In the second part of our Champions of Performance Marketing conversation with Josh Littler, CEO and co-founder of Digital Mojito, we get into the operational detail: how long to leave a campaign running before you optimize, what makes a creative perform, why the ugliest creatives often convert best, the tracking and attribution gaps that hold advertisers back, the pre-lander versus direct link question, and how Josh uses AI in his daily media buying workflow.
If you missed it, read Part 1 of our interview with Josh Littler here!
Check the episode on Spotify here:
Or you can watch it on YouTube here!
Q: How much time, at minimum, should you leave a campaign running to get data before you start optimizing based on it?
Josh: It depends on the vertical and on how you get paid.
On a CPL basis, you can get results pretty quickly because it is higher up in the funnel, so you get a better vision of the future projection of that campaign early on.
If you are running e-commerce and you get paid on a CPA or per sale, then I would say leave it for four or five days minimum to see how things are working. E-commerce is probably five days, sometimes seven days. It depends.
You may get one conversion; you may get two. It all depends on your ad spend and your budget, but the learning process is there. Meta specifically tells us there is a learning process. We need to leave it and let it do its job.
For lead gen, I would say two or three days is more than enough for you to know whether an angle is working or not.
Q: About creatives. What makes a creative perform well, and what should you pay attention to when building them? We have AI and we have suggestions, but humans tend to be emotional and react differently to different creatives, so how much can AI really do here without our help?
Josh: I think AI does need a bit of assistance with reaching certain emotions, although it is getting very good at it now.
There are some really powerful tools in the market that do almost everything for you.
But with creative, it is all about the angles.
It is about learning about the avatar you want to show the ad to. Put yourself in their shoes. What solution are you giving them to their problem? You need to do that research and understand what problem they have. And if they do not have a problem, create it for them, and offer them a solution in the same moment.
Different angles, of course. It is all about trying different wordings and different combinations.
Video creative is very strong with creators at the moment.
Static images are working really well. Carousels actually work surprisingly well, depending on the vertical.
For my advertisers and for me, the most important thing is compliance and brand. Following brand guidelines, making sure you are promoting the brand as they want to be perceived by the user, by their potential consumer. That is a key thing. Other brands just want to sell, and as long as you do not do anything illegal, they do not really mind how you promote them.
But with ours, where it is a brand that says “I am Maserati, I want to give you some budget, I want you to do media buying for me on your sites and your socials” then it becomes a little bit more complicated from a brand compliance and guideline perspective.
I would say that represents maybe 1% of media buying efforts in the world, less than 1%, for branding campaigns. For everything else, as long as you have creative freedom from the brand and you really know what you are supposed to be doing, with the best interest of the brand and of getting paid for that commission, you are fine.
At the end of the day, we are investing our own money. If the advertiser does not give you budget for ad spend and you are investing your own money, you need to do it right and you want to make it work.
Q: So the creatives should not be misleading, to stay compliant?
Josh: Yes, they should not be misleading, because it just ends up in chargebacks, refunds and complaints, and ultimately you are going to be removed from the campaign, blacklisted, and any commissions you have generated scrubbed. That is in extreme cases, of course.
But from a creative perspective, I would say be compliant, be creative, and, I know it is hard to say, do not rely on AI to give you a solution to all your problems. Use it as a support.
I use AI for everything, I have got to admit, but I use it more like the walking sticks they give you when you break your leg. It is the same thing. You use it as a support, or like training wheels on a bicycle.
Q: How often should creatives be changed?
Josh: Rather than changing them, I am more of the opinion of adding them to a successful campaign, adding creatives, and then removing the ones that are not pacing at the right level.
I think you should always be testing, because the data is there for you to see and to make your own decisions and assumptions. So I would say just add creatives rather than swapping them.We find more success in adding creatives rather than swapping around from existing active ads.
I remove them when they go below a certain threshold and are not pacing at the right level. If they are pacing below a certain level for me, I just pause them, and I revisit with a different angle and keep trying.
Q: How many creatives do you usually use for a campaign?
Josh: The way I structure it is the campaign, then the ad set is a certain avatar, a certain target market. Then I do 5 to 10 different creatives and variations for each ad set, and I will probably try three or four different avatars at a time.
- one campaign
- an ad set per avatar
- 5 to 10 creatives per ad set
I am probably running about 40 different creatives at a time, and then I just use the data to help me make informed decisions. Before, I used to get very involved in the campaign setup process, I used to love a creative and always want to keep it there, and it just becomes really counterproductive. I have made a ton of mistakes in that respect. I still have a lot to learn, but from my personal experience, that is how it goes.
Q: When you build something, you get very attached to it, and it is hard to let go of some parts. Is the feedback you get from traffic, clicks, and customers what helps you let go?
Josh: Yes. And I usually find that what works is not necessarily what I think is working. That is usually the trend in my life. Whatever I think is going to do really well is actually the complete opposite.
Most of the time, the ugliest creatives and the worst copy are what convert the best for me.
Q: You mentioned that you watch the data. What metrics do you watch closely when you optimize a campaign?
Josh: Primarily reach. Reach (visitors), clicks, conversions, and most importantly the CPA, if it is within my threshold levels.
I focus on those four key elements more than anything.
If you get a good reach but a low click, then there is an issue with your creative. If you get a high reach, high click and low conversion, then you know there is something with the landing page, or something in the user journey post-click.
So there is a lot of information you can get just from a snapshot of the data. You can see where things are dropping off.
A top tip for me, and I know we said we should not use AI that much, is that I literally screenshot it, upload it into Claude, and get it to do an analysis for me.
You can use other tools like Manus. Manus is a Meta product now. It is an AI that is working really well, and you just connect it to your ads library. Y
ou literally have a conversation with it and say: okay, what is working, what is not, what do I need to change, what is successful, what is failing. You just have a conversation with this AI and it tells you very clearly and candidly what needs to be done.
If you have an issue with the landing page, there are two ways to handle it.
- You can speak to the advertiser and discuss what is happening and get them to share information about where the user is dropping off. Maybe there is friction with the pricing or copy, or something on the site that just does not agree with the user.
- If you control the landing page or the user journey, and you have a pre-lander or advertorial in place, and the user drops off from there, then you know you need to make a few tweaks to keep the user on the site. There needs to be a connection from impression to click to conversion.
If the user is looking at coffee products and they go to a site that then talks about the benefits of tea, they are going to drop off.
But if you are talking about coffee products, then the benefits of coffee and of a coffee subscription, then they are likely to potentially take that coffee subscription. So it depends, but there needs to be cohesiveness for sure.
Q: The affiliates you work with, do you see them using pre-landers or sending traffic directly to the offer? As an affiliate, you do not control the final offer page, but you can control the landing page and warm up the visitor there. What is your experience with the ones you work with?
Josh: I think that is a deeply personal decision for each affiliate.
It depends on whether they run the ads on a page that has authority. If it is a relatively easy vertical that is not overly saturated and is very branded, then you could get away with sending users straight through to the landing page. It also depends on your copy and your ads.
If you need to warm up a user because there is a purchase and you need to create that purchase intent, then you do need to implement some sort of intermediary solution for the user to read through and learn about the benefits. You have the opportunity to have that user read about the product, which gives you the chance to sell them and warm them up.
It is like an oven. If the oven is hot, the bread is going to bake. If it is not, it is not.
A pre-lander depends on the affiliate and their experience.
I normally find that new affiliates sometimes do not have much experience with pre-landers, or do not have the technology or the know-how for what they need to do on one. That is fine. You can try sending traffic straight through to the landing page, but then your creative or ad copy needs to be absolutely perfect for the user to be pre-warmed before they get there.
So it really depends. Some of my affiliates are extremely creative and they can get conversions out of thin air, really good quality conversions. I would never even know how they do it, but the advertisers always want more of that traffic, so we know it works.
And as a platform, we invest a lot in technology. We have a fraud prevention tool to make sure the traffic is clean. But yes, it depends on the affiliate and their preferences.
Julia @CPV Lab: From our side, we have a tracking platform, CPV Lab and CPV One, used by media buyers, and they sometimes use direct linking, going straight to the offer. But most of the time when they start something, we notice they split it. They send some traffic directly and some to the landing page, and test to compare the data. As you said, it depends a lot on the affiliate’s experience and on the offer
Q: You mentioned that data is very important, and I agree. With all these AIs, data needs to be accurate so you can monitor and optimize. What mistakes do you see advertisers make with attribution and tracking?
Josh: Without sounding too controversial, I think the larger the company, the worse the setup they have, because they try to build everything internally rather than rely on a third party that knows exactly what they are doing to offer them that solution.
I also think a lot of advertisers do not give the affiliates the opportunity to track different events of the traffic they are sending.
For me, that is a very key and common limitation across a lot of advertisers, because they rely purely on reporting back the conversion they want to pay you for. They do not necessarily tell you if the user signed up as a lead, added to cart, abandoned the cart, or other really important elements for you as an affiliate to know where the traffic is dropping off.
If the user drops off a lot at cart abandonment and you get that information, then you know maybe it is not your issue, maybe it is an issue with the advertiser that you need to raise with them.
But if you do not have that visibility, you cannot do it. You just think, okay, that campaign is not working for me, I am going to pause it, and that is it. Then you never look back and never consider running it again.
So advertisers definitely need to work a little bit more on improving their processes from a tracking gaps and attribution perspective, with a view to reporting that information to affiliates more often. I think that is a massive issue at the moment.
Q: Beyond conversions, signals like phone, age or email matter too, but as an affiliate you usually do not have that information because the advertiser keeps it private. Would the partnership be better if that information flowed more easily?
Josh: Absolutely. If you have a direct relationship with an advertiser and they can tell you exactly what the traffic is doing and who those users are, it is completely relevant to you as a buyer, but it is also interesting for them, because you are going to be driving them more sales, more leads and more traffic.
So it is something advertisers do need to invest more time and resources in. It is a limitation at the moment, and it restricts success.
Q: Do advertisers need to be educated to start doing this so that once some of them see the progress, it grows like a snowball?
Josh: Exactly. It is what I say to my advertisers most of the time.
As an advertiser, when you run your own campaigns, you want to see what the user is doing.
The affiliate expects exactly the same as what you expect to see.
So if you can provide that information and insight, it does not mean the affiliate is going to ask you for more money. That is not the end goal. The end goal is for the affiliate to make money and to make a sustainable campaign out of your products.
Q: Since we are talking about this partnership between brands and affiliates, what do you think brands look for in affiliate partners? Are there specific things they ask from you when you find them affiliates?
Josh: We already have a close-knit community of affiliates on our network.
It is very important for us as a network to know those affiliates, what works for them and what does not, so that we do not waste each other’s time.
If I am running a campaign with you and you do really well with technology, but I know from historical performance that you do not do well with gambling, I am not going to send you gambling. It is just a waste of everybody’s resources.
So it is important for us to know our affiliates as peers of the industry. Some of them are even friends, and we know them down to a family level. I think it is very important to have that connection with your partners.
Then we share those insights with the advertisers, because at least that way the advertisers know that everything is under control, that you are going to run a campaign with integrity, and that you want the campaign to be a success.
When we speak to the brands, most of them already know how we run our campaigns and what we can give them from our affiliates.
Q: What do you think makes brands stop working with affiliates?
Josh: Bad experiences, fraud, a lack of transparency, a lack of insight.
You find plenty of brands that have tried the affiliate space and got very badly burnt with fraud, for example. That is a massive issue, and we remedy it with fraud prevention. We can say very confidently that in the last three or four years we have had this fraud prevention tool, we have not had a single case of fraud.
There are times where you have fluctuations in quality, and that is inevitable, but that is another topic, because quality is relative to what the advertiser perceives of the lead. Fraud, though, is a massive issue, and we feel we have put a stop to it with our own fraud prevention solution.
When an advertiser does not want to run affiliate campaigns, it is usually because they have had fraud before, or a campaign run non-compliantly, and the list can go on.
An example I have had quite a few times is specifically for the email channel. Advertisers have tried the affiliate channel via email and found it created a lot of complaints, legal issues and compliance problems, and they do not want to try email ever again. It becomes a non-negotiable, because the issue was too big at the time. It is our job to ensure those things do not happen.
Q: So is your job essentially to filter the affiliates? And is this part of why affiliate marketing has the reputation it has, not fully undeserved, since the fraud was much worse a few years ago than today?
Josh: Yes, it does have that reputation. There are also stricter filters these days. Advertisers have a really strict level of what they expect from you as an affiliate.
We have a campaign now, for example, where we have to send the affiliate a 30 or 40 question due diligence questionnaire, where they fill out everything about how they operate, where they collect the data, permissions, all of it. Then it takes the brand two or three weeks to approve that, and only then can the affiliate run the campaign.
So there are processes in place. But if you pass those processes and run a campaign, success is almost guaranteed, because the campaigns are normally quite good.
Consider this: if you spend half an hour or an hour filling out a due diligence form, then wait two or three weeks, and then the campaign does not convert, that is a massive waste of your time as an affiliate. We try to find an even balance.
What we do is expect the affiliate to fill it out once, and then we forward that template to the advertiser, so the affiliate does not have to do any more work. We do it for them in that respect.
Q: That makes sense, and I think it is very good for the brand. Let us talk a little about AI and how you use it in your workflows. What part of the work should a media buyer automate, if you have any advice there?
Josh: If we are speaking specifically about media buying, reporting and workflows in that space, I use ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex and Manus. I use them all and I rely heavily on the MCPs, and I connect to my marketplace, my ads library, my pages, to everything. What I like is that I do everything conversationally. I think that is the most important thing, because I consider myself an expert in digital marketing, but I do not consider myself an expert in media buying.
I do believe AI can help you gain insight into things you might not consider looking into.
For example, if you use Manus, which has that direct integration with Meta, you literally just ask the question. Get it to run a report and set up a schedule, a workflow, so that every Monday, or every two or three days, it sends you an export of how your campaigns look and how they are performing: conversions, clicks, reach and so on, in a snapshot. It really helps you organize your day.
I have gone one step further and use a technology called OpenClaw, which is an agent setup. I give it access to my Meta accounts and my ads library. If I want to, it can automatically pause campaigns, switch creatives and try different angles.
You can let it do your media buying for you. Most of the time I do not have it enabled because I think it is not too secure right now, and I am not at the level where I can give it that level of freedom, but I know the capability is there, and I have it pre-configured to do that.
I use it more for reporting. I just get on my Telegram and ask it a question. “How are my campaigns turning out at the moment?” “How is X campaign doing today, I saw a spike in conversions?”
You just have a conversation with it, like you would with the advertiser or the affiliate. I think you use AI for that, to set up these workflows for you.
Q: Is that the trend now, talking to the data and understanding in plain language what is happening instead of reading all the reporting so you can see that your campaign is doing great but your landing page is not, and focus there?
Josh: Yes. Meta also has its own AI embedded in the Ad Manager now.
You can go there and ask a question and get the same feedback. But you have a level of limitations there when it comes to workflows.
You cannot actually do workflows through that tool. But if you plug in a third-party tool, then you have all the insight you need. It is so overwhelming to look at just data on a screen, but with this, you get it structured in a clear way with useful suggestions on how to improve.
Q: What would be your top advice for somebody starting media buying now, as an affiliate?
Josh: There are a lot of things to consider when you are a media buyer.
I would say have a clear idea of what you want to spend and what you are prepared to invest in media buying.
Find the niche that you are particularly interested in. That is also a very key element, like what we touched on earlier.
Do not let yourself get carried away by emotions, by what other people are doing, and by what they are supposedly making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars with, because most of the time it is not that true, it is just hype.
Find a niche you are comfortable with and know a little bit about. You do not have to be an expert in it, but know something about it, something you enjoy, and something that has the potential to make you money.
If you think doing teacups is going to make you money, maybe it is not going to make you a millionaire. You may sell a few teacups, but it is not going to make you rich. So be structured, be disciplined, and know exactly what you want to achieve. Be patient. That is also a super key attribute we all need to have.
Patience is a virtue, as the saying goes.
Be organized, know what you want to achieve, and work towards that goal. And do not let emotion get in the way. Other than that, you could have a successful campaign if you follow those steps, in my opinion.
Conclusion
Josh Littler’s second half doubles down on a discipline-first mindset: give campaigns enough time to exit the learning phase before you intervene, add winning creatives rather than constantly swapping them, and trust the data over your own attachment to a favorite ad, because the ugly creative often wins.
His sharpest point for the wider industry is the tracking gap. When advertisers withhold event-level data from affiliates, both sides lose. Passing those events back through a server-to-server postback and on to the ad platform through the Conversion API is what turns the relationship into a genuine win-win. On AI, his framing is consistent: a support, like training wheels, not a replacement for your own judgment.
To get the complete picture of Josh’s email, creative and media buying expertise, watch the full video interview on our YouTube channel.
Read the first part of the interview with Josh Littler here!
And if you want to get in touch with Josh, go to Digital Mojito or on Linkedin and talk to him.
Watch the full interview here:
This interview is part of our ongoing Champions of Performance Marketing series featuring marketing experts who share actionable strategies you can implement today. Subscribe to our newsletter so we can notify you when we release our next expert interview.
Author: Julia Draghici
Julia is the CEO of CPV Lab and CPV One ad trackers. She has 15+ years experience in the software industry, from development to management. For more than 8 years she is helping marketers get the best out of their marketing campaigns by using a performant ad tracker. Passionate about entrepreneurship, business and performance marketing, Julia loves helping people!
