Curriculum · v1.0

Become a Performance Marketing Engineer

Four chapters, one for each craft and one for the loop. Every chapter has a hands-on project with a before-and-after number, plus the best free courses and videos we could find.

Chapters
4
Projects
4
Time
About 10 hours
Cost
Free
Proficiency levels

Progress through evidence, not a badge.

01

Foundation

You can explain the system and produce a supervised piece of work. Finishing the four chapters is a Foundation step.

02

Practitioner

You can deliver, monitor and improve the system in a live account with routine review.

03

Advanced

You can design safeguards and trade-offs across a team, and teach others.

Levels are per craft: someone can be Advanced in Creative and Foundation in Signal. The chapters take about ten hours if you already work in paid media; that is an entry point, not a qualification. Practitioner and Advanced come from doing the work on real accounts. Capabilities by level ›

Chapter 1
How to own the signal

Chapter I · signal
by PME.orgv1.0
Chapter I · Signal

How to own the signal

Platforms optimise toward the conversions you send. This chapter makes sure those conversions are real, complete and worth something.

What you learn

    Hands-on projectAbout 3 hours

    Send revenue back to the platforms

    1. 1Map each CRM stage to a conversion event, with a value
    2. 2Send qualified leads through a Conversions API, hashed and deduplicated
    3. 3Show match quality and signal coverage before and after

    Proof · signal coverage, before and after

    At the end of this chapter you can

      Portfolio evidenceA tracking plan, event validation and a before-and-after coverage report.

      Courses and docs

      Watch

      Terms in this chapter

      Server-side trackingConversions API

      Chapter 2
      How to make decisions

      Chapter II · decisions
      by PME.orgv1.0
      Chapter II · Decisions

      How to make decisions

      Platform dashboards grade their own homework. This chapter moves every budget decision onto outcomes the business owns.

      What you learn

        Hands-on projectAbout 2 hours

        Build the morning ledger

        1. 1Pull spend from every platform next to CRM revenue
        2. 2Compute MER and cost per qualified lead per channel
        3. 3Show the gap between platform and CRM numbers

        Proof · platform vs CRM gap, before and after

        At the end of this chapter you can

          Portfolio evidenceA reconciled reporting ledger and a documented budget recommendation.

          Courses and docs

          Watch

          Terms in this chapter

          MERPOASIncrementality

          Chapter 3
          How to feed the creative

          Chapter III · creative
          by PME.orgv1.0
          Chapter III · Creative

          How to feed the creative

          Targeting moved into the ads themselves. This chapter turns creative into a pipeline of hypotheses, sized so every test reaches a verdict.

          Deep diveSizes per platform, brand inputs, a layout lab and the research loop behind a creative agentOpen the deep dive

          What you learn

            Hands-on projectAbout 2 hours

            Size your next creative test

            1. 1Work out how many variants the budget can actually judge
            2. 2Build variants from the current winner and launch them paused
            3. 3Show the days to a verdict

            Proof · days to a verdict, before and after

            At the end of this chapter you can

              Portfolio evidenceA creative testing plan with explicit hypotheses and decision criteria.

              Courses and docs

              Watch

              Terms in this chapter

              Performance Marketer

              Chapter 4
              How to run the loop

              Chapter IV · the loop
              by PME.orgv1.0
              Chapter IV · The loop

              How to run the loop

              The last chapter joins the three crafts into one weekly loop: read, decide, create, launch, learn. Humans approve the money.

              What you learn

                Hands-on projectAbout 3 hours

                Ship one guarded budget rule

                1. 1Write a weekly rule that proposes budget moves inside fixed limits
                2. 2Add an approval step and a log with one-click revert
                3. 3Show the manual hours removed per week

                Proof · manual hours removed, before and after

                At the end of this chapter you can

                  Portfolio evidenceA working workflow with approvals, a change log and rollback.

                  Courses and docs

                  Watch

                  Terms in this chapter

                  Marketing EngineerMarketing EngineeringPerformance Marketing Engineer
                  Open library

                  Learn from the teams defining the space.

                  Free material from the teams behind the role and the platforms it runs on. Open to everyone.

                  The originalsThey named the engineering roles in marketing.
                  Named the Marketing Engineer

                  Profound University

                  The manifesto and the course behind the role: systems thinking, agents and APIs.

                  Free courseOpen ↗
                  Behind the GTM Engineer

                  Clay University

                  The same engineering habit pointed at the pipeline: enrichment, scoring, CRM workflows.

                  Cohorts freeOpen ↗
                  The platformsThey run the auctions a PME works in.
                  Search & YouTube auction

                  Google

                  How its auction reads signal: server-side tagging, Google Ads and Meridian, its open-source mix model.

                  FreeOpen ↗
                  Feed & Reels auction

                  Meta

                  How outcomes reach its bidding: the Conversions API, lift tests, Robyn and GeoLift.

                  FreeOpen ↗
                  Chapter III · deep diveFeed the creative: sizes per platform, brand inputs, layout and the research loop

                  Become a PME / Chapter III · creative / Deep dive

                  Chapter III · deep dive

                  Feed the creative. Sized, branded and built to win.

                  Every platform crops, overlays and rebuilds your ad in its own way. This page covers the four things a creative agent needs before it can make anything worth testing: the right sizes, the brand inputs, a layout that reads in a second and a research loop that teaches it what wins.

                  01 · Sizes per platform

                  One idea, six different frames.

                  Design for the tallest frame first, then crop down. Keep the message inside the safe zone so no caption, button or profile bar covers it.

                  Meta

                  Facebook · Instagram

                  Official specs ↗
                  4:5
                  Feed image1080 × 1350

                  Default for feed. 1:1 still runs but gives up screen.

                  9:16
                  Stories & Reels1080 × 1920

                  One safe zone for both: keep 14% top, 35% bottom, 6% sides clear.

                  4:5
                  Carousel card1080 × 1350

                  1:1 also works. Keep every card in the same ratio.

                  1:1
                  Square1080 × 1080

                  Fallback for older placements.

                  Brand mark

                  No separate logo field: the Page picture is the only brand mark, so the logo lives inside the creative.

                  Copy

                  Primary text shows about 125 characters before “See more”; keep headlines near 40.

                  covered by the app’s interface on 9:16 · Checked 26 Oct 2026 against the platforms’ help pages. Specs change; confirm in Ads Manager before production.

                  02 · Brand inputs

                  Some platforms add your logo. Some never will.

                  Google assembles the ad from separate assets, Meta shows only the Page picture, TikTok a 98-pixel profile image. Know which one you are feeding before the logo goes into the image.

                  Assembled for you

                  Google · LinkedIn. Logo, name and headline arrive as separate fields. Keep the image clean: no overlaid logo, text or button, or the ad shows them twice.

                  Inside the creative

                  Meta · Pinterest. The only brand mark is a small profile picture. The logo, the product and the promise have to live in the image itself.

                  Native first

                  TikTok · Shorts · Reels. Ads that look like posts win. Brand in the first seconds through product, voice or a short end card, not a fixed corner logo.

                  03 · Layout lab

                  Clean reads first. Move the logo and see.

                  A phone viewer decides in about a second. Give the eye one place to land, keep the brand readable and leave room at the edges. Change the frame, the logo position and the margin, and watch the checks.

                  Frame

                  Logo position

                  Edge margin6%
                  Logo width22%
                    One focal point

                    The product, or a face. Not both fighting.

                    Eye-tracking work agrees on the basics: faces, contrast and motion are seen first. Pick the one thing that should be seen, and place it on a thirds line.

                    Breathing room

                    Nothing touches the edge.

                    Keep logo and text at least 4–8% in from every edge. Crops differ by placement, and a logo glued to the border looks like a mistake.

                    Reading order

                    Brand, promise, action.

                    Top-left or top-centre logo, the promise across the middle third, the button bottom-right where the thumb already is. On 9:16, lift it all above the caption zone.

                    Few words

                    Six to eight words on the image.

                    The rest goes in the ad copy. Large type, one weight change, brand colours from the kit, and contrast that survives a dimmed screen.

                    04 · The research loop

                    A creative agent is only as good as what it was told.

                    Put a website into an image model and you get the model’s default taste. Teams getting results wrap the model in research: brand, competitors, a library of winners and a person’s judgement, then feed the test results back.

                    1. 01Read the brand

                      Website, product pages and reviews: what is sold, to whom, the claims you can prove and the tone of voice.

                    2. 02Pull the brand kit

                      Logo files, fonts, colours and product shots, taken from the site so every ad stays on brand without a designer checking pixels.

                    3. 03Audit your own ads

                      Which formats run today, and how long each ad has stayed live. Ads that survive for weeks are the ones the budget kept paying for.

                    4. 04Read the competition

                      Public ad libraries show what competitors run and for how long. Long-running formats are the ones worth learning from.

                    5. 05Use a reference library

                      A labelled set of winning ads across industries: format, hook, layout and run time. One team describes about 1,000 of them.

                    6. 06Add human taste

                      A person rates ads and says why. With hundreds of rated examples (one team rated about 700) the agent stops producing the model’s default look.

                    7. 07Brief the image model

                      All of it becomes one specific instruction: format, layout, copy, brand kit and taste, instead of “here is my website”.

                    8. 08Test, then feed back

                      Variants run as a sized test. Results go back into the library, so the next brief starts from what actually won.

                    Why it matters inside a company

                    The wrapper, not the image model, is the asset. Models get swapped every few months; the brand research, the labelled library and the rated examples stay and get better with every test.

                      What the PME owns

                      The agent produces the variants. The PME owns the inputs, the test and the verdict.

                      Which brand inputs are allowed, which claims are off limits, how many variants the budget can judge, and when a winner is a winner. That is the hypothesis-and-verdict system Chapter III teaches.

                      Back to Chapter III

                      The research-loop pattern and its numbers (about 1,000 reference ads, about 700 rated by hand) follow a workflow shared by practitioner Josh Jackson in a video on building ad-creative agents.

                      05 · What still sells

                      A hundred years old. Still the brief.

                      Claude Hopkins treated advertising as salesmanship in print, and every claim as something to test. His Scientific Advertising was locked in a safe for 20 years because it gave away the secrets. Models make the variants now; his rules are still the best instruction you can give them.

                      1 in 10 → nearly allDoor-to-door silver polish: talking about it sold one woman in ten. Showing it in the house sold almost every one.
                      5–10×What changing only the headline can do to the returns of an identical ad, in Hopkins’ tests.
                      5th → top twoSchlitz beer, within months, after telling a purity story every brewer shared but none had told.
                      3% · 78 sec“My net profit is 3%” and a “78-second shave” beat “lowest prices” and “quick shaves”.
                      Test small, then trust the court

                      Never judge buyers by your own taste. Hopkins made his mistakes small, learned from each, and let public response decide every claim.

                      For the agentSized tests only. The agent proposes; spend gives the verdict. Your favourite variant gets no extra vote.

                      The headline is the ad

                      It picks the right person out of the crowd, like calling “Hey there, Bill Jones”. Put the main promise in it. Hopkins spent hours on one line and threw scores away.

                      For the agentGenerate many headlines per idea and test the headline before the visual. The biggest lift is usually there.

                      Tell the pains you take

                      Schlitz cleaned every pipe twice a day and filtered the air in its cooling rooms. Every brewer did it; nobody had said it. Makers are too close to their product to see what amazes buyers.

                      For the agentMine the website, specs and process docs for the dull facts competitors never mention, and turn one into the hook.

                      Specific beats superlative

                      “Best in the world” rolls off like water. Real numbers are believed and remembered.

                      For the agentEvery variant needs one concrete number: time saved, price, results. Ban unprovable superlatives in the brief.

                      Show it working

                      One dramatic demonstration beats any argument. Samples work best when people asked for them and made a small effort.

                      For the agentOpen on the product in use, before and after, in the first two seconds. Gate the free trial behind one small step.

                      Service, not “buy my brand”

                      Boasting and selfishness are the two great faults. “Insist on this brand” and “avoid imitations” kill ads.

                      For the agentLead with the buyer’s outcome. Cut every sentence that is about the company, not the customer.

                      Sell the reward

                      People will do anything to cure a trouble and little to prevent it. Pepsodent sold beautiful teeth, never decay, and never pictured the afflicted.

                      For the agentFrame the gain, not the fear. Show the after-state and attractive results, not the problem.

                      One person, not the mass

                      A woman asking about sewing machines got the sewing-machine catalogue and the names of owners in her town, not the whole range.

                      For the agentSegment by intent: one ad, one landing page, local or peer proof for each audience the platform finds.

                      Keep the winner running

                      You are not advertising to a standing army but to a moving parade. The ad that won millions usually keeps winning; only the advertiser is bored of it.

                      For the agentRotate on data, not on boredom. Retire a creative when its numbers fatigue, not when the team does.

                      The Hopkins check

                      Eight questions before any variant ships.

                      Give them to the agent as a gate, and to the person who approves. “Genius is the art of taking pains.”

                      Stories and figures from Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising and My Life in Advertising, as told on the Founders Podcast ↗. Paraphrased; “for the agent” notes are PME.org’s.

                      06 · Hands-on

                      Build your creative input pack.

                      Collect these nine things before you brief an agent or a designer. Your progress stays in this browser.

                      Progress

                      0 of 9

                      Done? Run your first sized test with the Chapter III project: Size your next creative test.

                      Next

                      Sized, on brand, researched. Now test it.

                      Size the test (Chapter II)Read Chapter III
                      Test yourself

                      Not sure where to start?

                      Ten questions, five minutes. The result points you to the chapter that will help most.

                      The four layersPrompt library