Stop scoring every creator on reach
🎯 Plus, your creator scorecard might be measuring the wrong thing, sponsored ads are showing up in nearly half of ChatGPT's shopping chats, and more!
Howdy readers 🥰
In this newsletter, you’ll find:
🎯 Stop measuring creators like they only do awareness
💬 ChatGPT Ads are becoming more common and more conversational
🏆 Ad of the day
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Together with Billo
You Need To Check This Before You Scale Another Q4 Ad
Your best-performing ad may be underperforming against the ads competing for your customer.
Q4 benchmarks change by category and month. Scale against the wrong one, and every extra dollar can widen your performance gap.
Billo analyzed 80,069 sales-objective Meta video ads across 14 categories and turned the findings into a free Q4 Performance Calculator.
- See how your results compare with the right category benchmark.
- Find the month when your category offers the biggest opportunity.
- Identify the performance gap to fix before increasing spend.
In under a minute, you get a sharper target and a clear priority for your next creative batch. That means faster decisions and more confidence behind the ads you choose to scale during the most competitive quarter.
Run the calculation before your next Q4 budget increase locks in an avoidable disadvantage.
🎯 Stop measuring creators like they only do awareness
A brand moving beyond reach as the default creator metric was the headline behind Mars’s recent shift to deploying creator content across the full marketing funnel this month, not just awareness.
The company now measures creators on their ability to move consumers from awareness into consideration and action, rather than treating every piece of creator content as a top-of-funnel play by default.
Most creator programs still score everyone the same way regardless of what a piece of content was for: reach, impressions, engagement rate. That works fine when every creator is genuinely running an awareness campaign.
It breaks down once a program has creators doing product education, comparison content, and direct-response demos, all judged against the same awareness-shaped scorecard that has nothing to do with what those formats were built to accomplish.
Sort your current roster by the funnel stage they’re actually driving
Before changing anything, find out what’s happening now. Pull your last quarter of creator content and tag each piece by what it was realistically built to do: build awareness, help someone compare options, or push a warm shopper to purchase.
Most rosters turn out more mixed than the reporting suggests, and a creator quietly producing strong consideration-stage content is scored against an awareness benchmark that was never the right measure for what they made.
Build a scorecard with a metric per funnel stage, not one blended number
A single engagement score averaged across every piece of content flattens exactly the distinction that matters: an awareness video and a comparison video aren’t competing for the same job, and shouldn’t be measured with the same ruler.
Assign each funnel stage its own primary metric: reach and completion for awareness, saves and comparison-page traffic for consideration, conversion rate or assisted revenue for action.
A creator strong in one stage and weak in another is a different asset than a generalist producing average results everywhere.
Recruit deliberately for the funnel gap, not just for reach
Rosters accumulate top-of-funnel talent by default, since reach is the easiest thing to evaluate before a relationship starts. Consideration and conversion-stage creators end up underrepresented without anyone deciding that on purpose.
The uncomfortable part of fixing it this quarter: you have about eight weeks. Every week spent sourcing is a week not spent testing.
Insense's creator marketing playbook works backward from that math with a week-by-week calendar through January.
When to secure permissions. When to test. When to scale winners. When to shift into the cheaper Q5 window with 10 to 15% held back for it. plus you get benchmarks for hook rates, modular UGC testing, and creative volume. You can download the playbook for free here.
A roster full of awareness talent looks impressive on a reach report and says nothing about whether it can close.
💬 ChatGPT Ads are becoming more common and more conversational
New data shows sponsored ads appearing across a growing share of ChatGPT retail conversations, while OpenAI is expanding its advertising platform with Sponsored Agents, AI campaign creation and integrations with existing marketing tools.
The Breakdown:
Ads Reach More Chats - Comscore found sponsored ads in 47% of tracked U.S. desktop gaming conversations in June, up from 3% in March. Toys and hobbies reached 24%, while books, music and video reached 22%.
Ad Platform Expands - The increase comes as OpenAI expands beyond its initial ad test with self-serve Ads Manager and CPC bidding. However, Comscore does not establish that these changes caused the rise, and its data only covers an opt-in U.S. PC panel.
Ads Become Conversations - OpenAI is testing Sponsored Agents, where clicking an ad opens a separate branded conversation for questions about products, sizing or compatibility. These chats remain separate from users’ original ChatGPT conversations.
Campaigns Move Into AI - Advertisers can use ChatGPT Work to create, update and analyze campaigns, while AI can suggest or customize ad creative. New HubSpot and Shopify integrations bring CRM, product and ecommerce data into these workflows.
OpenAI is building ChatGPT Ads beyond simple sponsored placements. The platform is combining conversational ads, campaign creation, creative generation, targeting, measurement and marketing integrations, while Shopify merchants can now manage campaigns through a dedicated ChatGPT Ads app.
🎥 Ad of the Day
What Works:
Deadline Creates Urgency - “By Dec 26” gives the creative a hard behavioral deadline, turning post-holiday fatigue into a timely purchase trigger without needing a discount or promotional gimmick.
Scene Sells Longevity - Showing the child deeply engaged with the blocks reinforces repeat play and durability, helping parents visualize a toy that stays interesting beyond the first few uses.
Copy Targets Parents - “The toy they won’t be tired of” speaks directly to a common parental frustration, creating strong message-market fit while the candid family scene adds warmth and trust.
For toys, attack boredom directly. Show the product holding attention over time, then anchor the message to a real parental pain point like novelty wearing off.
🥳 Events
🔥 What 3 Million Citations Reveal About Winning AI Shortlists
September 29 | 1 PM ET | Virtual Event
Foundation CEO Ross Simmonds and AirOps’ Josh Spilker unpack nearly 380,000 AI answers to show which sources shape B2B recommendations across six AI engines. Learn which prompts to track, where your brand is losing citation share, and which external sites deserve your next content investment.
Can't attend the session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.
🔥 How Top Brands Measure, Fund, and Scale Creator Marketing
October 21 | Online | Free Festival
Return on Influence Festival ’26 brings together teams from Adobe, Edelman, ŌURA, Ogilvy, and more to unpack how creator programs actually run. Learn how they measure ROI, justify budget, structure partnerships, and scale from 5 to 5,000 creators without adding chaos.
Can't attend every session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.
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