Making a single ad used to cost anywhere from half a million to a few million dollars. You’d pour everything into one big idea, one hero execution, and you had to be right, because that was the bet. The whole model was built on getting it perfect before it ever went live.
That world is gone. Today a brand can make a few hundred ads off an iPhone, put a bit of spend behind each, and let the market tell them which one works. And here’s the shift worth sitting with: this isn’t just about you being braver with creative. It’s about how your whole team works, how you approve things, how much you trust the data, and letting go of the idea that any single ad is your whole brand. On Meta, a piece of content is disposable. It’s not the masthead, it’s a test.
Not many people live that better than Mark Broadhead, Head of Creative and Growth at The Lad Collective, the Queensland bedding brand you’ve almost certainly been served on Meta. He’s made around 15,000 ads in four years, and he’s the engine behind the brand growing to 200,000 customers and launching into the US.
The Maths That Reframes Everything
Mark did some research on his own account and the numbers are startling. Around 15,000 ads in four years, and fewer than 10 genuine “unicorns”, the ads that don’t just work but scale like crazy.
Your strike rate is not high. We’ve probably had less than ten that really, really scale, that just go nuts. These are the type of ads you put in and you couldn’t believe the results.
- Mark Broadhead, Head of Creative and Growth, The Lad Collective
His biggest ever winner came from realising that thread count is basically a myth, and that nobody had ever said so. The team shot a whole ad in a shopping centre de-mything thread count, and for the first 45 seconds never mentioned the product. His logic: if you can find something everyone believes is true and then derail it, that’s the biggest hook there is, and if you can get someone 45 seconds in without them knowing why they’re watching, that’s where the gold is. He also refuses to gatekeep. Anyone gives him anything, there’s a 99.9% chance it goes in the account, with almost no feedback, because he genuinely doesn’t know what will work. That sounds like chaos, but underneath it is a disciplined system, and it’s a team sport more than a solo one.
Lesson One: Take More Shots, and Protect the Ones You’re Testing
Start with the maths, because it reframes everything. If one of the country’s best Meta advertisers misses most of the time, you and I have no chance of picking the winner up front, and the only lever left is how many chances you give yourself to find one. For years we’ve been taught good marketing is selective and precise. But volume isn’t laziness anymore, it’s a strategy, whether you like it or not.
There’s a trap sitting right next to it. Pour all your budget into the ads already winning and the algorithm never finds the next one, because it just keeps feeding what it knows. So you have to ring-fence budget for new, unproven creative and keep it separate from your winners. Scratch Pet Food‘s co-founder Mike Halligan built his whole growth engine around exactly that.
We get about sixty to seventy percent of our sales from creative launched in the last two or three months, through having new creative in separate campaigns from the winning creative, so it’s not influenced by the bias it has towards data it knows.
- Mike Halligan, Co-founder, Scratch Pet Food
His biggest risk isn’t wasting money on tests, it’s accidentally overspending because too many are working at once. That’s the position you want to be in, and you only get there by constantly feeding in new creative and protecting it from your winners. So carve out a testing budget that’s ring-fenced, and judge it on whether it’s finding your next unicorn, not on today’s return.
Lesson Two: Change Your Approvals, Not Just Your Attitude
This one usually gets talked about as “get your ego out of the way,” and that’s part of it, but it’s bigger than one person being humble. It’s about your process. Who signs off on creative, how many people have to say yes, how tightly you cling to the brand book. Every one of those approval steps is a place where a future unicorn gets killed because it looked wrong to someone in a meeting.
The fix is to change the system so the default is that things go live and the data decides. Set one real guardrail, that an ad can’t be inaccurate or misleading, and inside that line, let it run. Ovira‘s founder Alice Williams, who made it one of the most-followed Australian brands on TikTok, is blunt on this.
Ignore your account managers when they say simplify your campaigns. If it’s making us money, we don’t care. Make it look like organic content, then introduce the product so the consumer doesn’t realise they’re watching an ad. Throw out your brand guidelines.
- Alice Williams, Founder, Ovira
That’s not a licence to be sloppy or to say anything you like, it’s a licence to stop pre-judging on taste. Don’t hang on to your brand book so tightly that you strangle the test. Loosen the approvals, keep the one guardrail that it’s honest to the customer, and let the market do the vetoing.
Lesson Three: Give Your Long Shots Their Own Budget
This is where your volume and the algorithm collide. Left alone, Meta pours money into whatever is converting right now, which is usually your one big winner. That’s fine until it starves everything else, and the next unicorn is often hiding in a product or an idea the machine would never choose to bet on. So you have to step outside the algorithm and give your long shots their own budget to find an audience. Dave Dullens, who runs the ad account across a big product range at Conquest Sports, put it well.
You can’t rely on the algorithm to surface the most commercial. Brands don’t sell one product, they sell hundreds, and some things need to find an audience to establish. It understands conversion, it doesn’t understand the brand priorities.
- Dave Dullens, Conquest Sports
The algorithm optimises for the next sale. You’re trying to find the next unicorn. Those are not the same job. So ring-fence a little spend for the products and ideas you actually want to grow, give them a proper run of their own, and feed the winners back into your main engine once they’ve earned it.
The Takeaway
Finding a breakout ad isn’t a talent, it’s a numbers game played with a bit of humility, and it’s a team sport more than a solo one. Take more shots, protect the new ones from your proven winners, loosen the approvals so the data decides instead of a person, and give your long shots a real budget. Then let go of the idea that any single ad is your whole brand, because on Meta, most of them are disposable. The unicorn is sitting somewhere in your next hundred ads. You just have to publish enough of them to meet it, and be humble enough not to kill it on the way.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a “unicorn ad”? It’s a breakout ad that doesn’t just perform but scales dramatically, delivering results far beyond a normal winner. They’re rare: The Lad Collective made around 15,000 ads in four years and had fewer than 10 genuine unicorns. Because you can’t reliably pick them in advance, the strategy is to run enough creative to find them.
How much of your ad budget should go to testing new creative? Enough that new creative is a meaningful share of spend, kept in separate campaigns from your proven winners so the algorithm’s bias toward known data doesn’t smother it. Scratch Pet Food gets 60 to 70% of sales from creative launched in the last two to three months, and judges testing on whether it’s finding the next winner rather than on immediate return.
Why shouldn’t you put all your budget behind your best-performing ad? Because the algorithm will keep feeding your current winner and never discover the next one. Concentrating spend on proven ads starves new creative of the chance to find an audience, so you have to ring-fence budget for unproven ads and for the products you want to grow.
How do you stop good ad ideas dying in approvals? Change the system so the default is that ads go live and the data decides, rather than requiring sign-off from people who pre-judge on taste. Set one guardrail, that the ad must be accurate and not misleading, and let everything inside that line run. Tight brand-book gatekeeping is where future winners get killed.
Based on episode #653 of the Add To Cart podcast with with Mark Broadhead, Head of Creative and Growth at The Lad Collective. Join the Add To Cart community for free.
In this Playbook we cover three things ecommerce operators can take into their business:
- Take more shots, and ring-fence the ones you’re testing from your proven winners
- Change your approvals, not just your attitude, so the data decides instead of a person
- Give your long shots their own budget, because the algorithm won’t bet on them for you
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