How Rubix went from hours of manual research to strategic creative insights that keep clients coming back

Faster iteration cycles: 40% faster creative analysis and turnarounds

Higher ROAS: 15%

Lower CPA: 20%

"Atria is phenomenal, especially from a reporting standpoint. It's going to make your life easier, and it's an easy decision when you look at ROI." - Alex Realmuto, Founder & CEO, Rubix

Meet Rubix: A world-class creative agency that's been on the inside.

Alex Realmuto runs Rubix, a performance marketing agency that's different from most shops in one crucial way: everyone on his team comes from the brand side. After taking Leesa Sleep from $0 to $125M in revenue in three years as a founding team member, Alex knows firsthand what it's like to be on the receiving end of agency work. Now he applies that perspective to help venture-backed brands like Misfit Market, Fishwife, Cumulus Coffee, and Ollie bridge the gap between performance and awareness marketing.

As he puts it: "Rubix doesn't work for you: We're an extension of your team." Over the past three years, the agency has evolved from pure performance marketing into creative-heavy campaigns, driven by changes in how platforms work and how AI is affecting traditional affiliate partnerships.

The team’s problem: Hours of research for basic creative inspiration

Alex's team was facing the same challenge many performance agencies face: how to scale creative performance insights quickly and efficiently across a whole team. They had the marketing chops (after all, most of his team came from running marketing at actual brands). But when it came to creative analysis, they were drowning in manual research.

For Shelby Fitts, Rubix's Affiliate and Creative Manager, the old process was extremely time-intensive:

"I was on Meta's ad library all the time. And not only that, I was also trying to prime my own social media accounts. If I wanted to create an ad for a mattress brand, I would just start going to different sites and Instagram pages about mattresses so that I could start getting ads about mattresses"

The research burden was especially heavy when working with unfamiliar industries: "When I didn't have deep experience in one of our clients' specific industries, it would take me a lot of time to learn exactly what people were looking for."

Without better creative analytics, as Shelby puts it: "I didn't have my finger on the pulse as much" when it came to understanding what creative was actually working.

Leadership’s problem: Team time is going to reporting instead of strategy

The bigger problem was what this meant for his team's time. We have to figure out a way to make reporting less cumbersome and get out of the monotony of these repetitive tasks," Alex says. To really add value, he knew he needed his team to focus on developing the strategy for the next campaign instead of getting bogged down in manual creative analysis. They needed a quick way to get past reporting and numbers to the "so what": the insights that could actually drive better performance.

“From a marketing strategy perspective, Trevor Bailey, Director, Marketing at Rubix, saw how this shift empowered the team to spend more time thinking creatively and less time buried in data. ‘Atria helped us connect the dots between creative and performance faster than ever. It’s become part of how we build insights that actually move the needle.’”

The transformation: from manual research to instant creative insights

Alex discovered Atria through a friend who runs a similar agency: "He literally was just like ‘this is Motion but more robust and a more fair price and you should just use this.’" Ultimately, the decision wasn't complicated. Alex needed his team to access creative insights quickly without spending a ton of time on a manual process.

Before long, Atria had transformed the team’s entire workflow:

Step 1: Ideation gets faster and smarter

Atria’s ad library transformed how Shelby starts every creative brainstorm. Instead of manually priming social accounts and scrolling through endless ad libraries for inspiration, she explains: "I use Atria’s ad library to see how other brands and platforms are speaking to their customers and what formats they're using. It’s extremely helpful, it saves me so much time." she says. She can now systematically follow competitors: "I will follow competitors for specific clients and I'll use the spying tool to understand what they’re doing."

The ultimate impact? A massive time savings: “I'm able to come up with better ideas just because I can see so much more, and I'm coming up with those ideas faster than I would going into the Meta ads library and having to search for each brand." Shelby relates.

Step 2: Performance insights the whole team can access

Once ads are live, Shelby can track performance without getting lost in Meta’s ads manager: "I will monitor campaign activity on Atria. It’s just my preferred platform for that. I like how it's laid out for someone that's not necessarily in the ads manager all day. It's very easy for me to comprehend."

Her analysis workflow is now systematic:

"I typically will check the main dashboard to do a quick pulse check. If nothing screams at me, my next step is looking at top-performing creatives. I'll take a look at Radar as well to look for high-potential ads, especially when we're doing a very focused creative review."

Step 3: Client reporting becomes automatic

Instead of manually creating reports, Shelby explains: "we'll take screenshots directly from Atria and use them in our decks." In minutes they could show clients data analysis that backs up their creative recommendations.

And from a leadership perspective, Alex loves seeing analytics be more deeply integrated into the team’s workflows in such a way that insights aren’t left to chance: "Atria made the evolution of my agency a lot easier to really push creative analytics forward in a way that was a little bit safer or more guided as opposed to just assuming that my team would be able to successfully do proper creative analysis on their own," Alex explains.

Bottom line impact: the feedback loop that works

For Shelby, this created a complete creative intelligence loop:

"I can quickly understand what's working well, and I definitely have more context when I'm coming up with ideas and iterating on our ads. I have a better understanding of the media environment. And I think that really helps us to create better ads."

Unlike other tools Alex pays for, Alex knows that Atria has become a critical part of the team’s creative workflow:

"I know for a fact that my team is using Atria and I have a number of SaaS tools that I pay for that I can't say the same about."

Trevor Bailey, Director, Marketing at Rubix, adds:

‘We use Atria not just for efficiency, but for clarity. It’s one of the few tools that actually helps us think better as marketers.’”

What they'd tell other agencies: It’s a tool every team can get value from

"I would definitely recommend Atria to someone in my role," Shelby says. "For one, it saves me a lot of time. It definitely saves me hours, and it helps me come up with better ideas just because I can see so much more, and I'm also coming up with those ideas faster."

Alex's recommendation is equally direct:

"Atria is phenomenal, especially from a reporting standpoint. It's going to make your life easier, and it's an easy decision when you look at ROI."

Coming from someone who took a mattress company from zero to $125M in three years, that endorsement carries weight.

For Rubix, Atria has become an integral part of the creative workflow—from brainstorming creatives to analyzing performance, to sharing insights with clients. With keen insights into what's working and what's not, this team can now focus on what they do best: bringing that brand-side perspective to growth marketing that actually moves the needle.

Want to see how Rubix's brand-side perspective could work for your company? The team is currently working with select eCommerce, SaaS, and DTC brands ready to move beyond basic campaign management to strategic, full-funnel growth partnerships.

Rubix | Performance Marketing Agency

Specialties: Performance PR, paid digital (Meta/Google), creative strategy, analytics