Dimitri Bukys — Profitable paid acquisition

One of these is probably you right now.

It works, until you try to scale it.

Every time the budget goes up the ROAS slides back down, so the account stays stuck. Even when it is profitable, there is no safe path to twice the spend without the whole thing falling over.

The dashboard and the bank don't agree.

Campaigns do not tie cleanly back to real revenue or bookings, and even the ROAS target was never built from the real margins, returns, or AOV.

The account has history, not a system.

Old campaigns overlap, branded traffic makes weak acquisition look healthy, and every test comes and goes without leaving a clear answer behind.

Creative keeps running out.

New ads only show up once performance has already dropped. There is never anything lined up before the old ones burn out.

The ads might not even be the problem.

The real bottleneck can sit in the offer, landing page, or in what happens to a lead after it comes in.

There's no paid acquisition yet.

The business already sells, but there is nothing paid behind it yet: no tracking, campaign structure, messaging, or rules that keep the spend honest.

Different starting points. Same first move: work out where the business actually stands before touching anything.

How I work

The ads are only one piece. Before I touch them I want to understand what the business sells, who is buying, how a sale happens, and what a customer is really worth.

The business first

I go through the offer, the buyers, and whatever is already bringing work in. Then I audit the ad accounts and analytics against that reality, not against what the account assumes is happening.

You know what is actually blocking growth, so the budget goes at the real problem first.

Make the numbers agree

If campaigns cannot be connected to real revenue or bookings, that gets sorted first. Sometimes the platform setup is enough. When it is not, I build the connection with APIs and whatever code the job needs.

You can see which campaigns create real revenue and make budget decisions from one version of the truth.

Set the floor

Real margins, AOV, returns, and what a conversion is genuinely worth give us the breakeven ROAS or maximum acquisition cost. Everything after that gets measured against the business's own number.

You know the exact point where buying another customer stops making money.

Find where growth could come from

I look for waste inside the account and openings outside it. Reviews show what buyers care about, forums show the words they use, and competitors show what the category keeps getting wrong.

You get campaign angles grounded in what buyers already care about, not ideas pulled out of the air.

Build a weekly engine

A good account needs a steady stream of new creative, fresh angles, and experiments. Every test starts with a reason and a number to beat, and win or lose it leaves a reusable answer.

The business gets a repeatable pipeline of better bets instead of waiting for one lucky campaign.

Scale without losing the plot

Whatever misses the floor gets cut. Whatever clears it earns more budget. Results feed into the next research round, so the account keeps learning instead of becoming a museum of old campaigns.

Budget moves toward profitable demand while weak spend gets cut before it compounds.

Built from zero

One acquisition system serving consumers and wholesale buyers.

There was no paid acquisition when I came in. I built the campaign structure, tracking, research-driven messaging, and the testing framework the account still runs on today.

Still running in 2026. At the latest read, revenue grew 45% month over month while spend scaled 54%, holding blended ROAS 3.2 and ecommerce ROAS 4.18.

Private design cut: named case and absolute figures still require client consent before a public launch.

International bookings · whole puzzle rebuilt

From campaigns nobody could trace to a system that kept working.

No booking could be traced to the campaign that caused it. I fixed measurement first, tied marketing activity to real booking revenue, separated branded from non-branded demand, researched the customers, and rebuilt the messaging.

The tracking, account, messaging, and rules for what to cut or scale became one connected system.

Private design cut: naming and exact results still require owner consent before a public launch.

Private + corporate bookings · 4+ years

Paid acquisition became 30% of company revenue.

Over more than four years I ran the offer, messaging, landing-page work, and paid acquisition as one connected system rather than separate jobs.

The full platform breakdown and raw dashboards are open on a call.

Private design cut: naming and exact results still require owner consent before a public launch.

The longer version

The short version is seven years of paid ads. The longer one has a war in it, so here's the longer one.

'18

Where I learned the craft

I started in-house at Paper Planes in Moscow, working through the agency on campaigns for Pepsi, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Bosch and major retailers, managing more than $1M in ad budget between them. Then I found surfing, the office stopped making sense, and I went remote for good.

Paper Planes beginspaper-planes.ru ↗

'20

My first client of my own

In December 2020 I landed Casa Picassa, a Moscow events venue and the first client that was fully mine. It began alongside Paper Planes and became the longest relationship on this page.

Paper Planes continuesCasa Picassa begins

'22

The year everything moved

I'm Ukrainian, born and raised in Russia. When the war started I went out to protest, came close to being arrested, and left the country for good. Paper Planes and I parted over opposite political positions, while Casa Picassa stayed with me through it.

Paid traffic dried up, so I stopped thinking like a media buyer and became the whole marketing team, finding customers through channels most people never look at.

24 Feb 2022 · Russia attacks UkraineLeft RussiaPaper Planes endsCasa continuesSupport Ukraine ↗

'25

One line ends. Another begins.

In March 2025 Casa Picassa and I parted on good terms. A month later I started with Globaltic in Manchester, and the international work properly began.

Casa Picassa endsGlobaltic beginsWavehouse begins

Now

The journey continues

I've never wanted to run this the same way two years running. Lately that means building AI deep into the research and testing so grunt work stops eating hours and the judgment gets sharper. The work I'll be proudest of still feels ahead of me.

Wavehouse endsGlobaltic continuesUS project begins

Wanna be one of them? Let's talk ↗

Three ways in

01 / Diagnose

Paid audit + growth plan

I go through the account, tracking, funnel, offer, and economics. You leave with the leaks, openings, and a 30–60 day plan in the order I would work through it.

If the ads are not the real problem, the plan says that too.

$500–1,000 fixed

02 / Build

Acquisition build or repair

A one-time build for a system that needs setting up from scratch or rebuilding out of a mess: campaign structure, measurement, research, first creative tests, and the operating framework.

From $3,0003-month minimum · exact scope set after the audit

03 / Grow

Monthly growth

Ongoing management once the system is in place: a weekly testing rhythm, direction on creative and messaging, and reporting tied to the actual business result.

$1,000/mo + % over $5k spend

2/5slots available now

BookedOpen

06 / Capacity

Five slots. Two open.

Five is where I can still run everything myself. The accounts, tracking, reporting. Nobody junior learning on your budget.

Available now

Two of the five seats are open. If one is yours, let's find out on a call.

Claim an open slot ↗

Outside the account

Surfing, skating, mountains, too much hip hop. Certified lifesaver of people and brands since 2019.

Tell me what you're working with.

Send over the business, what you're spending a month, and what you actually want paid acquisition to do next. I'll tell you honestly whether I can help.

Message me on WhatsApp↗