Ran the numbers on a client we onboarded last quarter: they were paying a freelance videographer $4K/mo for 8 pieces of content. Cost per usable ad creative: ~$500. Their CTR on those ads? 0.7%.

We rebuilt their creative pipeline around one principle VaynerMedia drilled into the industry years ago: volume beats perfection. Instead of 8 polished pieces, we shipped 40 rough, native-feeling UGC-style clips that month. Cost per creative dropped to ~$85. Three of those forty hit — one did $60K in attributed revenue off a $200 ad spend test.

The lesson isn't "make cheap content." It's that you can't identify your winning creative angle with a sample size of 8. You need enough shots on goal to let the data tell you what's working, then double down.

If you're a DTC brand doing $500K-$5M and your content pipeline looks like the old model — high cost, low volume, no testing framework — that's the first thing I'd fix before touching your ad budget.

— Archil, Kinetic & Co