More with less. The challenger media playbook.
Media buying that delivers outsized impact at scale.
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— Paid Media & Analytics
Incumbent best practices deliver average results.
Most media is bought the same way, following “best practices” set by the incumbents and the platforms. Unless you plan to spend your way to the top, you can't do what everyone else does.
Challenger brands don't win on budget. They win on how they spend it. Our media practice runs cross-channel planning, biddable and programmatic buying, and measurement that feeds the next decision rather than confirming the last one, powered by Rival Intelligence and our own audit, planning and pacing tools.
Capabilities
What we do.
- Media & analytics audit On read-only access, our human-led, AI-orchestrated audit checks every account across tracking, structure, bidding, audiences, search intent and creative, and returns a 0 to 100 Rival Score with a ranked action plan.
- Data & analytics strategy Strategy, roadmapping and implementation for first-party data, designed around how challenger brands are structured and where they can run more efficiently.
- Buying and optimization Full-funnel buying and daily optimization across Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Amazon, retail media, programmatic, CTV and DOOH.
- Synthetic and in-market testing Every message is a hypothesis until it is tested and analyzed. We run live and synthetic tests. One variable per test, a test budget in every plan, and no winner called below 95% confidence.
How we buy
Three things set our media apart.
- Planned from the brand. Every plan starts from the brand position and breaks into line items by funnel stage and geography, down to ZIP code where a market needs it, so a priority market can never slip back into a national buy.
- More of the budget reaches people. We audit the media and the tracking before we optimize, buy as the client’s agent on a flat fee, and put what we recover back into working media.
- Proof in plain language. Messages are tested in market and every ad is read against results, so marketers see what drives performance and what does not.
Case studies
Recent paid media & analytics work
- Upway Brand media grew share of search 87%, the highest growth in its category, then state-level holdout tests found where paid media drove incremental revenue.
- Webflow Media for a brand relaunch across LinkedIn, CTV, out-of-home in 11 cities, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok and programmatic, with CPMs under plan on Reddit, CTV and display.
- Premier America Early adoption of Google’s AI ad placements lifted performance beyond traditional search levels.
Learn more
From the Lab.
One integrated team
The other solutions.
All solutions
- Research & Strategy Challenger brand and go-to-market strategies that differentiate and drive relevance in crowded categories.
- Creative, Production & Design Creativity that breaks through the noise to drive talkability.
- Martech & AI Transformation Engineering and products that transform marketing operations into AI-native systems.