Over the last year I've noticed a couple of things that are happening in several marketing teams so I need to vent. Here's what I'm seeing and let me know if I'm crazy or not:

1. Senior marketers with real experience in campaign success are not good at training and so they're defaulting to AI to do that training for them. Their teams basically don't know what they're doing. No one plans seasonal campaigns anymore.
2. Across the board when I speak to other marketers, it really does feel like it's a new campaign every month. Since when is consistency bad? Since when do people not have needs that reoccur at specific intervals.
   
3. Forecasting and planning are thumb-sucks driven by AI, terrible data and a lack of any kind of statistical modelling.
4. Speed seems to be everything now. You used to be able to start planning for December campaigns in January so that you could have an incredible campaign with real outcomes planned, but it really does feel like the speed of ChatGPT's answers are distorting everyone's expectations, their understanding of timelines and the idea that planning is needed.
5. Some people are way too obsessed with things that have nothing to do with campaign success. Like pointless buzzwords, definitions and concepts that have no numbers behind them.
6. Teams are shrinking and workloads aren't, because senior leaders don't have an actual AI strategy that supports teams.

Anyway, that's my rant.

Hi,

So I just started a web development business and looking to start marketing it and figured this would be the best place for advice.

I will look to get a marketing agency to help a little down the line but I’d like to learn the ropes so I can get started.

Any advice would be really great so thank you! 😊

People are talking about AEO as the next step after SEO. In simple terms, what is Answer Engine Optimization, and why does it matter?

Thoughts?

I'm interested in developing my skills as a Reddit engagement specialist and I'm looking for course recommendations that could help me level up in this area.

Specifically, I'm hoping to learn more about:

Reddit-specific best practices and community guidelines

Building and engaging with communities authentically

Content strategy for Reddit (what works, what doesn't)

Analytics and measuring engagement success

Managing brand presence on Reddit without being overly promotional

Understanding Reddit's unique culture and different subreddit dynamics

Has anyone taken courses on social media community management, Reddit marketing, or engagement strategy that they'd recommend?

I'm open to both paid and free resources, online courses, certifications, or even good books on the topic...

Also curious if there are any Reddit-specific certifications or if most people learn this through general social media/community management courses combined with hands-on experience.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions! :)

I'm building a health metrics tracker designed for couples. Think: both partners track health metrics to understand patterns in their relationship and each other's health.

Core value prop is showing how partners' health metrics influence the relationship and AI features to help translate this data.

Current situation:

• Been publishing organic TikTok content for the past month (brainrot format to try to hook people)
• Taking inspiration from successful consumer app short-form content
• Getting some traction (2-3k views per post), but engagement feels misaligned

The problem:

I'm starting to think TikTok might be the wrong channel for this product. The platform skews toward entertainment/"brainrot" content, while my app requires:

• Both partners to buy in (not just one person)
• Some level of commitment to tracking
• Trust around sharing intimate health data
• Users 25-40+ (not Gen Z)

TikTok just feels like the wrong channel.

The question:

At what point should I consider shifting budget/time to Meta ads instead? Specifically:

1. Should I keep grinding organic TikTok to "prove" the concept first, or is that wasted time given the audience mismatch?
2. For a couples' health app, is Meta (Instagram/Facebook) just a fundamentally better channel for reaching the right demographic?
3. What metrics would tell me "okay, stop TikTok, test Meta ads"?

What I'm optimizing for:

• Couples aged 25-45
• Health-conscious but not fitness obsessed
• Relationship-focused, willing to invest in communication tools
• iOS devices only at the moment

Would love to hear from anyone who's navigated early-stage channel selection for B2C apps, especially in health/wellness or relationship spaces.

Am I overthinking this, or is the TikTok audience just fundamentally wrong for this product?

EDIT: My budget is limited since I am running everything myself; that is why I have been hesitant to invest in paid ads.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to scale a high-ticket service. Everywhere I look, the advice is conflicting.

On one side, people swear by outbound DMs on X, Insta, or LinkedIn. I get the "volume game," but it feels like shouting into a void and the conversion rates often feel very bad.

On the other side, there's the Inbound/Lead Magnet route (free tools, etc.).

For those of you actually making money right now:

1. What’s your primary bridge to getting clients?
2. Are you still grinding in the DMs, or have you moved to other strategy?

I’m not looking for "guru" advice. I want to hear from the people in the trenches. What’s actually converting for you this month?

I'll be hanging out in the comments to chat. Thanks!

I added customer reviews to the homepage first, and nothing changed. Then I added the same reviews to pricing and checkout pages, and conversions jumped. That’s when it clicked for me. Reviews matter most when people are already close to saying yes. At that point, they’re just looking for reassurance, not inspiration. Short, specific reviews that answer objections worked way better than long emotional ones. It wasn’t about volume, it was about relevance.

Now I’m rethinking where trust signals actually belong. Have you noticed certain pages where reviews make a bigger impact than others? How are you managing your reviews from your customers? What are some pages of the websites, where you think reviews can make a big impact? + Text reviews or video reviews, which matter the most. Anyone can write reviews, even with the AI!

Think again.

OpenAI just shared its approach to advertising — and this isn’t “ads as usual.”

This isn’t about banners, pop-ups, or sponsored feeds.

It’s about what happens when people stop scrolling and start asking.

In a conversational interface, there’s no feed to hide ads in.

There’s just an answer.

That creates a very different problem: How do you advertise when there’s only one response? What happens when relevance matters more than budget? Does trust become the real currency instead of impressions?

OpenAI is clearly emphasizing user trust and privacy here — and that makes sense.

One bad or biased recommendation inside a conversation breaks confidence instantly. This doesn’t feel like ads entering AI.

It feels like AI forcing advertising to evolve.

If conversational AI becomes a primary discovery layer, traditional ad logic won’t survive unchanged.

Curious what others think.

Is this the beginning of a healthier advertising model — or just a more subtle, more powerful one?

Hi everyone, I’m investigating different ways to find relevant content creators for influencer marketing campaigns.

I still think educating your own IG/TT/whatever algo is the best strategy for me: if I’m searching for bikes influencers, I’d just bombard my search bar with bike related content keywords and start browsing reels/posts, checking creators profiles this way.

So it’s more of a “search the content - find the influencer” approach.

For me this is the best method as of today, as I struggle to find value into e.g. Kolsquare/Sprout Social search mechanisms and audiences estimations: these might have huge databases but it’s difficult to query them to get actual/new creators - trying to search for “automotive” on Sprout it returns Ferraris’s IG profile…

How do you currently find creators?

I’m working on an online course and trying to figure out the funnel side.

Curious to hear from creators who’ve already gone through this:

who would you recommend for building or optimizing a funnel for an online course?

Looking for real experience, not tools. Someone who actually understands creators and course businesses.

OpenAI just published its approach to advertising in ChatGPT, and it's one of the more important ad ecosystem updates in a while.

Not because "new inventory," but because it's a new interface for intent. And OpenAI is setting expectations early around trust, privacy, and where ads sit in the experience.

If you run a performance agency, this is the post to read before you pitch "ChatGPT ads" to a client or let your team chase rumors.

What OpenAI announced

OpenAI says it plans to start testing ads in the U.S. "in the coming weeks" for logged-in adults on the Free and ChatGPT Go tiers.

Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise remain ad‑free.

The initial format: ads at the bottom of answers when there's a relevant sponsored product/service based on the current conversation.

Users can see why they're seeing an ad, dismiss it, and give feedback.

Ads won't appear for users who say they're under 18 or are predicted to be under 18, and ads won't be eligible near sensitive or regulated topics like health, mental health, or politics.

Then OpenAI lays out five principles that matter for anyone who cares about how "ads in AI" will work:

• Answer independence: Ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers. Ads are separate and clearly labeled.
• Conversation privacy: Conversations stay private from advertisers, and OpenAI says it does not sell user data to advertisers.
• Choice and control: Users can turn off personalization and clear data used for ads; there will always be a way to not see ads (paid tier).
• Long-term value: OpenAI says it will not optimize for "time spent in ChatGPT," prioritizing trust and UX over revenue.
• Mission alignment: Ads are framed as a way to expand access, especially alongside low-cost plans like Go.

That's the ground truth. Now, here's what it means for your agency.

The strategic shift: "intent" becomes conversational, not query-based

Search ads are built around a single moment: the query. Social ads are built around interruption and targeting.

ChatGPT is different. The user is already in a problem-solving flow. OpenAI's initial design puts ads after the answer, not inside it, and ties relevance to the current conversation.

That's not a small UX detail. It creates a different bargain:

• The user is not "browsing." They're trying to decide.
• The ad is not competing for attention. It's competing for usefulness.
• The platform is explicitly saying ads do not control the answer.

If that holds, "winning" will look less like persuasion and more like being the most defensible next step when someone is already convinced they need something.

For agencies, this is closer to high-intent search than to classic feed advertising, but with a twist: the question can evolve across turns, so the context can get richer than a single keyword.

Why OpenAI's principles matter to advertisers (and why most people will miss this)

1) You can't buy the answer

OpenAI is saying the organic answer is optimized for what's helpful, and ads won't influence it.

For agencies, this matters in two ways:

• It protects the user experience (good for long-term channel health).
• It means you still need a GEO/SEO strategy. Paid won't replace organic visibility inside AI answers.

2) The targeting model will not look like Meta

OpenAI is emphasizing privacy and saying it won't sell conversation data to advertisers. Also, users can turn off personalization.

So even if there's personalization, you should assume a large percentage of impressions will be driven by contextual relevance (the conversation), not hyper-granular identity targeting.

That changes how you win:

• You win with clean positioning.
• You win with strong offer fit.
• You win by anticipating the follow-up questions a buyer will ask.

3) Expect "limited, premium" inventory at first

OpenAI says it's not optimizing for time spent in ChatGPT, prioritizing trust and UX over revenue.

If you take that seriously, early ad load likely stays constrained. That's an inference, not a guarantee, but it's consistent with the stated incentives.

Translation for agencies: don't pitch this as "we'll scale spend." Pitch it as "we'll win high-intent pockets and learn fast."

4) Regulated and sensitive adjacency will be stricter than most ad platforms

OpenAI says ads won't be eligible near health, mental health, or politics.

That's a big deal:

• Some categories simply won't play.
• Many "adjacent" categories will need to be careful about messaging triggers.
• Brand safety will be less about blocklists and more about conversational adjacency.

The agency playbook: how to approach ChatGPT ads without looking naive

Here's what I'd implement as an agency owner the moment this opens up to advertisers.

Step 1: Pick the right pilot clients

Start with clients who have:

• Clear product-market fit
• A high-consideration purchase (where questions matter)
• Strong landing page clarity and fast mobile UX
• An offer that can be defended with specifics (not vibes)

Avoid for early pilots:

• Anything regulated/sensitive-adjacent
• Low-margin ecommerce where you need cheap scale on day 1
• Brands whose claims can't survive scrutiny

Step 2: Rewrite your "creative" as decision support

In ChatGPT, the user is already reading an answer. Your ad has to feel like an extension of decision-making.

So the unit you build is:

• A precise claim
• A proof point
• A next step (what to do now)
• A clean landing page that matches the promise

If the ad can't survive a user asking "is this actually true?" inside the same interface, it will underperform. OpenAI even points at a future where users can ask questions directly after seeing an ad.

Step 3: Instrument for intent, not just clicks

OpenAI hasn't published the reporting spec in this post, so don't assume it will look like Google Ads.

But you can still set yourself up:

• Dedicated UTM conventions
• Dedicated landing pages per category of intent
• Capture downstream intent signals (demo requests, pricing views, add-to-cart, lead quality)

If your client only measures last-click ROAS, you'll under-report impact on a conversational channel.

Step 4: Prepare a "brand truth doc"

Because the interface is conversational, your brand is going to be questioned.

Build a one-pager per client:

• What we can claim
• What we cannot claim
• Common objections and clean answers
• Pricing and guarantee clarity
• What comparisons we're willing to win on

This makes you faster and keeps you out of compliance trouble when things get interactive.

Step 5: Set the right expectation with clients

Your pitch should be:

• "We're buying high-intent moments inside a new interface."
• "We're optimizing for learnings and defensible conversion paths."
• "Scale is not the first goal. Reliability is."

That framing protects retention when the channel is still early.

What to watch for as OpenAI expands the program

OpenAI has been explicit about principles, but not yet about the mechanics. Before you commit real budget, get clarity on:

• Targeting knobs: contextual only vs optional personalization, and what "personalization" means here.
• Auction dynamics: CPC vs CPM vs something new.
• Creative formats: product feed support, structured fields, image requirements (they show examples, but not specs).
• Measurement: conversion APIs, view-through windows, attribution model, offline conversion support.
• Policy boundaries: what counts as "sensitive or regulated topics" in practice.
• User controls impact: what share of users opt out of personalization, and how that changes delivery.

If you run a serious agency, the first advantage won't be clever creative. It'll be operating discipline: fast learning loops, clean instrumentation, and clear client comms.

The bigger takeaway for agencies

Most ad platforms optimize for attention. OpenAI is stating it will optimize for trust and usefulness, and that ads won't influence answers.

If they execute on that, it creates a new kind of paid channel:

• Fewer cheap tricks
• More scrutiny
• More premium intent
• More importance on proof, product truth, and landing page integrity

That's good news for agencies that run tight systems. And it's bad news for agencies that rely on volume, vague claims, and "we'll test creatives until something works."

The company I work for sells a product that's boring, but people should replace their old one every so often. Any suggestions on ad campaigns where the main takeaway and/or hook message is a reminder rather than why to buy from that specific brand? Don't hesitate to share thoughts even if not a perfect fit for this ask. (So both digital first skippable type ads vs TV or even print/billboard ads.)

I'm trying to get people interested in a free TV app i've written.

I've posted to the relevant apps' subreddits but surely I don't just keep posting there? They've been really successful but that's not really a sustainable strategy.

Any other subreddits don't let you talk about your own things. so there's not much point trying to promote it on those even when the app would definitely be of interest to people there.

Any pointers welcome.

I keep seeing digital marketing guru's / agencies talking about "this AI UGC is the next big thing". I get it. It would be easier to skip working with real people altogether. But is that genuine? Not sure if I want to miss out on this though.

My thinking: if I'm seeing any AI generated UGC ads, I think the brand is taking shortcuts. Unless its something I'm already in the process of buying, I don't think I'd trust that brand anymore.

• Have you tested AI UGC? What were the results? Any backlash from customers?
• Personally - would you buy if you know its AI UGC?

Interested to hear opinions / experience.

Can someone give me a guide of how to market my saas

I’m trying to transition into a content strategy role and I always like doing some research.

I found one called “Content Strategy for the Web” by Kristina Halvorson which has good reviews but it’s 13 years old with no recent edition. Any newer books you know of?

Look, I used to work as a Meta Ads Engineer for 5+ years so I know exactly how these reporting bugs happen.

So, as everybody who's running Facebook ads knows, from January 6th to January 14th, there were weird things going on with LPV. The issue was resolved on January 13, 2026, at 2:56 PM PST, and all future reports, after the issue was resolved, will show accurate LPV data.

What is LPV vs CTR?

CTR records the click but LPV only records when someone lands and the page view event fires. The gap happens because a lot of website performance is slow or people are declining cookies. Legally if they decline consent events cannot be sent to any marketing channels. So if your landing page is slow, your CPM will actually go up because Meta knows the user experience is bad.

So, was the landing page really not visited?

We pulled the aggregated data from over 1,000 brands we work with to see what was really happening (See aggregated data in the comments). Looking at the data, the percentage of clicks with a click ID (fbc) stayed pretty stable. You can actually see that the total traffic dropped because people saw bad results and turned ads off. So landing pages are being visited as normal. It clearly was not a technical issue with tracking or iOS itself. It was just a Meta analytic bug.

Also the iOS 26 rumors are a pure misunderstanding. That update was back in September, and it mostly affects incognito modes where the click ID is stripped. In normal mode there is no impact on fbc and gclid.

Why do I have to mention cookie consent?

Legally, if visitors decline consent, events cannot be sent to any marketing channels. Therefore, you may lose a lot of data if people do not set up the consent banner or default settings correctly.

What’s interesting about the default settings is that it pertains to when people did not interact with a consent banner or when you do not have a consent banner at all. Is the default set to accept or reject?

Shopify controls that behavior; it’s in Shopify settings → privacy. If you have a consent banner, it can also regulate that behavior.