As an entrepreneurial, innovative, and consultative professional, I possess 18+ years of startup and business management experience across a breadth of sectors – from consultancy through sales to information technology with my most recent venture at adstrong. 

I am widely regarded for my propensity to locate growth opportunities as well as pioneer business development initiatives. I have paved a history of influence and impact, directly cultivating company growth throughout my career trajectory. In doing so, I have continually met market demand with innovative, value-adding, and cutting-edge products and services.

My core body of professional specialties ranges from business leadership, operations management, and strategy development to optimization & sales strategies. My accountabilities have required me to leverage an entrepreneurial mindset, partnership building and negotiation, as well as strong business & financial acumen, systematic business management, and project governance to streamline end-to-end ops and maximize returns.  

As an entrepreneur who has pioneered numerous businesses, I understand the requirements of building a successful business, and honing a client-first mentality. I am adept at translating customer insights into progressive strategies, contributing to the success of various operations within a competitive environment and ensuring products/ services reach their maximum user-end value. 

As a venture capitalist, I am competent in extending approaches, spearheading development initiatives, overseeing sales operations, and identifying opportunities for process improvement to drive effectiveness.

Peers, mentors, and clients alike commend me as a reliable, down-to-earth, and continuously innovative change agent, growth advocate, and champion of effective, pragmatic action and leadership.

I welcome contacts from potential colleagues and clients, and other professionals in my space. Feel free to contact me through this profile if you wish to connect.

Ingmar Albert

When you start a company, the first few hires are the most dangerous decisions you will ever make.

In the beginning, you aren't just hiring for a "role." You are hiring the culture. If those first 5 people aren't aligned, the next 50 never will be. 

Starting at McKinsey to the startups I have founded and exited, I have learned that the best talent on paper is often the wrong talent for a scaling business. I have stopped looking for the most impressive CV and started looking for something much harder to find: High-trust alignment.

At adstrong, we have built a team that doesn't just work well together, but actually like hanging out together. To some, that sounds like a "nice to have." To me, it is a strategic requirement.

Here is why leveraging your network and hiring people you know deeply is the ultimate scale hack:

𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁
When you hire from your network, you skip the "getting to know you" phase. You already know how they handle pressure and whether they will tell you the truth when things are going wrong. In a fast-growing company, that trust is the only thing that allows you to move at speed.

𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀
Every high-performer has weaknesses. The problem with hiring strangers is that it takes 6-12 months to find out what those weaknesses are. By then, the damage might be done. 

When you hire people you know well, you already have the full picture. You know their "blind spots" just as well as their "superpowers." This puts you in a position of strength as a CEO. You can strategically position them where they are guaranteed to succeed and build systems that cover their gaps. You aren't managing a CV; you are managing a known set of variables.

"𝗡𝗼-𝗖𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗲" 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲
We spend more time with our colleagues than almost anyone else. If you are building a company where you dread the Monday morning meeting because of the personalities in the room, you have already lost. I want to be surrounded by people who challenge me, yes... but also people I would happily grab a beer with on a Friday.

𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁
The best people want to work with two things: big problems and great people. When you hire the "best of the best" from your network, they bring their own networks with them. It creates a virtuous cycle where high-performers want to join because they see the caliber of the people already in the room.

Building a team from zero isn't about filling seats. It is about curating a group of people who are as invested in the "why" as you are.

Ingmar V. Albert

The "Google Tax" is a choice, not a requirement.

When we were involved in the legal friction that forced the creation of the CSS program, the goal wasn't just to "add a link" to the bottom of an ad. It was to introduce actual auction competition into a space that had been a monopoly.

Years later, I'm still surprised by how many sophisticated brands treat the ~20% internal margin they pay to Google as a "cost of doing business." It isn't.

In an environment where CAC is rising and margins are being squeezed by global competition, that 20% isn't just a saving. It's a reinvestment fund. If your competitor is bidding 1€ through a CSS and you are bidding 1€ through Google Shopping, they are effectively outbidding you by about 20% before the auction even starts.

At adstrong, we now manage over 20% of all CSS Centers globally. We don't do this by selling a "discount." we do it by treating the Shopping auction as what it is: a game of marginal gains.

Whether it's using a Branded CSS to reclaim agency authority or leveraging Keyword CSS to occupy more than one spot in the carousel, the goal is the same: Min/Maxing the available real estate.

What worked to get you to 1 million often becomes the very thing that prevents you from getting to 10 million. I call this the "Complexity Tax."

As you scale, your overhead doesn't just grow: it compounds. Your decision-making slows down. You start optimizing for "not losing" instead of winning. But the most dangerous part of the Complexity Tax is that it is often invisible. It hides in your default settings, your legacy contracts, and your "standard" operational procedures.

The most successful CEOs I know aren't the ones who work the hardest. They are the ones who are ruthless about identifying these invisible taxes. 

They ask questions that others find uncomfortable:
1. Is this "industry standard" actually efficient, or is it just what everyone else is doing?
2. Are we building our own infrastructure, or are we just renting someone else's?
3. If we had to start from zero today, would we choose the partners we have now?

Scaling a business isn't about doing more of the same. It is about constantly auditing the foundations you are standing on. If you aren't willing to break your own processes to find a more efficient path, the market will eventually break them for you.

Leadership isn't just about vision. It is about the discipline to keep the "Complexity Tax" from eating your future.

I am tired of hearing about the "grind."

I have been in McKinsey boardrooms and the trenches of my own startups. If there is one thing I have learned, it is this: If you are relying on your team to "push harder" just to hit your numbers, you have hit a ceiling that effort alone won't break.

"Grinding" is often just a symptom of a system that is working against you.

Most CEOs think they can outwork a bad setup. But you can't out-hustle a 20% disadvantage in a Google auction, just like you can't out-hustle a flawed strategy. You are just asking your people to work twice as hard for the same result.

At adstrong, we didn't just build another tool. We fixed the math of the game. We removed the friction so our clients could win without having to redline their teams.

I don't want to be the guy who works the most hours. I want to be the guy who builds the best machine.

Growth shouldn't be a test of endurance. It should be a result of better architecture. If you find yourself stuck, stop looking at the clock and start looking at the pipes.

Stop trying to out-hustle the auction. Start fixing the machine.

🚀 Senior Consultant Digital Advertising @ Hutter Consult AG 💸 10 Years Experience in Digital Marketing & E-Commerce 🤓 PPC & Excel Nerd 🕵‍♂️ Google Ads Detective 🖊 Content Machine 🤝 Networking Enthusiast 😎 Memelord

I’m the Google Ads Detective - nice to meet you and welcome to my network! 🤗 

No cold pitches here, and you can expect the same from me. If I need something, I’ll ask! But if you're ready to scale your digital marketing efforts or improve efficiency, here’s 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩: 

🕵️‍♂️ Comprehensive account audits to identify growth opportunities 
🧠 Crafting tailored advertising strategies that drive real results 
🔨 Setting up high-performing campaigns from scratch 
🚀 Optimizing existing campaigns for better ROI 
🤝 Connecting you with the right person if I’m not the best fit for your project 

𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐬 𝐈 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐢𝐧: Over the past decade, I’ve gained extensive experience managing campaigns for both e-commerce and B2B clients on platforms such as: 

👉 Google Ads 
👉 Microsoft Ads 
👉 Apple Search Ads 
👉 Amazon Ads 
👉 eBay Ads 
👉 Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram) 
👉 LinkedIn Ads 
👉 Criteo 

I have a particular passion for Search and Shopping / Performance Max campaigns, but I’m also well-versed in: 
👉 Demand Gen 
👉 Display Ads 
👉 App campaigns 
👉 YouTube / Video campaigns 
👉 Advantage+ campaigns 

🗺️ 𝐆𝐞𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐞: 

While I primarily focus on the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), my experience spans across markets in Spain, Italy, France, the UK, North and South America, and the Middle East. Fluent in both German and English, I manage multilingual campaigns with ease, requiring translation assistance only for ad texts in other languages. 

🔗 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭? 

I believe that great opportunities often come from unexpected connections. Let’s connect and explore how we might work together to elevate your digital marketing strategies or simply build a valuable professional relationship.

Georgi Zayakov

𝐁𝐚𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭!

Starting March 2026, Lookalike segments in Demand Gen campaigns in Google Ads will default to suggestion mode. What used to be a similarity-based targeting constraint becomes a signal for Google AI, allowing the system to expand beyond defined thresholds.

This is another step toward automation over manual control and I do not like it. Lookalike audiences were the USP of Demand Gen campaigns, and reducing them to a signal instead of a targeting criterion is, in my opinion, a step in the wrong direction.

In this carousel, I have summarized all important information.

Credit to Dario Zannoni for spotting it first and to Adriaan Dekker for bringing it to my attention.

#GoogleAds #DemandGen #PPC #SEM #DigitalMarketing

🕵‍♂️ The Google Ads Detective 🚀 Top 100 PPC Influencer 2 years in a row 💸 10+ Years Experience in Digital Marketing & E-Commerce

Lookalike Audiences Update

Microsoft Advertising has launched a scenario-based Performance Max learning path in the Learning Lab.

The courses cover setup, optimization, and troubleshooting, with hands-on practice for real campaign scenarios. Completing all three gives you a verifiable Performance Max badge to showcase your skills.

You’ll get guidance on creative, audience signals, bids, and budgets, plus checklists and reference materials for applied learning.

If you want to learn how to implement and optimize Performance Max campaigns, this learning path makes it practical.

#MicrosoftAds #BingAds #PPC #PMax #SEM

If you are using ad scheduling, especially for lead gen or B2B campaigns, you don’t want to miss this update.

Jordan Fry received an email from Google yesterday informing him that, beginning in March, Google Ads will try to spend the full monthly budget regardless of a campaign’s ad schedule.

This means the system may become more aggressive with CPCs at certain times.

In some accounts, we only run ads during working hours. It can be challenging to spend the full monthly budget, and in some cases I’ve set higher budgets to manage pacing that way.

With this change, you need to be more conservative and careful. Check your monthly limits in the Budget report.

#GoogleAds #PPC #SEA #SEM #DigitalMarketing

Last week, Microsoft has refreshed its AI Marketer’s Guide, offering practical tips for brands to show up in AI-powered search, both through paid placements and organic visibility. 

The guide covers:

LLMs demystified: How large language models work and how Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) improves accuracy.

AI search mechanics: How AI surfaces brands using baseline knowledge, retrieved web content, and structured first-party data.

SEO vs. GEO: Why traditional SEO remains essential, but GEO emphasizes clarity, structure, and phrasing to be AI-ready.

Expert insights: Contributions from leading voices including Aleyda Solis, Britney Muller, Crystal Carter, Lily Ray, Michael King, Myriam Jessier, and Pedro Bojikian.

For marketers, the key takeaway is clear: AI is reshaping discovery, and visibility now requires a deliberate approach that blends structured content, paid strategies, and AI-aware optimization.

Worth a read if you want to understand how brands will be found in 2026 and beyond.

#MicrosoftAds #BingAds #PPC #AI #GEO

AI Search Demystified

With the launch of Scenario Planner, Meridian takes the next step from measurement to action.

Nearly 40% of marketers say their organizations struggle to connect Marketing Mix Model outputs to real business decisions, according to a recent report by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services.

That gap is what Meridian was built to close.

Scenario Planner introduces a user-friendly interface that allows marketers to test different budget scenarios and see real-time ROI estimates, no coding required. Instead of only analyzing what happened, teams can now model what happens next and align on investment decisions collaboratively.

#Meridian #MMM #MarketingMixModelling #Attribution #DigitalMarketing

Meridian Scenario Planner

Spotted by Matteo Braghetta: Google is rolling out controlled A/B testing for creatives directly inside Performance Max.

You can now test two asset sets within a single asset group, with a defined traffic split and experiment structure.

How it works:
 • Asset set A = control (existing assets)
 • Asset set B = treatment (new creatives)
 • Optional shared assets across both variants
 • Defined traffic split, e.g. 50/50
 • Recommended runtime: 4 to 6 weeks

Benefits:
 • Cleaner measurement of creative impact
 • More structured, data-based rollout decisions
 • Potential efficiency and ROAS improvements over time

#PerformanceMax #PMax #GoogleAds #PPC #SEM

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