Desk fact
Yours
Ad accounts stay in your name. Data leaves with you.
01 · Performance Marketing
Performance marketing agency that answers to profit — in any market.
Google, Meta, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and the rest of the paid stack — run as one P&L, in any market where those platforms sell. Creative, landing pages, and measurement sit on the same desk, and spend only grows when contribution margin says yes.
Lower CAC. Higher contribution. Cleaner pipeline.
Google & MicrosoftMeta, LinkedIn, TikTokYouTube & Demand GenCRM-tied reporting
- P&L desk
- Reply in one business day
- 30-min working session
Desk fact
Weekly
Kill / hold / scale memo — not a 40-page PDF.
Desk fact
1 P&L
Search, social, video, creative, and landing on one scoreboard.
Direct answer
What is a performance marketing agency?
A performance marketing agency is a paid-media partner accountable to a business number — revenue, qualified pipeline, contribution margin, payback — not reach. SpikeROAS runs Google, Meta, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon, and Microsoft as one P&L, with creative, landing pages, and measurement on the same desk.
Most brands do not have a traffic problem. They have a waste problem: tired creative still spending, queries that will never close, last-click dashboards that lie, and an agency that asks for more budget before it adds more work. I built this desk because platform ROAS kept getting celebrated while contribution died after fees, COGS, and sales time.
Markets change CPCs, language, and how people pay. They do not change the operating system. We pace the goal against time. If we are behind, we add work first — a new hook, a cleaner query list, a page that matches the ad — before we ask you to spend more. That is the deal, in any currency.
Related: paid search, paid social, performance creative, analytics and attribution, and live Google Ads and Meta work.
Fit
Who this performance marketing agency is for
We work with operators who can absorb more demand and feel wasted media in the P&L — ecommerce, lead-gen, and B2B, wherever you sell. If you need a logo farm, we are the wrong shop.
Ecommerce & DTC
Catalog, prospecting, and retention under one scoreboard. We scale only when contribution margin after fees, returns, and payment costs still holds — on your site or on a marketplace.
Lead-gen & services
Calls and forms that sales will actually run — home services, professional services, healthcare, education — not junk volume to hit a CPL vanity target.
B2B & SaaS
LinkedIn plus search plus remarketing, with SQL definitions agreed before the first dollar. Pipeline and payback, not MQLs that die in a CRM graveyard.
Who we will not take
- Brands that will not share margins, payback, or capacity — we cannot run a P&L in the dark.
- Spend too small to exit learning on the platforms that matter in your market. We will say that on the call.
- Teams that want a 12-month lock-in and a junior account coordinator as the product.
- Shops shopping for a pasted playbook. What works in one market is a hypothesis in the next — not a template.
The leak
What typical performance agencies get wrong
Vanity metrics as the product
CTR, CPC, and platform ROAS make pretty slides. They do not tell you if the next dollar is profitable after COGS, fees, and sales time. We report the number finance will fund.
Creative on a quarterly moodboard
Social dies in creative, not in targeting toggles. Five new ads a month loses to a weekly hook / offer / format matrix with kill rules — in the language and format your market actually watches.
A playbook with a flag on it
What worked in one country gets pasted into another with a currency swap. CPCs, creative, payment, and sales capacity are local. The operating system can travel. The ads cannot.
Media without the funnel
Buying cheap clicks into a homepage that was never built to convert is not performance. Landing, offer, and CRM routing sit on this desk — same as the bids.
On the desk
Performance marketing services on the desk
We do not sell a stack you do not need. The mix follows the number that has to move — and the platforms that can actually move it in your market.
Paid search & Shopping
Google and Microsoft search, Shopping, and Performance Max only when it earns its keep. Query-level waste reports. Brand vs non-brand split so you can see the truth.
Paid social
Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok — prospecting and retargeting with a creative testing cadence. Advantage+ without giving up a kill list.
YouTube & Demand Gen
In-stream and demand-gen units built for the skip button, then captured in search. Assisted conversions, not vanity view rates.
Amazon & retail media
Sponsored Products, Brands, Display, and DSP against profit after fees — TACoS, not ACOS theater. When the catalog and the marketplace justify it.
Creative + landing
Hooks, offers, UGC, and message-match pages scored weekly. Media does not wait on a separate brand vendor in another time zone.
Measurement
GA4, enhanced conversions, CRM offline import, and incrementality reads when spend is large enough to learn. One view for whoever owns the P&L.
The work
What we actually do
- Full-funnel paid search, paid social, and video under one P&L
- Creative testing sprints scored against contribution margin
- Budget pacing against goal % vs time %
- Incrementality reads — not last-click theater
- Weekly reallocation: kill, hold, or scale — same OS in every market
Deliverables
You leave with
- 90-day media architecture
- Weekly capital reallocation memo
- Creative scorecard by hook, offer, and audience
- CRM-connected revenue reporting
Ready to brief the Performance Marketing desk?
Tell us the number that has to move — and where you sell. We will tell you where the next dollar works, and what we would cut.
Cadence
How the work runs
01
Audit the P&L
Margins, payback, capacity, and the number that has to move.
02
Rebuild the stack
Accounts, tracking, audiences, and offers — then the first test slate.
03
Pace and scale
If we are behind the goal, we add work before we ask for more budget.
First 90 days
First 90 days on a performance retainer
Days 1–14
Audit the P&L
Margins, payback, capacity, tracking, creative inventory, and the number that has to move. Freeze what is bleeding. You get a kill list before we ask for more budget.
Days 15–45
Rebuild and test
Account structure, audiences, offers, and the first creative slate. Tracking that actually joins to CRM. Weekly memo: what died, what held, what scaled.
Days 46–75
Pace the goal
KPI % vs time %. Winners get budget. Losers leave the account. If we are behind, we add work — landing, creative, or query hygiene — before we ask you to spend more.
Days 76–90
Architecture for the next quarter
90-day media map, creative scorecard, and the channels that earned a seat. Scale only where contribution holds. Everything else stays a test.
The fork
SpikeROAS vs typical agency vs in-house
Hire us when you need a desk that reallocates capital weekly. Stay in-house when you already have operators, creative velocity, and a trusted scoreboard.
| Factor | SpikeROAS | Typical agency | In-house |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scoreboard | Contribution margin, SQL quality, payback | CTR, CPC, platform ROAS screenshots | Depends on who owns finance vs marketing |
| Creative | Weekly hook / offer / format tests with kill rules | Quarterly moodboard, five ads a month | Often starved — brand team is not a test engine |
| Markets | One operating system. Local CPCs, creative, and capacity. | One-market playbook with a currency swap | Deep in one market; thin when you expand |
| Measurement | CRM joins, enhanced conversions, incrementality when spend earns it | Last-click Ads Manager export | Strong if you staffed it; usually one overworked analyst |
| Cadence | Weekly reallocation memo. Goal % vs time % | Monthly slide deck, QBR theater | Fast if empowered; slow if every bid needs a committee |
| Account ownership | Yours. Always. | Sometimes theirs — you lose history if you leave | Yours, by definition |
Pricing philosophy
No fake menu. An honest gate.
We do not publish a fake menu. A Google-only cleanup is not a full-funnel desk, and a small test in a cheap CPC market is not the same job as a multi-market program. On the call we will tell you if the working media is too small to learn, or if you should stay in-house.
- Typical fit: wasted media actually hurts. In high-CPC markets that is often $20k+/month in working media; in others we can learn on less. We will say if the spend cannot teach us anything.
- You own the ad accounts. We do not mark up media or bury fees in spend.
- No 12-month hostage contract. If the desk is not working, you should be able to leave with your data.
- If we cannot see a path to the number, we will say no. That is cheaper than a bad retainer.
The call
What happens in 30 minutes
- 30 minutes. Working session, not a demo.
- Bring spend, the markets you sell in, the number that has to move, and whatever tracking you trust today.
- We will tell you what we would kill, what we would test, and whether SpikeROAS is the right desk.
- Leave with a yes, a not-yet, or a stay-in-house. No bait-and-switch junior.
Client result · Florida
Google Ads for a hardware brand.
A Florida hardware brand needed Google to take more volume without breaking the unit. We rebuilt Shopping and search architecture, then scaled only where ROAS held. Mar–Jun 2026 vs the prior four months: $2.65M spend (+12.69%), 74,169 conversions (+8.50%), ROAS 3.91 vs 3.93. Catalog work on Meta still sits beside it — Google is the scale floor.
- Google Ads architecture — Shopping, search, and brand vs non-brand
- Scale rules: more budget only where ROAS held
- Feed and catalog hygiene so Shopping could take the volume
Google Ads ROAS
3.91x
held vs 3.93
Ad spend
$2.65M
+12.69%
Conversions
74,169
+8.50%
Client result · Minneapolis
Meta ads for Tergar.
Traffic was steady. Sales were not. We tightened Meta audiences and creative, kept Google on high-intent search, and fixed the conversion path. Last 30 days in Ads Manager, across the highest-spending campaigns: website leads from $3.35 to $3.52, website purchases from $6.14 to $26.08, $9,261 spent, 216,510 reach. Across the program: +16% total sales, 502 orders (+9%), returning customer rate 45.68%.
- Meta structure split for website leads and website purchases — not one blended campaign
- Creative tests with a kill threshold; tired ads left the account
- Conversion-path and offer work so CPA could stay in range
Best lead CPA
$3.35
top campaign; range to $3.52
Best purchase CPA
$6.14
top campaign; range to $26.08
30-day spend
$9,261
1.14M impressions · 216.5k reach
FAQ
Questions we get about Performance Marketing
What is a performance marketing agency?
A performance marketing agency manages paid campaigns where every dollar is accountable to a business outcome — revenue, qualified leads, or payback — not impressions. SpikeROAS runs search, social, video, and retail media as one P&L, with creative and landing pages on the same desk.
How is performance marketing different from digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the whole toolkit — content, email, organic, brand, paid. Performance marketing is the paid slice measured on a cost-per-outcome and scaled only when that outcome is profitable. We still fix the page and the offer, because cheap clicks into a leaky funnel are not performance.
What is the difference between PPC and performance marketing?
PPC usually means paid search — Google and Microsoft. A performance marketing agency covers search plus social, video, and often retail media, with creative and landing on the same plan. SpikeROAS does both: this page is the full P&L; paid search is the search desk.
Is this just media buying?
No. Media, creative, landing, and measurement sit together. Buying cheap clicks into a broken funnel is not performance. If the offer, page, or CRM routing is the bottleneck, we fix that before we scale spend.
Which platforms do you run?
Google, Meta, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon, and Microsoft — plus AI search placements as they mature, in any market where those platforms sell. We only scale a channel if the math holds. You will not get a seven-channel stack because it looks impressive on a website.
How fast do performance marketing results show up?
Paid can move in weeks once tracking and the offer are honest. Statistically useful reads usually take 30–90 days depending on conversion volume. We still ship a kill list in week one. SEO and GEO, if they are on the plan, compound over a quarter.
What budget do I need for a performance marketing agency?
Enough to exit learning and still have room to test. In high-CPC markets that is often $20k+/month in working media; in others we can learn on less. If the spend cannot teach us anything in your market, we will tell you to wait or stay in-house.
Do you work with brands worldwide?
Yes. The operating system is the same — weekly kill / hold / scale against contribution. CPCs, creative, language, payment, and sales capacity are local. We will not paste one market's winners into another and call it a launch.
Do you take over existing ad accounts?
Yes. We audit, freeze what is bleeding, and rebuild in place or in parallel — your call. Accounts stay in your name. If a prior agency ran ads in their MCC and you have no history, we start by recovering what we can and telling you the truth about the gap.
How do you handle attribution?
Platform ROAS is an input, not the religion. We join CRM and offline conversions where they exist, watch blended payback, and run incrementality or geo-holdouts when spend is large enough. Anyone promising perfect user-level truth in 2026 is selling comfort.
Usually paired with
Other desks on the same P&L
Paid Search
Google and Microsoft Ads treated as capital — every query has a job.
Paid Social
Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube — creative as the media plan.
Performance Creative
Ads designed to be tested, killed, and scaled — not presented.
Analytics & Attribution
Know which dollar worked — without worshipping last click.
Industries
Where this service actually runs
Further reading
How we actually run it
Paid Search
How to scale Google Ads without losing ROAS (2026)
Most accounts break at the same three points when budget goes up — and one of them changed nine days ago. The ladder, the readiness gate, and the diagnostic table.
14 min read →
Measurement
ROAS vs POAS: why a 4x account can still lose money
A 4x account that loses money is not a bug. It is what happens when you optimize revenue instead of margin. The math, the break-even table, and the tROAS trap that wipes out accounts.
14 min read →
Next step
Brief the performance desk.
Tell us the number that has to move — and where you sell. We will tell you where the next dollar works, and what we would cut.