The Pennock Knockdown: Jeremy Yang On Paid Ads, Creative Briefs, And Going From Tradie To Agency Founder

Jeremy Yang, founder of Digital Goliath, sat down with Nikki Lindgren on The Pennock Knockdown Podcast to talk about building an e-commerce and lead gen agency from scratch, what the 2026 ad landscape actually looks like, and why ROAS is only ever part of the story.

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From Satellite Cabling to Paid Ads: Jeremy’s Background

Nikki: I want to start by understanding what you were doing professionally leading into Digital Goliath. Just kind of paint the scene of your experience.

Jeremy: I was a high school dropout. I worked in various jobs and ended up becoming what Aussies call a tradie — TV antennas, satellite cabling, a lot of that. I had my own business for 12 years. With a business like that there’s a ceiling on how much you can make. I was doing about 150K, and it was weather dependent too.

There was always something inside me because I didn’t finish high school. So I sold that business and went back to university to do a business degree. Out of the beginner subjects, marketing was the one that really resonated with me — and something my classmates just weren’t very confident in. I scored really high and came out with a perfect GPA, but I couldn’t get a paid job because I was already 33.

So I went from 150K a year back to being an unpaid intern. I did that for a whole year, which is unheard of — usually it’s three months. Because I didn’t fit the mold, I had to do it for a long time.

Eventually I bounced around and got into more marketing roles. One of my bosses was sensing how impatient I am when it comes to results. He said, “Jeremy, if you want results fast, you have to get into paid advertising.” I didn’t even know what that was.

Paid media was the best thing that happened to me — you could get results almost straight away. I followed a mentor who I still talk to every day. She helped me start my first agency in 2019, just before COVID. We were in e-commerce. I got into e-commerce because I was crap at copywriting. E-commerce was more carried by products, videos, button clicking — not the long funnel copywriting stuff that was big back then. It just so happened it was right before COVID, so everything exploded. That was seven years ago, just me. Now we have a team of 10.

What Digital Goliath Does Today

Nikki: Digital Goliath sounds like it’s doing e-commerce paid marketing. Are there other services you’re offering or is that your primary?

Jeremy: At the moment, e-commerce and lead gen. When I first started it was all about the platform side — Google Ads, Facebook Ads, tracking, talking to the web dev. We never really went into Shopify, CRM, or email marketing.

Now the service has become more about before the ads start — scripting videos, UGC guidance, not sourcing the creators but giving them ideas, examples, and inspiration for what they actually need. We explain the numbers, build calculators, run the ads, do post-analysis reporting, then feed that back into the beginning of the loop for the next round. The brands I work with are typically in the $500K to $3M annual revenue range — very owner-focused, which I love.

Nikki: So you’re not helping them find creators, but you are helping with the creative direction for their ads?

Jeremy: Exactly. People come wanting to run paid ads, but you have to walk them through the education first. Where are your assets? What are your angles? Is it an unboxing video? A teach-and-pitch to camera? Even though I’m not great at coming up with wild viral ideas, I can help them discern — because we spend so much money in ads, when they come up with something, I can tell them whether it’s going to hit or not.

As I wrote about in the real question before choosing your ad platform, you need more bullets in the chamber than you think going in. That preparation mindset applies to creative just as much as it does to platform selection.

The ROAS Conversation Nobody Has

Nikki: Part of our planning process now is understanding contribution margin — what they need to back into from the back end — so we can say, “This is your drop-dead ROAS. If it falls below this, we’re not in a good place.”

Jeremy: And that’s the thing — people always talk about ROAS, but it also comes down to average order value and recurring revenue. When you watch seven-figure e-commerce brands, they’ll go down to 0.9 ROAS if they had to, to go in the red. Meanwhile, an 8X ROAS could just mean a higher ticket item with better sourcing. It’s so much deeper than just the number.

Our ROAS calculator helps clients model this before we’ve even spent a dollar — understanding what their numbers actually need to look like, not just what looks good in a report.

Nikki: We’ve actually got a brand health score we’re launching — to understand which part of the business might be the actual problem. Sometimes it’s paid ads, sometimes it’s retention, sometimes it’s that their product margins aren’t great.

Jeremy: That’s a great initiative. And coming from the brand side and then moving to agency is a huge advantage — you saw how things really worked before you started running them.

The Agency-Client Relationship Problem

Nikki: In the early days of running this agency, I didn’t do casual conversations with clients about what’s working or not. I was so nervous that any time I offered that up, they’d question what we were even doing for them. Now that I’ve gotten over that, it’s been really helpful to just ask — is this Monday email useful? Would you like it delivered differently?

Jeremy: Even to be at a level where your hands are off — I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that. To do it with an offshore team would be really difficult.

Nikki: That’s fine. You as the agency owner are picking a lane. You’re building more of a lifestyle agency — where you’re so pivotal to the success that anyone acquiring you is really acquiring you, Jeremy Yang.

Jeremy: I call it lifestyle, but I’m here 12 hours a day. It’s not really lifestyle lifestyle.

That tension is something I’ve thought about a lot, especially in the context of 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 Front of Mind in 2026

Nikki: 2026 has started off with a handful of changes. What are you most excited about?

Jeremy: The big one in Google is Performance Max becoming more granular — they’re giving control back to operators. I hate the black box. Now they’re allowing you to segment better, articulate products better, giving a lot more control back. Big one for e-commerce.

For Meta — about a month and a half ago everyone was hyping Andromeda. I never believed in it and none of my clients were affected because we already had a variety of creatives running. You can still make similar types of videos, testing different hooks. You just have to be more proactive — more bullets in the chamber. When something stops working, you better have the next one ready before it dies.

This is also why, as I talked about in why I don’t run ads for podcast downloads, it matters to be intentional about what you’re actually trying to move the needle on.

Nikki: TikTok is working really well for lower price point impulse purchases, but it’s not for every brand. Gen Alpha is using Pinterest again — who would have thought? We’re doing Reddit ads for women’s health and sexual wellness too, because Google and Meta make that category difficult.

Jeremy: Reddit’s CPM was super low for us, clicks super high, but the community didn’t respond well for our service clients. The category matters a lot.

Nikki: We’re also running media buys on Axon — formerly AppLovin — which serves ads inside app placements. The watch time behavior is really different. Traditional social, someone decides in two to three seconds. On Axon, it’s more like second seven or eight before they make that call. Totally different creative brief.

Jeremy: YouTube ads has also been rough — especially for e-commerce and smaller AOVs. Every Google rep tells me they’re bringing the performance back. I haven’t seen it yet.

The channel fragmentation piece is worth keeping in mind — I covered this in the unbundling of marketing services, where I lay out how small businesses should think about specialists versus generalists in exactly this kind of environment.

Advice & Who to Contact

Nikki: If you were going back to your early twenties, what advice would you give yourself?

Jeremy: Get to this a lot earlier, and pick a niche. Focus on the niche because it makes life so much easier. I’m done now — the clientele is too widespread. Niche early.

And if you’re thinking about how to show up on the platforms that matter for the long game, why LinkedIn is still the most valuable platform for business owners in 2026 is worth a read.

Nikki: Who’s the right brand to come to you, and how do they find you?

Jeremy: The brands that should come to me are brands that aren’t happy with their current agency, or feel like they’re being overcharged. There’s a lot of them. Website is always best — or email me at jeremy@digitalgoliath.com.au.

Key Takeaways

• Creative direction is as valuable as ad buying. Helping brands figure out what to make before spending a dollar on media is now a core service — and 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 behaviour is what separates agencies that actually 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 behaviour before you brief creative. A two-second hook for TikTok and a seven-second hook for Axon are completely different briefs.

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.