The Baseball Manager Analogy: What Advertisers Get Wrong

Now, you might already know that I'm a baseball nerd through and through. I grew up playing baseball, although I wouldn't say I was all that great. I then coached baseball for more than 15 years as my three boys grew up, and along the way, those were some of the most amazing years and experiences of my life.

So, needless to say, I'm a huge baseball fan, stats nerd, and overall traditional baseball strategy skeptic. You might know that about me. It occurred to me recently that there's actually a very close parallel between many of the frustrations I have with advertisers and similar frustrations I have with baseball managers.

Now, I promise this will be relevant to Meta advertising. Even if you're not a baseball fan, you might think of a similar parallel to something relevant in your life.

So let's start with baseball managers. A manager's primary job is to put players in position to succeed. Things like who you put in the field and where, who is in the lineup and where, who pitches and when, and using all the right stats and information to help make those decisions.

This might oversimplify the manager's role a bit, because there's more that goes into it, but these are truly the most impactful parts of a manager's job. The problem I have with managers is when they try to inject themselves too much into the game and they over-manage. They get cute with strategies, take silly risks, and make the likelihood of scoring and winning less likely.

An obvious sign of a manager who is too involved is a constant barrage of unsuccessful bunts. And this hits close to home for me right now, as I watch a lot of high school baseball — it's an epidemic. It's as if they want to constantly remind us that the manager is important.

Strangely, I think there's actually something else to the motivation behind over-management. In this case, for a baseball manager, my theory is that some managers — either consciously or not — feel they need to constantly direct their players for job security. If they're not running quirky plays and unnecessary strategies, what do we need a manager for?

But when they do all these things, it often comes at the expense of wins.

Now, let's be clear about something. The most important factor of a successful team isn't the manager or that manager's strategies. It's talent.

A great manager can't take a no-talent team to a championship. They can try to get the most out of that low talent, but the potential is capped. On the other hand, a bad manager can absolutely mismanage a talented team and keep them out of the playoffs.

Now let's talk about advertisers, which is why you're here in the first place. In this analogy, the ads are an advertiser’s players. Some advertisers believe that their tweaks and quirky strategies with targeting and campaign construction are what win games for them.

Back in the old days, there may have been some truth to that. But it's a much different game now. Those strategies aren't the key to generating profit and winning games. It's the ads — or the players.

So, like the manager, an advertiser's job is to put their ads in position to succeed. A micromanaging advertiser can actually make a team of talented ads less effective. They make bad decisions by overvaluing the wrong metrics. They get cute using the wrong performance goals. They water down budgets with multiple ad sets for targeting. They remove placements or use manual bidding strategies when they don't need to. They do all these things that look good on paper but are at best meaningless without high-quality ads. And at worst, they're counterproductive and hurt team performance.

And like with the baseball manager, an advertiser — whether they know it or not — is largely doing this out of perceived job security. They might be thinking, “If I'm not constantly tweaking things, what am I needed for? If a client knows I don't have this super complex strategy, why did they hire me?”

I've actually heard advertisers express this fear. This exact fear. It's often related to Meta’s various optimizations or my suggestion to take a simplified approach.

This fear completely misunderstands the advertiser's very important role.

The baseball manager may not need to do all that extra stuff, but he still has an important job. He’s still needed. That manager still needs talented players to win. And a smart manager will prioritize taking a job to lead a talented team, because that gives him the best chance.

Of course, he also needs to nurture that talent. Give his players confidence. Make sure everyone on the team is getting reps and getting better. That team morale is high and players are remaining focused through a long season. Teach them new things — but ultimately, don't screw it up.

Similarly, the advertiser has an important job, even without overcomplicated strategies. They still need talented ads to win, and they should play the primary role in creating them.

But even the best ads need proper nurturing. Are they optimized for each placement? Is the proper format used? What do you do to avoid creative fatigue when ads stop performing? Maybe, like a player, do you have others to call up from the minors?

It's all a delicate balance. You don't want to micromanage and make ad performance worse, but you also shouldn't take a completely invisible role either.

So let's get to the bottom of the glass.

As an advertiser, your ads are what you should care about most. This is the talent you need to help your clients succeed. Without that talent, forget about it. It's a lost cause. You're going to lose — and you're probably going to blame the league for it.

Everything else you do, from campaign construction to number of ad sets and targeting and all those strategies, helps determine whether you're putting those ads in position to succeed or fail.

But don't overvalue all of the secondary things you do. Don't assume you're a magician who can take low-talent ads to profits with your super-complicated strategy. You're not going to bunt those low-talent ads to a championship.

If you have the talent, you have one primary job: Don't screw it up.