The platforms' AI took over targeting. Feed it well, or pay for feeding it badly.

Enough for the platform's AI to learn from: the systems need a steady flow of conversions to optimise against, and a budget too thin to produce them just buys expensive silence. The honest floor differs by industry and by what a customer is worth to you, so we work it out from your numbers in the pre-spend audit rather than quoting a universal figure that would be fiction for half the readers of this page. Sometimes our advice is to start smaller on one platform and prove the loop before scaling; occasionally it is to wait entirely.

Expect a learning period measured in weeks, not days: the platforms explicitly run new campaigns through a learning phase while their systems work out who responds. Judging a campaign in its first week is like judging a hire on their first morning. What you should see immediately is process: the weekly report from week one, showing what ran, what it cost and what it returned, so the learning period is documented rather than hidden behind "trust us, it's warming up".

No, and we would ask you to be suspicious of anyone who does, because they control neither the auction, the algorithm, nor your competitors. What we guarantee is conduct: honest setup in accounts you own, weekly reporting you can verify in your own CRM, a monthly analysis with named changes, and a plain recommendation to stop or redirect spend if the numbers say so, even though our fee shrinks when your spend does.

Yours. Google and Meta accounts are created under your business's ownership with billing in your name; we operate through manager access you grant and can revoke. If we part ways, your account history, your pixel data and your audiences stay exactly where they always were: with you. The digital assets page makes this a written standard, not a courtesy.

Because a flat fee pays the same for neglect as for excellence, and a pure percentage with hidden reporting rewards reckless spending. The combination we run, a percentage plus weekly reporting you can audit, keeps the incentive honest from both directions: we grow only by finding spend that demonstrably works, and you can check the demonstration yourself. It also scales sanely: small budgets are not crushed by a big flat retainer.

If the site passes the speed gate, gladly: the gate is a test, not a sales funnel, and plenty of sites pass. If it fails, we decline the spend until it is fixed, by our web division or anyone competent you prefer. Taking management fees to pour traffic into a page that leaks it would be profitable for us and poor stewardship of you, and stewardship is the product.

Yes, and we will be fair about it: the pre-spend audit reads the account structure, the tracking honesty and the landing-page experience, and reports what it finds whether that flatters us or them. Good agencies exist, and if yours is one we will say so; an audit that always concludes "hire us" is not an audit, it is an advert wearing a lab coat.

We do the shaping, which means copy, editing, formats and variants at the volume the algorithms reward, from raw truth you help supply: real photographs, the owner on camera, the words actual customers use. Polished stock imagery is the camouflage pattern of forgettable advertising; audiences scroll past it on reflex, and the youngest audiences distrust it on sight. The production cadence, and which formats earn video budget versus a strong static, is covered on the social and video page.

When the numbers say so: conversion costs rising past what your margins support, a seasonal trough where spend buys attention nobody acts on, a website change that breaks the conversion path, or an offer the market has plainly declined. The monthly analysis names it, the recommendation goes in writing, and our fee shrinks with the spend, which is exactly why the recommendation is believable. An agency that can never say "stop" is a vending machine, not an advisor.

The fee covers the work, not the ceremony: existing accounts still get the full audit, conversion rebuild, tracking verification and architecture correction, and in our experience inherited accounts often need more repair than fresh ones. Where genuinely little work is needed, the audit will say so, and the audit happens before you commit. What we do not do is discount the foundation to win the retainer; that trade is how badly-tracked accounts are born.

The one where your customers already look for what you sell, which is a research question, not a preference. Search-driven businesses usually start with Google; visually-driven and impulse categories often start with Meta; B2B with a defined professional buyer should at least test Microsoft's LinkedIn-profile targeting. The social and video page maps who is actually on each platform in South Africa, including the platforms we will tell you to ignore.