Tony Chopp
Career media buyer who leads paid media at Common Thread Collective and authors the paid-media side of the “CTC canon” — CTC’s house methodology for Meta (sales objective, value optimisation with minimum ROAS, inflated budgets with cost controls, evergreen vs marketing-moment campaigns, never turning ads off). In 2026 CTC connected Claude to its Statlas database via MCP to analyse portfolio-wide questions, e.g. ~$1.5B of Meta spend across ~320 accounts.
Strong on: cost-control and value bidding (min ROAS, cost cap, bid cap), budget liquidity, ecommerce account structure, setting platform targets from margin and incrementality.
Bias to keep in mind: speaks for an agency with a strong prior for cost-controlled buying; portfolio results are CTC’s clients (ecommerce, Shopify-heavy) and the full reports aren’t public in the episodes; episodes carry sponsor reads (Tapcart, Lutiq).
Sources: sources/youtube/common-thread-collective/.
Notes citing Tony Chopp
- Conversions API (CAPI) — why server-side conversion feedback mattersWhy browser pixels broke under Safari ITP and ATT, how server-to-server Conversion APIs restore feedback to ad platforms (identifiers to send, full event stream), which platforms now offer CAPIs, and why advertisers only integrate a few.
- Fixing Meta underspend — CTC's four phases, and why they never turn off adsCommon Thread Collective's 4-phase answer when Meta won't spend at target efficiency — (1) creative expansion with big concept swings, (2) bid-surface expansion by duplicating evergreen campaigns into other bid types, (3) an "underspend" ASC for ads that got <3× target CPA in spend, (4) relaxing the ROAS/cost constraint only when the business justifies it — plus the "never turn off an ad" principle and how others disagree.
- How many ads per ad set, and the minimum budget for a Meta campaignPractitioner numbers for ads per ad set (10 to start, 15–20 diverse concepts in a consolidated ad set, 3–6 per concept test, ~20 for ASC) and minimum daily budgets (≥3× target CPA, ≥$100/day for ASC, $100–300 per concept test).
- How to structure a Meta ads account in 2025–2026The campaign layouts practitioners actually run — Dara Denney's testing campaign + Advantage+ (ASC) core, Smart Marketer's one-campaign-per-objective "Andromeda portfolio", CTC's evergreen (acquisition/retention ad sets filled to 150 ads) + marketing-moment campaigns, Ben Heath and Jon Loomer's one-campaign-one-ad-set start, Mars Men's 40 pillar campaigns — plus multiple products, countries, retargeting and the 2020 baseline.
- Meta audience segments — proving remarketing happens on its ownDefine engaged-audience and existing-customer segments in Meta's advertising settings, then use the audience-segment breakdown on sales campaigns to see how much budget already goes to warm people (often 10–30%+) — why separate remarketing campaigns are usually unnecessary and non-incremental, and how the breakdown underpins scaling and fatigue decisions.
- Meta bid strategy — minimum ROAS vs cost per result goal vs lowest costCTC's analysis of ~$1.5B Meta spend across ~320 accounts (Mar–Jun 2026) found minimum ROAS lands within a few percent of its target at portfolio level while the cost-per-result goal hit target less than half the time (on Google tROAS 1.3× target, tCPA 0.8×); why value bidding gives the algorithm more room, how CTC sets the target from margin and incrementality, budget liquidity, and the low-volume counter-advice to avoid manual bids.
- Meta's incremental attribution model — should you switch from standard?What Meta's ad-set-level "incremental" attribution model does (predicts which conversions the ad caused, and optimises for them) versus standard 7-day click / 1-day view / 1-day engaged-view, why results look worse after switching, and who should use it — Jon Loomer says most advertisers, Ben Heath says only larger advertisers with a customer base.
- The breakdown effect — judge Meta results at the ad-set level, not per adWhy per-ad and per-asset comparisons mislead on Meta (historical ROAS doesn't predict future delivery; low-volume slices; day-1 delivery ≠ day-8), so judge ad sets or CBO campaigns in aggregate, launch new ads in batches of uniquely different angles every ~2 weeks, and don't chase the single winning headline or image.
- Weekly Meta media-buying cadence and attribution settingsLaunch new ads on one fixed day each week and judge after 7 days; use 7-day click for evergreen campaigns and 1-day click for flash sales; starter bid/attribution defaults; how teams run weekly pillar and hypothesis reviews; when third-party attribution tools are worth it.
- What actually moves Meta ads results in 2026 — the fundamentals checklistA consolidated checklist from Ben Heath ("97% of results"), Jon Loomer (foundational elements) and CTC (the "canon") — simplify and consolidate, make creative the targeting via diversification and creator partnership ads, accurate pixel + CAPI tracking, optimise for what you really want (value, qualified leads), value rules instead of restrictions, know and grow LTV, build brand, test with Meta's tools, read attribution properly.
- What Andromeda, GEM and Lattice are, and what they change for advertisersPlain-language model of Meta's 2025–2026 ad delivery stack (Andromeda retrieval → GEM ranking → Lattice unified models), the Advantage+ sales rollout of mid-2025, and the practical consequence that creative, not targeting or structure, decides delivery.