Key Takeaways

  • IM8 runs between 2,000 and 3,000 Meta ads live at any given moment while testing 500 to 800 new creator assets every single week.
  • Ad targeting on Meta is fully automated; creative diversity across customer personas now performs the targeting work previously handled by media buyers.
  • Scaling spend from $17 million to $33 million in one quarter lowered IM8's customer acquisition cost from $305 to $301, and down to $239 the following month.
  • Tracking an internal creative fatigue score allows media teams to retire dying assets before performance drops erode return on ad spend.

The Method

Most direct-to-consumer founders treat media buying like a puzzle of lookalike audiences, interest stacks, and bid caps. Danny Yeung, who co-founded supplement brand IM8 with David Beckham, threw that playbook out the window. IM8 scaled to a $200 million revenue run rate in 18 months by treating Meta as an asset-testing machine rather than a targeting tool.

“Before a few years ago, you have to be really really good at ad buying,” Yeung explained. “Now Meta does all of that for you already. You don't need to do the targeting. All you need to really figure out is how do you get really good creatives and really good creative diversity on the different personas because now you need a creative to do the targeting.”

To feed that machine, IM8 operates at industrial scale. The company maintains 2,000 to 3,000 live ads simultaneously and reviews 500 to 800 creator submissions weekly. Instead of trying to guess which hook resonates, they deploy high creative volume across different customer personas. A 25-year-old fitness enthusiast and a 55-year-old executive see entirely different visuals and messaging for the exact same product.

When ad spend reaches eight figures, creative fatigue becomes the main threat to margins. Yeung's team built an internal fatigue score to track performance decay. When an asset's score signals imminent exhaustion, they swap it out before the algorithm penalizes the campaign.

This pipeline produced counterintuitive results. When IM8 doubled marketing spend from $17 million to $33 million in a single quarter, customer acquisition cost did not skyrocket. “Q1 our CAC was 305, right? Our average order value is about $230,” Yeung noted. “We doubled our marketing spend in Q2. Our CAC actually went down by $4, from 305 to 301.” By July, with monthly spend exceeding $10 million, CAC dropped further to $239.

Where This Breaks Down

This strategy requires deep pockets and disciplined cash flow management. In Q1, IM8 lost $75 on first orders, spending $305 to acquire a customer with an average order value of $230.

If your repeat purchase rates, gross margins, or balance sheet cannot float negative unit economics on the first transaction, copying this volume will bankrupt you. A brand without proven retention or venture backing cannot burn cash waiting for ad accounts to train Meta's delivery algorithms. Furthermore, sourcing hundreds of high-quality creator assets every week requires a massive operational team for outreach, contract management, and asset tagging.

What to Do With This

Audit your Meta ad account this week. If you have fewer than 20 active ads running across three distinct buyer personas, stop tweaking your audience targeting. Take your best-selling product, write five distinct scripts that address five different customer problems, and hire ten micro-creators on short contracts to produce two variations each. Let the creative assets find your buyers instead of your manual audience settings.