META ADS · CREATIVE STRATEGY · CREATIVE PRODUCTION · B2B
We built and ran the creative engine behind it. 150 new ads a month, statics and UGC video, inside one of software's most protected brand systems. The actual ads are below, with the numbers and the caveats attached.
Workspace software · 100M+ users · Engagement live since September · numbers cover September to February · we ran creative strategy + production, Notion ran media buying
cost per signup, September to February
monthly ad spend, same window
signups a month, paid-team rate held
The Forbes hook, 18 seconds. Opens on a Forbes cover calling Notion the $10B startup building "your AI everything app," stacks Toyota and Figma as receipts, then the app icons pile up and collapse into one Notion block. Borrowed authority first, then the pain. 31% hook rate, $6.90 signups across $163k of spend so far. It started life as a static.
Notion came to us with a creative bottleneck, not a targeting problem. An in-house brand team that makes genuinely beautiful work, two freelancers, and roughly 30 new ads a quarter. At $400k a month in spend, that's starvation. The best ad had been carrying the account since spring, frequency on it had crept past 3, and every week it cost more to feed.
The usual fix is a performance shop. The usual result is the brand getting mangled, because ugly tests well and shops chase what tests. Notion's brand is the product's front door. Mangling it was off the table.
So the brief was specific. 150 new creatives a month that look unmistakably Notion, and the kill discipline to match.
Nobody scrolling Instagram is shopping for workspace software. Feature ads kept proving it. What won instead was naming a Tuesday problem.
Three problems carried most of the spend. Paying for eight tools that don't talk to each other. Writing up the meeting after the meeting. And for founders, the software line item itself, which the startup offer ("up to $12,000 of free Notion") deletes outright.