Velocity: Performance Marketing Podcast

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Velocity by Hawky: Performance Marketing Podcast is aimed at fostering a community of digital marketers and performance marketing leaders to share insights and real-world campaign experiences. The goal is to collectively gain knowledge and accelerate these learnings across the industry. We host marketing experts, CMOs, and agency founders from leading brands across business verticals and geographies to understand their performance marketing philosophy. In this podcast, we will cover topics spanning campaign optimization, creative scaling, audience targeting, attribution modeling, and cross-channel performance among other key aspects of digital marketing velocity. Whether you're scaling Meta campaigns, optimizing Google ads, or building high-performance marketing teams, Velocity delivers the insider strategies that drive measurable results and sustainable growth.

  1. 14h ago

    EP 22 - Automation Isn't Your Problem. Fragmentation Is | Anthony Higman

    $190M in legal ad spend. Every client account touched by hand, every single day. And a habit of spotting Google's changes before Google announces them. In this episode of Velocity: Performance Marketing Podcast by Hawky, we sit down with Anthony Higman, CEO of ADSQUIRE, a Philadelphia agency and Google Premier Partner that runs Google Ads, Local Services Ads and ChatGPT Ads exclusively for law firms. Anthony has spent 15 years in paid search, and his five-person team deliberately works the opposite way to everything Google is pushing: manual bids, daily negatives, no automation platforms on top. Anthony explains how Google's recommendations tab began as an internal churn-prevention tool for its sales reps, which control he has quietly stopped fighting for (and why it costs advertisers their creative insight), and why fragmentation across four ad platforms hurt his business more than automation ever did. He also shares what happened when ADSQUIRE spent $15,000 on ChatGPT Ads in the first week of self-serve, why results fell off a cliff the week after, and how he worked out that ChatGPT targets your conversation history more than the query you just typed. 🎯 Key Topics Covered: 00:00 - Meet Anthony Higman: $190M in legal ad spend, managed by hand 01:28 - Google's endgame: "give us your credit card and your URL" 04:07 - Recommendations started as a churn tool for Google's sales reps 06:02 - The control he gave up on: Google Business Profile assets 07:00 - Auto-apply assets: the setting most advertisers never find 11:10 - Why a law-firm agency still depends on Google 14:25 - ChatGPT Ads: $15K in week one, then results fell off a cliff 16:00 - Where ChatGPT Ads work: bankruptcy and truck accidents 17:51 - Ads that ignore your query, and the conversation-history weighting 20:10 - Spend 10 to 15% of your time outside the ad platform 20:46 - The legal channel mix: search, LSA, YouTube, ChatGPT, billboards 22:04 - Why 15-second non-skippables are still his favourite YouTube ad 22:32 - Five people, 35 clients, and still in every account every day 24:55 - The real problem isn't automation, it's fragmentation 25:31 - Google reps: 12 calls a day, and going around the agency 26:27 - What a media buyer's job actually is now 28:30 - What he hires for: creative problem solving, humility, hunger 29:27 - Why ADSQUIRE refuses automation platforms 31:27 - How five people run 35 accounts: a full-time lead-quality role 32:52 - What's next: social lead gen, Demand Gen and Google's branded search beta Meet Surender (Host & Co-Founder at Hawky): https://www.linkedin.com/in/say2surender/ Meet Anthony Higman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-higman-a3656a46/ 🔗 ADSQUIRE: https://adsquire.com/ About Hawky: An agentic performance marketing platform. Two always-on agents and a Copilot that buy media against your KPI, generate on-brand creatives from your winners, and answer any question about the account instantly. Other tools generate. Hawky operates. 👉 Book a Hawky demo: https://hawky.ai/get-demo 🎧 More episodes: https://hawky.ai/podcast #GoogleAds #PPC #LegalMarketing #LawFirmMarketing #ChatGPTAds #LocalServicesAds #PerformanceMarketing #MarketingPodcast

    EP 22 - Automation Isn't Your Problem. Fragmentation Is | Anthony Higman

  2. Sep 29

    EP 21 - Why Affiliate Programs Fail: The $10M Rule, Referrals and AI Attribution | Michael Cole

    Bootstrapped to $35 million ARR. Zero investors. Sixty-five percent of new revenue from referrals. And they grew by switching off a Google Ads channel that was profitable. In this episode of Velocity: Performance Marketing Podcast by Hawky, we sit down with Michael Cole, CMO at Everflow, the partner marketing platform that last year tracked more than 1.3 billion events and attributed more than 700 million conversions for 1,200 plus brands. Michael was an early Everflow customer before he joined, and has spent eight years on the problem of paying partners for what actually happened rather than for the last click. Michael's core argument is that most affiliate programs do not fail because of the affiliates. They fail because they launched before the funnel was ready, and affiliates carry all the risk in the deal. He explains why he puts the threshold at roughly $10 million in revenue, why your best affiliates are the ones already promoting your competitors, why they killed a profitable paid channel and grew, and why 22 percent of their demo requests self-report AI while their analytics can only see ten. He also makes the case that AI companies are the affiliate category nobody is running yet. 🎯 Key Topics Covered: 00:00 - Meet Michael Cole: a customer before he was the CMO 01:15 - Bootstrapped to $35M ARR with no outside investors 02:25 - 1,200 customers, and why the whole journey has to be tracked 04:03 - 65% of new revenue from referrals, and the two plays behind it 05:15 - The structure: $250, $500, $1,000, and how it filters itself 07:07 - Your best affiliates are already promoting your competitors 10:40 - Networks vs platform: marketplaces and super affiliates 12:47 - The profitable Google Ads channel they turned off 13:41 - Referrals that never produce a click, and how you track them anyway 15:41 - What AEO did to affiliate publishers 17:31 - 22% of demos self-report AI while analytics sees 10 20:02 - Who affiliate works for, and why AI companies are ideal 22:19 - Channels don't matter: find the affiliates who own your vertical 23:36 - Micro influencers, and why the channel needs a dedicated person 25:54 - When to start: referrals on day one, affiliates at $10M 27:30 - PLG vs SLG, long sales cycles, and where resellers come in 29:00 - Catching fraud with deterministic signals 31:32 - Optimise Google for company emails, not demo requests 33:01 - The marketing stack, and what to buy vs build 35:03 - HubSpot, Gong, Jira, Supabase, and Claude on top 38:31 - GTM engineers and an AI-transformed content workflow Meet Surender (Host & Co-Founder at Hawky): https://www.linkedin.com/in/say2surender/ Meet Michael Cole: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcole6 🔗 Everflow: https://www.everflow.io/ About Hawky: An agentic performance marketing platform. Two always-on agents and a Copilot that buy media against your KPI, generate on-brand creatives from your winners, and answer any question about the account instantly. Other tools generate. Hawky operates. 👉 Book a Hawky demo: https://hawky.ai/get-demo 🎧 More episodes: https://hawky.ai/podcast #PerformanceMarketing #AffiliateMarketing #PartnerMarketing #ReferralMarketing #B2BSaaS #Attribution #AEO #MarketingPodcast

    EP 21 - Why Affiliate Programs Fail: The $10M Rule, Referrals and AI Attribution | Michael Cole

  3. Sep 29

    EP 20 - Why 1,000 Ads a Month Won't Scale: Creative Strategy from $5K to $600K | Sarah Levinger

    Most brands don't have a creative strategy. They have an ad factory. Sarah Levinger can tell the difference in about thirty seconds of scrolling an asset folder. In this episode of Velocity: Performance Marketing Podcast by Hawky, we sit down with Sarah Levinger, consumer psychologist and founder of Tether Insights, one of the most-cited voices in creative strategy for DTC. Sarah works the psychology layer under ad creative: what the customer is really saying beneath the pain point, and why the ads a team labours over are rarely the ones that scale. Her case is that volume is the wrong goal, and that the category's loudest advice, ship more ads, is what quietly caps performance. She rebuilds creative strategy from scratch three times on the show, at $5K, $60K and $600K a month, and the answer is never "more". 🎯 Key Topics Covered: 00:00 - Meet Sarah Levinger, founder of Tether Insights 01:20 - "You don't have a creative strategy. You have an ad factory." 04:26 - The four steps before you pick an ad format 07:04 - What creative strategy actually is 08:14 - Why the job exists now: iOS 14, TikTok and the algorithm shift 10:36 - The one metric she judges creative on, read by cohort 12:13 - $5K a month: three to five ads a week, and why ten reads as noise 15:08 - The only research worth doing yet: reviews, surveys, support tickets 16:23 - Why she won't look at competitor ads until you're bigger 17:33 - When a brand earns its first designer ($30K–$50K a month) 18:28 - AI vs human creative: why all-AI accounts struggle to hold performance 19:21 - Trigger, Exploration, Evaluation, Purchase: her model, not TOFU/MOFU/BOFU 23:04 - Her cadence: quarterly goal, monthly culture, weekly account 24:34 - $60K a month: format diversity vs story diversity, and the one-angle account 28:35 - One campaign per journey stage, built for the human 30:15 - $600K a month: segment by product category first, then expand 32:15 - Brief creators like a film director: character first, one ingredient 36:07 - Creative fatigue: frequency isn't the signal; the ad is starved, not tired 38:56 - How she scores a creative: valence, self-discrepancy, story depth 40:40 - Spend an ad needs before you can call it: 2–3x CPA, ~$100 an ad 41:42 - Where AI stops: objective on data, useless on context 43:48 - Andromeda: a purchase is a symptom of a good movie 46:41 - The post-mortem on a flopped ad: account, psychology, culture 48:26 - Stop and start: run half your ads, ask customers what they want Meet Surender (Host & Co-Founder at Hawky): https://www.linkedin.com/in/say2surender/ Meet Sarah Levinger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahlevinger 🔗 Tether Insights: https://tetherinsights.io About Hawky: An agentic performance marketing platform. Two always-on agents and a Copilot that buy media against your KPI, generate on-brand creatives from your winners, and answer any question about the account instantly. Other tools generate. Hawky operates. 👉 Book a Hawky demo: https://hawky.ai/get-demo 🎧 More episodes: https://hawky.ai/podcast #PerformanceMarketing #CreativeStrategy #MetaAds #AdCreative #UGC #SarahLevinger #MarketingPodcast

    EP 20 - Why 1,000 Ads a Month Won't Scale: Creative Strategy from $5K to $600K | Sarah Levinger

  4. Sep 8

    EP 18 - Why AI Gets Your Marketing Data Wrong: GA4, Attribution and ROAS | Ahmed Elsamadisi

    Fifteen years in data. He created the Activity Schema. He still can't fact-check what an AI tells him. Here's why that should worry every marketer running numbers through an agent. In this episode of Velocity: Performance Marketing Podcast by Hawky, we sit down with Ahmed Elsamadisi, Founder of Polyform and creator of the Activity Schema, the open-source event model that other companies now consult on. Ahmed has spent his career on the layer between raw data and the questions people ask of it, and he built Polyform because that layer is where AI answers quietly go wrong. Ahmed makes the case that AI is optimised to be helpful, not to be right, and that most teams have no way to tell the difference. He unpacks why the best models still get most data questions wrong, why he forbids his own AI from writing SQL, why pointing an agent at GA4 returns confident answers instead of correct ones, and where 10 to 20 percent of ad budgets quietly disappear. He also tells most brands not to fix any of it: under 5,000 dollars a month in spend, his advice is to accept that you are guessing. 🎯 Key Topics Covered: 00:00 - Meet Ahmed Elsamadisi: fifteen years in data and the Activity Schema 01:09 - Why you can't fact-check an AI's answer, and the accuracy numbers nobody quotes 04:57 - How to engineer an agent that gets it right, and why his AI never writes SQL 08:56 - Stop putting everyone in a room to define a metric: build seven instead 11:34 - Where this actually gets deployed, from go-to-market to product analytics 13:54 - How Poly works, and the moment it escalates to a human 17:45 - Kodak, Blockbuster, and why bolting AI onto legacy doesn't work 20:37 - Salesforce, MCP servers, and the CRM shift already underway 22:58 - Why he pays 5x more to leave HubSpot 24:35 - Where chat stops and the UI has to take over 27:01 - Performance marketing: attribution, junk clicks, and where budget dies 31:31 - What to actually connect, starting with raw GA4 rather than reports 32:30 - Why GA4 breaks AI agents in two different ways 33:46 - Don't fix your data under 5,000 dollars a month 34:40 - The linearity test: double the spend, do the sales double? 35:51 - What "AI native" actually means for a product 38:42 - Dashboards, daily digests, and what belongs in an email Meet Surender (Host & Co-Founder at Hawky): https://www.linkedin.com/in/say2surender/ Meet Ahmed Elsamadisi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elsamadisi/ 🔗 Polyform: https://www.polyform.to/ 🔗 Activity Schema (open source): https://activityschema.com/ About Hawky: An agentic performance marketing platform. Two always-on agents and a Copilot that buy media against your KPI, generate on-brand creatives from your winners, and answer any question about the account instantly. Other tools generate. Hawky operates. 👉 Book a Hawky demo: https://hawky.ai/get-demo 🎧 More episodes: https://hawky.ai/podcast #PerformanceMarketing #GA4 #MarketingAnalytics #Attribution #AIAgents #MarketingData #DataStack #MarketingPodcast

    EP 18 - Why AI Gets Your Marketing Data Wrong: GA4, Attribution and ROAS | Ahmed Elsamadisi

  5. Sep 3

    EP 17 - $1.5 Billion in Ad Spend & Why "Best Practices" Are Dead | Patrick Gilbert

    $1.5 billion in ad spend. Two books. A section in Google's own Ads certification. Here's what Patrick Gilbert says actually wins in the AI era, and why most of the old rulebook no longer applies. In this episode of Velocity: Performance Marketing Podcast by Hawky, we sit down with Patrick Gilbert, CEO of AdVenture Media Group and author of two books, Join or Die: Digital Advertising in the Age of Automation and Never Always, Never Never: Strategic Marketing in an AI World. Patrick has overseen more than $1.5 billion in ad spend, and his work on AI-driven campaigns is featured inside Google's official Ads certification. Patrick makes the case that the era of "best practices" is over — marketing is poker now, not blackjack. He unpacks why the decade-long arbitrage of buying underpriced attention has completely dried up, why he won't put a single dollar into ChatGPT ads yet (and why Google is still the best ad platform on the planet), why ROAS is quietly pushing marketers toward the wrong decisions, and how an AI-first agency decides what to build versus what to keep buying. It's a first-principles tour of what really drives growth once the algorithm advantage is gone. 🎯 Key Topics Covered: 00:00 - Meet Patrick Gilbert: $1.5B in ad spend, two books, and a seat in Google's certification 00:53 - From living inside the Google Ads UI to full-funnel, first-principles marketing 04:13 - "Join or Die": the 2017 bet on AI, the resistance, and how Google featured his work 11:21 - Marketing is poker, not blackjack — why "best practices" are over 13:54 - Always vs. never: where the playbook still holds, and the first dollar — Google or Meta? 15:17 - Why he won't spend on ChatGPT ads (and why Google still wins) 18:10 - Digital arbitrage is dead: the 10-year run that just closed, and where marketers add value now 24:03 - Channel specialists vs. the full-funnel operator: Red Ocean vs. Blue Ocean 30:17 - Why ROAS is lying to you: how he halved it and tripled profit (+ the 4 numbers to watch) 36:01 - Build vs. buy in an AI-first world: the SaaS purge, keeping HubSpot, and why the back end is the moat 44:12 - The takeaway: an AI coach trained on his books Meet Surender (Host & Co-Founder at Hawky): https://www.linkedin.com/in/say2surender/ Meet Patrick Gilbert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickjamesgilbert/ 📘 Patrick's new book & newsletter: https://neveralwaysbook.com About AdVenture Media Group: A digital advertising and education company founded by Isaac Rudansky, specializing in Google and Meta ads — pairing hands-on campaign management with training that's reached students worldwide. About Hawky: A creative intelligence platform that transforms marketing guesswork into data-driven success. From Ad Creative Analysis to AI-powered optimization, we help B2C brands and agencies achieve higher ROAS and predictable campaign performance. 👉 Book a Hawky demo: https://hawky.ai/get-demo More episodes: https://hawky.ai/podcast #GoogleAds #PerformanceMarketing #DigitalAdvertising #AIMarketing #MarketingStrategy #PPC #AdVentureMedia #VelocityPodcast #Hawky

    EP 17 - $1.5 Billion in Ad Spend & Why "Best Practices" Are Dead | Patrick Gilbert

  6. Apr 29

    EP 16 - The Ultimate LinkedIn Ads Playbook from $200M in Spend | AJ Wilcox

    $200M+ in LinkedIn ad spend. 14 years on one channel. Here's the playbook AJ Wilcox swears by. In this episode of Velocity: Performance Marketing Podcast by Hawky, we spoke to AJ Wilcox - Founder of B2Linked, host of The LinkedIn Ads Show, and author of LinkedIn Ads Demystified. AJ is widely regarded as the world's most concentrated authority on LinkedIn Ads, having managed over $200M in spend across some of LinkedIn's largest accounts globally, including 5 of LinkedIn's top 10 spending advertisers. In this masterclass, AJ unpacks his complete LinkedIn Ads playbook - from the 3 default settings silently killing your budget, to why he's pulling clients off Conversation Ads, to the 3-stage retargeting funnel that actually converts B2B buyers. If you run LinkedIn ads, this is the deepest tactical hour you'll spend this year. 🎯 Key Topics Covered: 00:00 – 02:35 — AJ's journey: From SEO to founding the world's first LinkedIn-only ad agency 02:35 – 07:54 — Conversation Ads vs Message Ads + when Thought Leader Ads actually win 07:54 – 10:33 — Why AJ bet his entire agency on ONE channel (and how AI is reshaping it) 10:33 – 17:06 — 3 default LinkedIn settings killing your budget + the 3-stage retargeting funnel 17:06 – 24:08 — The most expensive mistakes from $200M+ in LinkedIn ad spend 24:08 – 33:16 — The creative playbook: founder-led, witty B2B, and format stack rank by funnel stage 33:16 – 47:00 — AI in agency workflows, lead magnet posts, and LinkedIn vs Google Ads 47:00 – End — Future of LinkedIn Ads + rapid fire: overrated metrics, CTV, advice to his 2014 self Meet Surender (host and co-founder at Hawky): https://www.linkedin.com/in/say2surender/ Meet AJ Wilcox: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilcoxaj/ 🎧 Listen to The LinkedIn Ads Show by AJ Wilcox: https://b2linked.com/podcast 🌐 Learn more about B2Linked: https://b2linked.com About Hawky: A creative intelligence platform that transforms marketing guesswork into data-driven success. From Ad Creative Analysis to AI-powered optimization, we help B2C brands and agencies achieve higher ROAS and predictable campaign performance. 👉 Book a Hawky demo: https://hawky.ai/get-demo #LinkedInAds #B2BMarketing #PerformanceMarketing #AJWilcox #B2Linked #DigitalMarketing #PaidSocial #LinkedInAdvertising #CreativeIntelligence #MarketingPodcast

    EP 16 - The Ultimate LinkedIn Ads Playbook from $200M in Spend | AJ Wilcox

  7. Mar 28

    EP 15 - Breaking down the "AI Native" Enterprise | Nishith Srivastava

    In this episode of Velocity: Performance Marketing Podcast by Hawky, we sit down with Nishith Srivastava (Nish), Founder of Agentics (the "Anti-Consultancy") and a 26-year veteran of global giants like Ogilvy, JWT, and Tech Mahindra. Nishith breaks down the structural shift required to survive the next decade: moving away from "strategy on slides" toward multi-agent orchestration where 100+ AI agents work in sync to solve complex business problems. 🎯 KEY TOPICS COVERED: 00:00 - From Digital to Intelligence: Nishith’s 23-year evolution through the world's biggest agencies. 05:47 - The "Anti-Consultancy" Philosophy: Why strategy without execution is just a deck. 08:19 - The Multi-Agent Opportunity: Scaling beyond one chatbot to 100+ autonomous agents. 13:34 - The "Validation First" Framework: How to scale AI across 100 stores without breaking the system. 18:43 - AI Transformation vs. AI Native: Moving from "Rule Engines" to "Reasoning Engines". 23:29 - The 10x Productivity Leap: Why AI shouldn't replace humans, but make them superhuman. 34:35 - Rapid Fire: Why Claude is for research, and why Grok has "advertising flair". 35:45 - Build vs. Buy: The CMO’s roadmap for custom AI implementation. MEET THE SPEAKERS: Surender (Host & Co-Founder at Hawky):https://www.linkedin.com/in/say2surender/ Nishith Srivastava (Founder, Agentics):https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishith/ Ready to scale your creative production like the pros? https://hawky.ai/

    EP 15 - Breaking down the "AI Native" Enterprise | Nishith Srivastava

  8. Mar 18

    EP 14 - How Topmate Turns Creators into ₹4L+/Month Earners | Anuj Niranjan

    How Topmate Turns Creators into ₹4L+/Month Earners | Creator Economy Sales Playbook Followers don't pay bills. Sales systems do. In this debut episode, Anuj Niranjan reveals how Topmate built a sales-assisted engine that takes creators from inconsistent revenue to ₹4L+/month — without needing a single new follower. From cold-calling 200 people to land his first cohort, to building a 25-person sales floor that closes for creators across AI, product management, and tech — this is the BOFU playbook no one talks about. In this episode of Velocity: Performance Marketing Podcast by Hawky, we spoke to Anuj Niranjan, VP of Creator Growth at Topmate and an IIT Bombay alum who's gone from Citibank risk modelling to trading floors to running creator monetization at one of India's fastest-growing creator economy platforms. KEY TOPICS COVERED: 00:00 - Introduction: Meet Anuj Niranjan & the Velocity Podcast 04:30 - From Citibank to Manali: The unconventional path to Topmate 11:00 - The pilot that proved it: 9 creator sales in 12 days 18:30 - Pull vs Push: The sales philosophy behind ₹50K cohort closes 29:30 - Followers ≠ Revenue: Why trust beats follower count every time 37:00 - How performance marketers can start selling courses as a side stream 40:30 - Hiring freshers at speed: 3-day onboarding vs 30-day campus cycles 47:30 - AI's real impact on creators: What it replaces and what it never will Meet Surender (Host & Co-Founder at Hawky): https://www.linkedin.com/in/say2surender/ Meet Anuj Niranjan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anujniranjan/ About Hawky A creative intelligence platform that transforms marketing guesswork into data-driven success. From Ad Creative Analysis to AI-powered optimization, we help B2C brands and agencies achieve higher ROAS and predictable campaign performance. Ready to scale your creative production like the pros? https://hawky.ai/get-demo

    EP 14 - How Topmate Turns Creators into ₹4L+/Month Earners | Anuj Niranjan
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Velocity by Hawky: Performance Marketing Podcast is aimed at fostering a community of digital marketers and performance marketing leaders to share insights and real-world campaign experiences. The goal is to collectively gain knowledge and accelerate these learnings across the industry. We host marketing experts, CMOs, and agency founders from leading brands across business verticals and geographies to understand their performance marketing philosophy. In this podcast, we will cover topics spanning campaign optimization, creative scaling, audience targeting, attribution modeling, and cross-channel performance among other key aspects of digital marketing velocity. Whether you're scaling Meta campaigns, optimizing Google ads, or building high-performance marketing teams, Velocity delivers the insider strategies that drive measurable results and sustainable growth.

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