19+ years in performance marketing. Agency-side, client-side and now independent.
Joseph Tobin started in digital marketing in 2007 and ran his first paid search account in 2008. He has led performance for some of the biggest advertisers in the UK since, from both sides of the table.
The short version
Joseph began in 2007 as a marketing assistant at a branding agency, then moved in 2008 to Pikum, an online gambling business, managing Paid Search, Paid Social and Affiliate campaigns. Two agency roles followed, at STEAK and then iProspect, where he ran paid search and SEO for a broad client list.
In 2012 he joined MediaCom. Over seven years he moved from Search Planner Buyer to Director, leading integrated performance strategy for telecommunications, financial services, healthcare, retail and FMCG clients. Several of the campaigns he led won industry awards.
In 2019 he moved client side to evoke plc, first as Head of Paid Search for the sportsbook and then as Group Performance Head. He directed more than £50m of annual media investment across the group's brands, including more than £30m of annual Paid Search investment, scaled YouTube from nothing to £4m a year, took app adoption past 70%, and delivered a 3.1 ROI through experimentation, automation, marketing mix modelling and attribution.
After leaving evoke in 2024, he established JDTE Digital and worked as an independent performance marketing consultant.
In 2025 he moved back in-house as Global VP Performance Marketing at Global University Systems, where he rebuilt a 50+ person international performance team across more than thirty institutions, put governance and quality assurance in place, modernised attribution and reporting, embedded AI-driven optimisation and led the group's AI Search programme.
In 2026 he returned to JDTE Digital and now works independently with a small number of clients at a time.
What that experience means for you
Joseph has bought media at every scale, from four-figure test budgets to eight-figure annual plans, across paid search, paid social, YouTube, programmatic, affiliates and app. He has run SEO alongside paid since 2010 and AI search since it became a channel. He has hired and reviewed agencies, so he knows what a good one looks like and what a poor one hides. He has sat in the board meetings where marketing spend is challenged, so the measurement he builds is made to survive them.
He read History at the London School of Economics, which is where the habit of checking sources comes from.
Where the experience comes from
Agency-side foundations, followed by client-side leadership from 2019 and independent consulting alongside senior in-house roles.
Joseph read History at the London School of Economics.
How Joseph works
Four rules, applied on every account, whatever the budget.
Profit, not ROAS
A high ROAS on a low-margin product is a loss. Every account is planned from margin and payback, so the budget goes where the profit is.
- Plans built from unit economics
- Bids set to contribution, not revenue
- Budget moved to what pays back
Senior hands on the account
The person who pitches is the person who does the work. No account managers, no juniors learning on your budget.
- Direct access, one point of contact
- Weekly working sessions, not monthly decks
- 19+ years of performance marketing experience
Measurement you can defend
Attribution that a finance director will sign off. GA4, first-party data, incrementality tests, marketing mix modelling and dashboards built to survive a board meeting.
- GA4, CAPI and server-side set-up
- Incrementality tests and MMM for the big picture
- Looker Studio and Power BI dashboards
AI where it pays, people where it counts
Automation and AI bidding are used where they earn their keep. Strategy, structure and judgement stay human.
- Smart bidding tuned with real margin data
- Scripts and automation for the repetitive work
- AI and LLM search visibility for ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI
Talk to Joseph about your account
A thirty-minute call. You describe the account, Joseph tells you what he would look at first. No deck, no pitch.