About Mass Tort Ad Agency

The plaintiff-side agency that built mass tort Facebook advertising.

Last reviewed 2026-06-02 by Jacob Malherbe.

Quick Facts

What Mass Tort Ad Agency does

MTAA runs end-to-end Facebook and Instagram advertising programs for plaintiff law firms participating in active mass tort and class action litigation. The agency's scope covers the full claimant-acquisition pipeline:

• Tort selection strategy — analysis of MDL docket activity, FAERS adverse-event signals, scientific literature, plaintiff-attorney demand, and projected acquisition economics to recommend which torts to enter and when.
• Creative production — image ads, video ads, primary text, headlines, and call-to-action copy designed for plaintiff mass tort campaigns and aligned with Meta's advertising standards and applicable state attorney advertising rules.
• Audience segmentation — geo-targeting (state, ZIP, radius), demographic targeting (age, gender), interest and behavioral signals, and pixel-trained custom and lookalike audiences using the firm's own Meta pixel data.
• Campaign management — daily budget management, creative rotation, A/B testing, frequency control, placement optimization, and ongoing performance optimization in the firm's own Meta Business Manager.
• Landing page architecture — conversion-optimized landing pages with tort-specific eligibility qualifiers, plaintiff intake forms, click-to-call telephony, and attorney-advertising-compliant disclaimers and disclosures.
• Intake routing — direct integration with the firm's intake provider (commonly CloudIntake) or warm-transfer telephony so qualified leads reach a live intake specialist within seconds of form submission.
• Performance reporting — daily dashboards covering ad spend, cost per lead, conversion rate, lead-to-signed-client ratio, and projected case-acquisition cost, plus monthly performance reviews with the founder and senior staff.

MTAA does not sell leads, sell signed cases, run a lead-resale marketplace, or charge per-case acquisition fees. The agency runs real Meta advertising on each firm's own ad accounts, generating the firm's own leads, on the firm's own pixel. The firm owns everything produced during the engagement and retains everything after.

How Mass Tort Ad Agency started

MTAA traces its origin to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Jacob Malherbe and his wife Roseanna ran an information blog covering the spill, claimant rights, and the BP claims process for Gulf Coast residents and businesses. The blog's readership grew rapidly, plaintiff law firms working the BP litigation began calling to ask how to reach those readers, and a referral-and-advertising operation grew up around the blog.

The company was formally incorporated in 2015 as X Social Media LLC, with a focus on Facebook advertising for plaintiff mass tort and class action campaigns. At the time, most lawyers viewed Facebook as a consumer entertainment platform rather than a viable client-acquisition channel; most legal-vertical advertising agencies focused on search engine pay-per-click, broadcast television, and outdoor billboards. X Social Media's bet — that Facebook's interest targeting, geo-targeting, and pixel-trained audiences were better suited to mass tort claimant acquisition than any other channel — proved durable through every major MDL of the next decade.

By 2018, the company was named to the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private companies at #159 nationally with a 2,429% three-year revenue growth rate. Inc. Magazine subsequently profiled the company and the Malherbe family's path from the BP oil spill blog to the agency's mature operation. The company was named a Meta Business Partner as the Meta partner program formalized its vetting requirements, and was featured in a PBS public-television special on the role of social media advertising in plaintiff mass tort litigation with on-camera commentary from senior plaintiff attorneys Mike Papantonio (Levin Papantonio Rafferty), Anne Andrews (Andrews & Thornton), and Ben Crump.

In October 2023, the company filed a federal trademark infringement suit against Elon Musk's X Corp in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (X Social Media LLC v. X Corp, Case No. 6:23-cv-01903), arguing that Musk's renaming of Twitter to X created consumer confusion with the company's pre-existing federally registered "X" marks for advertising services. Reuters, Bloomberg Law, The Hollywood Reporter, and TechCrunch covered the filing. On July 19, 2024, Middle District of Florida Judge John Antoon II denied X Corp's motion to dismiss, ruling that X Social Media had sufficiently pleaded consumer confusion. The case settled on September 15, 2025 (Bloomberg Law, Law360, Reuters). Under settlement terms, the company rebranded from X Social Media LLC to Mass Tort Ad Agency on September 17, 2025, formally distributed by PR Newswire. Operations, leadership, ad accounts, pixel infrastructure, and client relationships continued unchanged through the rebrand.

See the Press & News page for the full coverage archive.

How Mass Tort Ad Agency operates differently

The plaintiff-side mass tort lead market is dominated by per-case lead sellers, lead resellers, and case marketplaces that operate on opaque pricing and frequently fraudulent or recycled leads. MTAA was built around the opposite operating philosophy. Three structural differences drive most of the agency's day-to-day distinction:

• Cost-plus-15% pricing. The client sees the actual Meta ad spend pass through on every invoice. MTAA adds a flat 15% management fee on top of that media spend. There is no per-case pricing, no inflated CPL markup, no lead resale margin, and no hidden fees. When a campaign's CPL drops by half, the firm's case-acquisition cost drops by half too — MTAA's fee scales with the media spend, not with the count of cases delivered. This alignment is the core reason mature firms typically migrate from lead marketplaces to MTAA's model.
• The firm owns everything produced. All advertising runs on the firm's own Meta ad accounts, Meta pixel, Meta Business Manager, and landing page domain. All creative assets, audience data, pixel training, and lead records remain the firm's property throughout and after the engagement. If a firm decides to bring its advertising in-house, every asset that MTAA built transfers with the firm. There is no proprietary platform lock-in, no leads-database lock-in, and no ad-account ownership claim.
• Bar-card-clean operations. Because MTAA runs advertising rather than selling signed cases, the firm's relationship with each signed client is a direct, first-contact attorney-client relationship — not a downstream relationship with a case marketplace or lead reseller. This avoids the bar-card exposure created when a firm acquires already-signed cases from a third party (the Buzzell precedent in the AMS Pelvic Mesh MDL and the pending dismissals in Uber MDL 3084 before Judge Charles Breyer are illustrative). For most state bars, advertising spend on a firm's own accounts is unambiguous; purchased cases sit on contested ground.

For the full operational framework — onboarding sequence, pixel training, intake routing, reporting cadence, and the cost-plus-15% mechanics in detail — see the For Lawyers page. For litigation funders deploying capital into MTAA-operated campaigns, see Funder Networks.

The team

MTAA is run by a four-person senior team. Campaigns are not handed off to junior account managers reading from a script — every active campaign gets direct attention from the founder and senior staff.

• Jacob Malherbe — Founder & CEO. Runs strategy, key accounts, and tort selection. Author of A Lawyer's Guide to Mass Torts and The Facebook Effect for Lawyers. 15+ years of plaintiff-side mass tort Facebook advertising experience. Conference speaker at MTMP (Mass Torts Made Perfect) and frequent press source for legal-vertical reporting at Bloomberg Law, Reuters, Law360, and Inc. Magazine. Full bio.
• Roseanna Malherbe — Co-founder & COO. Co-founded the company alongside Jacob in 2015 (and co-ran the predecessor BP Deepwater Horizon blog from 2010). Profiled in Inc. Magazine's 2020 feature on the company's growth.
• Sam Clark — Operations. Manages campaign flight direction, intake routing, and client communications across the firm's active campaign book.
• Aaron — Design & Creative. Leads image and video creative production, A/B test iteration, and creative compliance across active campaigns.
• Jose — Engineering. Builds and maintains MTAA's technical infrastructure: Watchdog (creative iteration platform), Designer (creative production pipeline), the agency's Cloudflare-native stack, and integrations with CloudIntake, Lexamica, and partner platforms.

Recognition and third-party validation

MTAA's third-party validation falls into three categories: industry recognition, press coverage, and named-attorney testimonials.

Industry recognition. Inc. 5000 (#159 nationally, 2,429% three-year revenue growth) as X Social Media LLC; Meta Business Partner status; featured in a PBS public-television special with on-camera commentary from Mike Papantonio (Levin Papantonio Rafferty), Anne Andrews (Andrews & Thornton), and Ben Crump.

Press coverage. National coverage spans legal wires (Law360, Bloomberg Law, Reuters, Daily Business Review/Law.com), tech and business outlets (Inc. Magazine, TechCrunch, The Hollywood Reporter), IP-specialty publications (IPWatchdog, Dehns IP Insights, Potter Clarkson, IIPLA), and PR Newswire. The X Corp trademark case is logged in Wikipedia's historical index of X Corp litigation. The full archive lives on the Press & News page.

Named-attorney reviews. The MTAA Results page carries 17 named, on-the-record reviews from senior plaintiff attorneys at firms including Andrews & Thornton (Anne Andrews), Levin Papantonio Rafferty (Martin Levin, Robert Blanchard), Lerner & Rowe (Glen Lerner), Brent Coon & Associates (Brent Coon), Danziger & DeLlano (Paul Danziger), Eisbrouch Marsh (David Eisbrouch), Dunn Sheehan (Connor Sheehan), and others — plus 6 detailed case studies (Purdue Opioid bankruptcy, Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy, Roundup, USC Tyndall, Las Vegas Route 91, Video Game Addiction).

Who Mass Tort Ad Agency works with

MTAA's client mix runs from solo practitioners launching their first mass tort campaign to national plaintiff firms running $50M+ annual media budgets. The agency works with three constituencies:

• Plaintiff law firms — Active mass tort firms running their own campaigns under their own Meta accounts. See For Lawyers for the full firm onboarding framework, including the operational architecture, pricing mechanics, and bar-card compliance considerations.
• Litigation funders — Funds deploying capital into mass tort advertising campaigns, either directly through a participating law firm or as part of a structured co-funding arrangement. See Funder Networks for the funder-specific operational structure, including real-time dashboard access, Meta Business Manager view-only credentials, chain-of-custody documentation, and cost-plus economics.
• Smaller originating firms — Firms originating a new tort that lack the case capacity to take it all the way through MDL or settlement. MTAA can introduce these firms to co-counsel relationships across its network of 600+ plaintiff firms, allowing the originating firm to retain meaningful economic participation while the cases are worked by partner firms with the docket capacity.

Frequently asked questions

Glossary of terms

Terms specific to how MTAA operates, with definitions written for plaintiff law firms, litigation funders, and journalists covering the mass tort advertising market.

Mass tort

A type of civil litigation in which many plaintiffs with similar injuries (typically caused by the same product, exposure, or event) bring claims against one or a few defendants. Mass torts may be consolidated in federal court as a multi-district litigation (MDL) or proceed individually in state court.

MDL

Multi-district litigation. A federal procedure under 28 U.S.C. § 1407 that consolidates pretrial proceedings of similar federal civil cases before a single judge for efficiency. Examples include MDL 2741 (Roundup), MDL 2885 (Combat Arms Earplugs), MDL 3084 (Uber).

Plaintiff-side

Representing injured parties bringing suit, as opposed to defense-side (representing the defendant company). MTAA works exclusively on the plaintiff side.

Cost-plus-15%

MTAA's transparent pricing model: clients see actual Meta ad spend pass through on every invoice, and MTAA adds a flat 15% management fee on top. No per-case pricing, no inflated CPL, no hidden markups.

CPL

Cost per lead. The amount of ad spend required to generate one qualified inbound lead. In mass tort campaigns CPL varies widely by tort, geography, and competitive intensity, typically ranging from sub-$10 (durable consumer torts at scale) into the hundreds (highly competitive or qualifier-heavy torts).

Meta pixel

A tracking code installed on a firm's landing page that records page views, button clicks, form submissions, and other conversion events. Pixel data trains Meta's ad delivery algorithms, builds lookalike audiences, and supports campaign optimization over time. MTAA-managed campaigns train the pixel on the firm's own domain, leaving the trained pixel as a permanent asset of the firm.

Lookalike audience

A Meta-generated audience modeled on the behavioral profile of a firm's existing converters. Lookalikes are a core efficiency mechanism in mature mass tort campaigns: once a pixel has been trained on enough signed-client conversion events, Meta can identify statistically similar prospective claimants at lower cost than cold targeting.

Pixel network effect

The compounding intelligence advantage that accrues to a firm running campaigns through MTAA's pixel infrastructure. As more torts are run through the same pixel-trained ecosystem, audience signals become richer and more efficient, producing decreasing CPL over time even on otherwise unrelated tort campaigns.

Meta Business Partner

A formal vetting designation administered by Meta for advertising operators with documented compliance history and platform expertise. MTAA holds this status.

Tort campaign

An organized Facebook/Instagram advertising effort targeted at a specific mass tort matter (e.g., Roundup, BSA bankruptcy, USC Tyndall). Each tort campaign has its own creative library, qualifier funnel, audience targeting, and intake routing. MTAA has historically run 100+ distinct tort campaigns.

Intake

The process of qualifying an inbound lead against tort-specific eligibility criteria, gathering medical and exposure history, executing the retainer agreement, and routing the signed client back to the law firm. MTAA frequently routes to CloudIntake but firms can use any qualified intake provider.

CloudIntake

MTAA's sister company providing specialized mass tort signed-client intake at $100 per signed client. CloudIntake operates as an independent business and is available to firms whether or not they run their advertising through MTAA.

Signed client

A prospective claimant who has executed an attorney-client retainer agreement with the participating law firm. "Signed client" is the canonical conversion event in mass tort advertising — distinct from "lead" (form submission) and "qualified lead" (passed the eligibility qualifier).

Bar-card-clean

An operating practice that avoids the bar-card exposure created when a law firm acquires signed cases from a third party. MTAA's model — advertising on the firm's own accounts to generate the firm's own first-contact attorney-client relationships — sits unambiguously on the safe side of every state bar's attorney advertising and solicitation rules.

Buzzell precedent

The pretrial discovery order (Pretrial Order #215, 2016) in the AMS Pelvic Mesh MDL, which exposed the marketing-to-litigation chain of custody for cases acquired through third-party lead sellers. The order forced plaintiff firms to produce detailed documentation of how each plaintiff was acquired, which led to significant case dismissals where firms could not document a direct first-contact relationship.

Chain of custody

Documentation tracing how a signed client was acquired — from initial ad exposure through landing page conversion through intake qualification through retainer execution. MTAA documents chain of custody on every signed client, which is essential for plaintiff firms operating under heightened MDL scrutiny.

X Social Media LLC

The legal name under which Mass Tort Ad Agency operated from 2015 to September 2025. The name change followed settlement of the federal trademark suit X Social Media LLC v. X Corp (Case No. 6:23-cv-01903, Middle District of Florida). All operations, leadership, ad accounts, and client relationships continued unchanged through the rebrand.

Litigation funding

Non-recourse capital provided to law firms to finance mass tort case acquisition, expert costs, and case development through to settlement or verdict. MTAA works directly with litigation funders deploying capital into MTAA-operated campaigns; see Funder Networks for details.

For more on Mass Tort Ad Agency

• About Jacob Malherbe — founder bio, career history, books, speaking record, and direct contact.
• Books by Jacob Malherbe — A Lawyer's Guide to Mass Torts; The Facebook Effect for Lawyers.
• Press & News — full press archive: Bloomberg Law, Reuters, Law360, Inc., TechCrunch, Hollywood Reporter, IP-specialty outlets.
• Results — 17 named-attorney reviews and 6 mass tort case studies including PBS feature.
• For Lawyers — the full plaintiff law firm operating framework.
• Funder Networks — for litigation funders deploying capital into MTAA-operated campaigns.
• Book a 30-minute strategy call with Jacob Malherbe.

Last reviewed 2026-06-02 by Jacob Malherbe.