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Jess Bachman

Creative Strategy Director · FireTeam

Jess Bachman is Creative Strategy Director at FireTeam, a performance creative agency that gets paid based on how its ads perform. He's the loudest advocate for dedicated creative testing campaigns in a world moving toward "just throw it all in cost caps," and he builds his arguments on baseball metaphors, stages-of-awareness theory, and a metric he invented called Creative Cycle Time.

Distinctive beliefs, repeated across talks

How Jess Bachman thinks about creative testing

01

Creative Cycle Time is the metric that actually matters

Bachman invented CCT — the loop time from testing an ad, to analyzing data, to shipping the next iteration. He argues the accounts growing fastest have the lowest CCT (ideally 1-2 weeks), and that reporting cadences, slow approvals, and rigid SOWs silently hard-code speed limits into organizations. Most teams obsess over hook rate or ROAS; he thinks the upstream bottleneck is how fast you close the loop.

"The most important creative metric is Creative Cycle Time."

"A non-result is worse than discovering a loser."

"Be very careful of hard-coding parts of your cycle time."

02

Every ad deserves enough spend to be judged fairly

Against the 'let the algorithm sort it out with cost caps' school, Bachman insists every asset needs guaranteed spend — at minimum 3x CPA — to produce a real signal. He rejects the idea that Meta can identify a winner on $20 of spend, and says nothing breaks his heart more than a great ad sitting in a cost-cap account with $4 of spend for weeks.

"Every asset that you put into market gets enough spend to determine if it's a winner or loser."

"I don't believe that there is some magic in the creative testing part where Facebook can find a winner with $20 worth of spend."

"There's nothing that breaks my heart more than making an amazing ad and seeing it sit in some cost cap creative testing account with $4 of spend for weeks."

03

Media buyer as umpire: three strikes, with fouls

Bachman's baseball metaphor governs when to kill an ad: each swing equals one CPA of spend, three strikes (3x CPA with zero purchases) is an out. But strong leading indicators — thumbstop, hold rate — can convert what looks like a strike into a foul ball, earning the ad more runway. Human judgment sits on top of the data, not beside it.

"Your job as a media buyer, creative strategist, or whatever, you are the umpire."

"Each swing is the CPA worth of ad spend."

"Singles and doubles win ball games."

04

Video fills the funnel; static empties it

Bachman thinks static-heavy accounts are either unhealthy or belong to brands with massive unaided awareness. Static only works on the bottom two stages of awareness (product-aware, most-aware); video is required to persuade the top of the funnel. If you look at a random account and see mostly static, that's a diagnostic signal something is wrong.

"Static images simply have less persuasive power than video."

"Video to fill the funnel. Static to empty it."

05

Spend 10% of ad spend on creative — budget by tier

Bachman argues 5-15% of ad spend should go to creative production, with 10% as the sweet spot. Below $10K/month is DIY, $100K unlocks a good agency, $500K means agency plus in-house, $1M+ is in-house supplemented by agencies. And the ideal agency/in-house split is roughly 50/50 — 80%+ on either side is a warning sign.

"We get paid more if the creative does better and get paid less if the creative does worse or does not spend at all."

"Creative costs money."

06

The best creative skill is noticing how you feel

Bachman's two-question evaluation — 'What am I feeling?' and 'Why am I feeling it?' — is, in his view, more valuable than any marketing psychology book. Boredom means cuts are too long; confusion means add a banner; feeling 'off' means the music or creator is wrong. He thinks most feedback fails because people intellectualize instead of listening to their own reactions.

"Nothing is going to compare to developing this one skill, which is noticing how you feel when watching an ad."

"What am I feeling? Why am I feeling it?"

07

No strategy works every time — brands have agency

Bachman pushes back against marketers who speak in absolutes or claim one method works universally. He thinks it's dangerous to strip brands of agency over their own destiny, and he's willing to concede that a rival method may be the right starting point while insisting his own becomes correct at scale. Bayesian-flavored arguments that creative metrics don't matter get a hard no from him.

"I will die on the hill that there is no strategy that works every time."

"If someone uses the word 'Bayesian,' that is your cue to nope out of the conversation."

"Only the Sith speak in absolutes."

Citation-ready quotes from across the corpus

Jess Bachman's most cited quotes

"You can't have emotional attachment to the ideas or the creatives. You do need to cut them and move on."

On why teams fail to kill underperforming creative fast enough.

"There's nothing that breaks my heart more than making an amazing ad and seeing it sit in some cost cap creative testing account with $4 of spend for weeks."

On why he refuses to run good creative through pure cost-cap structures.

Named methodologies Jess has introduced or articulated

Jess Bachman's frameworks

Creative Cycle Time (CCT)

The time it takes to complete one loop of test an ad → analyze data → ship another ad. Bachman argues the accounts growing fastest have the shortest CCT (1 week excellent, 2 weeks good, 4 weeks bad). Shrink every stage: guarantee spend so tests produce results, use shared tools to cut communication lag, negotiate flexible SOWs so production isn't rate-limited, and avoid hard-coding monthly reporting cadences that silently set your ceiling.

  1. Test an ad (with enough spend to produce a real signal)
  2. Analyze the data (shared tools, fast media-buyer ↔ creative communication)
  3. Make another ad (talented team, flexible SOWs, good creator relationships)
  4. Loop — aim for 1-2 week cadence

Baseball Umpire Creative Testing

The media buyer is the umpire; the ad is the batter; each 1x CPA of spend is a swing. Zero purchases at 1x CPA is a strike — three strikes (3x CPA, no purchases) and the ad is out. But a purchase above target CPA is a foul ball (extend runway), and strong leading indicators like thumbstop or hold rate can justify calling a strike a foul. Use it to stop killing ads too early without extending losers forever.

  1. Set CPA target
  2. Each 1x CPA of spend = one swing
  3. 0 purchases at 1x CPA = strike; purchase above CPA = foul; 3 strikes = out
  4. Use thumbstop/hold rate to convert borderline strikes into fouls and extend spend

When Does an Ad Become a Hit?

A hit-tier system based on multiples of CPA. At a $100 CPA: a Single is 10x CPA ($1K spend), a Double is 100x ($10K), a Triple is 1,000x ($100K), a Home Run is 10,000x ($1M). Bachman's point is that singles and doubles compound to beat one-ad home runs, because each hit appeals to a slightly different slice of the audience.

Creative Production Budgeting by Ad Spend

Spend 5-15% of ad spend on creative production, with ~10% as the sweet spot. Maps to a solution tier: $1K/mo → DIY; $10K → contractors; $50K → cheap agency; $100K → good agency; $500K → good agency + in-house; $1M+ → in-house + good agencies. Ideal agency/in-house mix is ~50/50; 80%+ on either side is a warning sign.

Two-Question Ad Evaluation

When giving creative feedback, ask only two questions: (1) What am I feeling while watching this? Bored, engaged, confused, off? (2) Why am I feeling it? Bachman argues this skill beats memorizing marketing psychology books because it forces you to diagnose the actual viewer experience second by second.

  1. Watch the ad and notice the emotion (bored / engaged / confused / off)
  2. Diagnose why — a too-long cut, a weak creator, a missing banner, wrong music
  3. Turn the 'why' into a specific edit

Red Flags for Bad Creative Advice

Three warning signs when taking creative advice: (1) single-brand operators whose strategy is shaped by one atypical business, (2) people who speak in absolutes ('cost caps always work'), and (3) anyone clearly selling you something. Not automatic disqualifiers, but triggers to be hyper-skeptical.

  1. Check if they only operate one brand
  2. Check if they speak in absolutes
  3. Check what they're selling
The framings Jess keeps returning to

Jess Bachman's signature questions

4 talks in Motion's library

All Jess Bachman talks

Panel

DTC Ad Creative Testing Showdown: Faris vs Bachman 🥊

Jul 2024 · 55 min
Tutorial

11 Hot Takes to Make Better Ads in 2024

Jun 2024 · 58 min
Panel

2024 Ad Strategy for Pros – Make Ads That Convert

May 2024 · 1 min
Panel

Debate: The Role of Creative Metrics With Jess Bachman, Taylor Holiday, Kyra Richards, Reza Khadjavi

Nov 2023 · 56 min