Ian McGavin

Ian co-founded Strataigize in 2022 and runs paid media and growth. His standing rule is that no number gets judged before its date range and attribution window are confirmed and stated out loud, because recent days under-report and keep filling in for a week afterward, and two mismatched windows produce decisions that are confident and wrong. It is the least glamorous standard in the business and it is why the reporting holds up. When a result is not final yet, clients hear that it is not final yet.

Most of what he builds never appears in a deck. Client accounts here are reviewed on a schedule by optimization systems he wrote, working inside written bounds: how far a budget can move in one step, what has to be true before an ad is paused, what gets escalated to a person instead of executed. Every change is logged and reversible. The practical effect is that accounts get attention on nights and weekends, and the reasoning behind any change can be produced on request.

He leads the firm's work on AI search on a simple premise: answer engines are becoming the front door, and the only durable way through it is to be worth citing. He is also willing to publish work that costs the agency money. In 2026 he had the Generative Engine Optimization deliverables the industry sells as standard put to the test, found that most of them do not hold up, cut them from Strataigize's own offer, and published the findings ungated rather than behind a lead form. The prices are on the pricing page for the same reason. An argument that only works while the buyer cannot check it is not an argument.