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Chris Trovato

Performance marketing + AI toolsSan Diego, California. Remote US.

I run acquisition. I build what makes it better.

I own paid acquisition strategy, forecasting, testing, and budget decisions across ad platforms. My experience spans Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. I also build AI-assisted tools for account analysis and reporting, so each decision starts from cleaner evidence.

See the workGet in touch

From the reporting platform

Week 34

Account A, cost per lead

8 weeks

Above goal for three weeks and still rising. Spend held steady while leads fell, so the cost is moving on the lead side.

Decision. Investigate before moving budget.

Built and deployed with Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex.

Inside the platform
Illustrative data, original diagram.
managed ad spend
$15M+managed ad spendLifetime, since 2017
managed annually
~$3.5Mmanaged annuallyAgency and independent clients, combined
years in paid media
9years in paid mediaMeta, Google Ads, TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn

Selected work

01Reporting platform, built and deployed

A reporting platform for weekly account decisions

Weekly reports were accurate one at a time and hard to compare across time or accounts. I built a platform that turns human-verified reports into historical trends, goal pacing, creative diagnostics, and a portfolio view, so the next decision starts from the whole picture.

Built with Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex. Deployed and running on verified weekly reports.

Inside the reporting platform

Portfolio view

Week 34

01Verified weekly reports

Illustrative portfolio view for week 34. Three placeholder accounts compared on this week’s spend, leads, and cost per lead, and on how many consecutive weeks each has been over its own cost-per-lead goal.
AccountCost / leadAgainst goal
$39.723 wks over
$28.39Under goal
$51.841 wk over

Select an account to open its eight weeks. Goals differ by account.

02Comparable history

Account A, cost per lead

8 weeks

This week
$39.72
8-week average
$34.46
Goal
$35.00

03Signal

Above goal for three weeks and still rising. Spend held steady while leads fell, so the cost is moving on the lead side.

04Decision

Investigate before moving budget.

First check: Creative frequency and the share of spend on the oldest ad. If both look normal, what changed on the landing page.

Illustrative data, original diagram. Three placeholder accounts, not a screenshot of the platform.

02Hirsh Marketing, April 2021 to present

Paid acquisition across a live agency portfolio

I own targeting, projections, account structure, budget allocation, testing, pacing, and optimization across 12 to 20 concurrent Meta ad accounts and roughly $2.5M a year. Clients and collaborators bring the offers, creative, and landing pages. I turn them into a plan, read what comes back, and make the call on what happens next.

concurrent Meta ad accounts
12–20concurrent Meta ad accounts
annual spend, inside the $3.5M combined figure
~$2.5Mannual spend, inside the $3.5M combined figure
Explore acquisition work

One audience test, 10 days

$1,000 per cell, same creative in every cell

  1. Audience A, Lookalike of past buyers

    $2005 customers

  2. Audience B, Broad, no interest targeting

    $1437 customers

  3. Audience C, Stacked interests

    $2504 customers

Decision. Extend A and B for 7 more days at the same budget and pause C. Move budget to B only if it holds under $160 on 15 or more customers.

Illustrative data, original diagram. The full walkthrough is on the acquisition page.

How I decide

Hypothetical example

The creative winning your clicks is not always winning your customers.

Every account runs on the same five decisions: forecast, structure, test, reconcile, decide. Here is the reconcile step, on two creatives with equal spend over one hypothetical period.

AI tools run through all of it: structured account reviews, faster analysis of what changed, and the reporting platform itself. I check the output against the account before it becomes a recommendation.

Hypothetical comparison of two advertising creatives over one invented period, both at $2,400 in spend.
Per creativeCreative ACreative B
Spend$2,400$2,400
Click-through rate2.8%1.3%
Link clicks2,0001,200
New customers——
Cost per customer——

Invented data over one hypothetical period. A table this size cannot establish cause or statistical significance.

Creative A is winning attention

Same spend, same period. A earns more than twice the click-through rate and 800 more link clicks. If the report stopped here, A would get the budget.

Experience

My own agency, then a larger portfolio. Next, one company.

I started my own agency in 2017, then joined Hirsh Marketing in 2021 to work on larger accounts alongside a bigger team. Nine years and more than 500 client businesses later, that is a lot of pattern recognition to bring to one company: go deeper on its customers and its growth, own acquisition end to end, and keep building the tools that sharpen it.

Most interested in consumer brands, ecommerce, and software companies, especially teams building AI products. Based in San Diego, open to remote US roles.

  1. April 2021 to present

    Senior Media Buyer, Hirsh Marketing

    Hands-on ownership of paid acquisition across the agency's client portfolio: targeting, projections, account structure, budget allocation, testing, pacing, and optimization. I also lead two weekly group coaching sessions for business owners and have trained and onboarded other media buyers.

  2. May 2017 to March 2021

    Founder & Performance Marketing Manager, Your Dream Agency

    My own agency. I owned strategy, delivery, targeting, account structure, and budgets, plus every conversation with an owner about what the numbers meant and what to do next.

Contact

Hiring for paid acquisition or growth?

Send me the role, the product, or the challenge you’re working on.

chris@christrovato.comLinkedIn
Based in
San Diego, California
Open to
Remote US and San Diego
Looking for
Senior in-house acquisition or growth ownership