DADS Talk with DADS
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MARKETING UNDER SHARED RISK

We put our money where our marketing is.

We'd rather earn from the result than invoice for the attempt.

DADS invests strategy, design, development and senior marketing expertise into businesses we believe in.

If our decisions work, we both win. If they don't, the cost of being wrong isn't yours alone.

When it works, we make money together.

Talk with DADS
Our work is our investment We put it in first You fund the market We invest the work We earn when the numbers work
The model

Our work is our investment. We put it in first.

Most agencies have a wonderfully resilient business model: whether the campaign flies, limps or catches fire on the runway, the invoice survives.

Ours works differently.

We invest our own time, expertise and production into the project from day one — strategy, research, design, development and execution.

You start paying us properly when there is something worth paying for.

Advertising budgets, software and other direct third-party costs remain yours, naturally. Google Ads has shown little interest in joining our risk-sharing experiment.

Unit economics

How the money actually works

Before we start, we agree on one thing: what a successful commercial result can cost and still make good business sense.

One result. One economic value.

For businesses where each successful outcome is worth roughly the same.

A new SaaS subscriber is a new SaaS subscriber. An activated app user is an activated app user.

We agree on the maximum economically acceptable acquisition cost for one result, and DADS earns inside that number.

Not every customer is worth the same. So we don't pretend they are.

For businesses where one physical outcome can be worth dramatically more than another.

A residential renovation enquiry and a large commercial project may arrive through exactly the same campaign, but pretending they have the same value would be ridiculous.

So we agree on several objective outcome classes in advance.

More details
Above $70 all-in the economics no longer work — the campaign needs to change.
Acquisition Spend
$70 35% of margin
DADS Success Fee
$0 no fee for us at this CAC
Client keeps
$13 $200 margin − $70 lead cost
Comparison

Same marketing. Very different economics.

Traditional agency
With DADS
When you pay
Before anyone knows whether the work will produce anything useful.
After measurable commercial results begin to appear.
What you pay for
Time, deliverables, retainers and an agreed scope of work.
Outcomes defined in numbers we agree on before starting.
Who carries the early risk
Mostly you. The agency gets paid for doing the work.
Both of us. Our strategy, design, development and working time go in first.
What happens when the plan changes
New scope often means a new estimate.
We care about whether the economics still work, not whether the original task list survived intact.
What happens if the work performs extremely well
Usually, the agency still earns roughly the same fee.
Our compensation grows with the value created.
What happens if it performs badly
You may still have paid the full agency bill.
We may have invested months of work and earned very little. That’s part of the bet.
What gets measured
Often hours, tasks, campaigns and deliverables.
Customers, revenue events, acquisition economics and other results visible inside your business.

The difference is fairly simple.

A conventional agency is paid for doing the work.

DADS is paid for making the work commercially useful.

Neither model is magic. Ours simply makes it rather difficult for us to celebrate a beautifully completed campaign that failed to make anybody any money.

Portfolio

Selected work

Volkswagen dealership
Official Volkswagen dealership — Odesa region

How three words and $15 helped sell a $70,000 Volkswagen

3.5× monthly vehicle sales, in three months
Positioning Marketplace listings Test-drive funnel Paid social
What we invested
Timeline
Listings rebuilt on AUTO.RIA, a single-purpose test-drive site, two $7.50 Facebook ads
3 mo.
Results
3.5× increase in monthly vehicle sales
Estimated regional market share ~3%~10%
~$400 total marketing spend for the whole project
A $70,000 Arteon sold two weeks after a $15 argument about which German car is fastest

Our paid result was a booked test drive, not a sold car. Tying our compensation to the final sale would have made us responsible for somebody else’s part of the funnel.

Explore
Architectural glazing company brochure
Architectural glazing company — custom glass partitions, United States

Same ad budget, 3.3× the leads

$100$50 average cost of a paid lead, budget unchanged
Research / QFD Service design UGC creative CRO
What we invested
Timeline
40 in-depth interviews into a House of Quality, real-installation galleries, measurement guides, national installer network, multi-step quote form
Ongoing
Results
Landing page conversion ~3%~11% after the multi-step form
Meta campaigns moved from $90–$140+ per lead to a consistent $40–$60
HubSpot deals created: 26,470 (2023)45,411 (2024)65,327 (2025)

The best way to halve your acquisition cost is not always to find cheaper traffic. Sometimes it is to stop wasting the traffic you already paid for.

Explore
STVOL hunting campaign creative
STVOL — civilian firearms, hunting & outdoor gear

57.5% more conversions in a market that had gone quiet

+57.5% conversions year on year, at comparable traffic
Lead model Product content Video Conversion
What we invested
Paid on
A complete lead model from first contact to transaction, product content rebuilt around what things actually do, and video worth reacting to
Cost per online customer
Results
First two months: traffic −42%, conversion +56%, transactions only −8%
After three months: half the traffic, conversion ~2×, transactions +8.5%
~200% more reactions on unpaid social video

If traffic was going to become scarcer, each visitor needed a much better chance of becoming a customer.

Explore
Method

We like real answers

Strategy matters. Research matters. Spending two months preparing to ask the market a question it could answer next Friday interests us considerably less.

We use enough research to make a sensible bet, build the lightest credible version and put it in front of real people.

If it works, we invest further. If it doesn't, we change direction before everyone has commissioned matching stationery.

The first version needs to answer the next important question — not the next five years.

Capability Tracks run in parallel, not in a queue

What we put into the project

Phase 01 — Foundationweeks 1–3
Phase 02 — Buildweeks 3–9
Phase 03 — Compoundingongoing
Strategy01
Research02
Positioning03
Design04
Websites05
App Development06
Advertising07
SEO08
Content09
Video10
Analytics11
CRO12

Our work is our investment.

You cover the external costs the project actually consumes: media, software, production and anything else that has to be bought from somebody who, regrettably, is not part of DADS.

Terms

The deal

We share the early risk — and the result.

There is no standard retainer.

01

Before we begin, we agree on the commercial result we're working toward and what our compensation looks like if we get there.

02

If our decisions produce very little value, we may earn nothing. We accept that risk deliberately.

03

If they produce a great result, our compensation grows with it.

That is what makes the model work for both sides: neither of us needs the other to lose in order to win.

The better the business does from the work we build together, the happier everybody should be when the numbers arrive.

Fit

We choose the project together

Our model is not suitable for every business, simply because our time is the capital we're putting in.

Before we start, we need to understand whether there is a real opportunity, whether our work can materially affect it and whether the conditions exist to move quickly enough to test our ideas properly.

We tend to work best with companies where
01the product solves a real problem;
02there is a credible market opportunity;
03decision-makers are involved;
04we can see enough of the numbers to know what is happening;
05both sides can make decisions without turning every change into a constitutional crisis;
06the potential result is meaningful enough to justify the effort.

This is as useful for the client as it is for us. Sometimes the honest conclusion is that DADS is not the right tool for the job. Better to discover that before either side has invested six months proving it.

Condition

One important condition

Shared responsibility works best with shared trust.

You know your product, customers and business better than we do when we arrive.

We bring a different set of eyes and the marketing, design and technical experience to turn that knowledge into something the market can respond to.

There will be disagreements. There should be.

The point is not to hand DADS the steering wheel and climb into the back seat. Nor is it to hire experienced people and then ask them to drive with the handbrake on.

We make the important decisions together, with enough trust on both sides to let expertise do its job.

If we share responsibility for the outcome, we should share enough influence to shape it.

The team

Who is actually betting on you

“Experience is useful mostly because it teaches you which twenty things not to waste time doing.”

Marketing Director

11 years in marketing and management, including six years across the US, Canada and Europe.

Research, positioning, launches, acquisition, content and marketing leadership.

“There is a time for perfection. Usually after we’ve established that anybody actually wants the thing.”

Design Lead

Senior Western-market design experience, with a particular talent for reaching a strong working solution quickly.

Brand, product and marketing design.

“Most marketing problems don’t need a technological moon landing. Some do. Knowing the difference is where a surprising amount of money disappears.”

Tech Lead

Lead-level development experience across banks, major services and complex commercial products.

Web, product and integration engineering.

Our team

Anna Kovalenko
Anna Kovalenko Brand Strategist
Mark Devlin
Mark Devlin Performance Lead
Sofia Restrepo
Sofia Restrepo Product Designer
Daniel Hart
Daniel Hart Frontend Engineer
Iryna Melnyk
Iryna Melnyk Content Lead
Tomas Berg
Tomas Berg Analytics
Clara Nowak
Clara Nowak Motion Designer
Victor Aliyev
Victor Aliyev Media Buyer
Elena Fischer
Elena Fischer Account Lead
Clients

What clients say

DADS bring a high level of professionalism to the work and pay attention to the details that usually get missed. They genuinely care about the client, and when deadlines get uncomfortable, they somehow find a way to make them work without sacrificing the quality of the result.
Yuliia Karabetska Yuliia KarabetskaMarketing Director, CRH UA
What I value most is that I don’t need to manage the process for them. If I need a video done properly, quickly and without spending my own time discussing fonts, scripts and every small decision, I know where to go. They don’t create “creative for the sake of creative”. The team thinks in marketing terms, so the work is not only good to look at — it is built to convert.
Anna Hrabovenko Anna HrabovenkoCEO, Soft Org
A very reliable team. They understand the task quickly, work out the right approach and can take the content all the way from brief to finished result without constant supervision. We’ve worked together for more than a year, and they have never let us down on either deadlines or quality.
Maria Soroka Maria SorokaMarketing Specialist, Patlazshan Clinic
FAQ

Fair questions

01So you really start without charging us?

For our work, yes.

You still fund the things that cost actual money: advertising, software, production and other agreed third-party expenses.

Our strategy, design, development and working capacity go in first.

02What's the catch?

There really isn't a hidden one.

We accept more risk at the beginning because our compensation grows when the work creates real value.

You get a team with something meaningful riding on the outcome. We get the opportunity to earn more when we genuinely help the business move.

The incentives point in the same direction, which is rather the point.

03What if it doesn't work?

Then we may have invested a considerable amount of time and earned very little.

We knew that when we made the bet.

We're confident, not clairvoyant.

04Do you guarantee results?

No.

Anyone guaranteeing commercial results before understanding the product and market belongs either in a circus or a much more imaginative sales department.

What we can do is put experienced people on the problem and make our own compensation depend on the quality of the decisions we make together.

05How much do we pay if it works extremely well?

Potentially more than you would have paid a conventional agency.

And ideally you will be delighted to do so, because the amount only grows when the value created grows with it.

A good success model should make a larger invoice feel like good news to both sides.

06Can I still disagree with you?

Of course.

We are joining your business, not annexing it.

You should challenge our thinking and we should challenge yours. The model simply works best when both sides are prepared to change their minds when the evidence is better than the argument.

07Why wouldn't I use a normal agency?

You absolutely can.

A conventional retainer makes perfect sense if you want to buy a defined amount of work for a defined amount of money.

We chose a different model because we prefer having our economics tied more closely to whether the work creates value.

Neither model is universally better. We know which one we'd rather work under.

Think we should bet on your business?

Tell us what you're building and why you believe it should work.

We'll look at the opportunity, ask some questions and see whether we believe in the same outcome.

If we do, we'll put our own resources behind it.

Marketing budget / month

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