Ad network support can feel like a mystery box. Sometimes it's a gift. Sometimes it's not so helpful, and at worst, it’s a heavy-handed sales pitch. Whether you're running ads on Google, Meta, Microsoft, or another platform, chances are you've encountered network reps or seen their suggestions show up in your account. These relationships can be incredibly useful, but it’s important to understand their purpose and limitations.

I’ve noticed several recent articles and posts focusing on brand marketing—highlighting its importance and the risks businesses face when they don’t invest in it (i.e. Nike’s recent sales dip). While these pieces emphasize why brand marketing matters, they don’t always mention the valuable role performance marketing plays (let alone, how). This can leave readers with the impression that it’s an either/or choice. So, I wanted to pause and break things down a bit more clearly.

At Working Planet, we help businesses grow profitably by managing paid digital marketing campaigns through a rigorous, data-driven approach. But successful paid media partnerships depend on knowing who owns which pieces of the puzzle and how they come together to drive results. Here’s a breakdown of what we handle, what we need from you, and where other partners may come into play.

What would you think if you heard one company’s marketing goal was to maximize lead volume at a $100 cost-per-lead (CPL)? You’d probably be preparing for a word problem to follow. 100 is a suspiciously even base, from which incremental calculations are pretty easy. A $100 CPL is surely a sample from which a learning experience will follow and be made much easier to understand because you used base 100. You’d be wrong, but that feeling in your gut that something’s off is not w

At Working Planet, we believe data should do more than sit in dashboards—it should drive better decisions and better business outcomes. That’s why when one of our clients mentioned their ideal customers tend to have higher net worths, we didn’t just nod and move on. We worked with their sales team to operationalize that insight. The results? Record-breaking post-marketing net profit, more qualified leads, and better return on ad spend.

We recently launched paid ads for a client that had never really leaned on digital advertising before. They’d done some smaller tests in the past, but nothing that stuck, and definitely nothing that contributed meaningfully to revenue.  That changed in September. We rolled out a full-funnel strategy designed not just to capture leads but to actually grow the business. Six months later, monthly recurring revenue is up 43%, and paid ads are now driving over 17% of total month