About

I run paid media. Personally.

Fractional paid media director · Raleigh, NC

7 years in paid search and $100M+ in managed spend, most of it in regulated categories where a bad pixel or a loose claim costs more than wasted budget. I don't hand accounts to a junior. The person who writes the strategy is the person in the account running it.

James Chase

Two ways to work with me

For business owners

You hire me directly and I do the work. Paid search, AI visibility, and the tracking that ties a click to a customer.

  • Google Ads, Local Services Ads and Microsoft Ads, built and run by me
  • Whether ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity recommend you, measured every month
  • Conversion tracking and CRM wired end to end
Start with a free AI visibility audit

For agencies and marketing teams

A senior paid media lead without a full-time hire. I set direction for the channel and stay close enough to the accounts to know when it's wrong.

  • Account structure, bidding strategy and a testing roadmap
  • Measurement: GTM, enhanced conversions, offline conversion imports
  • SOPs, training and 1:1s for the people running it day to day
See my resume

Selected results

$100M+managed ad spend across search, native and social
$5M ARRinbound call program built in its first year
70%less reporting time per client after automating it
263xcross-domain attributed purchases within 3 months

How I got here

I started as a geologist. At Terracon I analyzed spatial and lab data for client reports and ran the Raleigh office's drone program.

In 2019 I moved into paid search at Tranzact, a Willis Towers Watson company. Over 5 years I went from analyst to Associate Director, Paid Search. I ran branded search for Humana, Aetna, Elevance and Blue Cross Blue Shield Medicare plans under HIPAA and carrier compliance rules, took YourMedicareMatch.com from a single landing page to a $5M ARR inbound call program in its first year, and managed a team of 4.

Since 2024 I've run paid media at Sherpa Collaborative, a Raleigh agency, and I've run it AI-first. I built the automation that pulls every client's ad, GA4, LSA and CRM data each week and drafts the monthly briefs, which cut reporting time per client by 70%. I also built cross-domain purchase tracking for a DTC supplement brand, and pitched and sold inbound and outbound systems to clients.

How I work

Measurement comes first.Most of the waste I find isn't in the bidding. It's in what was never measured, or was measured wrong.

One variable at a time.Tests run to a real answer before the next one starts. Otherwise nobody learns anything.

Automate the reporting, not the judgment.Pulling numbers is a machine's job. Deciding what to do with them is mine.

Plain answers.If something isn't working, you hear it from me first, with what I'm changing.

Get in touch