Mastering paid growth | Jonathan Becker (Thrive Digital)

There's a lot of different ways that we are beginning to use AI to do more with less, basically. The effect, ultimately, that we've seen from a human capital point of view is displacement. We have more people now than we've ever had, but the nature of the work that they do is more strategic. It's more about modeling, validation, asking the right questions, being focused around creative levers, and less so the, like, trench work of implementation and bid modifiers at the keyword level on Google Search and some of the, like, really hardcore manual analysis we had to do. On our creative group, we can come up with mock-ups in literally, like, 1% of the time that it took. And so, you still have to understand what questions to ask of the AI and be capable of iterating, but these, like, rough drafts that you might show, like the artwork of, you know, to a client to say, like, "Do we like this more or do we like this more?" That's AI generated. It's really interesting.

(instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Jonathan Becker. Jonathan is a legend and an OG in the world of performance marketing. On this podcast, we've done deep dives into the many aspects of growth, including SEO, sales, conversion optimization, retention, product-led growth, product-led sales, but this is the first episode where we get super deep on paid growth. For the past decade plus, Jonathan and his team have planned, built, and executed more than three and a half billion dollars in paid acquisition budgets for companies like Uber, Asana, Square, MasterClass, Tempur-Pedic, and many more, and they've built their agency, Thrive Digital, into one of the preeminent independent digital marketing agencies. In our conversation, we get real deep into all things paid growth, including what's changed with recent privacy shifts, why focusing on creatives is the new biggest opportunity within paid growth, how to think about attribution and what's changed there, what to look for in people you hire to run paid growth for you, how AI is already changing how paid growth teams operate, and so much more. Enjoy this episode with Jonathan Becker after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Braintrust, where the world's most innovative companies go to find talent fast so that they can innovate faster. Let's be honest, it's a lot of work to build a company, and if you want to stay ahead of the game, you need to be able to hire the right talent quickly and confidently. Braintrust is the first decentralized talent network where you can find, hire, and manage high-quality contractors in engineering, design, and product for a fraction of the cost of agencies. Braintrust charges a flat rate of only 10%, unlike agency fees of up to 70%, so you can make your budget go four times further. Plus, they're the only network that takes 0% of what the talent makes, so they're able to attract and retain the world's best tech talent. Take it from DoorDash, Airbnb, Plaid, and hundreds of other high-growth startups that have shaved their hiring process from months to weeks at less than a quarter of the cost by hiring through Braintrust's network of 20,000 high-quality vetted candidates ready to work. Whether you're looking to fill in gaps, upscale your staff, or build a team for that dream project that finally got funded, contact Braintrust and you'll get matched with three candidates in just 48 hours. Visit usebraintrust.com/lenny or find them in my show notes for today's episode. That's usebraintrust.com/lenny, for when you need talent yesterday. Today's episode is brought to you by AssemblyAI. If you're looking to build AI-powered features in your audio and video products, then you need to know about AssemblyAI, which makes it easy to transcribe and understand speech at scale. What I love about AssemblyAI is you can use their simple API to access the latest AI breakthroughs from top-tier research labs. Product teams at startups and enterprises are using AssemblyAI to automatically transcribe and summarize phone calls and virtual meetings, detect topics in podcasts, pinpoint when sensitive content is spoken, and lots more. All of AssemblyAI's models which are accessed through their API are production-ready. So many PMs I know are considering or already building with AI, and AssemblyAI is the fastest way to build with AI for audio use cases. Now is the time to check out AssemblyAI, which makes it easy to bring the highest accuracy transcription, plus valuable insights to your customers, just like Spotify, CallRail, and Writer do for theirs. Visit assemblyai.com/lenny to try their API for free and start testing their models with their no-code playground. That's assemblyai.com/lenny. Jonathan, welcome to the podcast.