If you've ever liked anything I've ever posted, this is for you.

Howdy Haveaclues!

I can almost guarantee if you're reading this right now, I've said something that didn't make total sense to you orrrr you completely disagreed with.

Tbh, I've always felt misunderstood by many other smart and experienced marketers.

Most marketers spend their time reacting to data, whereas I like to spend my time digging into the deeper nuances of how and why the data is the way it is.

I like to focus on and think about:

• Philosophical and theoretical problems beyond practical and obvious data.

• Metapatterns (patterns of patterns).

• Survivorship bias (the data we don't have)

• What existing biases or beliefs may have caused certain results to occur.

And that focus and thinking has led me to find unconventional perspectives that are sometimes hard or impossible to explain with available data.

We don't advertise in a vacuum. We cannot perfectly control or monitor the true impact of our ads, especially social ones that can be shared and spread organically/virally. Even incremental lift testing is imperfect.

There are multiple overlapping variables that are causing the results you see, and they're often too complex to assign or ascribe success to any one variable on its own.

And yet, many marketers (especially the ones making lots of content 😅) love to attribute success to specific individual factors without understanding, considering, or mentioning any other variables that could be confounding their data or conflating correlation with causation.

Cost caps alone will not solve all of your problems. (But sure, they can help with some!)

An optimized system like Meta's ad platform doesn't understand or care about your actual business goals, it just understands and cares about the goals you give it and the rules you allow it to play by.

Real success can be found in putting together a better and deeper understanding of how all of the variables of advertising settings can cause the system to optimize in more or less effective ways to achieve your actual business goals.

We live in a new, advanced world of advertising. We need to throw away many legacy beliefs and best practices. Many principles from 3+ years ago are not applicable or relevant today.

Moneyball, Oppenheimer, Ford vs Ferrari, The Big Short, and Air are among my favorite films. They each feature protagonists who challenge conventional wisdom, fight against legacy institutional resistance and seek to redefine their respective fields.

Sure, it's bold of me to compare myself to Beane, Oppenheimer, Shelby, Burry, or Vaccaro, but my goal is to bring that level of change to our industry.

I have repeatedly found massive success in disrupting the status quo. (And no, not only with ugly ads.)

Just ask Dara Denney, Alex Cooper (Adcrate), Ovadia Labaton (The Perfect Jean), Justin Allen (Tushy), Jason Goode (Flakes), Darwish Gani (Lumin), Omar Rada (Misen) or anyone else I've worked with.

This is why I finally set aside the time to take alllll my 16+ years of media buying and creative expertise all my thoughts into one value bomb of a course: Building Ads with Barry

I've been talking about and wanting to do this for 5+ years and now it's finally done, and going live next week.

If you've ever liked anything I've posted, this is for you.

If you've been confused by or disagreed with something I've posted, (you might not want to admit it, but) this is for you.

If you're spending more than $10k/month on ads, even just 1 takeaway from the course could cover the cost of the course itself in a month.

If you're spending more than $10k/day, even just 1 takeaway from the course could pay for itself in minutes.

If you're interested, curious, or on the fence about the course, email me and my team, we respond very quickly: [email protected] For teams of 3 or more, we offer an additional discount. Contact me ASAP for a customized offer for your company!

Finally, thanks to all of my friends who have supported and encouraged me over the years to finally get this done. (And also a huge thanks to my team, without whom I'd still be stuck on choosing a name for the course 😅)

This is the start of a whole new chapter of my life with this course. It's a very exciting time for me and I hope you'll join me and the 100+ marketers who have already enrolled.

Don’t miss it. SIGN UP NOW!

For making it all the way down here to the deep end, take $200 off my course with this link:

See you in there!

Oh, and if you haven’t caught them, I’ve done a few recent free webinars jam-packed with value, check them out on my YouTube Channel:

How to create winning ads in 2025?

Creative Scaling in 2025 (featuring Andrew Foxwell)

Meta Ads Data Analysis in 2025 (featuring Dara Denney)

If you made it all the way down here, thank you, I appreciate you! Please smash the reply button and tell me what’s up with you and I’ll pick someone to send a free Make Ugly Ads (or Just Make Ads) hatt.

Hott regards,

Barry