Blackhat Strategy Avis 

We have been working with Black Hat for the last 11 months… And we are consistently growing together month over month. I would highly recommend that anyone else running a direct to consumer business.

Black Hat Strategy has been a solid, professional marketing partner. They’ve consistently delivered thoughtful ad campaigns that aligned with our goals, kept us in the loop with clear communication, and followed through with measurable results. Over time, they’ve been integral in helping us achieve steady growth. If you want a team that is reliable, strategic, and focused on performance, we highly recommend them.

Blackhat has delivered above and beyond for us. They keep our ads running and delivering performance well above our expectations. They even implemented a tracking system that works on our domain that’s blocked by Meta. I can’t say enough about how happy I’ve been working with them!

This agency has been pushing out meta ads for my cannabis business like crazy! Email blast are completed every week on time to over 16k of my supporters. I know there’s no other agency that can come close to what BHS has been able to provide.
Thank you at BHS 🥂

I engaged Blackhat Strategy for roughly 7 weeks to manage paid advertising. Posting this so other buyers can decide with full information. Every point below is from my direct experience, and I've updated it to address the company's reply.

On the ROAS numbers. The company states the account reached ~1x early and climbed to ~3x. That is their platform-reported, ad-account-level figure. My independent ThoughtMetric attribution never reconciled with it. In the final ~10 days before I ended the engagement, ThoughtMetric attributed a 0.25 ROAS on their campaigns. Over that same window, creatives I ran myself attributed 3 to 5x. Their reported numbers and independently-attributed numbers were not close, and that gap is the reason I'm posting. Any prospective client should verify one against the other before trusting it.

On the "side by side" campaigns. The company notes my parallel campaigns weren't connected to their reporting environment. Correct, and that's the point. They were measured independently in ThoughtMetric, same store, same window. Same period, same business, one quarter of a return from them versus 3 to 5x from campaigns I built myself.

On expertise and communication. This is the core of my review. The account managers assigned to me could not answer direct questions about advertising metrics or their own tooling. When I asked how figures were being calculated or why attributed performance didn't match their reporting, I did not get competent answers. Response speed was not the issue. They replied quickly and often. The replies did not reflect a working understanding of the advertising they were being paid to manage.

On the service model. In my experience, the work amounted to AI-generated campaigns that were then left largely untouched, with little ongoing optimization to justify the retainer. That is a setup a business owner can replicate themselves, at no management cost, and in my case with a far better return. Paying a premium retainer should buy expertise and active management. I did not receive either.

On the refund. To be precise about what was returned: the refund was unspent ad budget, money that was mine the entire time, held to be spent on ads and never spent. No management fees were refunded. Presenting the return of a client's own unspent ad dollars as something the agency provided is misleading.

Recommendation. Before hiring them, run your own campaigns side by side and verify every reported number with independent attribution. In my case, doing that is exactly what exposed the gap between what was reported and what was real.

If you ask anyone in a high-risk industry about Blackhat, they always have good things to say, and that's for a reason. Black Hat always under-promises and over-delivers. Couldn't be more pleased with my experience with them.