Sit down with Paid Media Manager: Jake

ake joined the team as Paid Media Manager at the end of March 2026, bringing a strong strategic background to the agency. Prior to Trio, he worked as a Paid and Social Media Strategist for one of the leading suppliers of resin-bound surfacing.

Driven by a desire to expand his knowledge and truly specialise within paid media, making the move to Trio was the perfect next step. Alongside his technical expertise, Jake holds a Master’s in Journalism from Leeds Beckett University, which has given him experience in content writing. He now works to deliver highly targeted, data-driven paid media campaigns.

What drew you to performance marketing?

What drew me to performance marketing was a genuine fascination with how paid media operates behind the scenes. It wasn’t necessarily about the process of building the ads, but rather how they perform and what we can learn from how people interact with them. I loved the idea that we can use these tools to target specific audiences and then use the resulting data to continually improve our targeting. When I first got into Meta ads, it was really insightful to see exactly what worked about our content and what didn’t. It felt natural for me to read the data and visualise a clear picture of what the results were trying to tell us.

For me, performance marketing shifted everything from guesswork to strategy. I started looking at campaigns and asking, Was the content effective? Were people actually clicking? And if they weren’t converting, what was stopping them? Being able to analyse user behaviours and build a strategy around real-time performance is exactly what drew me to performance marketing.

Are there any key lessons you’ve learnt that influence your work today?

One of the biggest learning curves in my career has been realising just how fragile data streams can be. In paid media, things are constantly changing with Meta pixels, Google conversion tracking and browser privacy updates. It is incredibly easy for a misconfigured tag to break a funnel, and a week of inaccurate reporting is essentially useless to a business. Because of that, I make it an absolute priority to constantly audit and verify our tracking. If you aren’t looking at accurate data, you can’t build an accurate strategy.

If there was one bit of advice I could give for managing clients, it’s to always be 100% honest. It can be quite intimidating to admit to a client that there has been a pixel or tracking issue, but I’ve learnt that transparency is always the best solution. Clients are remarkably understanding when you approach them with honesty, explain what went wrong, and show them the clear steps you are taking to fix it.

What current paid media trends do you find most influential?

For me, the most influential trend right now is the shift toward solution-first advertising. In paid media, we are seeing a major transition where consumers expect immediate answers. Instead of just bombing users with the hard sell, the ads that actually make an impact are those that actively seek to be informative. Trying to understand the user’s immediate problem or question and using your ads to provide a real, actionable solution right away is the best step forward.

I believe that this trend is completely changing how we build strategies; it bridges the gap between paid media and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). As conversational AI and social search continue to change how people find information, our ads have to adapt by matching that exact conversational intent. It’s becoming clear that in this climate, the brands that succeed are the ones that start treating paid media as a direct channel for delivering value.

Want to learn more about the future of PPC, SEO and AI? Read our roundup from our latest Trio Presents event.

What do you believe is the next big thing in paid media?

I believe the next big thing specifically for PPC managers is navigating the shift toward AI-driven automation. With the rise of Performance Max and Google’s automated bidding strategies, Google’s AI now handles most of the manual day-to-day settings, like choosing exactly which placements or search terms to bid on. Because of this, the next step isn’t about the technical setup inside the ad account anymore. The agencies that succeed moving forward will be those that focus on strategic data inputs, making sure we feed AI the most accurate customer data so it knows exactly who our highest-value users are.

I believe that as Google relies more on AI to match ads to users, our strategy has to shift from targeting broad keywords to creating copy that actively answers a user’s specific problem. This is why it’s so important for me to collaborate closely with my colleague, Lauren, our Content Manager. While I focus on the data and the audience targeting, Lauren helps craft the exact copy and messaging needed to speak to those users. The real human advantage comes down to writing helpful ad copy and ensuring our landing pages match that exact intent. Automation is taking over everyday tasks, making strategic thinking more valuable than ever.

Do you have any tips for doing an effective ad campaign?

• Competitor research: So many people completely overlook competitive research before building a campaign, which is a massive missed opportunity. You should never start spending money blindly without knowing what you are up against.
• Google Ads Transparency Center: Google offers a fantastic, free tool that lets you look up any business and see every single ad they are currently running. It’s an invaluable resource to use during your planning phase.
• Look for errors: The goal of looking at competitor ads isn’t to replicate them. Instead, use it to analyse what they might be missing or spot things they are doing wrong.
• Set your goal: Seeing exactly what your target audience is already looking at gives you the best idea of how to craft your copy, offers and creative that genuinely stand out from your competitors.