How SelfMade Went From Justifying Creative Decisions to Clients Asking for Access to Their Data

"Before Atria, creative insights were buried in Meta dashboards and reporting was a lot harder to put together. Now Atria gets rid of the guesswork and unlocks data-driven creative decisions across the whole team. It's a complete no-brainer."

Meet SelfMade: The Agency That Turns Data Into Creative Gold

SelfMade is a performance creative agency that uses AI personas and data-driven iteration to help e-commerce brands scale fast. With over 317 million assets delivered, Will Sartorius and his team have built their reputation on making ads that actually perform, not just look pretty. They’re at the forefront of using AI to cut out production work while delivering results that make clients say they’re an integral extension of their team.

Performance gains:

ROAS improvement: 33% 

CAC reduction: 29% 

Iteration cycle speed: 80% faster (2-3 weeks to 2-4 days)

The Problem: Defending Decisions Without Data

Running a creative agency means constantly justifying recommendations to clients who want to understand the "why" behind every creative decision. While SelfMade had a decent hit rate with their ads, they faced a critical challenge:

Manual data analysis drained time and insights: 

"It's a pain in the ass to dig through Meta ad accounts manually" 

Will explains. The team had to take screenshots from Facebook Ads Manager and manually piece together reports, making the entire reporting process a massive time investment. Translating data into more granular insights required tools like Coefficient, which added another step and additional friction to the process, and left the team with functional but not beautiful reports to show clients. 

Without easy access to detailed performance breakdowns, it was difficult to efficiently determine which personas and angles were working best, and give clients a constant flow of data and insights to support their creative recommendations.

The Transformation: From Defense to Indispensable

Will discovered Atria two years ago and immediately saw its potential to transform their entire client relationship dynamic.

Every creative brief now starts with performance analysis: 

"The first step that I've instilled into our strategists is before they brief anything they have to go into Atria" 

Will explains. Strategists start their creative workflow by looking at Atria’s creative reporting to break down ad performance by personas and ad angles. They find what ad angles pair best with which personas and identify opportunities: "We've tested persona A with angle 2. It worked really well. Let’s test persona B with angle 2." This eliminates the paradox of choice, giving copywriters a laser-focused approach to testing: 

"This is the persona we're focusing on. This is the angle. This is the messaging that we should be focused on." 

With this strategic approach, Will’s team can actually ground every recommendation in concrete performance data without becoming ad manager experts:

“Getting a creative strategist up to speed in using Atria is far superior than getting a creative strategist up to speed on Meta’s ad manager.”

Building trust with clients: Will says their Monday morning reports now include top 10 performing videos and statics alongside custom analysis.

He’s even found that real-time insights flip client conversations. When clients question creative performance, Will pulls up insights instantly. In a recent call, when a client claimed strong performance in the 45-54 age bracket, Will immediately showed their CPAs were actually second-lowest in that segment. The client's response: 

"How do I get access to this?" 

The reporting has become so valuable that "our customers couldn't live without that, and I don't know how we survived before," Will says.

The ROI: Better relationships and better results

Beyond measurable performance gains, Atria transformed client relationships fundamentally. "Atria is a retention saver," Will explains. "Because even if our creatives don't perform for whatever reason, we at least have the foundation in place to say this is the reason why we created this. So we don’t get the pushback: 'well, you guys are just making shit up.'"

The transformation delivered concrete results across key metrics:

33% ROAS improvement through data-driven creative decisions

29% CAC reduction via better audience and angle targeting

80% faster iteration cycles from 2-3 weeks down to 2-4 days

"Overall, Atria has gotten rid of the guesswork and forces data-driven decisions across the whole team," Will says. "Our creative reporting has gotten so good at this point that our customers couldn't live without that, and I don't know how we survived before."

What other agencies should know

Will's advice to agency owners considering Atria: 

"Don't expect this to replace thoughtful strategy but expect it to catalyze it to the extent that you're going to be able to turn junior strategists into senior strategists much faster."

The shift from justifying creative decisions to having clients ask for access to your data represents a fundamental change in agency-client relationships. Will calls it "a no-brainer" for agencies ready to stop defending their creative decisions and start demonstrating expertise through data clients can't get anywhere else.