IxDF × WeAdU · prepared for our call of Tuesday 8 September 2026

IxDF Preparation Pack

By Jeff (Jean-François Pen) with Fabio Mangas and Igor Hrsak · WeAdU, Brighton · Google Premier Partner For Mads Soegaard and Ashley Van Der Merwe · Interaction Design Foundation Public data only — nothing in here needed access to your accounts
Notes Notes stay in this browser
Our rule for the call: we ask, we don't pitch. Every idea in Part 2 is a question — does it make sense to you? has it been tested? with what results? Nothing gets locked before your numbers are in.
How to read this

This is the guide the three of us prepared for the call, shared as it was written — minus our internal notes, and with “Mads” turned into “you”. The names on each card say who would have asked the question. The notes fields work: anything you type stays in your browser, and “Copy my notes” exports it as text.

Part 1 is what we would have asked you, with the context behind each question. Part 2 is the strategy and account structure we drafted on 6 September, before any access — a working hypothesis, not a plan. Part 3 is the preliminary audit on public data promised in our proposal: what we found, and what everything above rests on.

Part 1

The discussion guide

What we would have asked, in the order we would have asked it. Each card: the question, why it matters to the plan, a field for notes, and the context we had from public data.

Where we start from: the claim in our letter

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What we wrote, and why

Our letter opened by saying your landing page, why-learn-design-with-ixdf, is built for people who already trust IxDF. The reasoning, from reading the page:

  • One action only: “Start Today” → direct membership purchase at $22/month with a 14-day money-back guarantee. No trial on that path, no content offered for an email, no intermediate step — a visitor either pays on the first visit or leaves.
  • Persuasion by authority: a catalogue (41 courses, 160 master classes, 200+ experts) plus reviews, logos and partnerships (Google, NASA, Adobe). Everything says “we are a reference — join us”.
  • Nothing hooks the visitor's problem — career change, salary, an empty portfolio. The entry is “learn from the masters”, not “here is what's blocking you”.

Why that means “already trusting”: massive reassurance only works when the visitor already grants the brand plausible authority — brand traffic and retargeting confirm an existing intent; a stranger arriving from “ux design course” gets no reason to enter. Buying a subscription on a first visit, with no soft step, is warm-audience behaviour; the cold visitor who doesn't pay is lost. At $5K a month you live well on brand traffic and remarketing; a 40× budget forces buying cold, non-brand traffic — exactly where this page leaks. That is why the letter ordered the work as measurement → offer and pages → budget.

What the audit changed since: the checkout does capture name and email at step 2 of 3, before payment, and the page has a newsletter signup — so “no trace at all” was too strong. The 7-day trial existed on 26 August and was switched off by 6 September. What we hold today is the hedged version: if this page's path leads to payment rather than to a softer step, that is where cold traffic leaks — and it is a question for you, not an assertion.

Where the conversation stood

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Proposal · 26 August (cover letter)
  • The landing-page claim above, hedged: “If this landing page's path leads to payment rather than to that trial, this is exactly where cold traffic leaks.” Order of work: measurement → the right landing page per intent → budget.
  • Track record: a 50× budget scale-up for a US electronics retailer at 8× blended ROAS, an account still with Jeff since 2014. WeAdU: Google Premier Partner, 24+ years in paid search, $32M+ ad spend managed.
  • First 30 days: read-only audit; conversion tracking rebuilt on revenue and lifetime value from your existing billing data; brand / non-brand split; creative work in parallel; budget increases driven by real ROAS, “never by enthusiasm”.
  • Creative volume is the ceiling at 40× — you already own the material: 348 videos, 160 master classes, 1,760 articles.
  • Founder-mode, boutique agency, UK-based with Europe overlap (Denmark included), afternoons matching Austin. Low-risk start: a complimentary preliminary audit on public data — that audit is Part 3; it feeds this guide.
  • What attracted us: not a rescue job — established business, real budget, in-house skills, almost everything to build on Google Ads, 106 countries, “the kind of account I can see myself still working on in ten years”.
Screening answer · who does the work
  • Jeff as architect; Fabio (ex-Google, French-Portuguese, English / French / Portuguese / Spanish) and Igor (Meta Ads specialist trained on Google Ads by Jeff) as full-time in-house account managers. No subcontracting, no white label, no rotating juniors. They cover for each other and challenge each other.
  • AI used to challenge decisions and automate routine tasks — “decisions stay human”.
Messages · 31 August → 2 September
  • Mads, 31 Aug: “thanks so much for your thoughtful and substantive reply… I'd love to have a call and give you some more context, like LTV, the results of a site-wide free trial experiment we did, etc.” — the two numbers this guide is built around.
  • Jeff, 1 Sep: booked 8 September. 2 Sep: Zoom tested; Igor and Fabio added to the room.

If we only got eight questions

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  1. Fabio Best member — who, trigger, which persona more of?
  2. Jeff Value at 12 / 24 months + renewal — by plan and country, net of refunds
  3. Igor Real price by country — $12 · £20 · $22 · $29 — what decides?
  4. Jeff 25 emerging markets, no US/UK/EU — deliberate? tier one tested?
  5. Igor Trial by source · trial without card — tested? results?
  6. Igor Who produces creative — how fast, raw assets?
  7. Jeff Who runs the account — take over, or new account?
  8. Jeff Success at 30 / 90 days — and what a precise plan would need from you

1. Who buys — Fabio

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What we thinkSeven audiences from public pages (Part 2, section 2) — all hypotheses. IxDF teaches personas; yours replace ours.
Fabiomust
Best member
Your best member — job, seniority, country — and the trigger to buy?
Priority persona → geo tier, pages, value rules.
IxDF sells three plans — Student $15, Professional $22 (billed annually), Design League $240 (monthly) — plus Company Membership. We don't know which plan or which country produces the members who stay. The "best member" is the one whose value over time is highest net of refunds, usually an annual Professional who renews. Once you name that profile, the whole plan aligns to it: which geo tier gets budget first, which course pages we land on, which conversions get a higher value in Google's bidding. The purchase trigger — a job search, a promotion, a project at work — becomes the creative angle.
Fabio
The mix
Split between career switchers, designers levelling up, non-designers (PMs, founders, devs)?
Budget split Career vs Skills; creative angles.
Our draft has two engines: people who search for a course (Skills campaigns) and people who search for a way out of a problem (Career campaigns). The split between career switchers, working designers and non-designers tells us how to weight budget between the two, and which stories the ads must tell. If non-designers — product managers, founders, developers — are a large share, the "one skill, one course page" funnel matters more than the career story.
Fabiomust
More of / not paying for
Which persona do you want more of — and which one you'd rather not pay for?
Fate of the emerging-market campaigns; exclusion list.
Your current ads target 25 emerging markets and probably bring Student-tier members at low cost. You may want those, or consider them low-value. Knowing which persona you do not want to pay for decides whether the existing emerging-market campaigns stay, shrink or stop, and which audiences we exclude from tier-one campaigns. It also protects the account from optimising toward cheap sign-ups nobody wants.
Fabio
Your personas
Do you have documented personas or JTBD research? Can we get them?
Saves weeks; same vocabulary.
IxDF is a UX school; your team almost certainly has personas and jobs-to-be-done research on your own learners. Those documents save weeks of guessing, and using your names for segments makes every report readable without translation. If none exist, that is useful too: the billing cohort export becomes the source of the personas.
Fabio
Objections · cancellations
Top 3 objections before buying — top 3 reasons to cancel?
Ads, pages, guarantee message.
Objections before buying become the reassurance in ads and landing pages: price, time, recognition of the certificate, "is it for beginners?". Cancellation reasons tell us what not to promise. Public reviews mention auto-renewal surprises; if billing surprises are a top reason to cancel, then "cancel anytime" and the guarantee belong in the ads for cold traffic.
Fabio
Design League · Company
Who initiates — individual, design lead, L&D — and how long?
Own campaigns for Teams and high-end in phase 3, or not.
Design League ($240 a month, with coaching) and Company Membership are the high-ticket products. If an individual professional buys, they fit Search campaigns on advanced skills. If a design lead or a learning-and-development manager initiates and the cycle is long, they need a lead form and a nurture sequence — and possibly LinkedIn rather than Google. The answer decides whether the Teams campaign planned for phase 3 is worth building.

2. Economics — Jeff, Igor

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What we thinkAnnual billing (~$264 first payment) → cash back on day one if the acquisition cost is below it; the limit is conversion rate and margin. Prices seen: $12 · £20 · $22 · $29. Renewal turns a first payment into lifetime value.
Jeffmust
Value at 12 / 24 months
What's a member worth at 12 and 24 months — by plan, by country, net of refunds?
Acceptable acquisition cost → speed of the ramp. You announced LTV: we listen first.
You said you would share LTV. What we need is the value by plan and by country, net of refunds and cancellations, because Google's bidding would be fed that number instead of the first payment. A member worth $400 over two years justifies a $200 acquisition cost; a member worth $120 does not. Without this number no target ROAS can be set honestly — so we would listen to what you bring, then ask for the split.
Igormust
Renewal after year one
How many renew after year one — by plan or country?
The multiplier behind every value rule.
The first annual payment (about $264 for Professional) covers acquisition on day one; renewal in year two is where the profit is. A 40% renewal rate and a 15% renewal rate describe two different businesses and two different acceptable costs per member. If renewal differs by country, a tier-one member may be worth several times an emerging-market member — which is the whole argument for entering the US and UK.
Igormust
Price by country
We've seen $12, £20, $22, $29 — actual price by country, and what decides it?
Value rules and ad copy; may reveal a live price test.
We saw $22 a month on 26 August (US view), £20 a month from a UK browser, $29 a month in an August Wayback snapshot, and $12 quoted by third-party sites. Either prices vary by country, or a price test is running. We cannot know without asking. The answer sets the conversion values by country and tells us which price to quote in ads — quoting the wrong one kills conversion at checkout.
Jeff
Refund rate
Refund rate under the 14-day guarantee — by source or country?
Value sent to Google must be net of refunds.
The 14-day money-back guarantee is IxDF's main reassurance. Refunds within 14 days must be subtracted from the value sent to Google, otherwise bidding optimises on money that was given back. If refunds are higher from cold traffic or from certain countries, those sources need a different offer or a lower value — this is also the argument for sending refund adjustments to Google (section 6).
Jeff
Cost per member today
What does a new member cost today, by country — and what would still work for US / UK?
Floor and ceiling for the first target-ROAS settings.
Your current campaigns run in 25 emerging markets at presumably low cost per member. Today's cost per member by country gives the floor; what you would accept for a US or UK member gives the ceiling. Tier-one clicks cost roughly $4 to $8; at a 1–2% conversion rate a member costs $200 to $400, so the ceiling has to be known before any tier-one budget is spent.
Jeff
Monthly plan for cold traffic
A monthly plan for cold paid traffic — makes sense? Tested?
Decides the soft step of the career funnel.
Annual billing suits people who already trust IxDF. A cold visitor arriving from a Google search may balk at about $264 upfront. A monthly plan, even at a higher monthly price, lowers that barrier but reduces cash per sale and may raise churn. It is a product decision, so we ask rather than propose — and if you have tested it, the results decide the soft step for cold traffic.

3. What already runs — Jeff

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What we thinkNot from zero: Google Ads since 2018, ~200 ads, live on 5 September, 70 YouTube ads, server-side tagging, GA4 ↔ Ads, remarketing lists, Meta / LinkedIn / Reddit configured. Live ads target 25 emerging countries, none of US/UK/EU.
Jeffmust
25 emerging markets, no US / UK / EU
Transparency Center: 25 emerging markets, none of US, UK, EU. Deliberate? Tier one tested? At what cost did it stop?
Deliberate → secure value by country. Past failure → find why before budget.
The Google Ads Transparency Center page for Interaction Design Foundation Inc shows IxDF's live text ad targeting 25 countries: Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Martinique, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Türkiye, Ukraine, Vietnam — and none of the US, UK, Canada, Australia or Western Europe. Two readings: a deliberate low-cost strategy, or a tier-one attempt that got too expensive and was stopped. Each leads to a different plan, so the question is open, not a criticism.
Jeffmust
Who runs the account
Campaigns run by in-house, agency, freelancer? Would we take over the account, or start a new one?
Phase 0: audit what exists, or clean build.
Someone runs the current Google Ads account today. Taking it over means phase 0 is an audit of eight years of history, audiences and conversion setup — valuable. Starting a new account loses the history and the audience lists but avoids inheriting a messy structure. The answer also tells us whether whoever is in the account today becomes a colleague or a predecessor.
Jeff
Channels
Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit — which are active, and cost per member?
Sequencing between channels.
The cookie preference centre in your page code lists Google Ads, Meta Pixel + CAPI, LinkedIn Insight + CAPI, and Reddit Pixel + CAPI. Four platforms are configured; we don't know which are active or how they perform. Cost per member by channel tells us where Google sits in your mix and how to sequence: Google first for intent, then scale the winners across channels — Igor covers Meta.
Jeff
"Set up" = rebuild or scale?
"Help us set up Google Ads" — a rebuild, or scaling what exists?
Expectations for the first 30 days.
The job post said "help us set up Google Ads", but the account has run since 2018 with server-side tagging and remarketing lists. "Set up" may mean "do it properly, at scale", or you may consider the current setup disposable. Knowing which avoids two mistakes: rebuilding what works, or scaling what is broken.
Jeff
Skill search → course page
Tier-one Search on named skills, landing on the course page — makes sense? Tried?
The heart of our draft: new to you, or already failed once.
This is the core of the draft: tier-one Search on named skills — "usability testing course", "ux research certification" — each landing on the matching course page; 41 such pages exist. From a UK browser, IxDF shows an ad on 1 of 7 such queries and no organic result, while all ten competitors we checked advertise. If it was tried and failed, we need to know whether measurement, page or offer was the cause before proposing it again.

4. Offer and funnel — Igor, Fabio, Jeff

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What we think7-day trial live on 26 Aug, off by 6 Sept; card required, full year charged after 7 days, no 14-day guarantee after a trial. A site-wide test mostly measures cannibalisation; the cold-traffic question stays open. Course pages: "Closes in 5 days", "54% booked". Questions, never verdicts.
Igormust
Trial by source · trial without card
Site-wide trial: who used, converted, refunded — by source? And a 7 / 14-day trial without card — tested? Results?
Soft step for cold traffic. If not cut by source → the first test we'd propose, paid cold traffic only.
ixdf.org/trial/join showed a 7-day trial on 26 August and by 6 September redirected with "Free Trial is not available at the moment". You mentioned "a site-wide free trial experiment we did". That trial required a card, charged the full year after 7 days and removed the 14-day guarantee — a design that generates disputes. A site-wide test mixes warm visitors, who would have paid anyway, with cold ones, so a negative result does not settle the cold-traffic question. Igor's addition: a trial without a card behaves very differently — more sign-ups, lower conversion, no billing surprises. We ask for both, and we don't read a site-wide result as a verdict on cold traffic.
FabioIgor
Countdown · "fully booked"
Courses are self-paced, yet pages show a countdown and fully booked — what does the deadline mean, what if I miss it? Real cohort capacity, or an urgency mechanic? How often reopen? A calendar to plan ads around?
Learner confusion to fix in ads and pages; real cohorts → ads scheduled to windows; the mechanic → the claims ads can make.
Course pages show "Closes in 5 days 18 hrs" and "54% booked", while the offer is sold as self-paced with unlimited access — Fabio's confusion is exactly what a cold visitor feels. If courses run in real cohorts with real capacity, ads should be scheduled to enrolment windows and paused when a course is full, and the ads must explain what "closes" means. If it is an urgency mechanic, the ads must be careful about what they claim: Google's policies and your own "truthful calibration of expectations" both apply. Either way, the answer tells us what a member can actually do after paying, which the ads must not contradict.
Fabio
Seasonal offers
Do you run offers during the year — Black Friday, Christmas, New Year? Which ones worked?
Promotion assets, budget peaks, and whether discounted cohorts renew.
The Wayback archive shows two offers: "3 months free + 3 bonus Master Classes" in July 2025 and "Get 3 Months Free + 6 Master Classes — IxDF Is Reborn" in March 2026. So promotions exist, but we don't know their calendar or their results. In Google Ads an offer becomes a promotion asset, a creative angle and a budget peak; November (Black Friday) and January (career-change season) are the two natural moments. The second half of the question matters as much: members acquired with three free months may renew less, which changes their value in the bidding model.
Igor
Live or recorded
Live classes or recordings? Do people interact, or mostly solo?
The promise in the ads: community, or self-paced freedom.
The promise in an ad differs: "learn with a cohort and live experts" attracts one persona, "self-paced, on your own schedule" attracts another. Your pages mention master classes, meetups in 496 cities and discussion forums, but we don't know how much real interaction a member gets. Igor needs this to write honest creative.
Igormust
Outcome data
Any outcome data — completions, jobs landed, promotions, salary? Anything we can put in an ad?
Strongest angle for career switchers — must be substantiated for Google.
For career switchers, outcomes — jobs landed, promotions, salary changes, completion rates — are the strongest possible ad claims. But Google requires such claims to be substantiated, and IxDF's own terms say certificates are not formal qualifications. So we ask what exists, with sources; anything without a source stays out of the ads. Even softer outcomes — portfolio built, certificate earned, 1.1M enrollments — are usable if they are precise.
Jeff
One page per intent
One page per intent — course page for a skill, career page for a career — makes sense? Tested?
The letter's point, as a question. How much freedom there is on pages.
Today every path leads to the same checkout, and the landing page cited in the job post is a generic authority page. Our letter argued that a skill search should land on the course page and a career search on the career page. Framed as a question, it tests how much freedom there is on pages — and whether your team has already tested landing pages per intent.

5. Creative — Igor, Fabio

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What we thinkAt 40× the budget the ceiling is creative volume. You own the material: 348 videos, Don Norman at 428K views, 160 master classes, 1,760 articles, 41 course pages — and designers in-house.
Igormust
Who produces, how fast
Who produces ads, videos, pages — turnaround? Can we get the raw assets?
Cadence sets the ceiling. Nobody produces → the plan changes.
At 40 times the budget, the same ads shown far more often wear out; the number of different messages and formats we can test sets the ceiling. IxDF owns 348 YouTube videos, 160 master classes, course previews and in-house designers — the raw material exists. What we need to know is who turns a brief into an ad or a page, how fast, and whether we can get the source files. If the answer is "nobody", creative production becomes part of the scope, or the ramp slows down.
Igor
70 YouTube ads
Your 70 YouTube ads — what worked, what did you learn?
Don't re-test what you know; creative maturity.
The Transparency Center shows about 70 video ads already served on YouTube, including vertical Shorts. Someone made them and presumably looked at results. Learning what worked avoids re-testing it, and tells us how mature your creative testing already is.
Fabio
Display & animated ads
As a UI company, would beautiful display and animated ads for brand awareness make sense to you? Do you already have them designed?
Assets for Display, Demand Gen and remarketing; design quality is your signature.
The Transparency Center shows text, image and video formats — about 200 ads, mostly Search, plus 70 YouTube videos and a few image ads ("Break into Tech with UX Design"). We don't know whether a proper display library exists. For a company that teaches UI, the visual quality of its ads is part of the proof; ugly banners would contradict the product. In the draft, display serves remarketing first (the warm-up campaign on your existing audience lists) because its return is measurable; pure brand-awareness display is harder to prove and comes later, with a lift measurement. Practical detail: Google Ads accepts animated GIFs of up to 30 seconds and HTML5 for Display and Demand Gen — an in-house designer could produce them from existing course visuals.
Igor
Claims to avoid
Brand rules — words or claims to avoid, e.g. "certification"?
You've questioned the word publicly; the terms say certificates aren't qualifications.
You have publicly questioned the word "certification" and insist on a "truthful calibration of expectations"; the terms of use state that certificates are not degrees or government-recognised qualifications. Ads must respect both. Asking avoids a rejected creative later.

6. Measurement and consent — Jeff

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What we thinkTag Manager served first-party via t.ixdf.org, GA4 ↔ Ads, tag AW-985705368 with audience lists. Conversion value is probably the first payment, not lifetime value. No consent banner from a UK IP: Consent Mode is a Google requirement for EU/UK audiences and conversions — not legal advice.
Jeff
Conversion value today
Who owns tagging? Does a conversion carry the first payment, or lifetime value?
First payment → the value model is deliverable one.
Your tagging is sophisticated: Tag Manager served first-party via t.ixdf.org, GA4 linked to Google Ads, an Ads tag with active audience lists. What we don't know is the value attached to a conversion. If it is the first payment, Google optimises toward first payments; if it is lifetime value by plan and country, it optimises toward good members. Building that value model from your billing cohorts would be the first deliverable if it doesn't exist yet.
Jeff
Refund adjustments
Are refunds sent back to Google as adjustments? Would that make sense?
Otherwise bidding optimises on money given back.
Google Ads accepts conversion adjustments: the value of a recorded conversion can be corrected after the fact — for example set to zero when a customer refunds within 14 days. Without it, Smart Bidding learns from revenue that was given back. It is a technical setup that can be built if your billing data allows it.
Jeff
Consent Mode EU / UK
Consent Mode in place for EU / UK? Google needs it for audiences and conversions there.
Prerequisite for tier two and UK remarketing.
From a UK IP we saw advertising tags fire on page load with no consent banner. Google requires consent signals — Consent Mode — to build audiences and count conversions for users in the EU and UK; without them, remarketing and tracking in those markets simply do not work in Google's systems. We state it as Google's requirement, not as legal advice. It is a prerequisite for tier two and for UK remarketing.
Jeff
Member list · warm lists
A member list to exclude — and past trial / newsletter lists for remarketing, with the consents you hold?
Cheapest saving; the warm-up campaign.
Customer Match lets an advertiser upload email lists, with consent, to target or exclude people. Excluding current members from acquisition campaigns is the cheapest saving in the account. Lists of past trial users, newsletter subscribers and expired members feed the warm-up campaign, which should have the highest return of all.

7. Working together, and the close — Jeff

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What we thinkYour job post asks for direct feedback and a long-term partnership. These questions are about how the work would actually run.
Jeffmust
Success at 30 / 90 days
What does success look like at 30 and 90 days?
Your metric = first line of the dashboard.
You will judge the work on something; we'd rather know what. It may be cost per member, new members per month, spend deployed, or proof that tier one works. Whatever you name becomes the first line of the weekly report and the definition of the first milestone in the action plan.
Jeff
Who ships page changes
Who decides page and offer changes — how fast do they ship?
Half the draft touches pages, not bids.
Half of the draft touches landing pages and offers, not bids: course pages as destinations, a career page, a possible soft step, guarantee messaging. If nobody can ship page changes quickly, that half stalls and only the bidding half moves. Knowing the decision-maker and the turnaround shapes the timeline.
Jeff
Previous freelancers and agencies
What has worked, and not worked, with previous freelancers or agencies?
The failure mode to avoid; what "top 1%" means to you.
Others have worked on your marketing before. What went well and what went wrong tells us what you watch for — overpromising, slow reporting, no ownership — and what "top 1%" means to you.
JeffFabioIgor
Anything else
Anything that fits no question above — numbers, names, constraints, promises.
Raw material for the action plan.
Everything that doesn't map to a card goes here: figures quoted in passing, people named, tools mentioned, deadlines, anything either side said it would send. Written as heard, in the speaker's words when possible — an action plan should quote you back.

How we would have closed

An action plan built from the discussion — what to test first, in what order, with what numbers. To make it precise: read-only access (Google Ads, GA4, Tag Manager) and a cohort export (sign-up month, plan, country, first payment, refunds, renewals). With access, a plan within 7 days.

The numbers we would have asked for

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Part 2

Draft strategy and account structure

Written on 6 September, before the call and before any access — version 5 of a working hypothesis. It assumed a 1 October start; the dates would shift, the logic would not. Every number in it is an order of magnitude to be replaced by yours.

1. Principle — two demand engines

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The core business stays the sale of a course, a training path or a certification to people who are already looking for one. The second engine sells the way out of a problem — changing careers, staying employable in the AI era, shipping a product that works, earning a promotion — to people who aren't looking yet.

Engine 1 · Direct demand

Someone types "usability testing course", "ux certification", "interaction design foundation". We sell exactly what they're looking for: the course, the certificate, the membership. This is where immediate volume and the best returns are. Campaigns: Brand, Skills, Competitors, Warm-up.

Engine 2 · Created demand

Someone has a problem and doesn't yet know that design training solves it. We sell the way out of the problem; the course is only the means. Campaigns: Career (Search and video), Informational, Teams. Engine 1 funds engine 2.

The already-warm audience — readers of the 1,760 articles, checkout abandoners, former members — belongs to both engines and costs the least: it gets handled first.

2. Seven audiences, seven problems

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These seven audiences are hypotheses built from public pages. Fabio's questions in Part 1 check them against your real personas — who buys, who renews, who refunds, and what triggers the purchase. The table gets rewritten with your data.

AudienceTheir problem todayWhat IxDF solvesHow Google recognises them
Training seekerKnows what they want to learn or certify; compares price, format, recognition.41 courses, certificates, self-paced, $22/month, 14-day guarantee, 1.1M enrollments since 2002."[skill] course", "ux certification", competitor brands.
Career switcherCapped career; wants a remote-friendly tech job without going back to school or paying $7,000–8,500 for a bootcamp; doubts they can do it.10 career programs, guided portfolio, job matching, meetups in 496 cities."how to become a ux designer", "career change", in-market Education / Jobs, YouTube.
Visual designer threatened by AISkills commoditised by AI; wants to move to product / UX.AI for designers courses, UI → UX bridge."ai for designers", "graphic design to ux", Figma / Adobe audiences.
Professional wanting to move upStuck at mid-level; needs methods and proof for a promotion.160 master classes, advanced courses, Design League ($240/month)."design systems course", "ux research certification".
Non-designer who has to make design decisionsFounder, PM, developer, marketer: must ship a product without training.Usability testing, design thinking, UX for PMs, accessibility."how to run a usability test", SaaS / startup audiences.
Teams and companiesTrain a whole team on a contained budget, with proof of skill.Company Membership."ux training for teams"; LinkedIn is often better.
Already-warm audienceTrusts IxDF, hasn't taken the step.Guarantee, occasional offers, value reminder.Active lists on tag AW-985705368, Customer Match.

3. Five funnels, one page each

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FunnelEntrySoft stepConversionNetworksPage
F1 · Career switch (cold)YouTube and Demand Gen "from X to UX designer", authority (Don Norman); Search "become a ux designer".Guide or quiz for an email, or a $5 master class. The 7-day trial only if your data justifies it on cold traffic.Annual membership within 30 days.YouTube, Demand Gen, Search.Career page.
F2 · Skill (intent)Search on a named skill or course.The course page; email captured at step 2 of checkout.Membership.Search T1 / T2.The matching course page (41).
F3 · Comparison"ux certification", "google ux certificate alternative", competitor brands.The authority page.Membership.Search T1.why-learn-design-with-ixdf.
F4 · Warm-upExisting lists, "Add Your Details" abandoners, Customer Match.14-day guarantee reminder, current offer.Membership, former members returning.Display, Demand Gen, YouTube./join.
F5 · TeamsB2B Search, Demand Gen to L&D profiles.Form.Qualified lead → sale.Search, Demand Gen.Company Membership.

Plainly — Demand Gen: Google's format that pushes an image or video into YouTube, Discover and Gmail to people who aren't searching, chosen by their interests and by our own lists. Customer Match: a list of emails (with consent) given to Google to target or exclude those people.

4. Account structure — one campaign = one economy

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Three geographic tiers, because cost per click and member value differ by 5 to 10 times between them: T1 US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand · T2 Western and Northern Europe (English-language site) · T3 India, Latin America, South-East Asia, Africa, Middle East — the 25 countries already targeted.

CampaignNetworkTargetingPageConversion and valueBidding
BrandSearch, all tiers"ixdf", "interaction design foundation", variants; exact and phrase./joinMembership, LTV value.High tROAS, small budget.
Competitors T1Search"coursera ux design", "google ux certificate", "designlab", "uxcel", "nng courses". No competitor brands in ad text.why-learnMembership.Max conversion value, then tROAS.
Skills T1SearchThemes: UX fundamentals, UI, research and usability, AI for designers, product and design thinking, accessibility. 10–20 keywords per group.Course pageMembership, LTV value by plan × country.tROAS. The heart of the account.
Skills T2SearchSame themes, separate budget and target.Course pageMembership.Own tROAS.
Career T1Search"become a ux designer", "ux design career", "ux bootcamp alternative".Career pageMembership; lead as secondary.tROAS or tCPA depending on volume.
Career video T1YouTube + Demand GenIn-market education and jobs, custom segments, own lists as seed. English only.Career page + soft stepLead, then membership.Max conversions, then tROAS.
Informational T1SearchInformational queries where IxDF isn't in the top 3 organic results or where a competitor advertises; targeting restricted to in-market audiences and own lists.The article + soft callEmail lead, low value; membership at 90 days in observation.Max clicks with CPC cap, then tCPA lead. 10% cap.
Warm-upDisplay + Demand Gen + YouTubeReaders 30 / 90 / 180 days, abandoners, Customer Match. Members excluded./joinMembership.tROAS. Capped by list sizes.
Emerging T3Search (existing)What already runs — audited before any change.ExistingSeparate Student value, renewal measured.Own tROAS.
Teams T1 T2Search"ux training for teams", "design training for employees".Company MembershipQualified lead.tCPA.
Performance MaxAllOnce the value sent is reliable: asset groups by audience, brand excluded.Per groupMembership, LTV value.tROAS.

5. Campaigns — angles, targets, timeline, budgets

↑ Contents
Working assumptions as of 6 September, all to be replaced by your data: access and audit from 15 Sept to 30 Sept, campaigns live on 1 Oct · T1 Search CPC $4 to $8 · first annual Professional payment ≈ $264 · course-page conversion rate 1 to 2% · net lifetime value unknown. Targets are orders of magnitude, not commitments; budgets are for new campaigns, excluding existing T3 (≈ $5K today, unchanged until the audit).
CampaignAngleSpecificsTarget (estimate)StartM1 · OctM3 · DecM6 · Mar
BrandCapture brand intent before competitors who buy it; message: "Official site · 1.1M+ enrollments · 14-day guarantee".Exact and phrase, low CPC, brand lists shared with T3; serves as the ROAS benchmark.LTV ROAS 8–15×; impression share > 90%.1 Oct$300$500$800
Competitors T1Comparison: "$22/month vs $7,999", "Since 2002", certificates, guarantee; authority page.No competitor brand in ad text; lower conversion rate expected; CareerFoundry closed = "alternative" queries.LTV ROAS 1–2×; CAC $300–500.1 Oct$600$1,200$2,500
Skills T1Sell exactly the skill searched for: the named course, its certificate, self-paced learning.One group per theme to its course page; value rules by country; the account's first reliable tROAS.Annual-member CAC $200–350; LTV ROAS 1.5–2.5× M1–M3, ≥ 2.5× M6.1 Oct$2,000$5,000$12,000
Warm-upValue reminder and guarantee to people who already know IxDF; current offer when there is one.Lists already active on the tag; "Add Your Details" abandoners; frequency cap; members excluded.LTV ROAS 4–8×; CAC < $120.1 Oct$800$1,500$3,000
Career Search T1The outcome, not the course: "Get a job in design", portfolio, job matching, community.Email lead as secondary; career page; broader volume, fuzzier intent.Lead $15–30; CAC $250–400.22 Oct—$1,800$4,000
Informational T1Free expertise: the article answers, the email or guide extends.Queries where IxDF isn't top 3 or a competitor advertises; restricted targeting; CPC cap; 10% max.Lead $3–8; membership at 90 days in observation.22 Oct—$1,000$2,000
Career video T1Story "from X to UX designer" + authority (Don Norman) + relevance in the AI era.Weekly creative cadence; English only; audience signals; test before scale.CPV $0.03–0.08; lead $20–40.22 Oct (test)—$1,500$6,000
Skills T2Same direct sale, in Western and Northern Europe.All languages on Search, ads in English; Consent Mode v2 required first.CAC $180–300; LTV ROAS ≥ 2×.12 Nov—$1,500$4,000
TeamsTrain a whole team for the price of one individual bootcamp.Form; long sales cycle; to be compared with LinkedIn.Qualified lead $80–150.12 Nov—$500$1,500
Performance MaxAll audiences, all formats, driven by value.Only once LTV values are reliable; brand excluded; asset groups by audience.ROAS ≥ the account's.Jan 2027——$4,000
Emerging T3 (existing)What already runs.Audit first; separate Student value; renewal measured.Maintain or reduce depending on renewal.Unchanged≈ $5,000to decideto decide
Total new campaigns$5,200$14,500$39,800

Every budget step is conditional: tROAS holds for 14 days, increases of at most 20% per week. Beyond M6, the path to $100–200K depends on three things: confirmed T1 value, creative cadence, and the offer chosen for cold traffic.

6. Rollout phases

↑ Contents
15–30 Sept

Phase 0 · Access and audit

Read-only Google Ads, GA4, GTM; cohort export; value model; Consent Mode check; audit of T3 campaigns. No spend changed.

1 Oct

Phase 1 · Foundations and quick wins

Conversion values in place, adjustments at day 14; Brand, Warm-up, Skills T1, Competitors T1 live.

22 Oct

Phase 2 · Extension

Career Search, Informational, Career video test. First offer experiment on cold traffic if your data allows it.

12 Nov

Phase 3 · Europe and teams

Skills T2 (after Consent Mode), Teams. Year-end offer aligned with your "X months free" campaigns and Black Friday.

Jan 2027

Phase 4 · Scale

Seasonal peak for career change; Performance Max; video at scale; weekly creative cadence in place. M6 target ≈ $40K new spend.

7. Thirteen rules so Smart Bidding works for us

↑ Contents

One campaign = one geo tier + one intent + one homogeneous value

Never T1 and T3 in the same campaign, never brand and non-brand together.

Smart Bidding optimises an average: mixing two economies makes T1 pay T3 prices, or the reverse.

At least 50 conversions a month per campaign, otherwise a portfolio strategy

Group campaigns with the same economics under one portfolio tROAS while they are small.

Below that volume the algorithm doesn't learn; it guesses.

The value sent = net lifetime value, not the first payment

First payment × multiplier by plan × country (billing cohorts), then a conversion adjustment at day 14 for refunds.

Plainly — conversion adjustment: Google lets you correct the value of a recorded conversion after the fact, for example setting it to zero after a refund.

Value rules by tier, device and audience

A T1 member is worth more than a T3 member; an article reader converts better than a stranger. We tell Google with value rules rather than with more campaigns.

Fewer campaigns, more volume per campaign, same priorities respected.

Consent Mode v2 before any EU and UK targeting

Without a consent signal, Google builds no audiences and counts no conversions in Europe.

A Google requirement, not a legal opinion. No banner seen from a UK IP on 6 September.

Exclude current members from every acquisition campaign

Customer Match list of members as an exclusion.

A member who clicks an ad costs a click and is worth nothing.

One page per intent

Skill → course page; career → career page; comparison → authority page; brand and warm-up → /join.

The authority page converts people who compare, not people who discover.

Responsive ads by theme: headline 1 = theme, headline 2 = proof, headline 3 = offer

Pinned theme ("Usability Testing Course"), proof ("1.1M+ Enrollments Since 2002"), offer ("14-Day Money-Back Guarantee"). Assets: courses, certificates, meetups, prices; promotion asset when an offer runs.

Three ads per group, assets by audience, no generic headlines.

Shared negative keyword lists from day one

Jobs at IxDF, "free download", "torrent", employee names, support queries. Informational queries are not excluded: they go to their own campaign.

On an informational query IxDF is rarely first organically and a competitor's ad sits above anyway: we buy it at informational prices, not commercial-intent prices.

Budget increases in 20% weekly steps, when tROAS holds

Never a doubling at once; 7 to 14 days of stabilisation after a change.

The operational translation of "driven by real ROAS, never by enthusiasm".

Offer tests run as campaign experiments, on cold traffic only

7-day trial vs direct purchase vs monthly plan: one experiment, one tier, a fixed duration, net revenue at 90 days.

Your site-wide test mixed warm and cold; this one wouldn't.

Language: all languages on Search, English only off Search

On Search, the English keyword already filters the user; restricting to English would exclude bilingual users whose browser is set to Spanish or French. On YouTube, Demand Gen and Display no query filters: English only, or audience signals.

A curious click on an English video by someone who doesn't understand it costs the same as a good click.

Naming everyone can read

T1_Skills_Search_Research, T1_Career_YouTube, ALL_Brand_Search, T3_Existing_Search_India.

Fabio, Igor and your team read the account without a legend.

8. Measurement

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What we track every week

  • ROAS on net lifetime value, by tier and by plan.
  • Cost of acquiring an annual member, by tier.
  • Lead rate (email) and checkout completion after "Add Your Details".
  • Guardrail: refunds at 14 days, disputes.

What must exist before the first T1 dollar

  • Conversion values by plan × country, sent to Google.
  • Conversion adjustments wired to refunds.
  • Consent Mode v2 for the EU and UK.
  • Member list as an exclusion.
  • A dashboard you can read without explanation.

9. Five unknowns before anything is locked

↑ Contents
Who really buys — your personas by plan, country and purchase trigger (Part 1, section 1); the seven audiences in section 2 are to be replaced by your data.
Member value at 12 and 24 months by plan and by country — without it, no tROAS is justifiable.
The site-wide trial results, split by traffic source — they decide F1's soft step.
The real price grid by country (£20, $22, $29 seen depending on the read) — it can't be known without asking.
What the existing T3 campaigns really do and whether Student members renew — nothing is touched before we know.

10. Ten-line recap

↑ Contents
  • Two engines: sell the course, the training path, the certification to people who search (the core); sell the way out of a problem to people who don't search yet.
  • Three geo tiers never mixed: T1, T2, T3.
  • Five funnels, one page each.
  • Eleven campaigns; Skills T1 is the heart, Warm-up the best return, Informational the defence.
  • Timeline: access and audit 15–30 Sept → launch 1 Oct → extension 22 Oct → Europe and teams 12 Nov → scale in January.
  • New budgets: $5.2K in October → $14.5K in December → $39.8K in March, each step conditional on tROAS.
  • Value sent to Google = net lifetime value, corrected for refunds — never the first payment alone.
  • Members excluded everywhere; all languages on Search, English only off Search; Consent Mode v2 before Europe.
  • Offer tests as campaign experiments, cold traffic only, net revenue at 90 days.
  • Five unknowns to settle with you before locking anything: real personas, LTV, trial by source, price by country, T3 campaigns.
Part 3

Preliminary audit — public data only

The complimentary audit promised in our proposal, run on 6 September from public pages and public tools. No account was created, no data entered, no form submitted. Every finding carries its source and a confidence level.

Preliminary Google Ads audit for IxDF

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Scope and method: the audit covers the public pages of ixdf.org (Interaction Design Foundation), the Google Ads Transparency Center, Google searches, and the public tools Wayback Machine and PageSpeed Insights. No account was created, no personal or payment data was entered, no form was submitted. Every finding below comes with a source (URL) and a confidence level: verified (observed directly), partial (incomplete data or limited tool coverage), not verifiable (step blocked by a form, a payment or a captcha). Quotes, button labels, titles and figures are kept in their original language (English).

A. Conversion paths

A1 — Funnel from the "Why Learn Design with IxDF" landing page

Page tested: ixdf.org/why-learn-design-with-ixdf

Page title: "Build High-Impact AI and Design Skills" — social-proof banner: "1.1M+ enrollments · 107 countries · Since 2002" and "4.9 ★ on Google · 14-day money-back guarantee".

Calls to action found on the page:

  • "Start Today" → /join — main button, repeated several times down the page.

  • "Subscribe" — button without a direct link (probably an email-capture form in the footer), unrelated to payment.

No price or plan is displayed on this page: it is a value/testimonial page (with a "total value" table adding up to $6,649). No mention of the word "trial" anywhere on the page — only the "14-day money-back guarantee" is highlighted.

Next steps in the path (clicking "Start Today"):

Page 2 — ixdf.org/join — "Design Your Future: Get Certified in UX/UI Design." Tagline: "Get Ready to Grow", badges "✓ 14-Day Money-Back Guarantee" and "✓ Cancel Anytime". No mention of a free trial. Plans displayed:

Plan Price displayed Billing
Professional £20/month billed annually
Design League £180/month billed monthly

Currency: pound sterling (£), consistent with the connection IP (United Kingdom, see below). Other options at the bottom of the page: "Company Membership", "Student Membership", "Give as a Gift", "Already a Member? Log In".

Page 3 — ixdf.org/join/who-are-you [STOPPING POINT] — reached by clicking "Select" on the Professional plan. Title: "Add Your Details" — progress bar at step 2/3: "Select Membership" (done) → "Add Your Details" (in progress) → "Complete Your Setup" (step 3, not reached). Form fields: Full name*, Email*, checkbox "I accept the Terms of Use", button "Next Step".

Email and name are captured before any payment, at step 2 of 3, with no reminder of the price on this screen. In line with the read-only instruction, navigation stops here: step 3 ("Complete Your Setup", presumably the payment form) is not verifiable — it sits behind the submission of name and email.

No mention of the word "trial" was encountered anywhere on this path (landing page → /join → /join/who-are-you). CONFIDENCE: verified for pages 1 to 3; not verifiable for the payment step.

A2 — Funnels from the homepage / /courses / a beginner course / /join / /trial/join

Homepage — ixdf.org: free trial visible? No (0 mentions of "trial"). Main CTA: "Start Today" → /join; hero CTA: "Explore IxDF Membership" → /why-learn-design-with-ixdf. No price displayed on this page. Promotional banner (dismissable): "Last Chance! Gen AI in UX: Past the Tool, Back to the Human Mind Master Class". Statistics displayed: "Trusted by 1,586 companies and 1,146,604 enrollments".

ixdf.org/courses: free trial visible? No. Main CTA: "Start Today". Only "perceived value" amounts are shown, in dollars (e.g. "$2,189 worth of toolkits", "$6,649 worth of premium tools") — these are not the actual subscription prices, and no currency selector is offered.

Beginner course — ixdf.org/courses/user-experience-the-beginner-s-guide ("User Experience: The Beginner's Guide"): free trial visible? No. Main CTA: "Start Today". Price displayed: "Price: $349" (struck through) then "Free for members. Unlimited access to all courses at no extra cost" — in US dollars, while /join shows pounds sterling to the same UK visitor. Urgency mechanics on this page: countdown "Closes in 5 days 18 hrs 38 mins 9 secs" and circular gauge "54% booked"; ratings displayed: Google 5★, G2 5★.

→ Finding: currency is not geolocated uniformly across the site — course pages display prices in US dollars, while the payment page (/join) displays pounds sterling to a British visitor.

ixdf.org/join: see A1 above (£20/month Professional, £180/month Design League, no trial, 14-day money-back guarantee).

ixdf.org/trial/join — KEY FINDING: this URL immediately redirects to ixdf.org/join (identical page to /join) and displays a red, dismissable error banner with the following exact wording:

"Free Trial is not available at the moment. You can still sign up with a 14-day money-back guarantee!"

This confirms three things: (1) a free-trial mechanism exists or has existed at this precise URL, (2) it is disabled as of today (6 September 2026), (3) the fallback message is the same everywhere — the 14-day money-back guarantee. CONFIDENCE: verified.

Currency and geolocation: it was not possible to verify whether the currency changes by location (no reliable way to simulate another location in a read-only session). Observation from a UK IP only: £ on /join, $ on course pages.

A3 — Wayback Machine timeline (site-wide free trial)

Method: Wayback Machine snapshots roughly every 2 months, from January 2025 to today, for the homepage, /join and the landing page. Methodological note: Wayback coverage of ixdf.org is very uneven (sometimes 6 to 7 months without a snapshot); the dates below are those of the actual snapshot closest to the target, not the target date itself.

Homepage (ixdf.org):

Target Actual snapshot Banner / promo observed IxDF free trial?
Jan 2025 2 Dec 2024 (redirects to www.interaction-design.org) no promo banner detected No
May 2025 14 Jul 2025 "3 months free + 3 bonus Master Classes — AI appreciation day" No ("free months" offer, not a trial)
Jul – Sep 2025 14 Jul 2025 (same snapshot) same No
Nov 2025 – Jan 2026 31 Jan 2026 "Last Chance! The AI Design Sprint Master Class" No
Mar 2026 13 Mar 2026 — ixdf.org becomes the main domain "Get 3 Months Free + 6 Master Classes. IxDF Is Reborn." No ("free months" offer, rebranding campaign)
May – Jul 2026 27 May then 18 Jul 2026 no promo banner No
Sep 2026 (today) 31 Aug 2026 "Start Today / Risk-free: 14-day money-back guarantee" — identical to the live site No

Conclusion A3 (homepage): no occurrence of the word "trial" in connection with IxDF over the period observed. The site alternates between no promotion, the 14-day money-back guarantee, and two one-off "X months free" campaigns (July 2025 and March 2026, the latter tied to the "IxDF Is Reborn" rebranding). No evidence of a free trial switched on then off over this period — but the multi-month gaps in Wayback coverage do not rule out a short trial having been missed. CONFIDENCE: partial.

/join (very sparse coverage): the only earlier snapshots found are 4 March 2026 (prices in $22/month, $240/year, with the perk "6 Free Master Classes included", no mention of "trial") and 6 August 2026 ($29/month, $320/year, still without "trial" or free perk). Note: these captures show prices in dollars, probably tied to the location of the Wayback crawler (often US-based), not to be confused with the pounds sterling observed live today.

Landing page /why-learn-design-with-ixdf: a recent page, first snapshot available 13 April 2026 (title at the time: "Get a Job in Design and AI. The Design Industry is Booming."). Across the two available snapshots, the only occurrence of the word "trial" is "60-day free trial $24 value" in a table of third-party partner perks — an external tool, not an IxDF trial — identical to what is visible live today.

Consolidated timeline: no window in which a real IxDF free trial (time-limited, on the subscription itself) appears publicly over the period covered by the available snapshots. The only IxDF-related "free" occurrences are two commercial "X months free" campaigns (July 2025, March 2026), which differ from a classic trial. In parallel, /trial/join (tested live, see A2) proves that a "Free Trial" mechanism does exist internally but is disabled today — its past activation window could not be dated via Wayback, for lack of sufficient snapshots of that precise URL.

B. Existing paid advertising

B1 — Google Ads Transparency Center: IxDF

Search by "Interaction Design Foundation" (also covers "IxDF", ixdf.org and interaction-design.org — one and the same advertiser):

Interaction Design Foundation Inc — identity verified by Google ("Advertiser has verified their identity") — based in the United States. Advertiser page: adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR14119624618171957249

  • Number of ads: ~200 over the "Any time" period (31 May 2018 → 6 September 2026).

  • Last delivery observed: 5 September 2026 (yesterday) → campaigns currently active.

  • Formats confirmed: text, image, video.

  • Breakdown by platform: Google Search ≈ 200 ads (almost all), YouTube = exactly 70 video ads (e.g. vertical Shorts format "Stay free — Get Certified in UX Design..."). Google Maps/Play/Shopping are offered as filters but were not investigated in detail. Note: the platform filter only works for ads served since 4 September 2023 (a native limit of the tool).

Sample ad headlines: "Online Product Design Courses - Online, Self-Paced Learning" (sitelinks: Free Design Literature / Build Your Design Portfolio / Join Over 170,000 Graduates / $8,577 in Design Tools); "Interaction Design Courses"; "Online UI Design Courses - Learn UI Design"; "Break into Tech with UX Design" (image); "Usability Testing Courses - Endorsed by Top Companies".

Geographic targeting (verified on the text ad "Online UX Design Courses - Leader in Design Education", last served 5 September 2026) — full list of the 25 countries offered in the regional filter for this ad:

Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Martinique, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Türkiye, Ukraine, Vietnam.

Notable absence: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Germany and almost all of Western Europe do NOT appear in this list, even though the advertiser is US-based and its own checkout bills a UK visitor in pounds sterling (see A1/A2). This ad targets almost exclusively emerging markets with a low cost per click (Latin America, South/South-East Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe). CONFIDENCE: verified — checked on one text ad, not on all ~200.

B2 — Google Ads Transparency Center: 10 competitors

Search by name (or by domain when the name search failed or pointed to the wrong entity):

Competitor Google Ads advertising? Legal entity found Volume Formats observed Sample headline
Coursera Yes Coursera, Inc. (US) + Coursera India Private Limited ~20,000 ads Text "Learn From Meta Experts - 100% Online Courses"
CareerFoundry Yes CareerFoundry GmbH (Germany) ~79 ads Text + Image "Try a Free Short Course - Become Certified Data Analyst"
Designlab Yes Designlab Learning Inc (US) ~200 ads Text "Become A UX/UI Designer - Voted Best UX Design Bootcamp"
Springboard Yes Sliderule Labs, Inc. (US) — legal name ≠ brand 83 ads Text + Video "Springboard Bootcamps - Springboard Courses to Career"
UX Design Institute Yes Night Mountain Limited — legal name ≠ brand ~800 ads Text "Online UI Design course - Now Enroling for Aug/Sept"
Uxcel Yes Uxcel, Inc. (US) 8 ads Text "Uxcel: Learn UX, PM & AI - Build UX skills"
General Assembly Yes General Assembly Space Inc. (US) ~700 ads Text "Learn with General Assembly - Largest tech training courses"
Udemy Yes Udemy, Inc. (US) ~40,000 ads Text, multilingual "Udemy - Courses On Demand - Courses For All Career Goals"
Domestika Yes Domestika INC (US) + Domestikas SAS (Colombia) ~9,000 ads Text, multilingual "Introduction To Figma - Learn to use Figma today"
Nielsen Norman Group Yes The Nielsen Norman Group (US) 84 ads Text + Video "UX Master Certification" ("Buy 2, Get the 3rd Free")

All 10 competitors tested advertise on Google Ads, and almost all of them at a much higher volume than IxDF (~200 ads). Scale ratio: Udemy ≈ 200x IxDF, Coursera ≈ 100x, Domestika ≈ 45x, UX Design Institute ≈ 4x. Only Uxcel (8), Nielsen Norman Group (84) and CareerFoundry (79) are smaller or comparable to IxDF. CONFIDENCE: verified for presence and volume; the formats listed are those seen in the first sample displayed, not an exhaustive audit of each advertiser.

B3 — Google searches (7 queries × 3 geographic variants)

Method: 7 queries tested without a geolocation parameter (real IP, United Kingdom), then with &gl=us, then with &gl=gb.

Default results (real UK IP, no parameter):

Query Ads Advertisers IxDF as an ad? IxDF organic?
"ux design course" 3 UX Design Institute; Grow with Google/Coursera; King's College London No Absent
"ux design certificate online" 4 UX Design Institute; Coursera; King's College; ICS Learn No Absent
"learn ux design" 2 UX Design Institute; Udemy No Absent (indirect mention in a Reddit answer)
"ui ux course" 2 UX Design Institute; Coursera No Absent
"interaction design course" 1 Interaction Design Foundation / IxDF — "Learn From Industry Experts — Complete hands-on projects & build your portfolio..." Yes — the only ad shown Absent from direct organic results
"ux bootcamp" 2 UX Design Institute; GAIN Experience No Not checked in detail
"ux design course free trial" 0 None No Mentioned by a third party (myuxacademy.com): "The Interaction Design Foundation offers a three-day free trial."

Out of 7 high commercial-intent queries, IxDF appears as a paid ad on only 1 ("interaction design course", a brand/niche term) and never appears as a direct organic result, including on generic high-volume queries such as "ux design course" or "learn ux design".

Effect of the &gl parameter:

Query Default &gl=us &gl=gb
"ux design course" 3 ads 1 (UX Design Institute) 1 (UX Design Institute, "£1,000 Off")
"ux design certificate online" 4 ads 1 (price still in £ despite gl=us) 1
"learn ux design" 2 ads 1 1
"ui ux course" 2 ads 1 1
"interaction design course" 1 (IxDF, only ad) 0 — "NO ADS FOUND" 0 — "NO ADS FOUND"
"ux bootcamp" 2 ads 1 1
"ux design course free trial" 0 0 0

The IxDF ad disappears as soon as a &gl parameter is added to the URL, whether &gl=us or &gl=gb — consistent with the absence of the United Kingdom and the United States from the regional targeting list observed in B1. Methodological note: adding a &gl parameter (whatever its value) systematically reduces the total number of ads displayed compared with no parameter — this parameter is therefore not a reliable proxy for the real geographic targeting of ads; a reliable multi-country test would require a VPN or a physical device in each target country. Another observation: the currency (£) stays unchanged on the UX Design Institute ads even under &gl=us, which confirms that the currency displayed depends on the browser's real IP geolocation, not on the URL parameter. CONFIDENCE: verified for all observations; the causal interpretation of the &gl parameter's behaviour remains partial.

C. Measurement setup

C1 — Trackers detected (view-source + real network requests)

Method: reading of the raw HTML and capture of the network requests actually fired after load, on 4 pages (homepage, landing page, /join, /trial/join → redirects to /join).

Tracking stack strictly identical on all 4 pages:

Tool Identifier Evidence
Google Tag Manager GTM-KJ8XGB Loaded server-side / first-party via the subdomain t.ixdf.org, rather than the standard googletagmanager.com
Google Analytics 4 G-WP2YP70Z2X Confirmed via real network requests (region1.analytics.google.com/g/s/collect)
Google Ads (remarketing) AW-985705368 Confirmed via google.com/rmkt/collect/, googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/viewthroughconversion/ and google.com/pagead/1p-user-list/ — display remarketing + active audience lists
LinkedIn Insight Tag partner ID = 40367 snap.licdn.com/li.lms-analytics/ and px.ads.linkedin.com/collect fired on all 4 pages
Meta/Facebook Pixel Absent on load No request fired without consent (see C2 — configured but probably consent-gated)
TikTok Social link only Link to IxDF's TikTok page in the footer — no advertising pixel
Hotjar / Microsoft Clarity Absent No trace on the 4 pages
Cookie consent banner (CMP) No visible banner None of the Cookiebot/OneTrust/Usercentrics strings detected, and no banner observed during the whole navigation

IxDF already has an active Google Ads tag with display remarketing and audience-list building across the whole funnel, including on /join itself — the technical foundation for remarketing already exists. GA4 is linked to Google Ads audiences (same tid identifier on the audience calls), a sign of an existing GA4↔Ads integration. IxDF also uses LinkedIn Ads/retargeting alongside Google. No cookie consent banner was observed while third-party advertising tags fire on page load — a possible GDPR/PECR compliance point to flag, a legal review being outside the scope of this technical audit. CONFIDENCE: verified.

C2 — robots.txt and privacy policy

robots.txt (ixdf.org/robots.txt): no analytics/advertising vendor named (not the usual purpose of a robots.txt), but notable content: the site declares Content-Signal: search=yes, ai-train=no, use=reference and explicitly blocks the following AI-training crawlers — Amazonbot, Applebot-Extended, Bytespider, CCBot, ClaudeBot, CloudflareBrowserRenderingCrawler, Google-Extended, GPTBot, meta-externalagent — as well as AhrefsBot, SiteSucker and HTTrack. Classic Googlebot Search is not affected (only Google-Extended, Google's AI-training crawler, is): this concerns visibility in generative AI, not Google Ads.

Privacy policy: there is no dedicated page. The "Terms / Privacy" link in the footer points to ixdf.org/about/terms-of-use, which contains a section "17.3 Privacy Policy (Summary)". This section is a circular reference: it states that the privacy policy is "available at https://www.ixdf.org/about/terms-of-use" — the same URL as the page being read — without listing a single vendor, and without details on data retention or international transfers.

However, this same page contains, hidden in the code (a cookie preference centre not displayed without interaction), a much more complete named list:

Category Tools named Exact quote
Essential — Error Reporting Bugsnag, NewRelic "We share user ID with Bugsnag and NewRelic to help us track errors and fix issues."
Essential — Referral Program (not named) "We use cookies to enable our referral program, giving you and your friends discounts."
Advertising Google Ads Tag, Meta Pixel, Meta CAPI, LinkedIn Insights, LinkedIn CAPI, Reddit Pixel, Reddit CAPI E.g. Reddit CAPI: "Measures the performance of our Reddit ads through the Reddit Conversions API, sharing conversion data server-side in a privacy-compliant way."

This preference centre reveals that IxDF has configured Meta Ads (Pixel + CAPI) and Reddit Ads (Pixel + CAPI), in addition to Google Ads and LinkedIn already confirmed in C1 — i.e. 4 advertising platforms active or recently active: Google, LinkedIn, Meta, Reddit. These Meta/Reddit tags did not fire in the real network requests captured in C1 (no consent given), probably because they are gated by cookie consent — to be checked directly with the client whether they are actively used today or historically. CONFIDENCE: verified for the exact textual content; the interpretation of the "why" remains partial, not confirmed by the client.

D. Technical quality of the site (PageSpeed Insights)

Methodological note: the "lab" performance score (Lighthouse) is a one-off measurement, subject to variance from one test to the next (two tests on /join gave 58 then 60 on mobile) — to be treated as directional. On 2 of the 4 pages, the first test failed on Google's own infrastructure side (internal server errors, unrelated to IxDF); a second run succeeded in both cases.

Page Mobile (Perf/Access./Best practices/SEO) Mobile lab LCP Desktop (Perf/Access./Best practices/SEO) Desktop lab LCP
Landing page 57 / 97 / 81 / 100 8.3 s 80 / 97 / 81 / 100 0.89 s
/trial/join (= /join) 65 / 96 / 81 / 100 3.16 s 67 / 96 / 81 / 100 0.80 s
/join 58–60 / 96 / 81 / 100 7.3 s 95 / 96 / 81 / 100 0.72 s
Beginner course 60 / 97 / 77 / 100 3.84 s 86 / 97 / 77 / 100 0.96 s

CLS (visual stability) is excellent everywhere: 0 to 0.02, "Good" over the whole period measured.

Field data (real users, last 28 days, Chrome UX Report) — all pages pass the "Core Web Vitals Assessment" (overall verdict: Passed), with real values markedly better than the lab scores:

Page Real LCP Real INP Real CLS Real TTFB
Landing page 1.7 s 137 ms 0.01 0.8 s
/join (and /trial/join) 1 s (mobile) / 0.7 s (desktop) 115 ms / 53 ms 0 0.6 s / 0.5 s
Beginner course 1.6 s 128 ms 0.02 0.9 s (the only individual indicator in the red)

The gap between the mobile lab score (57 to 65/100) and the real user experience (Core Web Vitals: Passed everywhere) is massive — the lab test simulates a degraded network and CPU, on which the many tracking requests described in C1/C2 weigh more than they do for a real visitor on a good connection. Desktop is markedly better than mobile on every page (67 to 95/100). CONFIDENCE: verified.

Ten findings, ranked by impact

  1. The live Google Ads targeting excludes the United Kingdom, the United States and Western Europe — 25 countries targeted, all emerging, low-CPC markets — while the checkout bills a UK visitor in pounds sterling. If this is deliberate, the cost-per-member logic behind it is worth writing down; if it is not, it is the largest untapped lever in the account.
  2. All 10 competitors checked advertise on Google Ads, most at a far higher volume (Udemy ≈ 200×, Coursera ≈ 100×, UX Design Institute ≈ 4× IxDF's ~200 ads) — the room to scale is quantifiable.
  3. The free-trial mechanism exists (/trial/join) but is disabled today ("Free Trial is not available at the moment"), while competitors such as Coursera, FutureLearn and LinkedIn Learning use trials as their main lever — its status changes the creative angle of any campaign.
  4. A Google Ads remarketing tag with audience-list building is already active across the whole funnel (AW-985705368, linked to GA4) — the remarketing infrastructure exists; whether it is used is the open question.
  5. On 7 high-intent commercial queries from the UK, IxDF appears as an ad on 1 and never as a direct organic result — the queries a Google Ads plan would target first are currently uncovered.
  6. The cookie preference centre reveals Meta, Reddit and LinkedIn conversion tags in addition to Google — the real advertising picture spans four platforms, and any plan should sequence them rather than treat Google in isolation.
  7. Currency inconsistency in the funnel: course pages show $349 while the payment page shows £20–180/month to the same UK visitor — a conversion friction independent of media budget.
  8. No cookie consent banner was observed while advertising tags fire on page load. Compliance is outside this audit's scope; technically, Google's Consent Mode is a prerequisite for building audiences and counting conversions for users in the EU and UK.
  9. Two "X months free" campaigns (July 2025, March 2026) rather than a permanent trial — how "free" has been communicated so far, useful for any future offer test.
  10. Mobile lab PageSpeed scores are modest (57–65/100) but real-user Core Web Vitals pass everywhere — worth knowing, not an urgency.

Based exclusively on public pages and public tools (Google Ads Transparency Center, Wayback Machine, PageSpeed Insights). No personal or payment data was entered; no form was submitted; no account access was used. — WeAdU, Brighton, UK · Google Premier Partner