Discovery no longer comes first

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We are back and hope you had an amazing New Year 🥳 Wishing you a year ahead full of good ideas and good energy 🎉

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

👀Discovery No Longer Comes First

📊 Northbeam shows where cheaper media actually paid off

🏆 Ad of the Day

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Together with Belay

Is your back office leaking profit?

Scaling a brand or agency is ultimately a math problem. But when you hit $50k+ a month, the math gets messy. 

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True leverage isn't about working more hours; it is about moving to a fractional finance model. BELAY matches you with U.S.-based experts who offload the ledger and deliver the data-driven clarity you need to protect your margins.

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👀Discovery No Longer Comes First

Buying a product used to feel like a process.

Discovery. Comparison. Validation. Then a decision.

That sequence made ads, reviews, PDPs, and retargeting work in a predictable order. That order is breaking.

When someone asks an AI tool, “Best hair dryer for frizzy hair,” or “Best mattress for lower back pain,” they aren’t browsing. They’re done researching. They want the thinking finished for them. One question replaces ten tabs.

That moment is the One-Question Buy.

What Actually Changed

People didn’t lose patience. They gained leverage. Instead of assembling trust from fragments, shoppers now outsource judgment. One well-phrased question delivers a shortlist that already filters out weak options.

Discovery, evaluation, and trust collapse into a single interaction. By the time someone lands on a product page, the decision isn’t forming. It’s being confirmed.

Why Performance Feels Unstable

This shift creates a blind spot most dashboards can’t see.

A buyer can now decide without clicking an ad, visiting a site, or entering a retargeting pool. The conversation that mattered already happened upstream, inside an AI answer.

So when sales feel inconsistent, it’s not always creative fatigue or pricing pressure. Often, the product simply never entered the decision conversation at the moment intent peaked.

Traffic doesn’t disappear. It becomes optional.

The New Battlefield

This isn’t about ranking for generic terms anymore. AI works in full judgments:

• “Best shampoo for postpartum hair loss”
• “Best protein powder that doesn’t bloat”
• “Best cookware that actually lasts”

These aren’t searches. They’re buying conclusions. If your product isn’t present when that question gets answered, no amount of optimization later can recover the sale. You were never shortlisted.

How Smart Brands Are Actually Adapting

The brands pulling ahead aren’t chasing channels. They’re redesigning how demand gets intercepted. They identify decision sentences, not keywords. The exact language buyers use when they’re done exploring and ready to choose.

They isolate which questions represent irreversible intent, where a satisfying answer ends the journey instead of starting one.

Then comes the hard test: does the product earn inclusion without persuasion? If it needs explanation, framing, or heavy positioning to appear credible, it won’t survive inside an AI answer.

This exposes weak differentiation fast. Generic claims vanish. Brand strength shows up as presence or absence, not engagement.

Everything downstream changes too. PDPs stop selling and start validating. Ads reinforce decisions instead of introducing products. Offers remove doubt instead of manufacturing urgency.

The goal isn’t visibility. It’s pre-approval.

Shopping journeys didn’t disappear. They compressed.

And in a world where buying happens in one question, growth doesn’t come from louder ads or prettier pages. It comes from being the product people already trust when they ask for the answer.

By the time they arrive, the decision is made. You’re just there to confirm they were right.

 📊 Northbeam shows where cheaper media actually paid off

Northbeam’s Media Buyer Index for Dec 22–28 shows the typical post-holiday reset. Costs dropped across almost every major platform. The real signal is which platforms turned cheaper traffic into real gains.

The Breakdown:

1. CPCs - CPCs fell across Meta, Google, Amazon, TikTok, YouTube, Microsoft, Pinterest, and Snapchat as auction pressure eased. This created breathing room to test new creatives, audiences, and prospecting setups. Brands with clear intent signals benefited most.

2. CACs - CAC improved on Meta, Amazon, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and Snapchat, while Google and Microsoft saw weaker outcomes. Lower costs rewarded brands with strong landing pages and conversion paths. Where funnels were leaky, efficiency did not follow.

3. ROAS - ROAS climbed on Meta +16.28%, TikTok +18.63%, and YouTube +16.84%, with modest gains on Google +4.51% and Amazon +3.13%. Microsoft declined by −12.79%. Brands should lean into platforms where engagement and creative momentum already exist.

Meta still commands 64.64% of the budget share with rising ROAS, while Google holds 25.94% with softer efficiency. TikTok and YouTube delivered strong ROAS despite a lower budget share. The play is clear: double down on platforms, converting cost relief into profit, and use cheaper media elsewhere to test, not scale.

Together with The Shift

The AI Newsletter That Solves Problems, Not Creates Them

AI can do a lot, but most newsletters leave you wondering what’s actually worth trying. 

That’s where The Shift comes in. They don’t just tell you “what’s new” in AI. 

Every edition answers one question: What can you do with AI today that saves you time, money, or effort?

You’ll see real-world examples, step-by-step mini-guides, and instantly usable prompts, plus free access to 3,000+ AI tools and top free AI courses so you can apply what you learn right away.

No hype, no wasted time, and no “just in case” news. If it’s in The Shift, it’s because it can make your work better today.

Subscribe to The Shift now - it’s free!

🎥 Ad of the Day

What Works:

1 Awareness Level: This is for people already open to “better-for-you coffee.” They’re past skepticism and now asking, “Will this actually work for me?”

2. Psychological Hook: It sells consistency, not instant magic. The timeline subtly tells you this isn’t a one-sip fix, it’s something that pays off if you stick with it.

3. Execution & Framing: Instead of cramming benefits, they stretch them across time. That makes the product feel structured, intentional, and more believable than vague wellness promises.

If you want daily usage, don’t hype day-one results. Show people what staying consistent unlocks and let the habit sell itself.

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