Twenty-six people. One platform.
Alderstone Media was founded in Bristol in 2014 by two media planners and a campaign manager who wanted to find out what upper-funnel planning discipline looked like when it was applied to Google's own inventory rather than to television.
- Est. 2014
- Team 26
- Offices Bristol & London
- Spend £24m
- Clients 19
- Owners 4 (all working)
Employee-owned since 2022
Google Ads only
IPA member agency
We started because of a view count
In 2013 our founders sat in a meeting where a client was shown a YouTube campaign report built almost entirely from views and view-through rate. Every number in it was accurate. None of them answered whether a single additional person had considered buying anything.
Alderstone opened the following year with three rules written into the articles of association: fixed fees only, never a percentage of ad spend; no rebate or incentive from any platform or tool vendor; and no campaign launched without its measurement designed first. Those rules have cost us at least two large accounts that wanted a commission model. We have kept them anyway.
In 2022 we moved to employee ownership, with a trust holding a majority stake. The practical effect is that nobody can sell the studio to a network without the staff agreeing, which is the only structural protection we could find for the way we work.
How the studio is organised
Four teams, deliberately unequal in size. Measurement is larger than a studio of our scale would normally justify, because it is the part clients cannot easily replace.
Planning
Nine planners, each on a maximum of three accounts. They own the argument, present the plan and are accountable when it does not work.
Campaign management
Seven campaign managers split by format group, holding the day-to-day account work, exclusions and pacing. They execute; they do not plan.
Measurement
Six analysts running Brand Lift studies, geo tests and search lift analysis, reporting directly to the managing director rather than to planning.
Creative
Four editors and designers cutting video for Google's formats and building asset sets, so creative never delays a launch date.
What we will not trade away
These are in our contracts and our articles, not only on this page.
- 01Transparency is not a slide
You see the platform cost, our fee and any third-party tool cost as three separate lines on every plan. You may audit any of them at any time, using an auditor of your choosing, at our cost.
- 02Evidence outranks seniority
If an analyst's lift study contradicts a planning director's recommendation, the study goes to the client with the disagreement documented. We have lost internal arguments in front of clients and consider that healthy.
- 03The brief is negotiable
We will not plan against a brief we believe is measuring the wrong thing. We say so in writing, propose an alternative, and let you decide.
- 04Small is a choice
We cap client numbers rather than headcount growth. Nineteen clients across twenty-six people is inefficient by industry standards and it is the reason our work holds up.
- 05We publish our mistakes
Our annual client report includes a section on campaigns that underperformed and what we changed as a result. It is uncomfortable to write and it is the most-read page.
We do not want to be the biggest Google Ads agency. We want to be the one that still measures properly.
Come and test the claims on this page.
Ask us for the disclosure letter. Ask a current client whether we really send the uncomfortable findings. Ask what we got wrong last year. We would rather answer those questions now than in month six.
Start a conversation