08 About
Platforms change. Judgement compounds.
Imran Kapadia is a growth strategist and technologist in the UAE. He builds the systems that connect data, technology and human behaviour to commercial outcomes.
01 Story
The short version
Fourteen years in performance marketing teach you one thing quickly: platforms change faster than principles. Google, Meta, TikTok and Snapchat reshuffle their rules every year. Tracking breaks, attribution models are retired, and now AI rewrites the job itself.
Through agency and client-side work across the UAE and beyond, and more than $50 million of managed ad spend, the constant has not been a tactic. It has been a habit of mind: measure what matters, understand the system behind the number, and never confuse activity with progress.
Imran works where growth, data and technology meet. He is as comfortable in a tag-management container or a server-side tracking architecture as in a boardroom, and increasingly as interested in AI agents and automation as in media.
Prior: sceptical. Posterior: updated.
02 Proof
Scale, stack, judgement
14+
Years
In digital and performance marketing.
Ad spend managed
$50M+
More than $50M in US dollars, cumulative, career to date.
Brands managed
150+
Across the GCC, UK, US, Australia and Asia, career to date.
03 Philosophy
What stays
Technology changes. Platforms change. Algorithms change. AI changes the job itself.
A small set of things do not. Good judgement. Curiosity. Measurement. An understanding of why people do what they do.
Tools make work faster. They do not decide what is worth doing, or whether the number on the screen means what it appears to mean. The work sits in that gap: learning every new system quickly, then returning to the questions that outlast it.
What is the business trying to achieve? What do we actually know? What would change our mind?
04 Principles
Ten principles
Show the working.
Evidence over noise. Every claim has a number, a method or a stated limit.
Build the system, then run the campaign.
A good campaign on a broken measurement set-up is a guess.
Take the long view.
Prefer what compounds over what spikes.
Stay curious on purpose.
Test one new tool, idea or workflow each month, and write down what happened.
Be honest about uncertainty.
Say "we don't know yet" and show the interval.
Tie it to the business.
Every metric connects to revenue, margin, risk or a decision.
Use technology as leverage, not decoration.
Automation and AI earn their place by saving time or improving judgement.
Make it simple.
If it cannot be explained to a client in a minute, the thinking is not finished.
Keep experimenting.
The default state is a test running.
Respect the number, and respect the person.
Human judgement still decides what the numbers mean.
05 Experience
Experience
Earlier roles. Current work is not listed.
Digital marketing lead (performance, SEO and CRO), then marketing lead, omnichannel and growth
Media performance manager, then media performance lead and senior consultant
Associate director, digital media
Supervisor, digital planning and strategy
Management trainee to senior media planner
06 Stack
Stack
Tools I use hands-on.
| Paid media | Google Ads, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, DV360, Campaign Manager 360, Apple Search Ads |
|---|---|
| Measurement | GA4, Google Tag Manager, Looker Studio, custom attribution, marketing mix modelling |
| CRM and automation | HubSpot, Salesforce, Mixpanel, lifecycle email flows |
| CRO | A/B and multivariate testing, Hotjar, funnel analysis |
| AI | ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney; smart bidding, Performance Max, Advantage+ |
07 Education
Education and certifications
- Growth Marketing micro degree, CXL Institute
- MBA, Marketing, Institute of Business Management (IoBM)
- BBA, Marketing, Institute of Business Management (IoBM)
Google: Black Belt; Google Analytics; Google Ads Search, Display and Fundamentals. Accenture: Digital Marketing; Web Analytics. Languages: English, Urdu, Hindi.
08 Contact
If your tracking disagrees with your finance data, start there. Write to me.