Welcome to SelfStack
A weekly newsletter that cuts through AI hype with sharp, practical insights for marketers and founders.

Written by Will Sartorius
(and surprisingly, not AI)

Dive into our latest posts ↓

Copywriting

🪭 I built a monitor that watches culture while i sleep. the first list it handed me held an ad i briefed that afternoon

Jul 31, 2026

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16 min read

🪭 I built a monitor that watches culture while i sleep. the first list it handed me held an ad i briefed that afternoon

Part five of the system. Everything we've built so far reads signals that hold still while you study them. This one reads the week you're standing in, and answers the question that actually matters about a trend: is this wave yours to ride, and how many days are left on it

Will Sartorius

Copywriting

☠️ your best ad is dying right now. here's the monitor that catches it five days early, and tells you how to save it

Jul 24, 2026

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15 min read

☠️ your best ad is dying right now. here's the monitor that catches it five days early, and tells you how to save it

Part four of the system. The dashboard from last issue has a blind spot: it grades winners on lifetime numbers, and lifetime numbers are where dying ads hide. Below: the fatigue monitor, the three tells in the order they fire, the autopsy of a winner we caught too late, and the question nobody asks about a fatigued ad, which quietly decides your next month.

Will Sartorius

Copywriting

🎶 your best ad copy is already written. a stranger on reddit wrote it. here are the two prompts that go find it.

Jul 17, 2026

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15 min read

🎶 your best ad copy is already written. a stranger on reddit wrote it. here are the two prompts that go find it.

A sneak preview of my second video with Dara Denney, before it airs. Two paste-ready prompts, zero API keys: one builds a dashboard of every persona you've ever tested, the other reads it and finds the ones you never have. Then the part everyone gets wrong, which is writing the actual copy without ruining the customer's own words.

Will Sartorius

Copywriting

a $4 reddit scrape ranked the 23 ad angles we've never run. number one embarrassed me.

Jul 10, 2026

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8 min read

a $4 reddit scrape ranked the 23 ad angles we've never run. number one embarrassed me.

Two weeks ago the machine mapped everything you've ever run. This week Reddit ranks everything you haven't. Below: the $4 Apify scrape, the two prompts, and the diff that turns your white-space map into a ranked test list.

Will Sartorius

Copywriting

🧬 I had an AI grade 18 months of our ads. The gold wasn't the winner

Jun 26, 2026

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7 min read

🧬 I had an AI grade 18 months of our ads. The gold wasn't the winner

It was the list of angles we'd never tested. the meta-api setup that finds yours is in the kit.

Will Sartorius

Copywriting

♻️ I figured out how to reverse-engineer any video ad

Jun 19, 2026

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6 min read

♻️ I figured out how to reverse-engineer any video ad

Point it at any winner you scroll past. It hands you the recipe to rebuild it

Will Sartorius

Copywriting

🏀 I made new claude and old claude compete for ad budget

Jun 12, 2026

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7 min read

🏀 I made new claude and old claude compete for ad budget

Fable 5 and Opus 4.8 each got the same raw export of a real NA-beer client's Meta account: 157 ads, no brief, no hints. Analyze it, slate it, write it, prompt it, QC it. Then they graded each other. Who's better at which job, with receipts?

Will Sartorius

Copywriting

◼️🌈 Claude turned raw b-roll into a polished ad (all by itself)

Jun 5, 2026

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8 min read

◼️🌈 Claude turned raw b-roll into a polished ad (all by itself)

The trick is the last step: a second AI whose only job is to find everything wrong with your ad and make you fix it until it passes. The whole pipeline is inside.

Will Sartorius

Copywriting

My AI product ads looked like 💩. One file fixed it

May 29, 2026

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7 min read

My AI product ads looked like 💩. One file fixed it

I dissected the product down to the pixel, then the ads stopped fighting me.

Will Sartorius

Welcome to SelfStackA weekly newsletter that cuts through AI hype with sharp, practical insights for marketers and founders.Written by Will Sartorius(and surprisingly, not AI)

Dive into our latest posts ↓

🪭 I built a monitor that watches culture while i sleep. the first list it handed me held an ad i briefed that afternoon

☠️ your best ad is dying right now. here's the monitor that catches it five days early, and tells you how to save it

🎶 your best ad copy is already written. a stranger on reddit wrote it. here are the two prompts that go find it.

a $4 reddit scrape ranked the 23 ad angles we've never run. number one embarrassed me.

🧬 I had an AI grade 18 months of our ads. The gold wasn't the winner

♻️ I figured out how to reverse-engineer any video ad

🏀 I made new claude and old claude compete for ad budget

◼️🌈 Claude turned raw b-roll into a polished ad (all by itself)

My AI product ads looked like 💩. One file fixed it

Welcome to SelfStack
A weekly newsletter that cuts through AI hype with sharp, practical insights for marketers and founders.

Written by Will Sartorius
(and surprisingly, not AI)