A paid media agency that helps your brand make the jump
Cannonball doesn’t just place media. Our paid media services holistically combine performance-focused media planning, strategic messaging and behavioral science to help brands reach the right audience, influence decisions and drive measurable growth.
Let’s jump in.
Why Cannonball?
We believe media and messaging work better together.
Most paid media marketing agencies separate creative and media. We don't.
Cannonball is a St. Louis-based paid media agency that operates at the intersection of audience behavior, messaging and media strategy.
Our media planners and creative teams work in tandem before, during and after the media campaign, optimizing for message, audience, channel and budget.
All the while, our in-house Behavioral Scientist and strategy team ensure we understand how your audience makes decisions, so that we are delivering the right message at the right moment throughout the consumer journey – creating integrated campaigns that move customers from awareness to action.
Already have a creative agency or in-house creative team? Cannonball’s media team can work with your creatives the same way we do our own.
Our Media Strategy
A full funnel approach to growth.
The customer journey isn't linear.
People discover, research, compare, leave, return and engage through multiple channels before making a decision.
That's why Cannonball’s paid media management services are built around the full decision-making journey. Our full-funnel strategy supports awareness through conversion and loyalty:
Awareness: Build visibility and introduce your brand.
Inspiration: Create emotional connection and interest.
Consideration: Provide information and reasons to choose you.
Conversion: Create emotional connection and interest.
Loyalty & Advocacy: Keep customers engaged and returning.
%
jump in web traffic
%
sales jump
%
growth in reservations
ticket deposits in 24 hours (MLS record)
%
sales lift in targeted media markets
5 Essential Components to make a media splash
As a paid media advertising agency, Cannonball’s process is built on 5 strategic pillars that are proven to make impact.
1 / Audience Development
1 / Audience Development
We identify the audiences most likely to engage, convert, and become long-term customers. Our behavioral scientist delivers strategic insight based on qualitative data, while our data analysts utilize first-, second- and third-party data to best capture your consumer on their media journey.
Services include:
- Audience segmentation
- Archetype development
- Behavioral research
- First-party data strategy
- Market analysis
2 / Strategic Messaging
2 / Strategic Messaging
Media performs best when messaging aligns with audience motivations. Our in-house creative team works with media planners to drive action and build your brand.
Services include:
- Message architecture
- Journey-based messaging
- Creative strategy
- Behavioral insight development
- Campaign planning
3 / Channel Strategy & Media Planning
3 / Channel Strategy & Media Planning
We build channel-neutral plans based on business goals – not media trends.
Capabilities include:
- Paid Search
- Paid Social
- Programmatic Display
- Video & Connected TV
- Streaming Audio
- Native Advertising
- Digital Out-of-Home
- Email Marketing
- Retargeting
4 / Performance & Optimization
4 / Performance & Optimization
Every campaign is measured, analyzed and improved continuously.
Capabilities include:
- Conversion tracking
- Attribution analysis
- Dashboard reporting
- A/B testing
- Budget optimization
- KPI management
5 / Growth & Learning
5 / Growth & Learning
Campaigns should become smarter over time.
We use performance data and audience insights to refine messaging, improve targeting, and uncover new opportunities for growth.
Media Capabilities
Cannonball is designed to be your paid media agency, paid search agency and beyond.
Paid Media
Cannonball plans, activates and optimizes paid media around the business outcomes that matter to your brand. We define the role each channel should play across the customer journey, then manage budget, audiences, creative, bidding and measurement as an integrated media system—rather than treating channels in isolation.
Capabilities include (but not limited to):
Social Media Management
Our team is accountable to social media marketing’s ever-changing landscape. Whether it’s a one-off social campaign or a yearly boosted content strategy with paid social surges, you can count on Cannonball to use the most up-to-date best practices in social media placement. We leverage the latest in creative social trends, techniques and emerging strategies to maximize engagement.
Primary social channels:
Analytics & Measurement
Our data analysts bring clarity to complexity by merging media, web and business analytics into a single source of truth. We uncover actionable insights that guide strategy, optimize performance and prove ROI across every channel.
Cannonball delivers proven excellence in:
Audience & Data Strategy
Cannonball’s process for audience development comes via all data sources, from PI to second-and-third party data. This also includes qualitative data, as Cannonball’s in-house behavioral scientist applies psychological understanding to the consumer, influencing overall audience strategy. Website integration is also addressed, including server-side tracking and audience journeys.
Services include:
SEO & Paid Media Collaboration
At Cannonball, SEO informs how we plan, build and optimize paid search campaigns. As your paid search marketing agency, we combine SEO keyword research, organic search performance and Google Ads conversion data to understand what customers search for—and which searches generate leads or sales. These insights shape keyword targeting, ad copy and landing page optimization, helping paid search and SEO work together to drive business results.
How we connect paid search and SEO:
Meet the media team
Parker Goldman
VP Media & Analytics
Vince Hulett
Media Director
Hayden Yates
Associate Media Director
Tyler Blest
Sr. Media Manager
Craig Wessel
Sr. Media Manager
Marie Schmich
Traditional Media Manager
Rachel Brunts
Digital Media Manager
Nicole Bloomer
Digital Media Manager
Brandyn Robinson
Digital Media Manager
Raine Morris
Digital Media Manager
Maria Tovrea
Digital Media Manager
Alex Wilking
Tracking Specialist
How We Work
Our Media Process
Discover
It begins with our behavioral scientist and data analysts researching your target audiences. If your campaign requires original qualitative or quantitative research, we lead it to uncover audience behaviors, subsets and opportunities.
If we are working from existing research and data, we dive into the numbers to inspire our approach. It all leads to a brief we create in partnership with our client, ensuring alignment from the beginning.
Develop
Working from the brief, our media planners and creative team begin collaborating on messaging and media strategies. We identify opportunities for breakthrough messaging and placement together. We also propose media channel selection, identifying the tracking setup, testing, reporting and optimization cadence.
Activate
Now comes the fun part – launching the campaign across all relevant channels. Our team is experienced and proven in hitting deadlines and ensuring the right assets are in the right channels, reaching the right audience at the right time.
Optimize
Our data analysts and media planners are always-on with media campaign dashboards. We monitor, test and improve performance, partnering with creative teams to update messaging and graphics if/where needed.
Grow
After the campaign, we turn the results and data into a report designed for growth. We turn insights from the campaign’s performance into future opportunities, giving your brand team tangible recommendations on what to stop, start and keep doing.
Your media should deliver more than just “results”
We are a paid ads agency that measures success based on business outcomes.
We intently measure:
- Leads that turn into customers
- Sales that reach short-term goals while driving long-term growth
- Bookings that keep customers coming back for more
- Website engagement that informs, entertains and inspires purchase
- Brand lift in consumer perception, ad recall, favorability and purchase intent
- Customer acquisition and its impact on growth
- Return on ad spend (ROAS), effectively understanding how your media dollars generate revenue
Industries we impact
Cannonball has helped brands make the jump in a variety of categories. By keeping our client roster diverse, we are always finding insights that we can translate to new categories.
Contact us for more info and case studies within any of the below industries.
Questions about Cannonball Paid Media Services?
Don’t hesitate to reach out, or peruse some FAQs below.
When should a brand hire a paid media agency?
A paid media agency can help when a brand wants to accelerate growth, reach specific audiences, or connect marketing investment to measurable business outcomes. It may also be time to bring in an agency when internal teams lack the bandwidth, specialized expertise, technology, or media partnerships needed to manage campaigns effectively.
Paid media is most effective when it works in coordination with strong organic, earned, and owned marketing efforts. Cannonball develops coordinated strategies that amplify those efforts and move audiences from awareness to action.
Does Cannonball do B2B media agency marketing?
Yes. Cannonball develops paid media strategies for both B2B and B2C brands. For B2B clients, we use account-based marketing, precise audience targeting, paid search, content promotion, retargeting, and other tactics designed to reach decision-makers and support longer sales cycles.
Our approach connects media activity to meaningful outcomes throughout the funnel, from awareness and engagement to qualified leads and business growth.
How do paid media agencies reduce wasted ad spend?
Reducing wasted ad spend requires continuous monitoring, testing, and optimization. That means actively monitoring performance, testing audiences and creative, adjusting bids and budgets, and shifting investment toward the tactics producing the strongest results.
We look beyond inexpensive impressions or clicks. Our goal is to connect media performance to business outcomes so that every optimization supports greater efficiency and impact.
What channels should a full-funnel paid media strategy include?
The right channel mix depends on your audience, objectives, customer journey, budget, and existing marketing activity. A full-funnel strategy may include paid search, paid social, programmatic display and video, connected TV, streaming audio, out-of-home, and other relevant channels.
Not every brand needs to be everywhere. Cannonball identifies the channels most likely to influence awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty—and builds a focused plan around your priorities and resources.
How does Cannonball measure paid media performance?
Cannonball builds measurement around the business outcomes that matter to each client. Our reporting can combine media-platform data with available first-party business data to provide a clearer view of campaign performance.
Clients receive access to dashboards where they can review results across campaigns, channels, and time periods. The dashboards are powered by a data infrastructure that updates nightly, giving clients access to current performance data each day. We also provide monthly reporting, quarterly business reviews, end-of-campaign analyses, and ad hoc insights. When the data and measurement environment allow, we connect media activity to downstream outcomes and use historical performance to establish meaningful benchmarks.