The man managing $600,000,000 in paid ads
About this episode
Chase Chappell has been running ads for 10 years. He has managed $600M in ad spend, advised on $200M more, and founded Sirge and Chappell Training. His agency has worked with brands including AliExpress and Power Crunch.
He explains how his team reads a new client's ad accounts and Shopify data to find the bottleneck, whether that is AOV, conversion rate or messaging, and when to add Google Shopping and TikTok Shop as new channels. He also shares the math his team uses to vet TikTok Shop affiliates, why only about 10 of 2,000 invites get approved, and how to keep top creators posting.
Key takeaways
- Plateaus are usually messaging. If AOV and conversion rate are healthy but spend stalls, change the positioning, for example "stop bloating" instead of a list of ingredients.
- Mine reviews for angles. Read the most common phrases in your Amazon, TikTok Shop and Shopify reviews, then look for the problems you are not talking about yet.
- Fix thin AOV before scaling. A $20 AOV with $5 profit breaks even if ad costs rise $5, so bundles, drawer cart upsells and post-purchase flows come first.
- Add channels in order. Around 80K a month on Meta, add Google Shopping; once Meta is maxed out, check if your margins can carry a 25 to 30% TikTok Shop commission.
- Vet affiliates on sales per view. Skip creators doing hundreds of brand collabs a year and check GMV per thousand views against their average views before shipping product.
Chapters
- 0:00 Intro & guest background
- 2:30 Early days in e-commerce
- 5:15 Learning ads & scaling stores
- 8:45 Mistakes beginners make
- 11:20 Winning products & testing
- 14:00 Creatives that drive sales
- 17:05 Scaling strategies on Meta
- 20:10 Importance of data & metrics
- 23:30 Customer understanding & focus
- 26:31 Key metrics for scaling
- 27:09 Expanding to new ad platforms
- 28:05 TikTok Shop growth potential
- 29:00 Inventory and logistics challenges
- 30:12 Power of affiliate creators
- 31:50 Picking the right TikTok partners
- 34:25 Scaling through top creators
- 35:01 Building UGC and creative systems
- 36:00 Incentivizing creators long term
- 37:09 Quality vs. volume in influencers
- 38:00 Gymshark's influencer model
- 39:10 UGC vs. big creators
- 41:17 Margins, fulfillment & scaling
Recorded in person in New York. Every guest runs a 7 or 8 figure brand, across every category. Hosted by Sam Jacobs, co-founder of Commercive.
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