Profit Over Clicks: How Stalled Brands Start Growing Again · Aleksandar Hadzhiyski, Titan Agency

What we talked about.

In this episode of the Sunny Ray Show, host Sunny Ray talks with Aleksandar Hadzhiyski, founder of Titan Agency, a performance marketing agency based in Bulgaria that serves direct to consumer brands, mostly in the United States. Aleksandar explains why brands should prioritize profit over clicks, noting that ad platforms tend to over-attribute sales while backend profit can quietly fall. He shares lessons from earlier ventures in blogging and affiliate marketing, and how his basketball background shaped a team built on specialists who know their roles and collaborate. The conversation covers why retargeting revenue is often not incremental, why creative diversity now acts as targeting on Meta, and why contribution margin and first order profitability should be a brand's North Star metrics. He also discusses Titan's referral-driven growth, his plans to build a personal brand and agency partnerships, and his view that AI should empower teams rather than replace them, letting account managers handle more brands within two years.

Your ads can look great while profit quietly falls. Aleksandar Hadzhiyski explains why contribution margin and creative diversity matter most.

The questions, and the answers.

What is Titan Agency and what problem do you solve?

We're a performance marketing agency working with D2C brands, mostly in the United States. We help them grow profitably, and I want to underline profitably. We run Facebook ads, Google ads, email, SMS and performance creative. We currently serve about 21 brands with a team of 12 people.

What from professional sports do you still use when running a team?

Collaboration, and everyone knowing their position. None of our team members juggle multiple disciplines. We have creative strategists, media buyers, and email and SMS specialists, each focused on one thing. They also work together so we can grow the client's business as a whole. I played basketball growing up.

Why do brands blame the ad when creative is the real problem?

It's the easiest thing to blame, since creatives run on the ad platform. Many brands don't look at soft metrics like whether the creative speaks to their ideal customer or whether they're diversifying enough. At $10,000 to $20,000 a month, you need big swings, not small tweaks.

What is a common campaign mistake you see?

Brands over-invest in retargeting existing customers. It's easy to get a high return on the platform, but that revenue isn't incremental, since most of those orders would have happened anyway. We focus only on new customers on Meta and Google, because new customers are what grow the business.

How will AI change what a performance team looks like in two years?

I want to empower my team with AI tools rather than replace designers or copywriters. Account managers currently handle no more than seven accounts. With automated reporting and scheduled reports in Slack each morning, I see them managing 10 to 15 brands, making decisions much faster.

What one number should a founder check after this episode?

Contribution margin. Brands should know whether they're profitable on the first order, understand their contribution margin targets, and make decisions from that. Decisions based only on Facebook Ads Manager data won't work. Click through rate and CPA are secondary metrics for us.

What would you tell a founder whose ads look great but profit is falling?

Understand your backend metrics and share them with your performance marketing team. Many brands keep profitability and contribution margin to themselves, which is a mistake. If the agency doesn't know you're losing money, they may keep scaling because the ads look good. Collaboration between client and agency is key.

If you took over a stalled brand tomorrow, what would you look at first?

First, backend metrics: are they profitable, what's the cost per acquisition, and are they hitting targets. Second, creative diversity. On Meta, the creative does the targeting. If it speaks only to one segment, the ads reach the same people over and over.