Agency
An account manager filters every decision
In-house
You write it between fires
With me
I write the program. You sign off.
47.66° N 117.43° W Summit · Profitable Growth
For DTC home & furniture brands
Everything between the click and the buyer.
More buyers from Google and AI assistants like ChatGPT. I run the campaigns, catalog and tracking as one system, from ad click through checkout. Plus a built-in lifestyle photoshoot pipeline, so new SKUs get scenes in days, not weeks.
The deep specialty inside the full ecommerce practice. Selling furniture? See Google Ads for Shopify furniture brands.
Video · 1:03 · Sound on
Who I am and how I work
Read the transcript
I'm Conner Crowe. I help ecommerce and service businesses get more customers from Google, and from AI assistants like ChatGPT. I run the website, the ads and the tracking as one system. Everything between the click and the customer. I started in graphic design, then web design, then in-house marketing, then inside agencies, where I saw the model break. The senior sells the work, and a junior learns on your account. So I went independent. The person on the call does the work. Tracking gets fixed first. You get a written summary every Monday, month to month, and you own everything I build. Ten years, more than $15 million in managed ad spend. A furniture store I built went from $5K in its first month to $56K, five months later. When I'm not working, I'm outdoors. Out there, you never guess when you can measure. I run accounts the same way. Start with a free ads audit. I write it myself, and it's back within 24 hours.
Running Google or Meta ads? Get a free ads audit instead.
01 The math
The agency model wasn't built
for catalog velocity.
Studio photography is billed per SKU and booked weeks out, so new SKUs sit in the warehouse before they reach a feed. Meta catalog ads underperform because half the inventory ships with bare-product imagery. Google Shopping quietly suppresses the rest. Meanwhile the agency you hired has a junior on your account learning Google Ads on your spend.
- 150+ Products rendered for Emma Grace Home, zero product shoots
- < 1 mo Kickoff to launch on the Emma Grace Home build
- $5,387 to $56,182 Emma Grace Home monthly sales, April to September 2026 (N = 1)
- 10 yrs On the keys of DTC ad accounts
02 The full program
Six services.
One person.
What an agency splits across four juniors and a project manager, I run as one program. The lifestyle photoshoot is included. The work is the marketing strategy and the campaigns that imagery feeds.
- 01
Marketing strategy
I write the plan for positioning, channel budgets, and what to test next. I set the monthly targets for the catalog and campaigns, then review them with you.
- 02
Google Ads program
Search, Shopping, PMax. Account structure, feed engineering, exclusions, intent themes. A decade and $15M+ managed on these keys.
- 03
Meta Ads program
Catalog ads, DCA, prospecting + retention split. Pixel and CAPI repair. Creative testing on the new imagery.
- 04
In-house lifestyle photoshoot
The studio shoot, run inside the engagement. Brand constitution, a 99% fidelity bar, audit trail. Production exhibit below.
- 05
Catalog + feed engineering
Shopify metafields, Merchant Center health, Meta catalog hygiene. The plumbing the ads run on.
- 06
Tracking + ROAS reconciliation
GA4, GTM (server-side where it earns its keep), Ads ↔ GA4 reconciliation, weekly written summary on Monday.
03 Honest comparison
Agency vs. in-house
vs. one operator.
Agency
A junior on five other accounts
In-house
Hire a specialist at $90K+
With me
Run by the same operator on the call.
Agency
A different junior
In-house
A second specialist
With me
Same operator. Same call.
Agency
Outsourced. Surprise invoice.
In-house
Studio days + a photographer retainer
With me
Lifestyle studio shoot run in-program. A 99% fidelity bar, audit-trailed.
Agency
Out of scope until you ask
In-house
Nobody owns it
With me
Built into the engagement.
Agency
A screenshot deck on Fridays
In-house
Your developer, when free
With me
GA4 + GTM + ROAS reconciliation, written weekly.
Agency
Routed through the account manager
In-house
Yourself, exhausted
With me
Yes. Same person every call.
04 Three ways in
Pick the entry point.
Same operator either way.
Start with a one-time project such as a catalog imagery batch, run Shopping monthly with imagery as an add-on, or step straight into the full DTC program. The catalog audit is free, and the price is fixed before any work starts.
-
One-time projects
A fixed price for one defined job, quoted from the free audit before any work starts.
$2,500 to $20,000- A catalog imagery batch: ten lifestyle renders plus one Meta ad set, typically $2,500
- A larger lifestyle library, 30 to 60 SKUs at 3 to 6 scenes each, quoted by SKU count
- A Shopify storefront, usually $5,000 to $20,000
- Vision QA + fidelity audit trail on every image
- Pushed to Shopify gallery slots with Merchant Center compliant metadata
Best forRequest my Catalog Lifestyle Gap Audit→Brands who want to see the work before committing to anything monthly, or brands stuck on bare-product photos.
- Most common
Monthly
$2,500 runs one ad channel end to end, keeps tracking healthy and sends a written report every Monday. Each add-on is $1,500. Ad spend is never marked up.
$2,500 to $8,500 /moMonth-to-month
- $2,500/mo: Google Shopping + PMax run end to end
- Merchant Center health, feed engineering and a written report every Monday
- Imagery and creative add-on, $1,500/mo: quarterly batches as new SKUs land
- Meta catalog ads as the second ad platform, $1,500/mo
- Ad spend never marked up. No minimum term.
Best forRequest my Catalog Lifestyle Gap Audit→Brands launching SKUs each quarter that already run Google Shopping but aren't getting the imagery cadence right.
-
Fractional Marketing Lead
Monthly at the cap: every add-on, with strategy, channels, tracking, reporting and the operating cadence led directly by me. Usually fits accounts spending $30K a month or more on ads.
$8,500 /moMonth-to-month
- Every monthly add-on, capped at $8,500/mo
- Meta catalog ads + DCA + CAPI program
- GA4 + GTM tracking program
- Weekly working session
- Monday written strategy summary
- Direct line. No account manager.
Best forBook a Strategy Call→Brands ready to replace the agency model entirely.
Projects are quoted at a fixed price after I've looked at your catalog and feed. Monthly never goes over $8,500 for one brand.
What the work looks like
The exact templates I send clients, filled in for a made-up sample store, in the order an engagement runs. Pick a step, or let it play.
(opens a larger view) Week 1
The plan, in writing
- Phases ordered by dependency, not by calendar. Nothing in phase two gets judged until the measurement in phase one is real.
- Written down, so you can push back before a single setting changes.
Example page on the real audit template. The store and every number are made up.
05 Inside the imagery engine
The photoshoot,
start to finish.
Most agencies outsource imagery to a studio and bill it through. Here it's built into the program. What follows is the mechanical exhibit for buyers who want proof under the hood. Skip to the Catalog Lifestyle Gap Audit if you've seen enough. Questions on cost, angles and AI accuracy are answered in my product photography library.
The 5-phase production system
Phases 00 and 03 halt for your approval. Phases 01, 02, and 04 run end-to-end. Nothing ships to your store without you signing off.
- 00
Calibration Halts for human review
Eight anchor images, one per scene template. You approve the set. That set becomes the locked visual contract for every render after.
- 01
Inventory
I read your Shopify catalog via API. Build a structured manifest: handle, title, type, dimensions, materials, scene-template match.
- 02
Generation
Your brand constitution + the matched scene template + per-product subject block feeds into the image model. PNGs land in staging.
- 03
Human review Halts for approve / reject
A review batch HTML pairs each staged image with its source product photo. You approve or reject per image, line by line.
- 04
Upload
Approved scenes push to Shopify via GraphQL productCreateMedia. Appended to the gallery. Never replaces your primary catalog photo.
Brand constitution
A JSON spec I write with you in week one. It defines your brand visually: light, palette, architecture, props rules, composition, atmosphere, forbidden territory. Every batch after week one reuses it.
Every render merges this constitution with a matched scene template and a per-product subject block. The constitution turns the art-direction decisions for 200 SKUs into fixed inputs.
- →Light: source, kelvin range, time of day, forbidden setups
- →Palette: hex-named colors plus forbidden tones
- →Architecture: wall, floor, anchor element rules
- →Props rules and style references, version-tracked
brand_constitution.json
"brand": "Your brand",
"light": {
"source": "single window natural",
"kelvin": 3200 to 4200,
"time": "late afternoon, golden hour",
"forbidden": ["overhead flat", "strobe"]
},
"palette": {
"cream": "#f5f0e6",
"caramel": "#9c7a4e",
"warm_brown": "#2a1e15",
"forbidden": ["pure white", "jewel tones"]
},
"architecture": {
"walls": "aged plaster, matte",
"floor": "wide-plank aged oak",
"anchor": "baseboard or doorway always visible"
}Snapshot from a real brand constitution. Yours will differ. That's the point.
The 99% fidelity engine
Six safeguards. Every batch runs through all six.
- 01
Multi-angle reference photos
Your catalog photos passed as inline image data on every generation call, not just text descriptions.
- 02
Distinctive features array
Per-product list of must-preserve details (hardware, joinery, finish, proportions, edge profile) injected into every prompt.
- 03
Subject proportions (5% tolerance)
Width-to-height ratios computed from your dimensions string. Generation rejected if rendered ratio drifts more than 5%.
- 04
Scene scale anchors
Every scene contains a known-size element: baseboard at 6 inches, door at 80 inches, window sash at 36 inches. Forces correct scale on the subject.
- 05
Vision QA pass
After generation, a separate model scores the image on FEATURE, PROPORTION, and COLOR each 1 to 10. Below threshold, it auto-retries with corrective notes.
- 06
SHA256 spec hash
Every approved image carries a content-addressable hash of the exact prompt, brand constitution version, and references that produced it. Audit trail.
Source Rendered
Sixteen products from two real catalogs: Emma Grace Home on Shopify and Vanity Resource on WooCommerce. Each row pairs the catalog product photo I sent the model as the fidelity anchor with the lifestyle scene the model returned. Same piece, every time. The hardware and joinery stay faithful to the source. Read the Emma Grace Home case study or see the live store.
-
Dark oak media console
-
Wingback chair, blue velvet
-
Club chair, antique leather
-
Arched bookcase, reclaimed pine
-
Cabinet, glass and panel doors
-
Armchair, leather and cane
-
York open-shelf washstand
-
Tall floor mirror
-
Swivel chair, white linen
-
Winfall farmhouse-sink vanity
-
Media console, washed oak
-
Arched mirror, hand-carved
-
Lincoln carved double vanity
-
Four-drawer chest
-
Single vanity, cream finish
-
Salford serpentine chest
Meta Ads method
How I run Meta ads for DTC home brands
I start with the catalog and the purchase signal, then build the creative system around how considered home purchases happen. The ads below came from that workflow, for two home brands I run: Emma Grace Home (the furniture catalog above) and Vanity Resource, a reclaimed-wood vanity brand on the same pipeline. Each set was generated and laid out inside the engagement that runs its campaigns.
-
Feed and signal
Clean catalog fields, Pixel and CAPI agreement, purchase values checked against Shopify, and prospecting separated from retention.
-
Creative system
Lifestyle scenes built from real product references, then tested by room, product, copy angle, and offer without breaking the visual spine.
-
Buying-window measurement
I read assisted demand and delayed purchases against blended revenue. A four-figure furniture order rarely behaves like an impulse checkout.
The Emma Grace Home case study shows the catalog and imagery foundation behind this system. It documents the storefront build, not an ad-performance claim.
Ten concepts across two brands. The products and rooms change, but each brand's visual spine stays fixed. I vary the offer and copy to test what moves demand. Once a brand constitution is locked, new ads ship in days. The same operator who renders the imagery sets up the campaigns.
Ship to Google Merchant without flinching
The model layer applies the compliance rules before an image reaches review.
-
Google Merchant 2026 ready
Every PNG carries IptcExt:DigitalSourceType = trainedAlgorithmicMedia, the metadata Google Merchant Center reads to identify AI-generated images.
-
SynthID + C2PA preserved
Watermarking and content provenance baked in by the model, preserved end to end. Not stripped on upload.
-
Alt-text disclosure
Generated alt text discloses the image as AI-rendered. Shopify and Meta both accept this; it protects you on consumer-protection compliance.
-
Never replaces your real product photo
Renders push to the gallery only. Your primary catalog photo stays the real product. Lifestyle scenes earn the secondary slots.
-
Named-designer prompt sanitizer
Living designer names (the ones at risk in Andersen v. Stability AI) are stripped from prompts before they reach the model. Style without legal exposure.
-
Content safety gate
Auto-rejects faces, hands, text, logos, seals, alcohol, weapons. Catalog-safe by construction.
“I’ve lived many rodeos. This is no noise. Just results.”
06 FAQ
What founders ask before they book.
What am I buying?
A senior marketing operator on your program. Strategy, Google Ads, Meta Ads, tracking, reporting, and a quarterly lifestyle photoshoot run through my in-house production pipeline. The imagery is what makes the rest of the program possible at scale. But you are hiring me, not buying a stack of renders.
Why not just hire an agency for half the price?
Agencies lose home brands on continuity. The senior who pitched you is rarely the one running your account a quarter later. With this engagement the same operator on the sales call is the operator on every weekly working session. There's no account manager between you and the work.
Why not just hire a photographer in-house?
You can. A studio bills per SKU and books weeks out, and an in-house photographer still ships a few SKUs a day. The in-house lifestyle pipeline removes that bottleneck so the rest of the program can run at catalog speed. On Emma Grace Home, a 150-plus product Shopify catalog I built solo, it meant zero product shoots and launch in under a month.
What does 99% fidelity mean?
It’s the bar every image has to clear, not an average. Each render is checked against multi-angle reference photos, a distinctive-features list per product, dimensional ratios with a 5% tolerance and scale anchors, then scored on feature, proportion and color. The checks fail closed: an image below the bar is retried with corrective notes or it doesn’t ship. Reference photos get checked too: on one catalog, 54% of products had at least one reference photo of a different product. Every approved image carries a content hash, and you see the audit trail.
What does this cost?
A catalog imagery batch, ten lifestyle renders plus one Meta ad set, is typically $2,500. It is the smallest valuable engagement, designed to let you see the work before committing to anything bigger. Every audit is free. One-time projects run $2,500 to $20,000, at a fixed price quoted from the audit before work starts. Monthly runs $2,500 to $8,500 a month, month-to-month: $2,500 for one ad channel and $1,500 for each add-on. At $8,500 it is the Fractional Marketing Lead seat. Ad spend is never marked up. The free catalog audit tells me where your brand sits before I quote anything. No mystery pricing.
Do these images get me in trouble with Google or Meta?
The compliance stack is built for both platforms. Every image carries that disclosure metadata, the SynthID watermark, C2PA provenance, and alt-text disclosure. Lifestyle scenes never push as your primary catalog image; they go to the gallery slots only. Faces, hands, logos, and text are auto-rejected before render.
What is the brand constitution?
A locked JSON spec I write with you in the first week of any engagement. It defines your brand visually: light, palette, architecture, props rules, composition ratios, atmosphere, explicit forbidden territory. Every render after that uses the same constitution. Consistency across 200 SKUs is mechanical, not aspirational.
How fast is a new batch after the initial calibration?
Once your brand constitution is locked, a batch of 50 SKUs is typically 24 to 72 hours: inventory manifest, generation to staging, review HTML, approved-scene queue, push to Shopify. The calibration pass on a new brand is the one slow step. Everything after compounds.
What does the free audit include?
A 5 to 7 page PDF report on your catalog: image-coverage audit, alt-text gap analysis, top SKUs ranked by imagery investment, two competitor snapshots, and one sample lifestyle render of your worst-offender SKU done through the production pipeline. Delivered within 24 hours of submission. No call required. The CTA at the end is to book one if you want to walk through it.
07 Free audit
Your catalog,
graded honestly.
Drop your Shopify URL. Within 24 hours you get back a 5 to 7 page PDF: image-coverage audit, alt-text gap analysis, your top SKUs ranked by imagery investment, two competitor snapshots, and one sample lifestyle render of your worst-offender SKU done through the production pipeline.
- 01Imagery audit. Per-product image counts, alt-text coverage, hero-image quality, bare-vs-lifestyle classification.
- 02Ads opportunity sizing. What the imagery gaps are costing you on Google Shopping CTR and Meta DCA, projected against published benchmarks.
- 03Competitive snapshot. Two competitor brands audited on the same axes. Where you're winning. Where you're not.
- 04Prioritized fix list. Top 10 SKUs to reshoot first, ranked by revenue signal.
- 05One sample render. Your worst-offender SKU, rendered through the production pipeline. So you can judge the result against your actual product.
Free. No call required. I read your public store, so there’s nothing to grant. If you want to talk the findings through, a strategy call is open too.
Free catalog audit, written by me
Your catalog,
graded in 24 hours.
Send the store link and I'll grade the catalog from your public store, back in writing within 24 hours. Nothing to grant, and no call. If you'd rather talk first, a strategy call is open too.