Akvile DeFazio shares her unconventional journey from physical therapy to founding a boutique social advertising agency. She dives into scaling with AI tools, staying hands-on with clients, and mastering creative strategy across platforms like Meta, Reddit, and TikTok.
https://page2pod.com - In this episode of the Page 2 Podcast, Akvile DeFazio of AKvertise shares her incredible journey from working in physical therapy clinics to becoming a powerhouse in social media advertising — including the wild story of how saying “no” got her dinner with Richard Branson.
Akvile breaks down her tactical playbook for scaling social ad campaigns, leveraging AI tools for efficiency, building a boutique agency without sacrificing personal client touch, and choosing platforms like Reddit, TikTok, and Meta for different business goals. You’ll also learn how she rotates creatives, optimizes video content for attention, and when it’s time to say no to a client.
Whether you're a small business owner or running campaigns for global brands, this conversation is packed with actionable insights.
📌 In This Episode (📱)
Discover how a creative and scientific mind finds balance in paid social — and why personalization and gut instinct still win the day.
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💬 Comment below: Have you ever said no to a client — and it worked in your favor? We’d love to hear your story!
📎 Mentioned Links & Resources:
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Akvile's Journey
03:09 The Bucket List Experience with Richard Branson
06:06 Transitioning from Physical Therapy to Digital Marketing
09:01 Building a Lifestyle Business in Digital Marketing
11:58 Leveraging AI Tools for Efficiency
15:05 Consulting as a Business Model
17:58 Launching Digital Products for Small Businesses
20:55 Best Practices for Video Marketing
23:56 Creating Effective Video Content
27:02 Testing AI Tools in Advertising
28:48 Exploring Ad Features and Options
31:01 Testing Strategies for Effective Advertising
34:51 Understanding Ad Fatigue and Creative Cycling
39:26 Advertising on Reddit: Strategies and Insights
41:25 Navigating TikTok Advertising Challenges
43:13 B2B Advertising Trends and Insights
45:19 Key Metrics for Evaluating Ad Performance
46:58 The Future of Advertising: Automation and AI
52:51 Predictions for Successful Ads in the Future
[00:00:00] Jon: What happens when the best decision you ever make is a firm polite no. And it lands you at dinner with Richard Branson. A month later, today's guest, Vela, the FIO founder of the page social boutique advertised, has built her business on gutsy decisions just like that. She went from physical therapy clinics to running campaign for global brands while insisting every client still gets her personal touch.
This conversation digs into the practical playbook of modern social advertising. Crafting video hooks that earn attention in under three seconds. Rotating creative before fatigue sets in, and deciding when a Reddit or TikTok test is really worth the budget. We'll break down why B2B leads are suddenly cheaper on Facebook.
How consulting packages can out earn percentage of spend fees and where small teams find leverage without losing their identity. If you appreciate conversations that get into the weeds. Then you'll certainly enjoy this one. Here's Vela DeFazio[00:01:00]
Vela. Welcome to the show. As always, I'm joined by Joe DaVita, my partner in crime at Moving Traffic Media. We're excited for this one. It is our first official conversation that's not. Only SEO focused. So we're really excited to dig into social and media in general. So thank you for joining the show.
[00:01:21] Akvile: Thank you for inviting me,
[00:01:22] Jon: doing some research. In prep for the, for the conversation, I came across something around Richard Branson, Yuan, some sort of trip to Richard Branson's Island, which for me is, that's incredible. Can you tell us anything about that? Like where along in your journey was this? Pretty early.
[00:01:39] Akvile: Yeah, this was before I started my own company. This was when I was working in-house still and, or actually maybe it was right at the beginning actually. I have always had a bucket list since I was a kid. I came from very humble beginnings and I just had a life list of aspirations and things I wanted to experience, taste, travel to.
And there were two people, Richard Branson being one of them, and then Anthony [00:02:00] Bourdain, which unfortunately I'm not gonna have the opportunity to sit down, but I wanted to have lunch with them and. I saw there was this company that did the bucket list app, and I knew somebody that worked at it because you post on social.
So I started following it and they posted a contest saying, you can go to Richard Branson's Island for five days, full expenses paid, and you get to bring a plus one. And I applied and thinking nothing of it. I'm like, this is never gonna happen. And moved on with my life. And then about seven or eight months later, this person reached out to me and said, Hey, we're really struggling to get leads from this contest.
Can we hire you to. For us for the next week. And they had a massive budget. And this was when I just got started on my own at this point. And I significantly under quoted it because I really wanted the client, it was completely in my area of interest and expertise. And I said, yeah. And then I quoted him so low that his CEO came back to me and I was basically doing it for free.
And he said, oh yeah, but can we pay you less? And basically [00:03:00] reduce it even further. I have always been more of a yes person in my life, and this was the first time I really said no to something that I wanted because I said, you clearly don't understand the value of my work, and respectfully, I'm gonna pass.
And I've never mustered those words up in my life to somebody. Especially in the professional setting, and it turned out to be the best no that I've ever said. Because he came back, he was like, I'm so sorry. We'll pay you your rate. I was like, I actually gave you a friend discount because we're like industry acquaintances and I really wanted this, but I just don't feel good about it and I'm just gonna still pass.
And then all of a sudden, two weeks later, I started getting the company following me everywhere and saying, Hey, you never gave us your phone number. When you filled out the formal, there wasn't a phone number field, it was just name and num or email. The long story long, they're like, you win. You get to go and I brought my now husband with me and they paid for everything and it was unreal.
It was during his annual tennis match that he does for nonprofits, for primarily for children's ones and that I do tennis. There was a lot of tennis stars that come there and we hung out with [00:04:00] Mike Tyson, jewel, other people like Robin Thick, and it was so surreal because we're not. Like those people and everyone's, you're so fascinating.
I was like, yeah, because we're just commoners. So we learned a lot, but long story, long, it was just surreal and got, Richard invited us to sit next to him and his wife at dinner, and they had a little long table the first night and there was about 50 people there. And. He just said, why don't you come sit with me and my wife?
And we just got to have dinner together, which was like exceeding my bucket list little thing that I had written down. So we, we hung out throughout the week and it was really interesting to see the least.
[00:04:35] Jon: I was gonna ask you how much you often auctioned off your plus one ticket, but it sounds like your now husband won out pretty easily on that.
Yeah.
[00:04:42] Joe: Yeah.
[00:04:43] Jon: Given that it was on your bucket list, did you have any, like, if I ever get to meet this person, like here's the one question I have to ask. Was there anything like that?
[00:04:52] Akvile: Yeah, and I prepped for months and then I just spaced as soon as I got there, I was just like, like just blown away by just being there.
I'd. I never [00:05:00] thought something like that would happen and then I just, I felt like everything I had prepared to ask was really cheesy, but I was like, at bare minimum I'm gonna say, hi, Richard, nice to meet you. I'm at Eila and I, this is my company. And that was bare minimum. But then having dinner and just going from business to just life and bucket list, because he's a very adventurous person.
He didn't give me a lot of business advice just because we're so different. And I feel I was at a loss of what to say to somebody of that caliber with that much experience, and, but he did just. Really encouraged me to keep moving forward. And if I feel something in my gut, just see it through. And it doesn't have to be perfect.
Just ship it and have a team with you to rally you through life. And I know it sounds generic, but in that moment, the way he said it, it just really hit a certain part where I'm like, I'm doing this and navigating my own life in a certain way and I'm not gonna settle for something that someone else maybe might want me to do.
[00:05:50] Jon: Yeah. Being an entrepreneur is. Incredibly rewarding. But also there, there is some of that self-doubt that creeps in and just having someone [00:06:00] say something that sort of keeps moving you along. I think Joe and I have experienced a couple of those scenarios along the way. Yeah. So let's talk maybe a little bit about, maybe before that.
So you also made a pretty big transition. You were in physical therapy, if I remember correctly, before you got into digital.
[00:06:17] Akvile: Yes. I've had the most non-linear path for my career, but I've always wanted to do something creative. I was great at science, but I immigrated during the Cold War from Lithuania to North America, and my stepdad who worked in medicine said that the only secure field is medicine, and hopefully I can have a respected job and good pay because we had nothing at that time.
So I was. Pushed into medicine in a way, and I realized that I'm the one paying all my student loans. And then I got into PT and anytime there was a marketing task at the clinics, I would jump all over it. So I don't know how to do this, but I wanna figure it out. And then I didn't get into grad school after working as an age for two years in PT clinics.
And even I had straight A's. It's a very competitive. And the counselor was like, you may wanna look at other career [00:07:00] options. And I was devastated when she said that, but then I realized she just gave me permission to tell my parents that like, I need to do something else. So I fought to get an internship.
I was living in Seattle at the time at a company called Evo. They are an outdoor ski snowboard, ski wakeboard. Outdoor sports apparel and apparel company. And I was the only person with a business marketing or communications degree, and I had a bachelor of science. And they're like, you're such like an outlier.
And I fought for this internship. I wanted it so badly. And they said, you know what? We're gonna give it to you. You're the wild card. And I got to work there for three years. And then 2008 happened and the, and then, yeah, school loans kicked in and they had to find a more full-time, better paying position.
[00:07:38] Joe: The science background lets you bring the scientific method to your testing approach, right? That's a little bit, yeah.
[00:07:44] Akvile: Yeah. Definitely get to use both sides of my brain, which is I think I found where I'm supposed to be.
[00:07:49] Jon: Very nice. I think when Joe and I started, a lot of our initial leads came off of just our network and the people that we had worked with, and so the big draw was to work directly with [00:08:00] us as.
Both founders, but also people were comfortable with working with us in the past. And I know you're big on in the sales process, promoting like you're gonna work directly with me. I'm not just gonna hand you off to account people. I think for. Again, Joe and I, that is still core to what we do, but becoming harder and harder as we scale.
So I'm curious how maybe you have battled with that maybe, or figured out a way to streamline what you're doing to give you back more time, maybe to allow you to still be the sort of primary person.
[00:08:36] Akvile: Great question, and I think you used the appropriate word of battling with it. I feel like I didn't come from an agency background.
I worked in-house in a number of brands before starting my own agency and it was a huge learning curve, but I really like being a part of the process and my company is part of my name, and I had struggled with going the traditional route of scaling agency with team members and then losing what I love most about my job is [00:09:00] managing accounts, and people have told me I'm a great.
Leader and manager. But I, a couple years back, I read some books that also gave me permission to just build it my own way and not take the traditional route. So instead of, I had people working with me and for me and I decided I'm going to, I guess you could call this more of a lifestyle business.
Honestly, the very intentionally small team, it just me and a couple of contractors and I put together a collective, other specialists that I trust to fill different areas of the work that we need done. It's been hard, but I really, I think it's a good selling point. So in the last 10 years of running my agency, I'm very hands-on to where.
I'm proud to say I've never been fired in 10 years and I speak, I think, I hope that speaks to the caliber of work that I do and the relationships that I hold, but I'm really part of that process and most clients are hands off because they trust me. And while the, I feel like in the last two years I've really dove deeper into using AI tools.
I was like, how do I still. The platforms are [00:10:00] changing. There's more automation, there's more ai, but how do I leverage those tools to give me more of my time back so I could take more clients? I can still charge the same or more, but my job is just shifting. So how do I become more efficient without sacrificing client results and then take on more clients focused on strategy and creative strategy in particular with paid social.
So I did a study, I spoke at Hero Comp slash partner SEO the last two years in San Diego, and last year, and then the year prior I did a case study towards the end of, here's the tools I use for my job, but here's the results that you get from implementing X, Y, and Z the way that I do it. But also I was like, if you're also an agency owner.
Here's how it also helped my business. So I showed a few, two different scenarios for two different client types and like what tools I use, whether it's in platform or external software that I'm using to show how much my time was reduced as soon as I started implementing ai, but watching the results still, I.
Stay consistent or increase, and how much time I got back, meaning that I had more [00:11:00] time to breathe. I had more time to get more consulting clients or account management depending on the openings that I had for that. So while I'm not scaling in traditional ways, I found ways to scale with efficiency and just meet my my revenue goals and profitability goals in the last couple of years since doing that.
[00:11:17] Jon: Let's dig into that a little bit. As a small business. We encounter this all the time. There's so many shiny tools out there, especially on the media side where there's management tools, created tools, analytics tools. How did you land on the tools that you wanted to test? Were they referrals from other folks in your network?
Did you sign up for free trials and just work your way through them? Like how do you weed through all that and decide to actually make the investment before you actually see the ROI?
[00:11:45] Akvile: All of the above. So people in my network just seeing new launches in the news. I'm in a private advertising membership group called Founders.
I've been in it for three years and I'm always seeing what people are talking about. I'll ask questions too. Hey, has anyone used this? What do you think? I did the [00:12:00] trials. So does this really work with my workflow? Does, is there actually a benefit? Do I wanna pay for it? If there's a free version, to a certain point I used it, but I narrowed it down to what works best with my workflow and what the needs are.
Jasper was a huge one, but I feel like a lot of it I can do through chat GPT now. So I've actually, in the last six months, I've reduced a lot of, I. Jasper used, so I'm sorry. It's a great tool, but if anyone's listening from that team. But yeah, there's a lot of things that were for making content, like I remember rose.io, they had some AI tools built into it where it's like Excel on steroids.
But now I can do a lot of that stuff through other AI tools. And then oh one, I really is Julius ai. I don't know if you've heard of that one. Really great for data analysis, not a data analyst by trade, but it's a big part of my job and I'm not the quickest at seeing certain things. So I like that it tells me fun facts about certain pieces of data that I put in there.
'cause I'm working a lot of spreadsheets and just trying to understand which ads work best and which platforms and where to adjust from that. So there's [00:13:00] a lot of tools that aren't specifically a AI tools, but some that just have features that are really nice. But yeah, I'm always keeping an eye out for what's new and what can help me become more efficient and effective.
[00:13:09] Jon: Amazing. Yeah, I think the space is changing so fast, it's hard to keep on top of all of that, but being part of networks, I found like Slack groups incredibly helpful for that as well. Looking in back into your entrepreneurial lifecycle, I guess. Mm-hmm. Another pivot around COVID, where you went from. Being highly like account management focused to more consulting, which I imagine also gave you back some time and maybe not in the weeds as much.
Is that still how you're approaching the business and maybe now that we're a couple years away from that, how has that maybe changed or allowed you to expand? I
[00:13:44] Akvile: think you've mentioned all these pivots. I'm like, maybe I'm just a professional pivot. So with that, I didn't really do much consulting. It was just if clients needed to pull back and I was like, how would I just help you as a high level strategist?
Or you know, somebody with more experience and if your team's greener. So that's how it happened. But then I [00:14:00] noticed when COVID took place, a lot of clients were uncertain. They pulled back on spend and at that point I was still charging percentage of ad spent for my fees, which I no longer do just because something changes from a macro level or something that I have no control over, like that was impacting my bottom line.
There was just so much uncertainty then that clients, it made sense for them to. Still get services and be able to understand how to optimize their campaigns, but a lower cost to them. But for me, it was much less time. So I have three, five, and 10 hour packages over a month that they can choose from and they can bump up if they need more time.
But I realized I'm making a lot more money per hour and I don't have to do all that work. I just get to concisely. Brain dump and make it killer to their business and to their goals and their challenges. And I leaned into that. I realized that I actually enjoyed consulting, where before I didn't have a lot of opportunities to do that, so I didn't really know how I'd feel about it.
And I'm noticing the same thing, like there was consistency, like it decreased, and then account management picked up between like end of COVID to last year or so. But now [00:15:00] with the economic uncertainty and. There's just so much going on in the news and the world that I'm noticing an influx of consulting come back and I think that anytime brands are looking to save some money, but they still need the help, I really promote that service because it's a win-win for both parties.
[00:15:16] Jon: Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. People are trying to figure out like how to even get involved in. New channels, or in the case of COVID, a lot of people had never spent online or were trying to figure that out. So before they just jump in and make sense that there's a, a, a strategy layer. So I'm curious if that is, congratulations on launching the digital product shop.
I saw that. That, oh, thank, oh, thank you. Yesterday. Um, is that an extension of that? So you do the consulting, you set up maybe. Here's your go-to-market strategy. Oh, and by the way, here's a bunch of hooks you can use if you wanna run this yourself, for example. Is that sort of the evolution of that, or,
[00:15:52] Akvile: I really, I'm impressed with your research, everything, so it's not as a result of that, but over my career, I've [00:16:00] noticed there's a lot of small business owners that come to me and.
They want me to help and I really wanna help everybody, but I don't have the time and it doesn't meet my financial goals for the business and for myself. In the past 10 years ago, I wrote an ebook that I sold on Amazon for a few bucks of the Beginner's Guide to Facebook ads. And then things changed so quickly and I, that took me a long time to write 70 pages, but so I realized that there's a need for that.
I can give people that. But consulting segued into a lead generation. Opportunity because a lot of clients would better understand the job and they'd say, this is actually not that easy. Like it's not rocket science. But if you're not in a day-to-day, you don't really like read the algorithms and you notice little nuances as you're running things because a lot of times you look at the platform and something sounds like it would work well in theory, but it doesn't actually in execution.
So. A lot of them will take that and say like, how much to hire you to just do it. And sometimes they'll say yes or no. I'll refer it out. And I have a really strong referral group of people that are referred to for different marketing and [00:17:00] advertising services. So I feel like it just feeds other areas.
But the products were a thing of. I did the ebook 10 years ago and I'm like, I need to do something else. And everyone keeps telling me to do digital products, so I figured, why not? I'll try it out. We'll see how it goes. So yeah, I just launched it yesterday. It took service a lot of those people that might not be able to hire an agency or somebody more experienced to handle their accounts.
[00:17:21] Jon: I had no expectations, but I jumped into it and I was like, wow, there is a ton of stuff here. I was expecting, I don't know, maybe five or six things, but there's actually a lot in there. So congratulations on the launch.
[00:17:32] Akvile: Thank you.
[00:17:33] Jon: And I think saying no is hard. Right? You want to be able to service all those folks.
I think that was a really tough thing for Joe and I to do when we started as well. And eventually we just had to put our foot down and be like, if it's under X number of dollars or if it's, you know, not the right day-to-day contact, we just know not gonna work for us. Yeah. But yeah. So maybe that's a good segue into.
Tactics. So maybe to start, is there, if you look across the social ecosystem, do you [00:18:00] have a preferred ad type
[00:18:02] Akvile: video?
[00:18:03] Jon: I had a feeling you were gonna say that. Yeah. So let's dig into the video a little bit. I saw you mention somewhere, I can't remember where, I'll try to dig it up, but something to the effect of if you're running video.
Make sure you have some like your, basically your brand mention within the first 10 seconds because the drop off is significant after that. I don't know if that's still true. If I recall correctly, that article was a couple years ago, but is there anything about video that you can dig into as far as I.
Best practices, things that you should be aware of just based on all of your experience?
[00:18:34] Akvile: Yeah, so it's actually three seconds. So three seconds. Okay. You know, both platforms, you gotta hook somebody in really quickly, whether it's a bold statement, something really dramatic happening on camera, or a question in those first three seconds, and then that drop off stops happening.
And most platforms report on the hook rate. Sorry, out the hook, right? The three second views, which you can count as a thumb stop, so they're like, they're stopped your content. They looked at it, and that's important because we're like, okay, we caught [00:19:00] their attention, but did they complete the other actions that we needed them to?
So if it's lead gen or purchase, then we look at how many people are buying, what's the cost per that purchase? What's the revenue from it? So then you can tell like what you might wanna adjust, like you hooked them in, but you didn't close them. So then that's a good opportunity to look at those hook rates and closing rates to see.
Maybe we can change the ending of the video, maybe have a stronger call to action. And on the flip side, something might have a low hook rate. Doesn't mean that it's performing poorly. You might just wanna adjust the beginning because you're closing those few people at the end. So there's a few different ways to see what's working, but if you can do it in the first three seconds, put the meat of your content, show your product, because sometimes I've had co clients send really great videos.
You don't even know what you're advertising until five plus seconds in. If you're showing a shoe show that shoe show how you style it. Don't confuse it with, oh, are they selling the sweater or are they selling the shoe? Yeah, so that's what inspired a lot of the products to do. Hook different hooks for different types of brands, just because it's so hard to get attention, and we're all fighting for [00:20:00] attention as marketers and advertisers.
So with video, it's the most effective just because we visually process things. Better and expectations are managed better through video. Always use captions just because most people do watch video without sound, and you also don't wanna disregard anybody that might be hearing impaired. So make sure that your content's coming out visually, textually, acoustically, just to have all those bases covered and just use bold colors, like something that doesn't blend in too much.
So then that way it's quick to understand like what you're advertising and. You're trying to be efficient as possible in that 15 seconds or less, you can do longer form video, it's fine, but just know that most people will drop off because you can't entertain or interest or inform everybody for that long.
And I believe this was like years back when I first started speaking at conferences where there was a study by Canadian Research group where they were studying the. The memory or like the average attention span of people. And before two thousands when like the cell phone [00:21:00] revolution really be began, our attention span was like 12 to 13 seconds.
And then after we got cell phones, it's now like six. Seconds and goldfish actually have a longer tension span compared to us by nine seconds, which is wild.
[00:21:13] Jon: I believe it. Unfortunately, I'm quite easily distracted, unfortunately. So thinking a little bit more about video, I would imagine historically like images or that type of creative, which was much easier to both create, but also test against.
Do you have any tips on. Maybe getting the video. So if you need clients, right, what is, is there a tool that makes that process easy? Are you reliant on the brands creating their own sort of concepts in video and then you mash it up and push it out, or, I think that's always a challenge for brands is just, okay, we know we need video, but what do we do and how do we create it?
[00:21:52] Akvile: So there's a lot of tools created on your phone. That's all you really need. Things that are more polished, more highly produced aren't as effective these days unless of [00:22:00] course you're a major brand, I don't know, an airline or something like that. You don't really see a lot of phone content, so make sure you're on brand, but most natural content.
You could just shoot it with your phone. There's a few different apps, like there's cap cut, there's just so many. But most of the clients we work with, we're not, we don't have an in-house design shop, so like I have a few tools that are within like the platforms that I can adjust certain things like add music or captions, things like that.
But there's just so much behind that area where I provide creative direction. But I work really closely with design teams, photographers, videographers, and influencers that the clients hire. So. My, like bread and butter clients from medium-sized to larger just because they have those resources and I just work in collaboration with those teams.
But if they're smaller, then I do make a recommendations like, Hey, do you need a videographer? And I have a a, a design agency that I partner with for a lot of brands, and that's a lot of the way that I get my business too, that we just partner up, they do the design, videography, photography, and then I'll do everything else.
[00:22:58] Joe: One of the nice parts about [00:23:00] the video executions on social is. It's a very small screen. It's typically just a phone or a tablet, maybe a desktop, but it's mostly mobile. Yeah. So you don't need, you don't need the super polished video that may appear in a, like a connective TV ad. It's, it, it, it can be a little bit more granular.
User-generated content, like you said, is probably the best approach. Have you used any of the AI tools with Meta's Advantage Plus Suite? Are you testing any of that or any, I guess. Stuff to stay away from stuff you like. We'll love to hear some opinions on that. Yes,
[00:23:33] Akvile: always testing, but certain brands I can't unless Meta hard pushes it through and like it is what it is.
I think a lot of meta's. Creative Advantage plus options are great for small businesses if they don't have a lot of creative options. So you can add backgrounds, transitions for videos, things like that. But for established brands, they're, a lot of them are not comfortable. Well, hey, that doesn't look on brand, or Facebook will put [00:24:00] overlay texts.
They'll take your headline and just superpose it everywhere. And yeah, that catches attention and it's an ugly ad, but those actually convert really well. So I do have clients. Most of my clients are, have a solid appetite for testing that type of stuff. And I say, Hey, we'll keep an eye on it, but let's test it out.
The only thing is if you're using it and it's really off brand, so say you have a product catalog and they're testing AI backgrounds. Now that one I do not recommend enabling just because I've seen one of my clients in the wild have a really unusual background, and then a friend of mine and then a lot of other people have seen some where it was a winter two or.
A beanie and there was a beach view behind them, behind the products. That's not really accurate. And some of the clients have a really good design on their brand and they really don't want anything to mess with that. But I keep telling them like, things are getting more automated. Meta is really pushing this.
And I wouldn't be surprised in the future if we have less control over that. So I think, I know one of your questions was like the future of this, [00:25:00] test it out, see how it works. If you. Are still seeing things in the wild after enabling creative advantage plus options since it auto enables a lot of things.
You have to play whack-a-mole to turn them off. I would not recommend music just because I've seen some that don't pair very well. Like I had a children's toy brand where it was not like non copyrighted elevator music in a sense, but it was like rock music and it didn't quite go with the vibe of the brand, and I'd be cautious with that one.
I do support the catalog and site links one, just because it does add more options and it looks nice in case. You want to appeal to more people if they get captivated by your ad, but maybe they don't wanna purchase that thing. They can see other options at the bottom and just a tidbit. So if you, even if you disable all of those things, there is an area in your business settings or ad manager settings where it still can overwrite that.
And some brands it says, we will test like 3% of your impressions with these other AI things and it's hidden. But know that if you start seeing [00:26:00] things that you didn't enable. On the ad level, go in there and check if that's something that you want done. But if not, that's a backup that they overwrite so they can test on your dime.
[00:26:09] Joe: I think the auto ad copy creator tool has been interesting too. Oh yeah. You don't necessarily have to use it. You can turn it on just to see what the suggestions look like, and then you can edit from there. Maybe you just use it for brainstorming, but it gives you more variations too, right? When you, yeah, five verse 10 or something like you get Yeah.
Variation when you use that, that copy generator So worth, it feels like it's only getting better. They are. It launched a little bit clunky, but now I feel like it's Yes, raw.
[00:26:38] Akvile: You're right. Yeah. So there's just so many features. Like we could talk about this for an hour alone, I feel like. But yeah, with the copy you can get five primary texts and five headline variations.
Just make sure that you reviewed them before you publish, and it has gotten a lot better. Like last year it was just stuffing it with hashtags and emojis and I'm like. Hash, like it was using hashtags on meta's ecosystem. Emojis may not be on brand for what you're trying to advertise, but yeah, that's a [00:27:00] good way to do it if you have writer's block and maybe you're not using other tools, but that's a good way to see test it out.
But just know that, don't add too many variants because if your budget's on the lower end, it's going to take a very long test to test and optimize and see what's working and what's not. So try to find a good balance. EM two or three if you have a lower or one to three. Two to three. Yeah, two to three if you have a lower budget.
But feel free to test more dynamic variables if you have a larger budget.
[00:27:26] Joe: I know we're only about halfway through, so I'm gonna ask one more question then maybe we can move on to something else. But the Audi, the audience extension tool with Advantage Plus, it seems if you have a national audience, that's a really interesting way to test.
I know you can add some suggestions to it. It'll not be as strong as your first ARI data, but. Seems like a really logical step for prospecting, right?
[00:27:49] Akvile: Yes, I use it. Uh, top and bottom funnel. Hybrid. I did a lot of testing across all of our accounts when that first came out and I tested no suggestion. And then [00:28:00] different suggestions we can test about website visitors, leads, newsletter subscribers, those didn't perform as well as Facebook's first party data.
So engagers, so Facebook engagers, Instagram engagers, anybody that engaged with your page, your posts, your ads. That worked best because it feeds Facebook some data and here's who's interested in our stuff, and now go find more. So it does retarget some of those people, but it also feeds the beast and then gives you more results.
But for us, that's what I found to be most successful with using Advantage plus audiences.
[00:28:31] Jon: Going back to your comment around hashtags, I always thought using hashtags in ad copy was weird because it's a click out that doesn't go to you. It never made sense to me. Yeah. Creative. On social gets stale much faster just because of the number of times impressions are being shown.
Do you have like a, a framework or like a best practice of how you think about cycling that creative out? Is there a threshold that you look for? Certainly there's performance, but yeah, I don't know if you have any thoughts there. [00:29:00]
[00:29:00] Akvile: Yeah, nothing is set in stone just because. Sometimes like I just feel it's not going to do well.
Like I give it some runtime, it gets out the learning phase. I start seeing how people are engaging with that ad if it's not accomplishing the goals of that campaign. So say we're optimizing for purchases, or maybe we have it further down to a specific return on ad spend for that sales campaign. If it's close enough to that goal, then I'll keep it running.
Maybe duplicate and test a different variable, maybe. Changing something in the video itself, or maybe the headline or the primary text. But if it's a really far off goal, I just, I know Facebook's just gonna keep lowering its impressions and it's not going to catch up and be a top performer. So over time, I've just picked up, like I think it's time to go.
We'll pause it, test something else in its place, another. Variable or another metric is frequency. So I'm seeing that the frequency is really high on it. I do watch that, but some people will just turn it off. Oh, people are seeing it too much. But if it's driving sales or leads or whatever the goal is and the cost for that and what [00:30:00] other secondary goals like revenue, return on ad spend, things like that.
If that's still good and within goal and it's not increasing, I don't care if they see it a million times a day because if that's ad still converting well enough and the conversion rate's high. Then great until the data says otherwise, it starts to tank. Then I'll either launch more ads to lower the frequency.
Maybe I'll test a larger, broader audience. Maybe I'll adjust the spend depending on the performance. But there's a lot of levers we can pull and just piece together, how's this working? Can we keep it running? How long is the shelf life? And if things change in the adverse direction, then I know that maybe we need to.
Test something different or just disable it. Let's
[00:30:35] Joe: see. It seems too much art and science to uncover ad fatigue. I would suggest maybe you build an ad fatigue calculator for Common Star. Mm-hmm.
[00:30:44] Akvile: Okay. My first request, maybe I'll, awesome. Okay. Thanks for the idea.
[00:30:49] Jon: We focus a lot on testing as well. And I'm always curious about this topic because there's just so much that you could test.
So I'm cur like. When you think about setting up a test, there's two ways to [00:31:00] go, right? You could have two totally different ad concepts and you're just trying to understand like, which concept is resonating better? Or it could be something as simple as, I dunno, a button color, like a simple AB test. When you're thinking about, or maybe applying like your testing methodology, is there a direction you skew more than the other, or does it really just depend on the vertical or.
Maybe just what you're feeling.
[00:31:24] Akvile: We'll talk about it with the brand of, if it's a new product, then we will figure out how do we message it And we'll have several creative variations, but we'll figure out what is hooking people in to either the pro, the product itself, the cost of it, other benefits. Uh, really understand how do we message and educate people about this new product.
And then we will figure out the messaging and then we will. Keep just testing different video content that pairs well with it. Again, it's not set in stone. It's what, what do you wanna start? Where do you wanna start? So do you wanna start with more creatives and figure out visually what works best or with messaging?
Yeah, I don't really, I don't really have a, [00:32:00] I usually just talk to the client and feel it out and say, okay, this is where we're gonna start. And it also depends on their resources. So say that they only have a few creatives that they have, we'll say, great. We'll use these until you get more done. But we'll create a, a doc of saying, here's our creative requests.
Let's try this, let's try that. And while their team works on it, we'll start testing what we have currently. Even if it's just one thing. And then I guess it's a, it's an area of where we test messaging first, and then we get more creative and then we can go further into that.
[00:32:27] Jon: You mentioned something about like new products, which makes a ton of sense.
Do you, when you're thinking about establishing the messaging for a new product, do you go directly to video to do that, or is it easier to hash through that messaging in like a standard, I don't know, feed ad. Does that make sense? Like a like test versus video, I guess is the easier way to say it.
[00:32:49] Akvile: Yes. But then I still recommend going the video route.
So what, I actually just have been going this through this with another client that launched a new, a new product last week and there's a lot of education revolved around it, so I'm like, how do we [00:33:00] make it as concise as possible? They're still working on videos, but I said, let's take the static image.
That they have and then make some subtle motion on it, whether it's like a highlighting of a benefit or an underline or just something like just moving, just to get people to catch their attention and stop scrolling. That's been working out really well as we wait for the creative to come in for video where we have people on camera actually talking about the product.
[00:33:23] Joe: That's really smart. Have you played around with that 3D feature at all for imagery? It seems put, gives it a little bit of motion with not much investment. Uh,
[00:33:31] Akvile: every time I try to upload something, even like a plain product image with a plain background, I've only had it work once to where it actually generates.
It normally just says like it doesn't work. So if you've gotten one to work, kudos. I'd love to see it.
[00:33:46] Jon: We talked a lot about Facebook. I'd love to jump over to maybe Reddit. Are you running ads on Reddit? What's the experience been like? I know that they're trying to do more with their sort of ad ecosystem features, ad types, [00:34:00] things like that.
What sort of experience are you having there?
[00:34:02] Akvile: Yeah, so we have several clients that are running ads on Reddit. They're all lead generation, so they do in. Evolve a sales team to sell these custom products. It works well. The cost per lead is higher than most other platforms. We do have to be cautious of how we word things, just because it's Reddit and the, the community treats things promotionally a little different.
We disable comments on ads just in case we'd rather not know how the community shields on there, but it helps drive people to the site to fill out lead forms or to learn something, to watch videos. But we primarily use it as a, an. Another area to find the right audiences. So Target targeting the Subcommunities works really well for those particular clients 'cause they're for home-based products and custom products.
[00:34:45] Jon: Have you tested e-commerce there? I imagine that's probably a little bit of a harder, probably Margin are much smaller too.
[00:34:50] Akvile: I have not, my team at Reddit keeps pushing me to do it for some of my other clients, but it's hard to justify some of the costs. And while we're seeing really great returns [00:35:00] for our e-commerce brands across Meta and TikTok.
[00:35:03] Jon: I think the efficiencies on those platforms are tough to pull dollars away from. Yeah. How about TikTok? So they were gonna be banned. They're not banned. They may still be banned, but they're not yet. So when all that was happening, were you trying to scramble to figure out like where to maybe reposition that budget or were you just status quo?
We'll deal with it if they actually get shut down.
[00:35:24] Akvile: Status quo, keeping my finger on the pulse of it, keeping the clients updated as to what's going on. I said, let's keep running it. If it's profitable for us, as long as we can, and if things pivot elsewhere, like we can just reallocate those funds. But yeah, it's been pretty touch and go, but people are using it.
It's not banned. So until it is, I say, why not keep using it?
[00:35:44] Jon: Any tips there that are such a unique platform compared to the others? Is there anything that you would call out there that is, I don't know, been a game changer for you as compared to Facebook?
[00:35:55] Akvile: Um, anytime that we have, I. We work with a lot of brands that skew a little bit older, like [00:36:00] age 30 plus, some of them like 40, 50 plus.
And it's one way that a lot of the brands we're working with, they're trying to extend their generational interest. So we are doing, they're launching new products that appeal to younger audiences, so we're using it more for influence and introductory points for the brand. And making it look cool and young and hip, and using a lot of creator content.
So things from the brand perspective don't convert as well, at least for the brands that we're working with. But anytime we partner with a creator for. The demo or unboxing or styling a product that works really well there where that does transfer over to stories and reels as well. But like tiktoks just really known for that and it performs well.
[00:36:46] Jon: Is there a vertical, so I'm guessing if it's like a B2B type thing, you're probably looking more toward a LinkedIn than a TikTok type of thing.
[00:36:53] Akvile: Yes. Are you doing a lot
[00:36:54] Joe: on,
[00:36:54] Akvile: yeah, so I was gonna say LinkedIn, but also in the last maybe. Seven, eight months. [00:37:00] Meta has actually been working really well for some of our B2B clients, which has not been the case in prior years.
So that's interesting. I wonder if they're just looking for, I dunno, people are more interested in it. I dunno if consumer behaviors change, but for those who do lead gen and LinkedIn can be very expensive, especially compared to other platforms. But some brands are okay to pay that price to get a quality lead, but we're starting to see that people are engaging more with business content on meta.
So we'll take it.
[00:37:27] Joe: We noticed that too, and I, oh, and a couple, an early insight we had was with audience lists where people use one email with LinkedIn and another with their Facebook login. So if you start with an audience list of Con, you have your list of contact emails, you can upload them to LinkedIn, you can upload them to Facebook, like the match rates are way different.
Even on a B2B campaign, you can find successful Facebook because you can't find that contact on LinkedIn.
[00:37:54] Jon: Yeah,
[00:37:54] Joe: John, I don't even know if we've talked about that yet. Yeah, no,
[00:37:57] Jon: this is news to me too. I guess it makes sense, right? Because more than [00:38:00] likely on LinkedIn, you're signing up with your personal email now, your work email, right?
'cause you leave, right? That login goes with you. Yeah. Interesting. So I know you said you weren't, analytics isn't your specialty, but when you're looking at Facebook and the. Hundreds of different KPIs that they throw at you. Out of the default reporting, is there maybe one that maybe isn't the most common, like people are looking at click through rate, clicks, impressions.
Is there something else that is a good indication of performance or a, an area that you like to dig into for? What's working, what isn't?
[00:38:33] Akvile: Yeah, we like to look at a lot of new customer acquisition metrics, like new customer roas, CPA, things like that, just to see can we convert earlier in the funnel and make it much more effective and profitable.
You know, we talked about video, we talked about hook rates. Like some people dunno, that's a thing. Highly recommend it. You can actually now add it in the in reports as a, an add-on, or before you'd have to make a custom formula for it. So Facebook's starting to offer. More things in a more convenient manner for advertisers, which is [00:39:00] great.
[00:39:00] Jon: Yeah, absolutely. I, I forgot to ask you about WhatsApp ads. So Facebook recently came out saying they're gonna be pushing ads there. Any thoughts? Excitement looks like,
[00:39:08] Akvile: ooh, they're breaking their promise. Yeah. It's excitement, but I know, right? I know. You know when there's a new platform and it takes off and it's free to use, you are the product and they're eventually going to monetize it and knowing that it's meta, it's what they do.
Great for more impression, rev or impression share, but I hope people will stop using it. I feel like they've built such a great. User base because people privates. But it'll be interesting how people perceive it because if they start seeing ads, they're gonna wonder, is it still that private though? I did see that.
They're saying you can only target by like city, maybe state or other locations. Like you can't really get hyper segmented as to who you're reaching just to respect that. Privacy, but I worry that how private is it really?
[00:39:56] Jon: We all know Meta doesn't have the best track record with privacy, [00:40:00] so I'll take that with a grain of salt.
[00:40:01] Akvile: Right.
[00:40:02] Jon: So as you're looking to the future, are there any trends or uh, insights for folks who are advertising or even pushing out content on social that they should be thinking about or that you're thinking about for your clients?
[00:40:14] Akvile: More automation, more ai, more hands off for things. Uh, I saw in one of your notes Zuckerberg's recent thing about for 2026.
I think that at this rate, like a lot of the tools that are available are still in its infancy. There's a lot of potential. I see that potential improving, but our jobs are gonna evolve. I will say that note that. Update he had did make me nervous for the first time in my career. I'm like, is my job at risk?
Like I'm gonna have to figure out other ways to provide value for clients. Advertising, marketing are not going away because that's how businesses grow and survive. And I've pivoted a lot in the last two years with my role changing more from hyper segmented audiences and finding like the nuggets of lucrative.
Audiences to [00:41:00] purchase and accomplish client goals. But now my job shifted more towards creative director and strategist. Like I'm still overseeing everything else and pulling the levers, but I feel like that's going to change a lot. So I'm excited about the future, but I. Like you said, with the grain of salt that like there's a love-hate relationship with technology evolving because it does keep us on our toes.
It's exciting, but I think with the state of the economy, it's hard to wonder like, can I still grow my business how I have been growing it? Sure. We pivot and we optimize our work and what we do for our clients, but. I don't know. I'd feel like there's a lot of unknowns that might happen the next few years, but
[00:41:37] Joe: the promise that we heard a couple of weeks ago was we are gonna have, by the end of 2026, we are gonna have a fully automated AI solution to create and launch a campaign.
But that's not really the problem, like creating and launching a campaign. So you make that a little bit easier for people who are not familiar. It's making that campaign successful over a long period of time, which [00:42:00] is why I think our jobs are safe.
[00:42:01] Akvile: Yeah, I hope.
[00:42:04] Jon: I think the other thing that's been the, basically as soon as AI launched, it was like, oh, anyone who does creative is was gonna be out of a job in three months.
And then they got the AI tools, got really good at coding and it was like, if you're a developer you're probably on the way out. And I think they're similar to what we do. There needs to be like hands-on in some way because they're very specific levers that you need to pull at distinct times, and sure, I think the models can over time maybe get there, but there's also the component of brand alignment that you talked about earlier and.
There are still monstrous brands out there who have very strong opinions around what goes out and how it's aligned. And the reality is these tools don't get that. And we experience it all the time where we're uploading image assets. And I think you even mentioned it, like they, they put them together just.
Not [00:43:00] correctly. And so I think there you could foresee maybe a future where there's very little need for human intervention, but I think in the near term, there's still just a lot of bandwidth for those errors to happen. And I remember when AI first got launched, Joe and I were like, so what are we gonna do for the rest of our lives?
And then you started to learn a little bit more about it. And I think there's always this apprehension for humans to think the worst. We're definitely guilty of it. And so it's really tough sometimes to take a step back and just take intake or intake the entire ecosystem. All that has to go right for no humans to be involved.
And I think that's, at least for advertisers so far, I think we have some runway to to, to still, I. Still go with.
[00:43:42] Joe: So anyway, our short-lived existential crisis has turned into mostly excitement. Now, I think we're more on the excitement level of spectrum for AI
[00:43:50] Akvile: until it gets really good at predictive things, because AI uses existing information and it's not coming up with novel ideas.
So I think we're safe with our creativity [00:44:00] up to a certain point, hopefully.
[00:44:01] Jon: I forget who we were talking about this with this the other day. If nothing new is created, eventually everything's the same. And so how do you stand out? But we do like to wrap up with a prediction question. In the past on the SEO sort of types of conversations, we've asked what google.com might look like in the future.
So if you look ahead, maybe 12 months, what does a successful ad look like in. 26, 20 27
[00:44:25] Akvile: video. I find it really hard so people digest it so much and it's just become the norm. I know that's not like a novel idea, but I think that we'll get different types of ad placements. Maybe there'll be more engagement, engaging components to ads.
I wonder how, because I know that now you can start engaging and like leaving comments on stories. So I like to take those little organic social things that they're testing and think, oh, if it's going to be useful and people are using that new feature, then maybe they're going to transfer it over in some capacity to the advertising side of things.
I think maybe that's one way to keep human [00:45:00] connection in between AI people posting and responding in ai, but maybe it'll keep some of that human component to it and still have helpful brands succeed.
[00:45:09] Jon: Very good, very good to put you on the spot, more selfishly, but you mentioned some books that were really helpful in your career.
Do you have any top of mind that you're, you could share with us?
[00:45:18] Akvile: Yes. Company of one by Paul Jarvis, and he also scales a non-traditional wave, just a company of one, literally. And he is been very successful and he just. Talks about different ways that you can grow your business and I'm spacing on other one, but yeah, that, that's a good one.
[00:45:33] Jon: Okay, awesome. Uh, Fila Def everyone give, if you have a couple links that you wanna toss out, let everyone know where they can connect with you.
[00:45:40] Akvile: Yeah, you can find me@advertise.com. My li my name's a little unusual, but you can find me on the socials. Look just at Fila DeFazio.
[00:45:47] Jon: All right, perfect. Thanks again for joining us on the Page two podcast, and if you enjoyed the show, please remember to subscribe, rate and review.
We'll see you next time. [00:46:00] Bye-bye.