CASE STUDY: If I'll spend $100k/day on ads this is what I would do as Fractional CMO

Scaling an ad account to $100,000 a day requires building an aggressive machine capable of launching hundreds of testable creatives every single week.

As a Fractional CMO, my objective is to execute this spend profitably by engineering a data-validated media buying architecture. Here is the exact playbook for structuring the team, allocating the budget, and running the testing protocol at a massive scale.

Phase 1: The $100k/Day Media Mix Allocation

Deploying a massive daily budget requires constantly hunting for the next best dollar across the entire digital ecosystem. Here is the precise allocation structure:

• 50% to the Primary Social Ad Platform: The dominant social network absorbs the bulk of the spend due to its unmatched machine learning capabilities and massive audience depth.

• 20% to the Major Search/Video Ecosystem: This allocation heavily favors long and short-form video placements. Branded search receives severe cuts; it must account for less than 1% of the total marketing spend to avoid cannibalizing organic traffic.

• 20% to Tertiary Channels: We fund alternative social networks, forum-based platforms, and linear TV. We spend between $1,000 and $10,000 a day across five to seven of these smaller channels to continuously test for underpriced attention.

• 10% to Creator Sponsorships: This portion goes directly to integrated ad reads and creator-led content, prioritizing evergreen video placements that drive sales years after the initial post.

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Phase 2: The Creative Volume Mandate

A $100k/day budget will immediately stall without constant creative fuel. The absolute best-performing ad in an account will typically tap out at $100,000 in profitable spend. Maintaining velocity requires a system that launches 50 new ads every single day.

To achieve this, I build a multi-layered content sourcing team:

• An in-house studio handles high-end production.

• Four to six external agency partners remain on retainer simultaneously.

• A dedicated roster of 30 to 50 user-generated content (UGC) creators supplies a steady stream of raw assets.

Crucially, all video editing moves in-house.

You can source raw footage globally, but an internal editing team of at least six people remains the most critical operational asset. They take thousands of hours of raw, varied footage and rapidly cut it down into specific testable units.

Phase 3: Forcing Algorithmic Contrast

Modern ad platform algorithms are highly sophisticated.

Changing the background color of an image from blue to pink registers as the exact same core image to the AI.

We force algorithmic contrast by launching radically different concepts:

• We test aggressive visual differences by switching between male and female actors, changing the core pain points, and altering the camera angles entirely.

• We prioritize the "thumb stop" (the first visual) and the hook (the first three seconds) to capture net-new audiences.

• We implement strict naming conventions in our Multi-Touch Attribution tools to track every single variable. This granular tracking reveals exactly which hook or mid-video call-to-action drives the highest completion and conversion rates.

Phase 4: Partner Ads and Organic Proving Grounds

Organic content serves as the ultimate proving ground before paid media acts as a financial accelerator.

• The Organic Gauntlet: Before a video receives significant ad spend, it must prove itself organically. Top-performing organic social media posts consistently make up the majority of winning paid ads.

• Partner Ads (Whitelisting): We push up to 50% of our social budget through "Partner Ads." This involves running our creatives directly through the social media handles of the creators we sponsor.

• The Deal Structure: We avoid revenue-share deals for these partner ads. We pay creators a flat fee for the raw content and the rights to run ads through their profiles. The dual-handle setup provides superior audience signals to the ad platform algorithms and effectively lowers customer acquisition costs.

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Phase 5: Advanced Measurement (Protecting the Spend)

When revenue crosses $15 million and campaigns span multiple channels, relying on basic platform reporting becomes a massive financial risk.

I mandate that exactly 1% of the total marketing budget goes toward advanced measurement and attribution tools. If these tools make the marketing 5% more efficient, they immediately pay for themselves.

We rely heavily on strict geographic holdout tests (Incrementality testing). By purposefully withholding ad spend in a specific state or region, we can scientifically prove the exact volume of net-new revenue our ads generate.

Marketing at this level demands an infrastructure that turns creative testing into predictable math.

Yes or No: Are your current campaigns driven by strict geographic incrementality testing? 

Would you like me to outline the specific SOPs for managing an in-house editing team of this size?

Fractional CMO

Karina Gerszberg