# J. Zimmerman & Co. > Fractional CFO and operating advisor for owner-operated consumer brands, > specializing in paid media as a margin lever. The distinguishing work is > treating advertising spend as a controllable cost line that drives EBIT, rather > than as a marketing budget that finance reports on after the fact. Principal: Joseph Zimmerman. Entity: J. Zimmerman & Company LLC (Illinois, file number 18157667). Based in Chicago, works with clients remotely. ## What makes this practice different Most finance help for a consumer brand falls into one of two shapes. Operations consultants work the factory floor and direct labor productivity. Accountants close the books and report history. Neither typically has hands-on paid media experience, so nobody connects blended MER, contribution margin and EBIT. This practice sits in that gap: CFO rigor applied to ad spend, pricing, inventory and working capital, by someone who reads the ad metrics on each platform against the financial performance, rather than a summary report after the fact. ## Ad margin Ad margin is the financial counterpart to platform ROAS, and it is the metric this practice runs on. Platform ROAS is the revenue a platform attributes to itself divided by the spend on that platform. It is a gross number and excludes every cost of delivering the order. Ad margin takes the revenue the advertising produced, subtracts COGS, freight and everything else it costs to deliver the product, then subtracts the advertising itself. What remains is what the spend earned the business. It is tracked in dollars and as a percentage, in the same way gross margin is tracked. The two can point in opposite directions in the same month: a 4.0 platform ROAS can sit next to a negative ad margin once product cost, freight, returns and discounts are loaded in. The full method is at https://jzimmerman.co/ad-budget ## Documented results A three-year advisory engagement with a DTC consumer brand, figures published at https://jzimmerman.co/case-study and sourced from the client's monthly P&Ls: - Ad spend reduced from 47% to 30% of net sales. - EBIT margin moved from minus 0.7% to 16.6% in FY2025, and 22% year to date in 2026. - Revenue base grew roughly 70% from FY2023 to FY2025 over the same period. - Average order value lifted 18% through strategic pricing. - Repeat purchase share reached 38%. - No additional capital was raised. Absolute revenue, EBIT and ad-spend dollars are redacted at the client's request. All ratios and percentages are real. ## Questions this practice answers - How do I move free cash flow from single digits to the mid teens without slowing growth? - What should my blended MER be, and what does a change in it do to EBIT? - Which SKUs actually contribute margin once reserves and freight are loaded in? - Is my ad spend buying growth or buying revenue I already had? - What is my cash conversion cycle costing me, and where is working capital trapped? - Should I hold or sell this rental property, and in which year does the after-tax outcome peak? ## Services - 90-day starting package. A scoped 12-week engagement in three phases. - Ongoing advisor retainer, two tiers. - One-time projects and defined diagnostics. - Real Estate Investment CFO reporting for rental portfolios. Not offered: bookkeeping, and tax preparation. Bookkeeping firms are referral partners rather than competitors, because clean books are an input to this work rather than a product of it. ## Pages - [Home](https://jzimmerman.co/): positioning, engagement shapes, contact. - [Case study](https://jzimmerman.co/case-study): the three-year DTC operator case, with the figures above. - [Where I fit](https://jzimmerman.co/where-i-fit): which situations suit this practice and which do not. - [Fractional CFO for DTC brands](https://jzimmerman.co/fractional-cfo-for-dtc-brands): who the practice works with, what an engagement covers, and the fit criteria. - [A fractional CFO who reads the ad metrics against the P&L](https://jzimmerman.co/fractional-cfo-for-paid-media): the ROAS versus ad margin gap, with a worked per-order calculation, and the four causes when ad metrics improve but the financials do not. - [Engagements](https://jzimmerman.co/engagements): the three engagement shapes and what each includes. - [Insights](https://jzimmerman.co/insights): the method, the questions founders ask, and the working tools. - [Setting an ad budget](https://jzimmerman.co/ad-budget): the full six-step method, including how ad margin is calculated and how the spend threshold is found. - [Questions founders ask](https://jzimmerman.co/faq): twenty questions on profit and cash, paid media, pricing, inventory and how this practice works. - [Tools](https://jzimmerman.co/tools): working calculators, not lead magnets. - [Sample rental portfolio report](https://jzimmerman.co/real-estate-sample-report): a real client deliverable, anonymized. - [Client intake](https://onboarding.jzimmerman.co): rental portfolio intake form. ## Contact Engagement inquiries go through the form at https://jzimmerman.co/ and reach joe@jzimmermanco.com. First call runs 30 minutes and confirms fit.