Discovery no longer comes first
Why shoppers decide before they ever see your store, Media buyer index of the week, and more!
Howdy Readers đ„°Â
We are back and hope you had an amazing New Year đ„ł Wishing you a year ahead full of good ideas and good energy đ
In this newsletter, youâll find:
đDiscovery No Longer Comes First
đ Northbeam shows where cheaper media actually paid off
đ Ad of the Day
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đDiscovery 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, âBest hair dryer for frizzy hair,â or âBest mattress for lower back pain,â they arenât browsing. Theyâre 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 didnât 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 isnât forming. Itâs being confirmed.
Why Performance Feels Unstable
This shift creates a blind spot most dashboards canât 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, itâs not always creative fatigue or pricing pressure. Often, the product simply never entered the decision conversation at the moment intent peaked.
Traffic doesnât disappear. It becomes optional.
The New Battlefield
This isnât about ranking for generic terms anymore. AI works in full judgments:
âBest shampoo for postpartum hair lossâ
âBest protein powder that doesnât bloatâ
âBest cookware that actually lastsâ
These arenât searches. Theyâre buying conclusions. If your product isnât 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 arenât chasing channels. Theyâre redesigning how demand gets intercepted. They identify decision sentences, not keywords. The exact language buyers use when theyâre 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 wonât 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 isnât visibility. Itâs pre-approval.
Shopping journeys didnât disappear. They compressed.
And in a world where buying happens in one question, growth doesnât 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. Youâre just there to confirm they were right.
đ Northbeam shows where cheaper media actually paid off
Northbeamâs Media Buyer Index for Dec 22â28 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 â12.79%. 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.
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The AI Newsletter That Solves Problems, Not Creates Them
AI can do a lot, but most newsletters leave you wondering whatâs actually worth trying.
Thatâs where The Shift comes in. They donât just tell you âwhatâs newâ in AI.
Every edition answers one question: What can you do with AI today that saves you time, money, or effort?
Youâll 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 âjust in caseâ news. If itâs in The Shift, itâs because it can make your work better today.
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đ Ad of the Day
What Works:
1 Awareness Level: This is for people already open to âbetter-for-you coffee.â Theyâre past skepticism and now asking, âWill this actually work for me?â
2. Psychological Hook: It sells consistency, not instant magic. The timeline subtly tells you this isnât a one-sip fix, itâs 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, donât hype day-one results. Show people what staying consistent unlocks and let the habit sell itself.
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