Mitchell Bishop · Performance Marketing · Orlando
Bringing paid media in-house is the largest cost reduction available to most travel and hospitality companies — and the one nobody pulls the trigger on, because the downside of getting it wrong is six months of broken performance and a team you can't staff.
I've done it once, at scale, and it worked. This is the engagement where I do it for you.
01 — The arithmetic
Move the three sliders to your numbers. Everything else updates, including the honest verdict at the bottom — which is sometimes "keep your agency."
Cumulative position If the risk reserve is spent in full
Sends the numbers you just set — spend, fee, team cost and the year-one result — so you have them in writing when you take this to your CFO. It reaches me too, which means if you'd rather talk, I already know your situation before the call.
02 — Why it doesn't happen
"Performance will fall off a cliff during the handover."
It does when the agency is switched off before anyone internal can run the accounts. The transition is sequenced channel by channel with a paid overlap period, and I run the accounts myself through the handover — so the dip has nowhere to happen.
"We can't hire people this specialized."
You can, but not with a generic job posting and a three-round loop. I write the scorecards, source against them, sit in the interviews and make the calibration calls. Hiring the wrong first media hire is the single most expensive mistake in this process.
"The agency owns our pixels, accounts and history."
Often true, and it is the leverage they'll use. Data and platform ownership gets settled in writing before notice is given — accounts, tags, audiences, creative files, historical reporting — and it's the first thing I audit, not the last.
"Then we're stuck with fixed cost instead of flexible spend."
Correct, and that's the real trade. Fixed cost is worth it above a spend threshold and not below it — that's what the calculator above is for. If your media is seasonal or volatile enough that flexibility is worth the premium, the honest answer is a hybrid, and I'll design that instead.
03 — The engagement
Scoped so that you can stop after phase one with a decision and a model, and owe nothing further if the answer is "don't do this."
04 — Price and terms
Scoped on media size and channel count. Fixed at signature — no hourly billing, no change orders for scope inside the five phases.
The build-vs-buy model on its own. If the answer is don't do it, you've bought a defensible decision for the price of a media test. Credited in full if you continue.
Billed monthly in advance across the term. Phases overlap by design; the calendar above is the real one.
Fractional CMO leadership of the team once it's built — budget ownership, agency oversight for what stays outside, board reporting.
05 — Fit
06 — Who's doing the work
Thirteen years in performance marketing, most of it accountable for the number rather than advising on it. I spent six and a half years as the performance marketing lead for a multi-brand vacation ownership portfolio, owning $15M+ in annual media across TV, CTV and OTT, paid search, paid social, display, programmatic and audio.
The relevant part: I led that portfolio's full transition from agency-managed media to an in-house operation — built the team structure, hired the talent, established the processes, and came out the other side with faster speed-to-market and lower cost.
Today I run enterprise marketing for a scaling multi-location franchise network, which means the multi-unit and local-demand side of this is current, not historical. I work with a small number of clients at a time, and I take on one transformation engagement at a time.
Bring your current agency arrangement and roughly what you spend. I'll tell you on that call whether the arithmetic works, and if it doesn't, I'll say so and we'll both save the quarter.