The “advertising cowboy” was once the hero of digital marketing. A lone operator, armed with technical know-how and a knack for analytics, who could jump into Ads Manager, set up campaigns, tweak targeting, and ride off with results. But in 2025, that model no longer works. Campaigns today are too complex, too content-driven, and too layered in strategy for one person to do it all. The cowboy is gone, and in his place is the need for blended advertisers and collaborative teams.
Running campaigns now means working directly with business teams to understand the building blocks of high-performing organic content. Paid results don’t exist in isolation — they feed off the strength of organic storytelling, brand consistency, and the ability of local teams to generate authentic material. Being an effective advertiser today means being an organic strategist too, unpacking what’s working on the ground, passing on learnings, and guiding teams on how to prepare the right content that can be elevated into campaigns.
It also means collaborating with media teams not just to place ads, but to optimise and forward plan content pipelines. To create the highest performing campaigns globally, you need content that is designed for the formats that dominate today’s platforms. That means 9×16 framing as a non-negotiable, story-first storytelling, and assets that are not just beautiful but purpose-built to stop the scroll.
And while strategy and planning matter, technical execution hasn’t disappeared. You still need to be a technical demon — staying on top of every change Meta makes to its systems and tools, leveraging updates like Andromeda to your advantage, and building safety nets into campaign structures. Technical skill alone doesn’t win anymore, but without it, even the best content won’t reach its audience.
Then comes design. Advertisers today can’t simply accept content as-is. They need to understand how to adjust, adapt, and reframe business-supplied assets so they work as high-performing ads. Cropping, resizing, overlaying brand elements, refining designs, and creating variations — these adjustments are just as important as the original content itself. Without them, campaigns fall flat.
This is why the lone cowboy has disappeared. No one person supporting teams at scale can be a strategist, organic content coach, media planner, designer, and technical specialist all at once and expect to deliver consistent growth. Success now comes from blended teams, where each person brings expertise but all share one common understanding: great campaigns are built on great content, applied with technical precision, and constantly optimised to meet an evolving digital landscape.
That’s the model we live by. We’re not cowboys chasing results in isolation. We’re a team of advertisers who understand that winning campaigns come from collaboration, from marrying content with systems, and from combining strategy, design, and technology into one seamless process. That’s how we continue to deliver outcomes for service-based businesses in an environment where the rules are always shifting.
