Chance Ecom Get my teardown

Performance marketing agency for DTC Built creative-first. Judged on MER.

Paid social, Google, YouTube and native, run as one system around the creative. We buy the media and make the ads in one place, so a hook that fails on Tuesday has a new variation in the auction by Wednesday.

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Rather diagnose it yourself first? Find out why your ads stopped scaling before you swap another audience.

Chance EcomCreative agency, DTC

A typical first conversation

  1. You

    Our agency keeps swapping audiences and bids. CPA still creeps up every month.

  2. Chance Ecom

    Advantage+ and Performance Max already pull those levers. What's left to move is the creative, and yours comes from another team.

  3. You

    And Meta's ROAS never matches what lands in Shopify.

  4. Chance Ecom

    It rarely does. The platforms claim the same orders. We judge spend on MER, not the dashboard.

  5. You

    So where would you start?

    Seen

  6. Chance Ecom

    With a free audit: account structure, creative pace, and what your numbers really say. Then we run the buying and the creative together.

You

Why does CPA keep creeping?

It's rarely the targeting. It's two teams and one dashboard.

Most DTC paid programs stall the same way: the agency runs media, the creative comes from somewhere else, and nobody owns the gap. Slow feedback, no profitable iteration.

Broken tracking, thin margins and a saturated audience can stall an account too, and a stalled-ads diagnostic separates them from creative fatigue.

  • Audience swaps stopped working

    Advantage+ and Performance Max pull the bid and audience levers now. What still moves CPA is the hook and the angle.

  • The creative lives with another team

    A buyer who can't brief, script and iterate creative is on the wrong side of the auction. Two teams means slow feedback.

  • The dashboard overstates the truth

    Meta and Google both claim the same orders. Add up what each platform reports and it beats what lands in Shopify.

You

So what do you actually run?

Five parts, run together. The creative is the lever.

Strategy, creative, buying, measurement and testing. None of them work alone, so none of them sit with another vendor.

The lever

Performance creative

Net-new concepts, not text-overlay reskins of one winner. Ten captions on one video is one ad to the algorithm.

New angles, not new paint
A founder-led explainer, a UGC unboxing, a demo, a social-proof stack, an urgency hook, a problem-agitate cut.
Hooks iterated daily
If a hook fails on Tuesday, a new variation is in the auction by Wednesday.
Why it leads
The platforms read the ad itself to find the buyer. Targeting got automated, so the creative now does the targeting, and angle volume is what scales.

all four feed the creative

  • Strategy and account architecture

    Campaigns mapped to funnel stages, exclusions so spend skips recent buyers, product feeds split by sell-through so the algorithm pushes stock that can carry demand.

    On Meta, a simple account structure with a separate testing sandbox keeps the signal dense enough to learn.

  • Multi-channel buying

    Meta and TikTok, Google Search and Performance Max, YouTube, native. Each bought in its own creative language: TikTok is not a square Meta placement.

    On Meta and TikTok, paid social runs as a system: consolidated campaigns, broad targeting, steady new creative and MER as the governor.

  • Measurement and server-side tracking

    Conversions API and server-side tagging in the base scope, not an upsell. Platform revenue reconciled against what lands in Shopify.

    Wiring Meta CAPI server-side recovers the conversions that iOS, browser limits and ad blockers hide from the algorithm.

  • Testing and scaling

    Winner criteria set before launch, tests run long enough to clear the noise, losers cut without ceremony. Budget follows the hooks that survive.

    A sound testing framework for creative isolates one variable per test and reads hook rate before CPA.

You

How do you work?

Quick wins in week one. Then a steady loop.

  1. 1

    First week

    The free audit, read back, plus the structural fixes that don't need new creative.

    • Pixel and Conversions API checked
    • Exclusions and wasted spend fixed
    • Restructure plan, plus MER and LTV:CAC targets
  2. 2

    Concept and produce

    From week 2. Brief, script, source or shoot, edit.

    • Net-new hooks
    • Distinct angles, not one asset ten ways
  3. 3

    Launch and read

    Into the new structure. We let the learning window finish before calling a creative.

    • A two-week read gives wrong answers
  4. 4

    Iterate and scale

    Kill losers fast. Build variations around the hooks that win.

    • Budget up while MER holds
    • Pulled back the moment it slips

steps 2 to 4 run on repeat

You

What do you need from us?

Access, numbers and someone who can say yes.

The audit and the restructure run on real data, so onboarding is mostly access. You keep ownership of every account.

  • Ad accounts: Meta Business Manager, Google Ads, TikTok, with access to the pixel, Conversions API and event setup
  • Store and analytics: Shopify and GA4
  • Unit economics: margin and COGS by product, plus LTV data
  • Your product feed, for the catalog and Performance Max
  • Brand assets and past creative, what ran and how it did
  • An approval contact who can sign off on creative and budget moves

You

How do you judge results?

On MER and margin. Not on the dashboard.

Platform ROAS is each platform grading its own homework. We hold the account to unit economics, and reconcile what the platforms report against what lands in Shopify.

  • MERTotal revenue over total ad spend. The blended check no single platform can inflate.
  • LTV:CACWhat a customer is worth against what it cost to win them. The target the account is held to.
  • MarginContribution margin: what an order leaves after the costs of making, shipping and selling it. It sets the CAC you can afford.
our read

Platform ROAS still helps read a single test, next to CPA and hold time. It never sets the budget. MER does.

Platforms over-credit themselves, so put MER next to platform ROAS before judging any creative.

Every test, judged the same way

  • Winner criteria set before launch: CPA, ROAS, hold time, MER contribution.
  • Tests run long enough to clear the noise.
  • Winners named at the hook level, then built on.
  • Incrementality tests at higher spend, because in-platform reports can't say what would have sold anyway.

A geo holdout or lift test shows which sales the ads actually caused. Day to day, attribution after iOS triangulates platform data, post-purchase surveys and modeling.

You

Are we a fit?

Built for brands that burn creative faster than they ship it.

A good fit

  • Product-market fit, a creative bottleneck. You burn through creative faster than your team can ship it.
  • Buying and creative in one place. You want the ads planned, made and bought together, not handed between vendors.

Not a fit

  • Spend too small to carry an agency. The agency math doesn't work for either side. We'll point you to lighter-scope tools instead.

Whether an agency or an in-house buyer pays off depends mostly on monthly ad spend.

You

A few more questions

Ask away. These come up on most first calls.

What does it cost?

Pricing depends on scope. Tell us what you're running and we'll quote after the free audit.

Is the audit really free?

Yes. It reads three things: your account architecture, your creative velocity, and your MER against platform ROAS.

Account structure and creative velocity are two of the core checks in any DTC paid media audit.

What else should we budget for?

Attribution software, CRO and session-recording tools, your email platform, and sourcing raw creator footage: editing it is in our scope, sourcing it is not. Plus your team's time for approvals, inventory and margin data.

What if we only need the creative?

Then the buying can stay where it is. Creative production runs as its own scope too.

A content creation agency worth hiring ships net-new concepts and hooks, judged on CPA rather than awards.

Why creative-first?

The platforms automated the buying. Meta reads the video and its transcript and finds the audience itself, so the ad decides who sees it. An agency's creative output is the ceiling on its performance.

You

Let me read first

Fair. Pick the one that sounds like your account.

Written by Camille Chen, a creative strategist here. No gated PDFs, no email wall.

"CPA keeps creeping"

"I don't trust my numbers"

"Is our account built right?"

You

OK. Audit our account.

Tell us what's broken. We'll tell you what we see.

A few short fields. The last one matters most: the more honest you are about what's not working, the more useful the audit.

  1. You

    Sent. Here's our brand and what's stuck.

  2. Chance Ecom

    Got it. We'll set up the free paid media audit and send back what we'd fix first. Want the creative teardown too? Say so in the message. We usually reply within one business day.

What the free audit reads

Three things, once we have access:

  • Account architecture: where structure leaks spend
  • Creative velocity: whether you ship as fast as the algorithm needs
  • MER against platform ROAS: what your numbers say once the overlap is stripped out

We usually reply within one business day. Not ready to send it? Read the blog first.