---
title: Answering your biggest performance marketing questions
description: Get answers to performance marketing questions, from AI's impact to reporting best practices, in this Q&A. Discover key takeaways and actionable insights.
image: https://blog.thrivedigital.com/hubfs/YT_Thumbnail_Episode%2017.png
---
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February 5, 2025
# Answering your biggest performance marketing questions
.png) *Santana Blanchette*
[Back to Blog Listings](https://blog.thrivedigital.com)
Performance marketing is constantly evolving, and we know you have questions. In this special Q&A episode, we took your questions about performance marketing, from AI’s impact to reporting best practices and answered them in this wide-spanning conversation.
Watch the full episode below or [listen to the conversation here](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2343108/episodes/16564284). Prefer to skim? Check out the top takeaways below.
### Top Takeaways from This Episode
#### How is AI impacting performance marketing?
- AI has been shaping performance marketing for over a decade, particularly in bidding strategies and audience selection.
- While AI tools continue to evolve, they haven't drastically changed how marketers approach performance campaigns—yet.
- AI is useful for improving individual understanding, assisting with code syntax, and idea generation, but creative outputs remain too generic.
- The real value today? AI-driven efficiency in creative production—photo manipulation, formatting, and cropping.
#### Is AI impacting consumer trust in ads?
- Consumers typically don’t think about AI’s role in ads unless they spread misinformation or feature low-quality AI-generated creative.
- The bigger concern is AI-generated organic content, which may impact consumer trust more than ads.
- Want to learn more about AI? We talk all about AI in Meta advertising[in this blog post](https://blog.thrivedigital.com/how-is-ai-going-to-impact-meta-advertising-in-2024).
#### What should clients look for in agency reporting?
- Agencies should provide a clear metric comparing total marketing investment against key business outcomes like revenue, new customer acquisition, or sales.
- Look for attributed results across all channels, whether through independent attribution models or MTA tools.
- Reporting should break down results by channel and tactic while clarifying the assumptions behind the data.
- Avoid overwhelming reports with excessive data points—stick to KPIs and diagnostic metrics.
- To analyze creative effectiveness, focus on hook rate, thumb stop, hold rate, view-throughs, and video completions.
#### How long does a campaign take to show results?
- Expect a learning period of at least one to several weeks.
- The timeline depends on the sales cycle—longer cycles require more time to evaluate impact.
- Define what “results” mean upfront—are you measuring first-time sales, profitability, or long-term sustainability?
- Short-term measurements often only capture immediate impact, while full-funnel effects can take months to materialize.
#### When should marketing be taken in-house vs. using an agency?
- Agencies provide diversity of ideas, cross-industry insights, and larger teams for problem-solving.
- In-house teams need specialized skills to run performance marketing effectively. Simply adding it to a brand or creative role isn’t ideal.
#### Performance marketing trends that need to stop
- Over-trusting data: Data can lie or be misinterpreted. Use it to inform decisions, not dictate them blindly.
- Calling campaign types “strategy”: A new campaign format isn’t a strategy—how you execute, measure, and iterate is.
- Relying solely on user-generated content for social: UGC is great, but it shouldn't be the entire strategy.
- Blindly following trends instead of forming hypotheses and testing new approaches.
- Incentivizing blended ROAS across platforms, which can lead to inefficient spending and low incremental impact.
#### How can performance and creative teams work better together?
- In-house brand and performance teams often work in silos, which slows down creative approvals.
- A collaborative brief—approved by both teams from the start—helps ensure smoother processes.
#### What recommendations are clients tired of hearing from agencies?
- Defaulting to "best practices" instead of testing and innovating. Agencies should experiment with new approaches, not apply the same broad models to every client.
#### How can reporting and dashboards be improved?
- Avoid overwhelming dashboards with excessive metrics—stick to three key indicators.
- Establish a clear metric hierarchy and focus on leading vs. lagging indicators.
- Revenue is a lagging indicator, so focus on leading indicators like direct and organic sessions to predict future trends.
- Compare year-over-year data for meaningful insights instead of focusing only on week-over-week changes.
Want a deeper dive into these insights? Listen to the full episode now and check out the show notes here:[https://thehypothesisshow.com/](https://thehypothesisshow.com/)
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