Free Resources
Knowledge we usually only use internally
Current performance marketing trends, hands-on guides to paid social ads and the data fundamentals you need to scale profitably – free, no email form, straight to the point.
Unfamiliar terms? Take a look at the performance marketing glossary.
Performance marketing trends
What's changing right now
Well-founded, timeless articles on the shifts affecting your account today – from AI-driven targeting to measurement beyond ROAS.
Meta Ads
Understanding Meta Andromeda: Why Your Creative Is Now Your Targeting
Meta's AI Andromeda decides based on creative signals which ads enter the auction. What changes for your setup and how you adapt.
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Creative Testing for Meta Ads: The Framework for Scalable Ads
How to build a system of exploration and iteration for Meta Ads creatives – with the right cadence, real volume and clear briefs instead of gut feeling.
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What Do Meta Ads Cost? What Your Shop Should Really Budget For
What really drives Meta Ads costs: auction logic, CPM drivers, deriving budget from contribution margin and target CAC – and the levers that cut costs.
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Meta Ads In-House or Outsourced? The Honest Comparison
Your own team or external support for your Meta Ads? A fair decision aid with clear criteria, hybrid models and 5 questions for any setup.
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Setting Up Advantage+ Shopping Properly: The Practical Guide
Meta's AI shopping campaign Advantage+ Shopping: when it pays off, which five foundations decide its success and which mistakes you should avoid.
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Setting Up Meta Pixel & Conversions API Properly: The Tracking Base
Set up Meta Pixel and Conversions API cleanly: dual events, deduplication via event_id, improving Event Match Quality – the base of every campaign.
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Facebook vs. Instagram Ads: When Each Channel Is the Better Choice
Advertise on Facebook or Instagram? Where the platforms really differ, when to let Meta distribute delivery – and when to split deliberately.
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Instagram Reels Ads: The Format Guide for Ads That Don't Disrupt
Reels ads that perform: using 9:16 properly, respecting safe zones, building hooks, nailing UGC craft – and avoiding the mistakes that cost reach.
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Dynamic Product Ads: The Catalogue Setup That Makes Retargeting Profitable
Setting up dynamic product ads properly: catalogue quality, content IDs, product sets and typical feed mistakes – profitable retargeting mechanics.
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Meta Ads Audit: How Our Free Account Check Works
What really happens in the free account check: five audit dimensions from tracking to budget – and three concrete quick wins in around 30 minutes.
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TikTok & Snapchat Ads
Snapchat Ads for E-Commerce: Placing the Underrated Channel Correctly
Snapchat is often overlooked in media plans – sometimes rightly, often wrongly. How the channel works, which brands it pays off for and how to weigh it up.
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TikTok Ads Costs & CPMs: What You Should Really Expect
What drives TikTok Ads costs: auction logic, why CPMs tend to be cheaper than on Meta – and why that does not automatically mean cheap customers.
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Spark Ads: Whitelisting Step by Step
Spark Ads turn real creator posts into ads. How the authorisation process works, what belongs in the creator contract and which pitfalls to avoid.
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UGC Briefings: How to Brief Creators for Performance
Good UGC briefings set a frame for performance and leave room for authenticity. The building blocks, the hook rule and what to feed back to creators.
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TikTok Shop & TikTok Ads: Why Your Shop Won't Scale Without Paid
Why organic reach alone won't scale a TikTok Shop: how Shop Ads, GMV Max and creator affiliates work together – and how to steer the channel profitably.
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Branding & community
Brand Beats Auction: Why Branding Lowers Your Performance Costs
Known brands collect better signals – and Meta's auction rewards exactly that. How branding lifts CTR, conversion rate and CLV and lowers your CAC.
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A Community That Buys: From Follower to Repeat Customer
Followers are vanity, community is business value: how dialogue becomes revenue – with a UGC loop, DM funnels, email and a fixed ambassador network.
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Influencer Marketing in E-Commerce: Reach That Pays Off
One-off posts fizzle out, systems pay off: creator selection by fit, clear rights, ambassador programmes and creator content as ad creative.
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Performance marketing for e-commerce
MER Instead of ROAS: How to Measure Paid Social When Attribution Crumbles
The more automated campaigns become, the more unreliable platform ROAS gets. Modern measurement combines MER, a profit view and simple incrementality tests.
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Incrementality Testing: Even Without a Data Science Team
How much revenue would have come without the ads? Holdout tests, geo splits and clean test designs – measure incrementality without a data science team.
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Building an MER Dashboard: The One Number That Steers Your Growth
MER = total revenue divided by total ad spend. How to build a lean MER dashboard, derive your target MER from margin and avoid interpretation traps.
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Attribution Today: What Still Works – and What You Need to Replace
Consent gaps and browser protection are eroding classic attribution. What platform attribution still does well, what it cannot – and what replaces it.
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What Is ROAS? Calculation, Limits and How to Use It Properly
ROAS explained simply: formula, worked example, break-even ROAS from your margin – and the metric's limits, so you use it instead of being fooled by it.
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What Is MER? The Big-Picture Metric That Keeps Your Marketing Honest
Marketing Efficiency Ratio explained: formula, example, aMER and deriving your target MER from margin – plus strengths, limits and a 3-step start.
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What Is CAC? How to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost Properly
Customer acquisition cost explained: formula, fully-loaded CAC, the comparison with contribution margin and CLV – and when a rising CAC is fine.
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Recovering Cart Abandoners: Ads, DM Funnels and Email Working Together
Full carts, no orders? How to combine retargeting, email flows and Instagram DMs into one recovery system – without the costly discount reflex.
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What Is CLV (Customer Lifetime Value)? And How Much Customer You Can Afford
Customer lifetime value explained: formula on contribution-margin basis, CLV:CAC ratio, the payback trap – and the levers that raise customer value.
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Landing Page CRO for Paid Traffic: The Click Is Only Half the Battle
Rising click prices? The biggest lever sits after the click: message match, mobile-first and clean testing lower your CAC – here is how to proceed.
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First-Party Data: The Data Strategy Nobody Can Take Away From You
Third-party signals are crumbling, first-party data remains: better signals, sharper audiences, smart exclusions – how to build your data foundation.
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AI
ChatGPT Instead of Google? How Your Shop Gets Recommended in AI Answers
How AI systems select and recommend shops: the honest data on AI search in e-commerce and a practical GEO checklist for more visibility.
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AI Creatives for Meta & TikTok Ads: How Much the Machine Really Takes Over
How AI is changing creative production for paid social – what it can do today, where human judgement counts and how a workflow connects volume and quality.
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AI in the Product Data Feed: Enriching Attributes, Optimising Titles, at Scale
How AI improves your product data feed at scale: titles built on search logic, missing attributes, clean categories – and guardrails against errors.
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Agent-Ready: When AI Assistants Don't Just Read Your Website, but Use It
After AI search comes the agentic web: what agent-ready means in practice, what we implemented at Social Cooks – with real measurements – and how your shop gets started.
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Guides to paid social ads
Hands-on guides you can copy
From a clean setup and the right optimisation goals to creative formats and systematic testing – step by step, without the buzzword fog.
SetupSetting Up Meta Ads Correctly: Pixel, Conversions API & Catalogue for Shopify and Shopware
Clean tracking and a well-maintained catalogue are the foundation of every profitable campaign – here, step by step, for Shopify and Shopware.
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FundamentalsChoosing the Right Optimisation Objectives for Meta Ads
Campaign objective, optimisation event, bid strategy – small levers with a big impact. How to optimise for revenue instead of cheap clicks.
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StrategyWhich Meta Ads Strategy Fits Your Situation
Starting fresh, breaking out of a plateau or scaling – every situation needs a different structure. An overview of the most important strategies.
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CreativeThe Most Successful Creative Formats for Performance Ads
Your creative is your targeting today. These formats currently perform most reliably – and the principles behind them.
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TestingWhy Systematic Testing Decides Your Success
Without structure, testing is burning money. How to build an agenda that reliably finds winners – our proven framework.
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Tools & calculators
Do the math: ROAS, MER, CAC & budget
Five free calculators that build on each other – from campaign ROAS to the ad budget for your revenue goal. No sign-up, everything runs locally in your browser.
Step 01
ROAS calculator
How much revenue does every ad euro return? Revenue + spend in, ROAS out.
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Step 02
Break-even ROAS calculator
At which ROAS do your ads actually make money? Your margin knows.
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Step 03
MER calculator
The most honest number in marketing: total revenue divided by total spend.
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Step 04
CAC calculator
What does a new customer cost you – and does their lifetime value justify it?
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Step 05
Ad budget planner
From revenue goal backwards to the required monthly budget – your scaling basis.
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All tools at a glance
The complete funnel chain – ending with the free account check.
Open the tools overview
Data & scaling
Without clean data you're scaling blind
Growth isn't decided in the ads manager, but in your numbers. The more budget you move, the more expensive every wrong decision becomes – and the more important a KPI set that tells you the truth. The most important north star is MER, because it stays robust when platform attribution crumbles. These are the metrics to keep an eye on as you scale:
Total revenue ÷ total ad spend across all channels. The most robust north star when the attribution of individual platforms becomes unreliable.
In the glossaryRevenue per advertising euro – important, but deceptive on its own. Always combine it with the profit and MER view.
In the glossaryWhat it costs to acquire a new customer. It has to match your contribution margin – otherwise you're scaling losses.
In the glossaryWhat a customer is worth over the entire relationship. A higher LTV justifies higher acquisition costs.
In the glossaryHow clean your conversion signals are. Poor data quality makes every KPI lie – the foundation before anything else.
In the glossaryPrefer to have us look at your account directly?
In the free account check we apply exactly this knowledge to your setup – and show you three concrete quick wins, no strings attached.