Jonathan Becker

CEO at Thrive Digital

Performance marketing veteran running Thrive Digital managing over $500M per year in ad spend across clients including Uber (which he landed by meeting Garrett Camp in a taxi), known for his perspective that creative is now the biggest lever in paid growth and that AI is fundamentally reshaping performance marketing work.

The Growth Scientist The Growth Architect

Dimension Profile

Strategic Vision 45%

Execution & Craft 50%

Data & Experimentation 55%

Growth & Distribution 90%

Team & Leadership 25%

User Empathy & Research 20%

Key Themes

creative as biggest paid growth lever AI disrupting performance marketing privacy shifts changing attribution serendipity in business development scaling paid acquisition budgets manual ad work being displaced by AI

Episode Summary

Jonathan Becker shares lessons from managing over $500M per year in paid acquisition at Thrive Digital, arguing that creative has become the single biggest lever in performance marketing now that platforms have automated bidding and targeting. He explains how AI is displacing manual ad optimization work and how privacy changes have fundamentally broken old attribution models, requiring teams to embrace ambiguity and incrementality testing.

Leadership Principles

→ Creative is now the single biggest lever in paid growth — the platforms have automated bidding and targeting, so the creative is what differentiates performance
→ AI is displacing the manual, tactical work of performance marketing — the people who thrive will be the ones who understand strategy and creative, not spreadsheet optimization
→ Privacy changes have fundamentally broken the old attribution playbook — you need to accept more ambiguity and focus on incrementality testing

Notable Quotes

"Creative is now the single biggest lever in paid growth. The platforms have automated bidding and targeting. What differentiates performance now is the creative."
— On how paid acquisition has evolved

"AI is displacing all the manual tactical work. The people who will thrive understand strategy and creative, not spreadsheet optimization."
— On the future of performance marketing careers

"I met Garrett Camp in a taxi and that's how we landed Uber as a client. Serendipity favors the prepared."
— On the origin story of his relationship with Uber

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