Mike Farrell — Performance Marketing & Paid Media

About

I’ve spent 11+ years running paid media for brands that actually care about growth, not just spend. I’ve worked from both sides of the table, across live entertainment, DTC e-commerce, extreme sports lifestyle and apparel, footwear, clothing, beauty, CPG, and more.

What’s stayed consistent throughout is a belief that the best media buyers aren’t just button-pushers, they’re systems thinkers. Solving problems is what really scratches the itch, and that’s what pushed me toward AI and automation, not because it was trendy, but because I saw what was coming and wanted to build for it.

How I Can Help

Paid Search Audits

A deep dive into your Google or Microsoft Ads account: structure, bidding, targeting, and wasted spend. You’ll walk away with a clear, prioritized action plan.

Shopping Feed Optimization

Clean, structured product data is the foundation of high-performing Shopping campaigns. I’ll audit and rebuild your feed to maximize visibility, click quality, and ROAS.

Paid Media Strategy

Full-funnel strategy built around your actual business goals: budget allocation, platform mix, creative direction, and a measurement framework that tells you what’s really working.

AI & Automation Consulting

Reduce manual overhead and build smarter workflows. From automated reporting pipelines to LLM integrations, I’ll help your team do more with less and think bigger with the time they get back.

Work History

Sunnyside

2023 – 2025

Digital Marketing Agency

Joined looking for something more progressive. Found a place to build, even when I had to build it myself. Owned the full paid media ecosystem across Google, Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and emerging retail media for D2C lifestyle and apparel brands. Developed AI-powered reporting workflows that saved the team 20+ hours a month and started pushing deeper into LLM integration and automation across client accounts.

City Winery

2022 – 2023

Entertainment / Hospitality Brand

Took a swing at the in-house world with a hospitality and live entertainment brand. Led a team of 11, built out a national paid media strategy from scratch, and drove $8.5M in ticket revenue at a 13x ROAS in the first half of 2022. Learned a lot about what it takes to move fast at scale — and what happens when an organization’s digital ambitions outpace its appetite for change.

Consistent Conversion

2015 – 2022

Digital Marketing Agency

Where I cut my teeth. My cousin brought me in, and over seven years we built something that actually worked. We developed complementary specialties over time, which made us a more effective team than most. My focus was paid search, reporting infrastructure, and client strategy.

Featured Projects

+35% Revenue

Shopping Feed Optimization Playbook

Feeds are infrastructure. Whatever AI-powered shopping looks like in five years, it runs on clean, optimized product data. I built a proprietary feed optimization playbook for D2C clients that increased Shopping campaign performance by an average of 35%. Most agencies treat feeds as an afterthought. I treat them as the foundation.

20+ Hrs/Mo Saved

Automated Reporting Pipeline

Manual data entry is a tax on good thinking. I built a reporting workflow integrating Funnel.io, Google Sheets, and Claude that replaced what used to be hours of tedious copy-paste work each week — freeing up time to actually analyze performance instead of just organizing it.

13x ROAS

$8.5M Paid Media Campaign

Built and led a national paid media strategy for a multi-venue live entertainment brand, managing 11 marketing managers across localized campaigns for dozens of artists and events. The result: $8.5M in ticket revenue at a 13x average ROAS in H1 2022.

Skills

Paid Media

Google Ads Meta Ads YouTube Ads TikTok Ads Microsoft/Bing Ads Google Shopping Retail Media Networks Nordstrom Ads Connected TV Criteo

Feed & Data

Google Merchant Center Shopping Feed Optimization GoDataFeed Funnel.io Looker Studio Google Tag Manager

AI & Automation

Prompt Engineering LLM Workflow Dev OpenAI API Anthropic API Make.com Cursor

Let’s Talk

I’m currently open to full-time, freelance, contract, and consulting opportunities. Based in West Orange, NJ. Open to remote or hybrid roles in Northern New Jersey or Manhattan.

linkedin.com/in/mtfarrell