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. 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.
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/