The Fold Illusion
🧠 Why Your CTA Isn’t Where the Shopper Needs It, Cloudflare’s Paywall for AI Bots Just Rewrote the Rules of the Internet, and more!
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In this newsletter, you’ll find:
🧠 The Fold Illusion: Why Your CTA Isn’t Where the Shopper Needs It
🔐 Cloudflare’s Paywall for AI Bots Just Rewrote the Rules of the Internet
🏆 Ad of the Day
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🧠 The Fold Illusion: Why Your CTA Isn’t Where the Shopper Needs It
You’ve heard it for years: “Put your CTA above the fold.” But in 2025, the fold isn’t fixed, and the button isn’t the blocker. Shoppers don’t convert when they see the CTA.
They convert when they feel ready to click it. And that timing? It’s shaped by the flow of your product gallery, not your layout template.
Modern PDPs break the old rules and still win.
Take this scenario:
You’ve got a beautiful hero image, a clean title, and a sticky ATC button right at the top. So why are 60% of users still scrolling before clicking? Why are conversions increasing on pages that delay the CTA?
Because context builds momentum, and premature CTAs break it. This is the Fold Illusion: thinking that positioning alone drives action, when it’s actually the sequence of belief that matters most.
It’s not CTA visibility. It’s CTA readiness.
In teardown after teardown, we’ve seen a better question than “Where should the button go?”
It’s:
“What information did they need right before they clicked it?”
If users click right after a gallery image → surface that image next to the CTA
If they stall until reading specs, → move ATC below the fold, but close to specs
If they hesitate mid-gallery → embed micro-CTAs or sticky nudges at that moment of intent
There’s no one-size-fits-all placement anymore.
But there is a pattern: alignment > visibility.
Brands that restructured gallery flow based on behavior, not templates, saw stronger click confidence. Mockingbird didn’t just move their CTA, they moved the content that unlocked it.
And conversion followed. Want to see which gallery behaviors predict CTA readiness? You can download the free guide from Eko and use the signals already hidden in your product pages.
The fold was a useful constraint in a static world. But today, the real conversion power lies in when, not where, you ask shoppers to act.
🔐 Cloudflare’s Paywall for AI Bots Just Rewrote the Rules of the Internet
AI crawlers have hijacked the content economy, taking information, generating answers, and leaving creators without traffic or revenue. Now, Cloudflare is forcing a reckoning with Pay Per Crawl, a protocol-level system that lets websites charge AI bots for access.
The Breakdown:
1. The Search-to-Traffic Pact Is Officially Broken - The old web deal was simple: let Google crawl, get traffic back. But today’s ratios are brutal: OpenAI crawls 1,500 pages for every click it sends, Anthropic 60,000:1.
2. HTTP 402 Turns Content Into an API - Instead of “allow or block,” Pay Per Crawl introduces a third option: charge. Site owners can set bot-specific rules, allow (HTTP 200), charge (HTTP 402), or block (HTTP 403 with payment hint).
3. The Most Active Crawlers, Finally Accountable - Bytespider (ByteDance) hits 40.4% of Cloudflare-protected sites, GPTBot (OpenAI) 35.5%, and ClaudeBot (Anthropic) 11.2%. GPTBot is also the most blocked, despite being mainstream; it’s losing trust.
4. Publishers Are Quietly Opting In - TIME, ADWEEK, Stack Overflow, BuzzFeed, and The Atlantic have opted into the Pay Per Crawl system. This isn’t a fringe movement; Cloudflare powers 20%+ of the web.
AI isn’t just disrupting SEO, it’s replacing the foundation of the open web. Pay Per Crawl reframes content as a licensed asset, not a free training set. And as bots begin paying to learn, GEO will shift from optimizing for clicks to controlling for model exposure.
🏆 Ad of the Day
What Works:
Minimal Text, Maximum Impact - The copy is laser-focused: “Weightless Hydration meets Pore-Refining Power.” Each benefit, weightless hydration, pore refinement, smooth texture, is broken out line-by-line, reinforcing clarity and calm.
Luxury Skincare Doesn’t Sell Solutions, It Sells Sensory Control - This ad doesn’t promise life-changing results. It promises feeling refined. By using the language of lightness, smoothness, and visibility, it sells the experience more than the outcome.
Cultural Codes of Prestige Are Built Into the Aesthetic - Everything about this layout, from the gold details to the vertical symmetry, mimics luxury perfume and spa product design. It’s using visual structure as a pricing cue.
Broader Insights:
This ad appeals to the conscious luxury buyer who values aesthetics, ingredients, and ritual. It doesn’t force urgency. Instead, it invites elevation. The composition, copy, and color deliver one message: this isn’t skincare you apply, it’s skincare you experience.
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