The Meta Game

I help social impact businesses improve their marketing efficiency and scale as an independent consultant and advisor.

I also write about and coach creative strategy and growth marketing at themetagame.us 

Specialties: Creative Strategy, Paid Social, Media Buying Strategy, Attribution, Signals, Automation, AI in marketing, Monetization, Onboarding, Privacy, General Growth Strategy

Consultant and Advisor

10 Scale

Media Buying & Performance creative designed for scale
10scale.co

President

Calm

Drove 1.2mm subscriptions
Reached ~1bn people
Led creative direction and production for 5500 ads

Focused on Paid Social & Creative Strategy/Production, working cross functionally with Data-sci, Data-eng, Product, Content, Marketing teams

Director, Growth Marketing

Sr. Manager of User Acquisition

User Acquisition Manager

Defeat by Tweet

Raised $7mm for community organizers in PA, GA, MI, WI, AZ, NV & CO by using Donald Trump's tweets against him.

Advisor

PlayQ

• Scaled monthly UA spend from $500k to $2MM: Facebook, Google, Rewarded Video Networks, DSPs
• Decreased mean cost per purchase by ~40%. Core wins: Value Opt & Min ROAS bidding (Facebook), Publisher level bidding, Network level LTV segmentation & portfolio optimization

Alphabit Trading

Operated data-driven yield curve and calendar spread desk in electronic U.S. treasury cash and futures markets, resulting in 40 months of consecutive profitability and 259% average year-over-year profit growth. Regularly maintained positions of roughly $10mm in notional risk with allocated limits exceeding $40mm. Primary strategies include: Relative Value Arbitrage, Spread Arbitrage, Statistical Arbitrage & Discretionary Positioning.

Sr. Fixed Income Trader

University of Northern Colorado

•Voted Team Captain by Peers
•2012 Football Scholar-Athlete of the Year

Student Athlete

Performance Marketing Designed for Scale, Ex-Calm | Creative Strategy and Paid Social Consulting & Coaching @ themetagame.us | Fully Scaled Creative Services @ 10scale.co | Meta, Google, ASA and TikTok ads

I started my career in derivatives trading and turned my knowledge of markets for the better, making the world happier and healthier at Calm as a Growth Marketing leader.

Now I am an agency owner, consultant, coach and advisor supporting products that make a positive social impact.  Over the years I have supported hundreds of millions of dollars of media spend on life changing products and political campaigns.

I am a student of the game and love both learning and teaching others. Check out my blog where I spill all the secrets at blog.themetagame.us!

On a personal level, I’m passionate about mindfulness, making art, the outdoors, and other people. My mission is to make other people's life better by leveraging technology and creativity.

We're getting glimpses into the AI marketing future as automated ads, funnels, and even products are starting to scale. 

Sadly the first look is not in a techno-optimist, exciting way. Right now, it's in an extractive zero sum way. I'm seeing products scaling in health and fitness using 100% stolen ads & every dark monetization pattern, just to push someone through to a text based web-app. On one hand: they often are using techniques I write about in the meta game, as well as actual ads that I made as the reference, so it's hard not to laugh at the irony. And from a technical perspective -- I'm impressed -- the monetization mechanics sometimes are really novel and innovative, and the products have made me reconsider whether you need a fully developed app or user experience to give people a lot of value.

But mostly it's sketchy behavior and makes me realize how much an arbitrage based strategy is becoming a race to zero and likely to get smoked in the long run by products that focus on trust, community, and delivering value — so long as the whole industry doesn't get a bad wrap.

Nick Candler

Performance Marketing Designed for Scale | President @ 10scale.co | Meta, TikTok, Google, ASA, + | All our secrets free @ Blog.TheMetaGame.US

Right now Threads is where I’m seeing the most interesting ideas rewarded. You can go viral with no network just like TikTok or Reels. In terms of design, this is where I’m seeing people on the edge — which makes sense, because the algorithm is more open than the feed or discover. The platform is increasingly monetizing with ads. Just like when you see murals getting thrown up in a trendy neighborhood, now is the time to buy in. Right now to the best of my knowledge the placement is only available for web advertisers, adding to the growing list of why apps should consider a web based funnel.

The best lesson I ever learned on the Pareto principle was from my Dad when I was in Cub Scouts. 

For those who don’t know Cub Scouts, there’s an event every year where kids (read: their parents) would build and race small cars called the pinewood derby.

I remember buying and handing over the kit for the car to him, fantasizing over what the final design would look like.

He came back to me two days later having made a single corner to corner cut, turning the block into a simple wedge.

I looked at him confused — “what is this?”

He shrugged — “It’s the most aerodynamic design.”

When we went to the derby, we didn’t win, but we did finish in the top 20%. 

Iterative and low cost ads are well understood these days, but when I see people struggle it’s still usually because they are over complicating things and getting away from the fundamentals 

When it comes to ads, you can beat 80% of people with simple statics; text walls; and small, disciplined iteration on existing wins.

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