Maddie Lightening, head of paid media at Hallam, sat down with me to unpack the missteps, learnings and mindset changes that have defined her journey in PPC. With over ten years’ experience spanning search, social, programmatic, digital out of home and ABM, she offered an honest view of what it’s really like to lead paid media in a rapidly evolving landscape. The reporting error that accidentally halved results Early in her career, Maddie made a reporting error caused by mismatched account currencies. She was managing an Australian billing setup but reporting in GBP, which meant conversion values were being converted and effectively cut in half in her reports. The discrepancy only became clear when she compared platform performance with CRM data and discovered results were actually twice as good as reported. It was a powerful reminder of how easily technical configuration details can distort performance metrics. When an old account structure starts holding you back A tougher challenge emerged with a travel client using an old, ultra-granular account structure containing thousands of campaigns. This “2016-style” build had once been effective, but it no longer aligned with modern, AI-led bidding and data aggregation strategies. As performance began to slip, the sheer complexity of the setup made it harder to optimize and to pinpoint what was going wrong. Why timing is as critical as the plan itself Maddie noted that although the team had already identified the need to rebuild the account, they postponed the restructure to avoid interfering with peak season. When results fell in January, they had to roll out several major changes at once, increasing both pressure and risk. Looking back, beginning the restructure sooner would likely have eased the transition, underlining how postponing essential changes can…