Technology
Every tool, judged by what it returns
Every new channel arrives with a wave of promises: the early web, search advertising, SEO, email, social media, and now AI. The question worth asking of each is the same one. What does it return, per dollar, for the business that pays for it?
We have adopted each of these early, for nineteen years, and we keep the ones that answer that question well.
Early, each time
The pattern is older than AI
When a channel changes what a dollar of marketing can buy, we move first and measure what it returns.
2007 · The participatory web
My Local Lineup, built on what surfers posted themselves, became the second-ranked surf website in the world by traffic, behind Surfer and ahead of Surfing Magazine.
Search
AAAA Auto Storage was losing share to newer competitors that ran pay-per-click better. We rebuilt the site and paired advertising with an SEO program that reached #1 nationally on a number of industry keywords. Customer acquisition became far cheaper than the competitors' could be; the competitors that were taking share are no longer in business.
Read the case studySocial media
For Rusty Surfboards, a social audience grew to nearly 300 times its size at the start of the partnership in 2007, alongside e-commerce built from zero to 90% of brand revenue.
Read the case studyEmail and SMS
Owned channels carry a meaningful share of sales for the partners who let us build them: newsletters drove 11.32% of Litra's direct-to-consumer revenue by its acquisition, and email reached nearly 20% of CARVE Eyewear's e-commerce sales in the first year.
Read the case study
AI, inside the work
Part of the work for years
AI did not arrive at i9media this year. It has been part of the work, across every department, since the ad platforms first put it in our hands. What it changed is how much we can do, and how exactly.
Advertising
On Google, machine learning first optimized copy, images and dynamic ad content; then audience targeting against a customer-acquisition-cost goal; then Performance Max campaigns that learn which placements and audiences deliver, so the cost of a customer falls over time. We set them up to respect seasonality and product availability. On Meta, the same approach runs through Advantage+ campaigns.
Creative
Generative tools extend and recompose images to the exact crop each ad unit needs, and design systems built for them let us produce more assets, more often, at a consistent standard.
Email
Send times chosen per recipient, copy assessed before it goes out, and A/B and multivariate tests on subject lines on every significant send.
A workspace for every partner
The agents prepare; our people decide
Each partner has a dedicated workspace at i9media: its own operating system and a team of 30 to 50 specialised AI agents, each with one job, working from the partner's business plan, brand design system, website, content and social calendars.
Ana Costa, i9media's AI assistant, joins client meetings, files the transcript in the partner's workspace, drafts the minutes and the follow-up for our team to review, and keeps the work on track between meetings, around the clock.
Two platforms, in pilot
Built from our own work
LaneLift
Closes the loop between marketing and sales. It records every enquiry and the marketing source that produced it, then joins the sale from the books, so we see not only what sold, but why: a map of the customer journey, down to the keyword, that until recently only the largest marketing departments could afford.
LaneLift Studio
Keeps a brand's library, its design system and the production of its assets in one place, so every asset starts from the brand and not from a blank page.
One partner, measured
Two businesses that looked like one
For a home-services partner in San Diego, LaneLift separated new customers from returning ones, from May 2025 to October 2026.
2.3x
Return on ad spend, new customers
May 2025 to October 2026
5.3x
Return on ad spend, returning customers
Same period, reactivation campaigns
15%
Of customers came back within a year
Of those: 45% within three months, 18% in three to six, 36% in six to twelve
That changed what we do next: reactivation campaigns timed to those windows; separate targets for new and returning customers, so each has its own acquisition cost; and a clearer answer to the question every owner asks, whether more advertising would pay. The same system shows where the funnel leaks, which customers buy again, and which lanes are working.
What it changes for a partner
More, faster, and measured
More output and better output, from the same hours. Answers in hours rather than days.
And a measured bridge between brand and performance: we can now show, with breadth and detail, how the brand work underwrites the performance numbers, and feed what we learn back into the next round.
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Let's rise above
The tools will keep changing. The question we ask of each one will not: what does it return for you, per dollar?