CONTRIBUTOR PROFILE

Craig Graham

Paid media strategy and measurement for ecommerce and multi-location healthcare

I run Grayvault Consulting, a paid media consultancy based in Victoria, BC. I’ve been doing paid media for about 15 years and have managed over $100M in ad spend across 100-plus businesses, mostly Google and Meta. Our clients are mainly ecommerce brands and multi-location healthcare groups. On the ecommerce side we manage accounts to a blended MER target and run geo holdout tests so the client knows what the ads are really adding. The most recent one was a 28-day PMAX holdout across 26 US states this fall. Google reported 2.3x to 2.8x, the test came in at 1.17x, and I published the whole thing, method included. On the healthcare side I helped build the attribution setup at Smile Doctors, which tied ad spend to booked consults and production across 500-plus orthodontic locations. I write for SEM Dispatch, Adzooma and Northbeam, publish a biweekly newsletter on LinkedIn called Grayvault Paid Media Insider, and a few of the Google Ads and ChatGPT Ads features I’ve spotted have ended up in Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Roundtable, MarTech and MediaPost. If you have a measurement question I’m glad to help. Setting an MER target, working out whether a holdout test is feasible at your spend level, or whether an attribution tool is worth paying for are the ones I get asked about most. There’s also a free breakeven MER calculator on our site.

Victoria, Canada

Profile details supplied by Craig Graham.