Podcast Recap: Jeremy Yang on How He Runs His Ads Agency

This episode of The Pennock Knockdown features Nikki Lindgren in conversation with Jeremy Yang, founder of Digital Goliath — a Sydney-based paid ads agency specialising in e-commerce and lead generation. A candid look at the agency world, the 2026 ad landscape, and what it actually takes to build something that lasts.

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From Tradie to Agency Founder: Jeremy’s Background

Jeremy’s path to running a paid ads agency is not the typical one. He was a high school dropout who spent 12 years running his own trade business — TV antennas, satellite cabling — before selling it and going back to university at 33 to study business. Marketing clicked for him immediately. He graduated with a perfect GPA, couldn’t get hired, and spent a year as an unpaid intern just to get a foot in the door.

One of his bosses sensed his impatience and pointed him in the right direction: “If you want results fast, you have to get into paid advertising.” Jeremy hadn’t even heard the term at that point — but the advice changed everything.

He followed a mentor he still talks to every day, and launched his first agency in 2019. Now, seven years later, he runs a team of 10 — all in-house, all based in the Philippines — and manages just under $500K in monthly ad spend.

The reason he landed in e-commerce specifically was simple: “I got into e-commerce because I was crap at copywriting. It was more carried by products and videos, not the long ass ad copy that was a thing back then.” The longer-form funnel world required the kind of writing he just didn’t have — so he went where the product did the talking.

The timing didn’t hurt either. He launched just before COVID, and the e-commerce wave did the rest.

What Digital Goliath Does — and Who It’s For

Digital Goliath works with e-commerce brands and lead gen clients, mostly in the $500K to $3M annual revenue range. Jeremy loves working at this stage because he’s dealing directly with founders — no layers, no miscommunication.

The service has evolved significantly. It used to be purely platform execution: Google Ads, Meta, tracking. Now it includes everything that needs to happen before the ads go live — scripting creative, building UGC briefs, explaining the numbers, building out calculators, and then feeding post-campaign analysis back into the next round.

Jeremy is quick to point out what he doesn’t do: he doesn’t source UGC creators or influencers. But that creative filter he’s built from years of ad spend is one of the most valued parts of the service. As he put it: “Even though I’m not great at coming up with wild viral ideas, I can tell them whether something’s going to hit or not. We spend so much money in ads — when they come up with something, I know.”

On the lead gen side, Google Search and Performance Max carry most of the weight, with Meta making up roughly 20 to 30% of spend. As he wrote in the real question before choosing your ad platform, preparation matters just as much as platform selection — and that applies to creative just as much as it does to spend.

The ROAS Conversation Nobody Has

One of the more interesting threads in this conversation was about ROAS — specifically, how much the industry misunderstands it.

Nikki outlined Pennock’s approach: rather than chasing ROAS as a vanity number, they work backward from contribution margin to establish a floor. “This is your drop-dead ROAS. If it falls below this, we’re not in a good spot.” That number is different for every brand, and it only makes sense once you understand product margins and unit economics.

Jeremy’s take cut straight to it: “People come to you because of your ROAS — they’ve watched YouTube videos and they don’t know any better. But it goes so much deeper than that.” He pointed to brands running at 0.9 ROAS by choice — deliberately going in the red on acquisition because the lifetime value math works out.

An 8X ROAS might look impressive but could just mean a high-ticket, one-time product with a fat margin. Digital Goliath’s ROAS calculator is built to help clients model this before spending a dollar.

Pennock is currently launching a brand health score to make this kind of diagnostic more systematic — a way to identify whether underperformance comes from paid ads, retention, margin, or something else entirely. Jeremy flagged it as a smart initiative, and one that could help brands stop blaming the ad channel when the problem is elsewhere.

Building an Agency That Actually Knows Its Clients

Nikki was candid about something she got wrong early on: she avoided open-ended conversations with clients for fear it would prompt them to question the relationship. Getting over that has made a real difference. Now those conversations — casual, honest check-ins on whether the reporting format is useful, whether they want more detail or less — have become one of the better tools for staying aligned.

Jeremy’s model is different: he stays hands-on, working directly with clients rather than stepping back into an oversight role. He’s built his team offshore and keeps account loads tight — no more than six accounts per person. When Nikki described his setup as a “lifestyle agency,” he pushed back with a laugh: “I call it lifestyle, but I’m here 12 hours a day. It’s not really lifestyle lifestyle.”

He acknowledged the trade-off: it’s harder to scale, and anyone acquiring the business is really acquiring Jeremy. But the quality of service holds up, and their 2% churn rate reflects that.

A point that resonated from both sides: the agencies that started by understanding their clients from the inside — because they’d been the client — tend to ask better questions and waste less of everyone’s time. As Jeremy noted in what the AI wave actually means for marketers who are really good at this, the operators who understand the craft deeply are still the ones who can’t be easily replaced.

What’s Changing in 2026

Performance Max is opening up. Google is finally giving operators more control — segmentation, product-level articulation, visibility into placement quality. For e-commerce advertisers who’ve been dealing with a black box, this is a meaningful shift.

Andromeda didn’t break everything. Despite a lot of noise, Jeremy’s clients weren’t materially affected because they already had creative variety running. His read on it: “When something stops working, you better have the next one ready. Don’t go asking for new creative after it’s already stopped.” More bullets in the chamber, not fewer.

Channel diversification is real now. Pinterest is back for Gen Alpha brands. Reddit is working for women’s health categories where Google and Meta create friction. Axon (formerly AppLovin) is showing up for in-app placements, and the hook timing there is notably different — where social platforms get two to three seconds, Axon users make their call around second seven or eight. That changes the entire brief. For more on how to think about channel decisions in this environment, Jeremy’s piece on the unbundling of marketing services is a useful frame for small businesses navigating specialists vs. generalists.

YouTube for e-commerce is still rough. Jeremy’s heard from Google reps that it’s coming back. He hasn’t seen it yet.

Advice for Early-Career Marketers

If Jeremy could go back to his early twenties, he wouldn’t mess around with a broad client base. “Pick a niche and focus on the niche. It makes life so much easier. I’m done now — it’s too late for me. The clientele is too widespread.” The businesses that win in this space tend to be the ones that commit to a lane early and get really good at it.

Everything else gets easier once you commit to a lane — client acquisition, team training, positioning. For founders thinking about their own visibility, Jeremy’s take on why LinkedIn is still the most valuable platform for business owners in 2026 is worth a read.

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Key Takeaways

• Creative direction is as valuable as ad buying. Helping brands figure out what to make before spending a dollar on media has become a core service — and most clients didn’t know they needed it until they had it.
• ROAS is a starting point, not the whole story. Understanding contribution margin, AOV, and repeat purchase behavior is what separates agencies that move the needle from ones that just report numbers.
• Have your next creative ready before your current one dies. Whether it’s Andromeda or the next platform shift, the agencies that stay ahead keep more bullets in the chamber rather than scrambling when something stops working.
• Niche early. Being a generalist agency feels like flexibility, but it creates a ceiling. The earlier you pick your lane, the easier everything else becomes.
• Know your platform’s watch time behavior before you brief creative. A two-second hook for TikTok and a seven-second hook for Axon are completely different briefs, and getting that wrong wastes budget before the ad even has a chance.

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Connect with Jeremy Yang on LinkedIn or visit Digital Goliath to learn more about paid advertising strategies for small to mid-sized businesses. Explore our landing page creation services to optimise your ad conversion funnel.

This conversation is from The Pennock Knockdown Podcast, where Nikki Lindgren and expert guests share proven playbooks, emerging trends, and real-world insights to help DTC and social commerce brands thrive in the fast-changing world of digital marketing.