Chris Hetzler
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Red Ventures · 2019–2020

Scaling paid media for Apple Books and Apple News+ at Red Ventures

Multimillion-dollar programmatic, a smarter post-back and the budget share to prove it.

ProgrammaticDisplayThe Trade DeskDV360ROASCPAVendor management
Apple Books ROAS, one quarter +250%
Partner CPA -90%
Budget share earned 70% From 20% in two quarters
Monthly ad spend managed $2M Grown from $200K
Publisher-direct deals 12+
Read time

In short: Performance marketing case study: on Red Ventures’ Apple Services team, Chris Hetzler lifted Apple Books ROAS 250% in a quarter, cut partner CPAs 90% with a weighted post-back, and earned a budget share increase from 20% to 70%.

Situation

I took over display and programmatic for Apple services, including Apple Books and Apple News+, with multimillion-dollar monthly budgets, strict brand-safety and privacy rules, and privacy-first measurement.

Insight

Privacy-first measurement gives partners limited conversion signal. The fastest lever was to send them a richer one, and to surface warehouse trends that platform dashboards don’t show.

Action

  • Built a weighted click post-back so partners could optimize toward real value with limited conversion data.
  • Analyzed Redshift data in Tableau with custom SQL to find hidden performance trends, then acted on them weekly.
  • Optimized The Trade Desk programmatic to 100%+ ROAS with quarter-over-quarter KPI gains.
  • Negotiated more than a dozen publisher-direct deals and built vendor onboarding that complied with Apple’s brand and privacy policies.
  • Ran channel-wide training on vendor management, data privacy and brand safety.

Result

  • Apple Books ROAS +250% in one quarter.
  • Partner CPAs down 90%.
  • Earned an increase in my component’s budget share from 20% to 70% after two quarters of optimization.
  • Grew the monthly ad spend I managed from $200K to $2M as results earned more budget.
The lesson: Algorithms are only as good as the signal you feed them. When conversion data is thin, engineer a better signal before you touch a bid.

What people said

“He not only was able to manage multiple vendors and platforms, but he was able to do so across multiple clients at the same time.”

Matt Ott · Worked with Chris on the same team at Red Ventures

“At TriMark, he was the go-to guy for optimizing our B2B accounts.”

Warren Snell · Worked with Chris at TriMark Digital and Red Ventures

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