make that spend convert. One team, one set of numbers, from first impression to purchase.
Experience
MSG is new. The people behind it aren't.
Between us, more than 45 years in digital media: building and running large-scale media buying teams, selling media from the publisher side, and leading growth in some of the most competitive verticals online, where creative, compliance and unit economics all have to work at once.
Large-scale buying teams
We've built and led teams that manage big budgets across many accounts at once, with the testing discipline, pacing and reporting that scale demands.
Both sides of the trade
We've sold media as well as bought it, so we know how inventory is priced, packaged and negotiated, and where the value actually is.
The hardest verticals
Our experience comes from categories where ad review is strict and every percentage point of margin counts. Accounts there only last if the advertising is clear and compliant.
What we run
Three ways we buy attention.
Google captures demand that already exists. Meta creates it. Custom media finds the people the big two miss or overcharge for. We manage all three against the same business numbers.
Meta Ads
Facebook and Instagram campaigns driven by structured creative testing and conversion signals you can trust.
- Structured creative testing
- Pixel and Conversions API signals
- Prospecting-first account structure
Custom media buying
Planning, sourcing, testing and managing the channels beyond Google and Meta that deserve a budget.
- TikTok, YouTube, CTV, podcasts and more
- Capped tests with decision dates
- Measurement agreed before spend
Built into every account, and organic
- Creative Concepts, hooks and short-form video built for testing, then improved by what the results show.
- Conversion Landing pages and funnels that match the ad, remove friction and make the offer clear.
- Measurement Tracking, attribution and reporting that connect ad spend to customers, revenue and margin.
- SEO & AEO Search and AI answer visibility built on expert content, clean technical foundations and tracking you can read.
Inside the accounts
How we build accounts that scale.
Campaign structure, split tests and the measurement that keeps them honest. These views show the decisions behind each line: what gets split out, what gets capped, what gets tested and how a winner is called.
| Campaign | Budget / day | Impr. | CTR | Cost | Conv. | CPA | ROAS | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1SRCH | Brand | Exact Search · Target impr. share | $3,500 | 1.38M | 23.0% | $96.4K | 9,820 | $9.82 | 12.22× | Capped |
| 2SRCH | Non-brand | High intent Search · Target CPA | $22.0K | 6.91M | 7.0% | $611.8K | 13.6K | $44.85 | 2.78× | Scaling |
| 3SRCH | Non-brand | Category | Broad Search · Target CPA | $10.0K | 9.24M | 3.8% | $288.3K | 5,060 | $56.98 | 2.09× | Active |
| SRCH | Competitor | Exact Search · Max. clicks (capped CPC) | $2,500 | 1.12M | 3.7% | $64.2K | 820 | $78.29 | 1.44× | Limited |
| 4SHOP | Hero SKUs | Margin tier A Shopping · Target ROAS 340% | $12.0K | 14.8M | 2.7% | $341.0K | 8,910 | $38.27 | 3.48× | Scaling |
| 5PMAX | Feed only | Brand excluded Performance Max · Target ROAS 260% | $9,500 | 22.6M | 1.3% | $274.1K | 5,380 | $50.95 | 2.49× | Testing |
| 6DGEN | Prospecting | Video Demand Gen · Max. conversions | $4,000 | 31.4M | 0.4% | $118.2K | 1,060 | $111.51 | 1.02× | Active |
| Total · 7 campaigns | $63.5K | 87.5M | 2.3% | $1.79M | 44.7K | $40.14 | 3.10× | 1,490/day |
Ad groups · SRCH | Non-brand | High intent
| Ad group | Keywords | CTR | Conv. | CPA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AG | [Category] for [use case] | 38 exact · 12 phrase | 7.9% | 4,420 | $38.73 | Scaling |
| AG | Best [category] | 24 exact · 9 phrase | 7.2% | 3,310 | $46.19 | Active |
| AG | [Product] vs [alternative] | 31 exact | 8.1% | 2,130 | $41.60 | Active |
| AG | [Problem] solution | 19 phrase | 5.8% | 2,060 | $53.16 | Testing |
| AG | [Category] price | 14 exact · 6 phrase | 6.1% | 1,720 | $52.09 | Active |
Search terms · this week's review
- Negative“free [category]”No free offer
- Negative“[category] near me”Online only
- Monitor“[product] coupon code”Low intent, brand-adjacent
- Promote“best [category] for [use case] 2026”Converts at 2.1× the ad-group average; added as exact
- Promote“[competitor] alternative”Moved to the competitor campaign
Responsive search ad test · AG | [Category] for [use case]
A · Benefit-led headlines
- CTR
- 8.3%
- Conv. rate
- 2.60%
- Conv.
- 2,060
B · Price and guarantee headlinesWinner
- CTR
- 7.5%
- Conv. rate
- 3.29%
- Conv.
- 2,360
B wins on conversions despite a lower CTR. B rolls out; A's best benefit line joins B's headline pool for the next round.
- Brand is split out and capped. Branded clicks are cheap and convert well, so blending them in makes non-brand look better than it is.
- High intent is organized by search theme, not by product SKU. Each ad group points at a page that answers the query.
- Broad match only runs where conversion volume can steer it, with search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added.
- Shopping is split by margin tier, so the bid target reflects profit, not just revenue.
- Performance Max runs feed-only with brand excluded and is reported on its own, so it can't take credit for brand demand.
- Video prospecting is judged on blended lift and branded-search growth, not on platform-reported conversions alone.
Illustrative account · names generalized · not a specific client's results
Campaign ASC | Prospecting | Purchase · Value optimization
| Ad set | Budget / day | Spend | CPM | Hook rate | CTR | Purchases | CPA | ROAS | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1PROS | Broad | Concept test | Wk 40 | $6,000 | $171.0K | $10.75 | 32.0% | 1.35% | 3,480 | $49.14 | 1.58× | Testing |
| 2PROS | Broad | Scale | Winners | $38.0K | $1.13M | $11.46 | 34.0% | 1.41% | 26.1K | $43.22 | 1.86× | Scaling |
| PROS | Advantage+ audience | Scale | $22.0K | $641.0K | $10.47 | 32.0% | 1.20% | 13.7K | $46.79 | 1.69× | Active |
| 3PROS | LAL 1% payers | Holdout control | $3,000 | $88.5K | $12.83 | 30.0% | 1.12% | 1,610 | $54.97 | 1.48× | Active |
| 4RT | Engaged 30d | Capped at 8% of spend | $5,500 | $161.0K | $16.43 | 28.0% | 1.54% | 4,920 | $32.72 | 2.28× | Capped |
| Total · 5 ad sets | $74.5K | $2.19M | $11.39 | 32.8% | 1.34% | 49.8K | $43.96 | 1.80× | 1,660/day |
Concept × hook test · hook rate and CPA vs. target
Concept H1H2H3
C01 Confession 0.82× 34% hook 0.88× 29% hook 0.74× 38% hook
C02 Demonstration 1.04× 27% hook 0.97× 31% hook 1.18× 25% hook
C03 Comparison 1.31× 22% hook 1.22× 24% hook 1.40× 21% hook
C04 Founder story 0.93× 30% hook 1.09× 26% hook 0.88× 33% hook
CPA at or under 0.90× target 1.20× or worse
The call
C01 wins across all three hooks, so the idea is working, not one lucky ad. It earns new voices and formats. C03 is retired after a diagnosis: the comparison read as an attack ad.
- New concepts enter a dedicated test ad set with its own budget, so testing never resets the learning in the scaling campaigns.
- Winners graduate as concepts, not single ads, with fresh hooks queued before the current ones fatigue.
- A small lookalike cell runs as a control to check whether broad delivery is actually finding better customers.
- Retargeting is capped as a share of spend, so it can't inflate results by claiming people who would have bought anyway.
Illustrative account · names generalized · not a specific client's results
What the platforms claim vs. what the business recorded
35% over-claim. Budgets set on platform totals would be funding conversions that happened once but were counted twice.
- Paid media spend
- $2.86M
- Revenue (business)
- $4.91M
- MER (blended)
- 1.72×
- New-customer CAC
- $104.76
- 90-day repeat rate
- 34%
- Meta incrementality (geo holdout)
- 0.71× reported
- Budget decisions use the business view (blended MER and new-customer CAC), with platform data steering optimization inside each channel.
- A holdout test showed the platform's reported conversions overstated true incremental impact, so its CPA target was set against the incremental figure, not the reported one.
Illustrative account · names generalized · not a specific client's results
| Source | Type | Sessions | vs. prior | Leads | Lead rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google organic | Search | 48.2K | +31% | 1,010 | 2.1% |
| Bing organic | Search | 6,900 | +22% | 166 | 2.4% |
| 1ChatGPT | AI answer | 3,140 | +184% | 144 | 4.6% |
| Perplexity | AI answer | 1,080 | +142% | 44 | 4.1% |
| Copilot | AI answer | 610 | +95% | 20 | 3.3% |
| Gemini | AI answer | 420 | +120% | 16 | 3.8% |
| Total organic + AI | 60.4K | +36% | 1,400 | 2.3% |
UTM convention for answer-engine links
?utm_source=chatgpt.com&utm_medium=ai-referral&utm_campaign=answer-engine - AI answer engines, share of sessions
- 8.7%
- AI answer engines, growth
- +155%
- Lead rate: AI vs. organic search
- 2.00×
- Pages indexed / submitted
- 138/142
- IndexNow submissions
- 37
- Median crawl lag after publish
- 19h
- Each answer engine is its own source, identified by referrer and UTM rules, so AI visits never disappear into "direct".
- Leads are followed into the CRM, so organic and AI channels are judged on pipeline, not pageviews.
- Every publish is submitted through sitemaps and IndexNow, and coverage is checked in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Illustrative account · names generalized · not a specific client's results
Creative from live campaigns
Ads built to be tested.
Short-form video built for paid placements: client work in English and Spanish, affiliate campaign creative across a dozen personas and accents, and animated product spots. Every piece is built around one hook worth testing.
Why connected
Most performance is lost at the seams.
Channels are usually managed by different people with different scorecards. The expensive problems sit between them, and nobody owns those gaps. We do.
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Search ↔ Landing page
The query asked one thing. The page answered another.
Someone searches for a specific product or problem, then lands on a general homepage. The ad did its job and the click was paid for, but the page made them search again.
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Creative ↔ Checkout
The ad said “free trial.” Checkout led with the annual price.
When the offer changes between the ad and the purchase step, conversion rates fall and refund requests rise. Creative and conversion have to be planned as one message.
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Platform ↔ Business
Google and Meta both claimed the same sale.
Each platform reports the conversions it touched. Added together they can exceed actual sales, and budgets get set on numbers that never happened.
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Acquisition ↔ Retention
The cheapest customers were the first to cancel.
Optimizing for the lowest cost per sign-up can attract people who refund, churn or never pay. Acquisition is only efficient if the customers are worth keeping.
The Grid
How acquisition actually works.
Customers move forward from audience to conversion. What we learn moves back, into who we target, where we buy and what we make next. Explore each part of the system and how it connects.
01 · Who
Audience
The people worth reaching, and the moment they're in: searching with a need, or scrolling without one yet.
What we do here
We define the best customers from your own data (who buys, who stays, who refunds) rather than demographic guesses, and we separate demand that already exists from demand that has to be created.
Connects to
In practice: Cheap isn't the same as good
An audience that converts at a low cost but cancels in the first month is more expensive than one that costs more and stays. Audience decisions get made on customer quality, not on the first conversion.
02 · Intent
Captures demand that already exists. Someone types what they want and the right ad answers.
What we do here
We structure accounts by intent, keep query quality tight, run Search, Shopping, Performance Max and YouTube where each fits, and bid on conversion data that reflects real value.
Connects to
In practice: Two searches, two jobs
"Best running shoes for flat feet" and "running shoes sale" look alike, but one person is researching and the other is ready to buy. They belong in different ad groups, with different pages and different bids.
03 · Attention
Meta
Creates demand. People aren't looking for you yet; the right ad makes them want to.
What we do here
We run Facebook and Instagram around a structured creative testing program, broad audiences and clean Pixel and Conversions API signals, so delivery finds buyers rather than clickers.
Connects to
In practice: The creative picks the audience
Shown to the same broad audience, a confession-style hook and a product demo will reach different people. The delivery system finds whoever responds, so the creative effectively chooses who sees it.
04 · Reach
Custom media
Channels beyond the big two, such as TikTok, YouTube, CTV, podcasts, newsletters and publishers, when they reach the right people at a better price.
What we do here
We plan and source each channel case by case, give it a capped test with a decision date, and agree how it will be measured before any money is spent.
Connects to
In practice: Measuring what a pixel can't see
A newsletter sponsorship can't be tracked click by click. A dedicated landing page, an offer code and a post-purchase "where did you hear about us" question can still show whether it worked.
05 · Message
Creative
The ad itself. It decides who stops scrolling, who understands the offer and who clicks.
What we do here
We write and produce concepts, hooks and short-form video built to be tested, cut for every placement, and improved using what each round of results shows.
Connects to
In practice: Where the difference sits
Two ads with the same body and different first three seconds can perform very differently. That's why we produce several hooks per concept, and why concepts are tested before polish.
06 · Promise
Landing page
Where the ad's promise is kept or broken, usually within the first screen on a phone.
What we do here
We design and build pages that continue the ad's message, put the offer and price up front, remove friction, and load fast on mobile connections.
Connects to
In practice: Message match
If an ad promises "first month free" and the page opens on a generic homepage banner, many visitors leave before scrolling. A page that opens on that exact offer keeps the thread unbroken.
07 · Outcome
Conversion
The action that matters, whether a purchase, a subscription or a qualified lead, and what happens after it.
What we do here
We define conversions that reflect business value, reduce drop-off in forms and checkout, and make terms such as billing and renewal clear, so customers stay converted.
In practice: A trial isn't a customer
For subscription offers, optimizing toward trial starts can attract people who never pay. Where volume allows, sending paid-conversion or renewal signals back teaches the platforms to find people who stay.
08 · Learning
Measurement
Turns outcomes into decisions: what to fund, what to cut, which audiences to pursue and what to make next.
What we do here
We combine clean platform tracking with first-party results and controlled tests, report acquisition cost and customer quality alongside platform numbers, and feed better signals back into every channel.
Connects to
In practice: When the platforms add up to more than 100%
Google and Meta can both claim the same sale. Comparing their reports with blended, first-party results shows how much of the combined total is overlap, and where budget is actually earning its keep.
An explanatory model of how we manage acquisition, not a software product or live data.
How we work
Diagnose. Build. Launch. Learn. Scale.
A predictable way of working, so you always know what we're doing, why, and when we'll make the next decision.
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Diagnose
Start with the numbers and the plumbing.
A written diagnosis with prioritized fixes and a plan you can hold us to.
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Build
Fix the foundation before buying more traffic.
A measurable foundation: clean signals, structured accounts, creative and pages ready to test.
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Launch
Controlled budgets, explicit hypotheses.
Live campaigns where every test has a reason, a budget and a decision date.
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Learn
Read results at the level they mean something.
A running learning log: what we tried, what happened and what we'll do next.
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Scale
Grow where the margin holds.
Growth tied to acquisition economics rather than just to spend.
Who we help
For businesses that grow through paid acquisition.
We're most useful where paid media is, or should be, a primary growth channel, and where the economics after the first purchase matter as much as the first purchase.
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E-commerce and DTC
Catalogue and hero-product brands selling online, where feed quality, creative volume, contribution margin and repeat purchase decide how far paid media can scale.
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Subscriptions and memberships
Recurring-revenue offers where trial-to-paid conversion, billing clarity, retention and payback period matter more than the cost of a sign-up.
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Apps and digital products
Apps, software, memberships, communities and other digital goods, including the demanding categories where ad review is strict and acquisition is hardest.
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Consumer brands
Brands building demand as well as capturing it, where creative, video and new channels have to work alongside search.
What does MEGA Stone Grid do?
MEGA Stone Grid (MSG) is a performance marketing agency. We plan, buy and manage paid media, mainly Google Ads, Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram) and other channels through custom media buying, and we produce the performance creative, landing pages and measurement that make that media profitable.
What types of businesses do you work with?
Businesses that acquire customers online: e-commerce and DTC brands, subscription and membership offers, apps and digital products, and consumer brands. We're a strong fit when paid media is, or should be, a primary growth channel.
Do you only run Google and Meta?
No. Google and Meta are the core of most plans, and we also buy across other channels such as TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, programmatic, connected TV, podcasts, newsletters and direct publisher placements when they suit the audience and can be measured.
Do you make the ads, or only manage the campaigns?
Both. We write and produce performance creative, mostly short-form video, and we build landing pages. Keeping creative, media and conversion with one team means test results flow straight into the next brief.
Is there a minimum budget?
We don't publish a fixed minimum. What matters is whether your budget can produce enough conversions for the platforms, and for us, to learn from. If it can't yet, we'll tell you in the first conversation.
How do you measure success?
Against business outcomes: new customers, acquisition cost, revenue and margin, payback, and customer quality such as refunds or retention. We use platform reporting, but we don't treat platform-reported ROAS as the whole story, because platforms often claim credit for the same sales.
How does an engagement start?
With a conversation about your goals and current numbers, then a diagnosis of your accounts, tracking, creative and funnel. From that we agree a prioritized plan before any rebuilding or scaling.
Do you handle SEO and AI search (AEO)?
Yes. We run SEO and answer engine optimization as one program: a clean technical foundation, Search Console and Bing Webmaster setup, sitemaps and IndexNow, subject-matter-expert content, and tracking that shows visits and leads from Google, Bing and AI answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity as separate sources.
Who is behind MSG?
A team with more than 45 years of combined experience in digital media: building and running large-scale media buying teams, selling media from the publisher side, and leading growth in some of the most competitive verticals online. MSG is a new agency; the people running your account are not new to this.
Can you work in categories where ads are hard to get approved?
Yes. Much of our experience comes from verticals where platform review is strict and margins are thin. We build offers, creative and landing pages that pass review and keep ad and payment accounts healthy. We don't use cloaking or any tactic designed to get around policy.
Tell us where growth is stuck.
Share your goals, your channels and roughly what you spend. We'll reply with an honest view of where we'd start, or tell you if we're not the right fit.