Paying for Attention

About Paying for Attention

A digital marketing podcast perfect for a quick listen on your commute, a jog on the treadmill, or as you take a break from checking your emails. Paying for Attention is focused on all things paid media and conversion rate optimization and is hosted by the team at ATRA Digital, an industry leading PPC agency.

Publisher

ATRA Digital

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

22 Jun 2021

Latest episode

30 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

31 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   30 Sept 2026

   Your Cost-Per-Lead Target Is Probably Wrong (The Real Math Behind Target KPIs)

   Most teams get handed a target cost per lead with no math behind it, and that's where paid media strategy quietly falls apart. In this episode, Keegan breaks down how to actually build a target KPI from the ground up, and why chasing the wrong number can make a winning campaign look like it's failing (or a losing one look like it's working). We cover why scaling a campaign often pushes cost per lead up, and why that's not automatically bad if lead quality is improving. We walk through the full math: starting from your revenue goal, working out how many deals you need using your average deal size, then your lead volume using your close rate, and finally breaking that down into the campaign-level metrics (conversion rate, cost per click, budget) that actually get you there. Using a real example from a B2B construction prospect with a $1.5M monthly revenue goal, we show how target cost per lead should change based on which product or service line you're spending on, since close rates can vary widely across segments, even within the same account. We also get into why attribution needs to go down to the keyword and audience level, not just the campaign level, and why e-commerce brands should be optimizing for profit (using cost of goods sold and per-product margin) rather than blanket ROAS or revenue targets. We share results from a 10,000+ SKU e-commerce client where shifting to profit-based optimization grew profit over 40% in a quarter. If you've ever been handed a KPI you couldn't explain, or you're not sure your target cost per lead is actually right for your business, this episode is for you.

2. 

   23 Sept 2026

   What NOT to Do in Paid Media: Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn & Programmatic Mistakes to Avoid

   In this episode of our What Not To Do series, ATRA senior analyst TJ walks through the mistakes we see wasting ad budget across Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, and programmatic display, plus where creative quietly kills performance. On Google Ads, we cover match type and keyword targeting mistakes that show your ads for the wrong searches, why geotargeting defaults to "presence or interest" (letting people outside your target market trigger your ads, something we catch in about 70% of audits), and why accounts running target CPA or target ROAS still need a max CPC bid cap, especially in high cost-per-click industries. On Meta, we get into audience exclusions and why they matter more than on Google, the classic mistake of not excluding retargeting audiences from prospecting campaigns (which makes prospecting look better than it is), and creative pitfalls like ad copy that triggers the "See More" button and headlines that get cut off. On LinkedIn, we talk about why targeting needs to be far more specific than on Meta, why a bad ICP list creates junk leads, and why turning off audience expansion made a dramatic difference in one client's sales-qualified leads. On programmatic, we cover why display creative should read like a billboard (one message, not a paragraph), the importance of a placement blacklist to avoid junk sites, and the attribution traps hiding in view-through conversions and long conversion windows. We close on attribution and the halo effect: why pausing one channel can tank another, why you need to know what your reporting is actually counting (view-through vs. click-through, first-click vs. last-click), and why misattributed conversions convince advertisers a channel is working when it isn't. This is part of our What Not To Do series on Paying For Attention, the paid media podcast from ATRA. Follow along so you don't miss the rest of the series.

3. 

   26 Aug 2026

   What Actually Drives Paid Media Performance (Budget, Creative & Attribution)

   Host [Host Name] interviews ATRA senior analyst TJ, exploring how budget, creative, and attribution fundamentally drive paid media performance for brands.

Who has been a guest on Paying for Attention

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• TJ
• Madi Fleetwood
• Dillon Hake

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

4 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Contact Paying for Attention

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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