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Regulated categories aren’t impossible - just unforgiving.
Founder Alexandra Prochshenko (Veloria) and I get brutally practical about what still works in paid media when you’re competing in red-ocean auctions or navigating policy landmines. We cover tiny budgets that actually move the needle, how to avoid flags, and why your offer + funnel beats any hack.
👉 Need a reality-first plan? Book your 20-min Exploration: https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/explorationplugin-20min
What you’ll learn
- Red-ocean truth: Meta/Google costs aren’t broken - you’re just bidding in crowded auctions. Here’s how to win anyway.
- $2/day local workshop play: tight geo, one clear outcome, short run, retarget all engagers - why this still converts.
- Small budget survival: most “failed” ads are offer/funnel failures; run 6–8 creative variations minimum.
- YouTube ads that work: story > length; open strong, stack proof, ship multiple cuts - not one “hero.”
- Regulated brands: use buffer pages, policy-safe language, and sequenced education to avoid flags.
- Search is changing: why founders should optimize for ChatGPT visibility (structured answers, sourceable pages).
- Diversify attention: blend paid with community, email, partnerships; measure signals over vanity.
Guest
Alexandra Prochshenko - Founder, Veloria (The app that brings pleasure back for women with pelvic pain.)
Site: https://www.veloria.ca/
About the show
Is Anything Real? with Adam W. Barney - Reality-First Leadership for founders and operators who want proof over theater and growth without burnout.
Work with Adam
👉 EnergyOS: book your 20-min Exploration → https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/explorationplugin-20min
Creators and Guests
What is Is Anything Real??
Is Anything Real? is the Reality-First Leadership podcast for builder-leaders who want outcomes, not optics. Each week, Adam W. Barney sits down with founders and operators to unpack positioning, marketing, community, energy management, and influence - plus the numbers behind what actually worked.
You’ll hear: a quick Reality Check, a practical Proof Stack (inputs → actions → outcomes), and one EnergyOS habit you can run this week. Specifics over slogans; humane systems over hustle cosplay.
New episodes every Wednesday at 12:00 PM ET.
👉 Book your 20-min Exploration Call: https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/explorationplugin-20min
[00:08.0]
Welcome back to "Is Anything Real?", the show where we question everything, especially that 7X ROAS someone's uncle claims they got on $40 a day. Today's hot take: paid advertising is either broken or it's built for someone else's budget.
[00:24.2]
I'm your host, Adam W. Barney, and today we're joined by Alexandra Prochshenko, a seasoned ad strategist who's run everything from million dollar daily budgets to $2 local campaigns that actually worked. she's launching Veloria, a new venture in women's health and wellness where the stakes are higher, the ad policy is stricter, and the word of mouth doesn't exactly flow on Instagram.
[00:48.2]
Alexandra, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Adam. So nice to meet you. So you've worked with massive ad budgets and, and hyper-targeted $40 campaigns. What's the biggest myth people believe about results at either end of the spectrum?
[01:06.5]
I think the issue is that, and I think many people say that, the landscape changes so fast, so much. And on top of that, many people run ads, like five years ago, and they got great results, and today that the same things don't work.
[01:22.1]
If we started with the blue ocean, imagine like 15 years ago, right? You could run any kind of ad so cheap and you would get all the leads and you would get all the purchases and it was great. These days it's so saturated that it's true that either you are very smart about how you do it and you don't put all your eggs in one basket.
[01:42.4]
I, as a paid ad specialist, I always say, please don't rely on me to be a sole provider of all of your roas, you know, of all of your revenue. You have to have other things going for you because it just doesn't work like this anymore. It's now a red ocean, it's filled with sharks.
[01:59.7]
And you either have to be really sneaky or you have to have a massive budget, right? And then you obviously get all the reps, you get amazing treatment, but your budgets have to be even more than before to get amazing treatment. Now, like even the clients with really large budgets sometimes get frustrated with the reps.
[02:19.2]
You know, on both Meta and Google, I find. Believe me, I've been there across my career, it's been one of those things where if you're spending even a huge amount of money, maybe you get assigned a bad team on the other end, and you don't get the service you want but let's talk a little bit about, I know you've pulled off an actual ROI positive Meta ad campaign for a tarot workshop with just $2 a day.
[02:44.8]
That's wild. What made that work? That's true. I think it's not the full truth because I then expanded to remarketing. So it was $4 a day, but I did do it. So it's such a close case of how you can make it work in your community.
[03:03.3]
However, if it was for just come to our coffee shop, I don't know if I would have done it. I would probably rely on my outdoor advertising way more. But because it was like a closed event, right? You need to buy a ticket through Eventbrite. I did have to launch the ads at first for prospecting.
[03:23.0]
And because I know exactly when it's happening, right? It's like a small area. I'm in Vancouver, Canada, so Vancouver is not that big. So I know people are not going to travel from really far. So I just put this on my ad. Both I said it was an Olympic Village, that's one of our neighborhoods. So I just said Olympic Village.
[03:39.3]
So it immediately grabs your eye, you can tell it's local. And also I just put yeah, like a variety of things on the ad that would really indicate what it is. Like it's a workshop, it's local, it's Olympic Village. Like next Sunday, let's go. And those ads run within the very restricted area, right?
[03:57.4]
And reach is quite affordable in Meta, you can still get a lot of people to see your ad for very little. So I would run it on $2 a day for a week. And then once I have the audience, and also because I run it for Eventbrite page, I can't track the audience.
[04:14.5]
Right. I don't know who landed on that page. So I just scooped everybody who interacted with the ad because what else could I do? And then I retargeted them too. And, the way I did it is, obviously no one would just go and buy a ticket from that.
[04:30.4]
So when we run ads on Meta, many people go, mmm, that's interesting. But I don't know, how about I just follow that girl on Instagram, right? And then on Instagram, every single day you post, or more like I post, I posted every single day.
[04:46.0]
I gave them like tips, tricks, interesting things about tarot that people don't know. How fun it could be, what they can get from that, you know, like every single day you're out there in stories, and you keep warming them up. And in the end, I think three people converted from the ads out of 10, which the 10 was my limit anyway.
[05:02.9]
So it actually worked out like the conversion rate was pretty high. But even here on such tiny budget. Right. You have to be really sneaky. You have to be local. You have to know exactly what you're doing. And then I tested a lot of creative. You have to have a lot of creative. And then in the end, you still have to warm them up and get them there.
[05:22.9]
I'm just thinking about this, like, let's be real, most founders or creators don't test like that. In general, what's your take on why small business ads flop even when they think they're doing it right? A variety of things.
[05:39.6]
I would say creative, you always have to have very different creative. And it has to be six to eight. Right. The Meta reps Tuesday will tell you you always run six to eight ads, which is what I follow. I mean, unless I have. If it's literally $2 a day, okay, I maybe would go for four to six.
[05:55.8]
But then you pause the losers, and you add more. Right. So I would just test a lot. I'm on Canva. Canva is very simple. You can put it together, but make sure to go for a very different look and style and feel and copy and everything. And then once you see what's working, you start changing, like, one of the variables, right.
[06:14.1]
Is it the background? Is it the copy? What was it? So that's one thing. Just go get yourself Canva, pay $20 a month. I don't know how much it is. I just paid for a year and then just do a lot of creative. I don't even use AI videos or anything. I just use images right now.
[06:30.0]
Right. So, that's an option. And then after that, there is obviously a lot of wrong offers. The broken website. I had a coffee shop one time. They were like, we want to run ads, but they would just leave and lock the shop and leave halfway through the day.
[06:45.7]
And, you know, like, what are we running ads for? And also, how many times did you go to a coffee shop because you saw an ad? Unless it's, you see, unless it's somebody went there and they made an influencer content. Right. And then you used it as an ad, and you ran it maybe then.
[07:02.9]
Right. But really like. Or unless you have a very cool feature about your coffee shop, like, I wouldn't even bother with that. So a lot of small businesses, they try to drive people, but they really. Maybe sometimes ads just won't work for them. That's one thing. And then another thing is maybe they're doing the wrong creative, the wrong copy, the wrong offer.
[07:20.9]
The website's broken. I had people running ads and their flow was broken on the website, you couldn't purchase what they wanted you to purchase. So, you know, it's just someone has to get in there and check every step of the funnel very carefully, and they have to think like a user, as they shouldn't be thinking like you, the business owner.
[07:37.6]
Right, right, right. I know you and I both agree, also that Meta and Google just don't deliver like they used to. You mentioned that up top at the beginning here. What do you think has changed? Is it the platforms themselves? Is it the targeting? Or is it the expectations of those of us who are running ads?
[07:56.0]
I honestly think it's mostly the auction. The biggest thing is that how many people run ads now? I do think that's really the massive reason for that. But then obviously other things come in, Right? Like there are all these new campaigns that are being tested.
[08:11.2]
The things break in different places. So when the auction's crazy and the things are breaking and your campaigns are constantly changed, and you adjust your algorithm all the time, of course, like, all these things, they pile up. I think I feel like things change on Google in the past three months, nonstop.
[08:27.5]
I feel like last week I got results, I didn't change anything. This week, I'm not getting results. I'm like, okay, I'll wait another week. Next week, I'm not getting results either. I'm like, okay, I need to go in and change things. And I do normally optimize, right? But you also want to let your ads breathe for a little bit.
[08:43.3]
So it's a mix of, like, you constantly optimize. Of course, you have to always come in, test new things, see what's working. But at the end of the day, yeah, you have to also let it run a little bit so no one can be breathing down your neck. I tell you that much. And I mean, that's one of those things for marketers who still want to believe in paid.
[09:02.6]
Those are some of the ideas of the guardrails you put in place so that you don't just light your budget on fire and walk away. But I know also you've brought up something smart before. It's about optimizing for new things as well, optimizing your brand for ChatGPT visibility.
[09:20.7]
You know, and also, I know you work deeply in YouTube ads. You know, I would love to understand your approach around those and why it matters and how to actually do things that lead to impact and aren't just total smoke in those newer areas as well.
[09:38.3]
Yes, 100%. And you mentioned ChatGPT. I think that is our new blue ocean that everybody's pouring into right now. Right. So this is your chance right now to optimize for ChatGPT. And I think, because that's the reason why everything's changing so much on the platforms, because everyone's freaking out in the industry, right?
[09:55.2]
So they try to immediately adjust all of their ads to be better and more efficient than ChatGPT or OpenAI would ever do it. So I'm sure we will have ads on ChatGPT eventually. Or I think we already have. We already have, right? I think so.
[10:11.4]
They're not maybe as front and center as they are through other platforms at this point. But it's there. It's definitely there. Yeah, you can already see the product, I think, and list the way you would see shopping, or maybe that was coming because I didn't get a chance to look into it yet.
[10:28.8]
But at the very least, your SEO already has to be adjusted to ChatGPT. So, there is that. And also, sorry, I feel like I forgot what the question was. Let me reframe there and say, you know, with your expertise in the YouTube space, what's one thing most YouTube ad strategists are completely missing in the way that ecosystem works?
[10:55.0]
Yeah, YouTube is tricky. It definitely has great potential to work at the top of the funnel. Top of the funnel. YouTube is beautiful, right? Bottom of the funnel. You really need to make it work. You need to know what's working. Definitely, would say YouTube is a visual first, right?
[11:12.6]
So you gotta do a lot of creative. There is no way around it. And much like I mentioned, with image ads, you have to have a very different ads running to make sure that you tried everything and you saw what's grabbing attention. Right? Because if you have pretty similar ads or they're all run on similar script, similar CTA, it's not going to work that well.
[11:33.8]
So you really do need a full funnel around YouTube. I would say. You run ads. You run very different creative. You see what's grabbing people's attention. Many people say that you have to run really short ads because of the attention spam. That is correct. But you can totally have a mix of longer ads and shorter ads.
[11:51.8]
It's actually not at all necessary. So many people only run 6-second or 15-second ads. 6-second would be bumper ad. You can skip it. Right? 15 second a little longer, but still it grabs attention. It's good. But if you have a good ad, it doesn't matter how long it is.
[12:10.4]
It shouldn't be six minutes. Okay. But it maybe could be from one minute to two to three minutes. But it has to be really good. It has to be like Hormozi-level ad. Right. It has to be strong. It has to have a story involved in it.
[12:26.9]
It has to do that narrative storytelling. You should be moving all the time at every point. You know, things should be flying around. There are a bunch of advertisers who are really good with that. And, whereas it should be really weird, we were talking to a friend who's about the Grammarly ad.
[12:43.5]
Whereas they're like all their office is kind of filled with water and you're on a boat. And she hated that ad. And I really liked it. I thought, oh, it really stops the scroll, you know? So this like absurd, weird ads, which are now more possible with AI for sure. But also, you don't want to go crazy.
[12:59.9]
You don't want to do cheap AI ads, if they look cheap, you have to have a good idea behind it. That's too right. Because if you just have a fake person talking and it's clear they're fake, that's a disaster. Never do that because people can tell. So there is definitely a mix of things you do with YouTube.
[13:17.5]
It's endless. There is length, there is quality of your creative, and then there is the fact that you have to have a whole funnel set up around it. Maybe make sure your search is prepped as well. You know, the search, the display, the Pmax, all of that. Yep, yep. Let's, let's take a second to talk about Valoria, though.
[13:33.6]
Women's wellness is one of the most needed but hardest spaces to advertise in. What are you navigating so far there? Yes. So I don't really run that many ads just yet. I only dip my toes in the water a little bit because I would maybe do a workshop sometime.
[13:52.9]
I will probably run ads to bring more traffic to the website. So, I started with the workshop. That was a beautiful story on its own because I collaborated with a. What words can we and can we not say, are you going to beep anything? Do I need to be careful?
[14:08.4]
No, it's open. It's open-ended. Yes, go. So, I collaborated with a sex shop that do workshops all the time on all kinds of things. You know, the bondage, the 50 shades of your organs, and anything. And we did this workshop specifically like to talk about, you know, conditions like vaginismus, the things like pelvic floor tension, because Veloria is meant to be a hypnotherapy first.
[14:34.9]
Right? Hypnotherapy for women who feel pain or discomfort during sex because their pelvic floor hurts. So, or like your hips are locked, for example. Right. So it doesn't have to be a specific condition, but we plan to talk about these things and have zero people signing up.
[14:52.7]
Zero people. That was the biggest lesson I learned very fast. And also, I still didn't learn it because I made the same mistake shortly after. But, literally, I just learned that, yeah, people are not gonna come and disclose their medical conditions.
[15:09.2]
That was crazy for me to assume. However, I did run the ads, right? So I run the ads for it. It was again, very cheap with all my experience, right? I was like, I can do it at $2 a day. So what I did is I run a lot of ads that say.
[15:25.6]
I actually have them open here, but I understand many people are going to listen to it. So I run a lot of ads that would say no more pain during "S". And then you kind of have like, underscore, you know, this, like silly things that kind of help you bypass ideally. I called it a women's health workshop.
[15:44.3]
Start your journey to Joyful S again, like underscore life, stuff like that. I did definitely put in vaginismus, vulvodynia, pelvic floor spasm, because technically they shouldn't be triggered. But also because right now I'm such a small account, right?
[15:59.8]
I'm just running these ads on my own money. So it's so small I feel like I'm flying under radar. No one can. Your flag isn't up there, right? It's not up there right now. If you're a sex shop or like a sex toy brand, that would be much harder because you already got flagged, most likely multiple times.
[16:20.5]
However, I just recently saw an ad that I thought was amazing. Sorry, I'm not looking at you because I literally have it open right here. That's okay. An ad library is one of the most critical things in the work there to keep in mind of those points of inspiration or points of people who are doing it differently as well.
[16:39.5]
Yes. I found an ad the other day that would lead you to a page was a. I call it a buffer page. Maybe there is a different name for that. Sure. So. Right. But it's a page in between the ad and the content. So that Facebook doesn't really.
[16:56.9]
I would, I would call that a marketing landing page. Right. That sits in the middle of the click and the actual product or the place where you see someone buys. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I call it a buffer because it's literally like a pillow in between.
[17:12.6]
Right. So it kind of softens the blow a little bit. And the ad was a work of beauty. The ad just said, based on extensive research, I can say these are the cream of the crop. And then it says, never need a man again. And then it says, they're so good you'll scream.
[17:29.7]
No wonder they're always sold out. There is not a single word in there that would trigger the algorithm. That's incredible. There was a raspberry, an image. And then you go to the actual like the landed marketing page, and it says, seven suction toys so good you'll want to cheat on your partner.
[17:48.6]
Just again, work of beauty. It does say suction, but you wouldn't necessarily think of that. Right. You would go for sex toys, maybe. I was like, this is a work of art. I would love to. Yeah. Bow to this because this is just fantastic work.
[18:05.8]
So I think this is kind of how you do it when you have to. So ideally, in the future, if I, maybe I will not lead people to the website directly, maybe I would just send them to the page like that. Yeah. I mean, in that sort of realm, what would your dream ad platform look like for health-related brands, if you could build it from scratch?
[18:28.1]
Oh, God. Just someone who takes a look at what we do and doesn't judge us. I don't know. It's just, so.... Break the stigma. Right? The stigma shouldn't be attached to it, is what I would say.
[18:44.7]
I don't even know if it's the stigma conversation anymore. It's just because in the past couple of weeks, even since me and you, like we talked briefly in the past couple of weeks, we see sex bots running that are run by Meta. By Meta.
[19:00.3]
Right. It's like that Russian girl. You're like, the high school girl you can talk to, that sexy teacher. They are real bots put out by a platform. They have no problem, right? They have no issue. There is no stigma in Meta. ChatGPT just let someone to suicide, God forbid, right?
[19:18.6]
So there is no problem when the platform does that. It's only the problem when we, the company, want to do something that's like real. So it's so far away, right? But it's somehow connected to maybe sexual health.
[19:33.7]
And I also understand why they go to such great lengths. They don't want to get sued for people pushing actual maybe porn. But you really need to have just a better review process, right? Because I also ran ads before for erectile dysfunction devices, right?
[19:49.3]
Completely unrelated for the client or for clinics for men's health, right? And that gets banned all the time, and you can't say anything in the ad, and it's just so hard, right? And I also run ads for mobility aid. It's mobility.
[20:05.0]
It's just healthcare, right? It's healthcare related, but it's not even close. And it's such an amazing, innovative product, but we still can't do anything. We constantly get flagged and banned and all that. I don't even think it's the stigma. It's just their endless fear of being persecuted for potentially like being sued, you know, for spreading materials like this.
[20:27.6]
But at the same time, with their left hand, they start doing all these things, you know, as, they, as, they stop us. It's talking while you're saying you can't do something, right? And doing something that you don't believe in or publicly say you believe in, but you're actually doing it yourself.
[20:43.5]
It's two sides of the mouth there. I think it's just a mess right now. And we just have to do everything to say again to fly under radar that we can, but I, and I don't know when it's going to end. Will Meta fix it on their end? Will they remove the sex bots?
[20:59.1]
What's going to happen? Right? There is a bot that lured like a senior out of his house and because she wanted to meet him, she gave him a real address, right? And he like died on his way there or something. It's crazy. So will that stop? We don't know.
[21:14.6]
But for now we just try to work with what we have, I guess. All right, Alexandra, this was gold. It's equal parts tactical and philosophical. And you've lived both sides of the ad world and your real talk is exactly what we need more of in this space.
[21:31.2]
Where can folks follow your work? Whether that's with Veloria, or just your take on no BS perspective on marketing. I am happy to always share my perspective. One day, I will become banned on LinkedIn. I believe in that. So you're gonna find me on LinkedIn.
[21:48.5]
I post on and off, but I'm there. So please follow my very complicated last name and follow me there. And then also, yeah, Veloria.ca. We have a newsletter now. Congratulations. All right. And join the wait list and we're going to send you all the news.
[22:07.4]
Fantastic. And if someone's listening, who's building in a regulated space or just tired of spinning their wheels in Google Ads, hell, what's one strategy or mindset shift you'd offer them? I would say keep exploring other channels.
[22:27.9]
Keep trying. I see a lot of sex toy brands. It seems like they don't run ads at all. Or maybe they don't do it on social media. I would still probably try. But also make sure to diversify all of your channels. Make sure every single thing is working for you.
[22:44.8]
Make sure your email is actually smartly set up. Follow the best people on LinkedIn for that because there's for example, Jay Schwedelson, who gives amazing advice on how to set up your email best. So just make sure to diversify as much as possible. Work with influencers, but don't just limit yourself to one channel, to just paid ads.
[23:05.2]
Also, don't discount every channel and just say, oh, it doesn't work for us. Just try to put in a little bit of effort into everything until you find a combo that works. Maybe not like six channels, so you don't spread yourself too thin, but it has to be a combo. 2, 3, 4, maybe is the sweet spot to hit for there.
[23:24.4]
Incredible, Alexandra. Well, thanks for tuning into "Is Anything Real?" where we don't promise unicorns, but we do promise honesty. Subscribe, leave a review, and check the show notes to follow Alexandra's work. And one last thing: If your ad budget feels more like a gamble than a strategy, maybe it's just time to play a different game.
[23:43.2]
But Alexandra, thank you very much for joining today. Thank you so much, Adam.