Matthias Stepancich

I’m a paid media strategist who understands measurement at a level most marketers don’t.

I was Tesla's first global growth performance hire. I built the function from scratch, scaled paid media from zero to $10M+/quarter across North America, EMEA, and APAC, coordinated the team across three continents, and launched Tesla's first-ever YouTube advertising campaigns (20M unique viewers, 35% search lift, 30% incremental lead uplift).

Before Tesla, I ran €3M+/month in paid search at lastminute.com across 8 products and 7 European markets, delivering +158% conversions and +67% ROAS in Germany alone.

In total, I've managed over €100M in paid media across 31 countries (US, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, Canada, and more) on Google, YouTube, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, CTV/OTT, and programmatic.

What sets me apart from most paid media people: I actually understand measurement. Not "data-driven marketing" buzzword stuff. Real measurement - incrementality testing, marketing mix modeling, causal inference. I spent my time at Tesla pushing for dedicated marketing data science and was the person who drove the adoption of incrementality-based experiments at lastminute.com. When I look at your campaigns, I don't just see what the platform tells me. I see what's actually working and what's fake signal.

Currently I advise growth-stage companies as a fractional growth leader and paid media strategist. Recent work includes a full paid media audit for AMBOSS (medtech) that identified up to €365K/year in untapped value, and founding the growth function at BlueAlpha (B2B AI Marketing SaaS), where I enabled B2C brands to adopt MMM and incrementality testing at scale.
I've also taught AI for Marketing courses to 1,500+ students with a 4.5/5 rating.

If your paid media needs senior strategic direction, contact me via LinkedIn or steptb.com