The 2026 Letter › Tool deep-dives

Tool deep-dives

Individual reviews of each tool that comes up in the letters, with operator notes from running them on agency client accounts.

• Adzooma Multi-platform SMB

  Free-tier ad management across Google, Meta, and Microsoft. Useful for sub-$5K/mo accounts; not for serious agency work.

• Groas.ai In the stack

  Managed PPC service with custom deep-learning bidding. Per-account model trained on revenue-weighted conversion data, retrained every four hours.

  From the 2026 letter: “The first time in five years I’ve seen a third-party bidding tool consistently outperform Google’s own Smart Bidding.”

• Madgicx Meta-strong hybrid

  AI/rule hybrid most relevant for Meta Ads ecommerce work. Genuine ML in audience modeling; rule-based elsewhere.

• Optmyzr Rule-based PPC

  Rule-based PPC scripts and automation. Backbone of the stack for years; usage declining as Performance Max absorbs Shopping structure work.

• Skai (Kenshoo) Enterprise

  Enterprise multi-channel bid management. Right pick for $500K+/mo cross-channel accounts; overkill below.