Performance marketing, paid on performance.
Most performance marketing agencies sell you performance and charge you a retainer. We charge for the performance.
By Mahesh Murthy, Founder of Pinstorm. Reviewed by Ansoo Gupta, Chief Operating Officer.
Definition
Performance marketing is the discipline of buying media you can measure, attribute and judge against revenue. At Pinstorm it goes one step further: we are paid on the performance we create — a share of the revenue, a CAC target, a ROAS floor — not a flat monthly fee that arrives whether the campaigns worked or not.
Performance marketing was supposed to fix advertising. Every click measured, every conversion tracked, every dollar accountable. Then the agency model quietly broke the promise: agencies kept the retainer, kept the media commission, and kept getting paid whether the numbers moved or not. “Performance” became a department name, not a deal structure.
We started Pinstorm in 2004 to close that gap. We buy the search, social and programmatic media, we build the funnels behind it, and we get paid on what it produces. If the revenue doesn't grow, neither does our invoice. That single change — tying our income to our forecasts, and case by case putting our own time or media money behind them — is what makes our performance marketing actually about performance.
What performance marketing should actually mean
Real performance marketing answers four questions before a single ad runs: what revenue number is this designed to move, what would have happened without the spend, what attribution window are we reading, and at what point do we kill it. An agency that can't answer those is running brand advertising with a tracking pixel bolted on.
We run paid search, paid social, programmatic display, retargeting and marketplace media as one accountable system — not as channels competing for credit in a last-click report. The channel mix is whatever moves the revenue number. Nothing is sacred, including the channels we recommended last quarter.
Why pay-on-results changes the work, not just the invoice
When an agency is paid on outcomes, it can't afford vanity metrics. Impressions, reach and “engagement” stop being deliverables and become diagnostics. The whole operation reorganises around incremental revenue, because that's the only thing that pays us.
It also changes who we say no to. We turn down accounts where the product can't convert, the margins can't carry paid acquisition, or the attribution can't be trusted — because under our model, taking that work would cost us money. A retainer agency never has to be that honest.
What's included
- Paid search (Google, Bing, marketplace search)
- Paid social (Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, X)
- Programmatic display, video and native
- Retargeting and lifecycle media
- Conversion tracking and incrementality testing
- Creative testing tied to revenue, not awards
- Weekly P&L-level reporting, not dashboard theatre
The thinking behind it
- Advertising is a crappy business. So why did we start Pinstorm?
No one gets rich in advertising - though it takes the same kind of smarts that any other unicorn does. So why bother? I'm Mahesh. I founded Pinstorm. Even after I swore to myself I…
- The world is changing. Is your marketing?
A world where the industrial era practices of command-and-control or even Kotler-type 4P approaches simply don’t cut it any more.
Proof in practice
- Client in the red? What about the client in the red-corner notice?— Interpolling well.
- The E-commerce Play: $240K to $2M in 12 Months— 9× revenue
- $120K Working Capital. $1.4M Annualised Revenue.— 12× ROAS
- Taking a SaaS Business Global: 280% MRR Growth— 280% MRR growth
Frequently asked
What does a performance marketing agency do?
A performance marketing agency plans, buys and optimises measurable media — search, social, programmatic — against a defined business outcome like revenue, leads or return on ad spend. Pinstorm differs from most in that it is compensated on that outcome rather than on a fixed retainer or media commission.
How is Pinstorm different from other performance marketing agencies?
Most agencies sell performance and bill a retainer. Pinstorm builds the funnels and is paid through revenue share, equity or performance milestones — deciding case by case whether to also invest its own team's time or the third-party media costs — so we only make money when the client's numbers actually move.
Which channels does Pinstorm run?
Paid search, paid social, programmatic display and video, retargeting and marketplace media — selected and weighted purely by what moves the client's revenue target, not by what's fashionable or what carries the highest commission.
How much does performance marketing cost with Pinstorm?
There is no rate card, because there is no retainer. Each engagement is structured around the outcome: a share of revenue, a CAC ceiling, a ROAS floor. You carry the third-party media costs; our fee moves with the result. So the real question is not what we cost but what the growth is worth, and we price against that together, before we start.
How do I choose a performance marketing agency?
Ask one question: how do you get paid if my revenue doesn't move? A retainer agency gets paid anyway. An agency on a percentage of ad spend gets paid more when you spend more. If the honest answer is 'we get paid regardless', you now know whose performance the contract protects.
How long does performance marketing take to show results?
Paid search and social produce readable data within weeks. We judge incrementality over a quarter, because a fortnight of noisy data proves nothing either way. Most engagements show measurable revenue impact within 60 to 90 days, depending on the sales cycle and the state of your tracking.
What KPIs should a performance marketing agency report?
Incremental revenue, blended CAC, contribution after media costs, and payback. Not impressions, not reach, not engagement rate; those are diagnostics, useful in the engine room and meaningless in the boardroom. If a weekly report can't be reconciled with your P&L, it's a dashboard, not a report.
Does Pinstorm run performance marketing outside India?
Yes. We work from Mumbai, Dubai and Noordwijk in the Netherlands, and have run campaigns across India, the Gulf and Europe since 2004. The platforms are global; the outcome deal travels with them.
Should we run performance marketing in-house instead of hiring an agency?
If your spend is small and you have the talent, possibly yes, and we'll say so. An agency on our model is only worth hiring if it outperforms what you'd do yourself by more than it costs. That is a testable claim, and we are comfortable being tested on it.
Related services
Want performance marketing that's paid on results?
If you'd like a marketing partner who only gets paid when you grow, talk to us. If you'd like to understand the philosophy first, read about outcome-based marketing and evidence-based marketing.