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- [00:00]
A
Wow, you guys are the real deal. I'm on my seat right now.
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B
Well, we appreciate it. In tier 11, we care about your business. That's a big deal for us.
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A
I am speechless. Yeah, you guys did your homework. So smart. And the fact that your team intuitively figured that out without me having to kind of go into that is just music to my ears. I mean, they really did the work here. I'm so blown away. This is all so spot on. This audit was really great. I'm ready to go. I do feel like I'm in good hands.
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C
Hey, if you're doing the marketing for a brand that's doing $10 million a year or more and you're spending real money on paid media, I have a question for you. When's the last time someone sat down and showed you, dollar by dollar, where your money is going and what it's actually doing? I'm not talking about a dashboard. I'm not talking about a weekly report. A real audit done by real strategists and who have real experience running digital marketing campaigns and advising businesses your size or greater. Well, that's what we do. It costs $10,000 to have this audit done, but right now we're picking a few brands to do it for free. No catch. We just want to show you what's possible. Head on over to tiereleven.com audit to apply for your free $10,000 audit today.
- [01:17]
B
The Meta and Dramata engine is last click. We're importing though first click conversions. So when you import first click and it says, hey, the amount of people that did the last click, it means that this is getting the highest amount of add to cards per click. I mean this is a crazy, crazy, crazy end cac $857. That is a winner for sure. You know what we're gonna do? We're gonna create five new versions of these. What we've identified is that Andromeda has a very specific way that it likes to optimize, which is you're listening to Perpetual Traffic.
- [01:48]
C
Hey, real quick. If you're looking to get your brand in front of growth minded marketers, CMOs, directors of marketing and agency owners, we're opening up our sponsorship SP1 and Q2. Get in front of a quarter of a million markers every single month at Perpetual Traffic. All you have to do is head on over to perpetualtraffic.com for the details or check out the link in the show notes to apply. Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier 11. And I am super excited for today's show because this is one of the most popular shows that we've done in the last six months to a year here at Perpetual Traffic. But because it's one of the most popular shows, I think it's really important for us to tell you a little bit about how things have evolved since we first recorded this episode back in November of 2025, which doesn't really seem like that long ago, but in actuality it was. It was recorded in October, it was aired in November, and so much has changed since then. So when you're listening to today's episode, there's a couple of things I want you to start thinking about and keep in mind, once again, Andromeda and Meta and everything going on right now with all of the individual ad platforms are changing so lightning fast. You've got to keep up with these changes or have your team listen to these shows and have them keep up with it. So if you're a director of marketing or VP of marketing, this is the kind of stuff that you should be talking to your team about. So the title of this show was Stop Pausing Winning Ads and this now changes everything with Andromeda. So was a great episode and there's a lot of things in this episode that we got right. So the core insight still holds that CPA in APPICPA is a poor judge of individual ad performance inside Andromeda's sequencing model, same today as it was when we recorded this in late 2025. So cut the losers, Let the Winners Run was already dead in November of 2025 and has been proven wrong many times over since. In subsequent tests that we've done, we've now tested upwards of $70 million of our own money over on a lot of these strategies here. So this is stuff that we're constantly evolving and constantly updating. So tier 11's data suite or even Wicked Reports, or an attribution software that uses first click capi imports for identifying true ad contribution. Not just attribution, but contribution. What does it contribute to? The bottom line, the ad itself may or may not get the last click attribution, but how is it contributing? So you have to look at everything as a continuum, everything as an entire environment, everything as a universe, which includes your meta paid ads, your Google paid ads, your search, your email, your TikTok, your programmatic spend, even just some of those people that just might find you just directly, which we can Track that through Tier 11 data suite very accurately, but all of that still holds true in today's episode. Creative diversification and UGC in particular User generated content, if you're not familiar with that phrase, as a sequencing entry point was exactly right. We still are using a lot of video at the very top of our funnels inside our meta ad accounts. It's very, very consistent. Top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. There's an episode that we just did on the Ad Lab which I'll leave links in the show notes to this where we're starting to separate some of these out. Now this episode doesn't really talk about that quite as much, but think about how each individual component of your ads contributes to not attributes, but contributes to the bottom line. Because the image ad might be the bottom of the funnel where it's here's this thing, buy it now for 20% off. That is not a top of funnel ad. Top of funnel ads are usually ones where there's UGC content, founder videos, stories about the company, something that introduces you to the brand and you only need one impression inside meta in order to get familiar with a brand. And then it's the middle of funnel ads that really start doing the heavy work. Oftentimes those are not the ones that get the last click attribution though. So you shouldn't be turning off your ads that are getting lots of spend as long as you're looking at everything as a contribution model which is how it's all behaving within the total environment of all of your media and non paid media spend. This includes your content marketing, this includes your email, everything else, as well as your organic search. So all of that still holds true. Now what's changed since we recorded this is that Andromeda has actually updated again. There was a global rollout in late October 2025, right around the time that we recorded this, which is the GEM update, which we did do a show about, which is generative ads recommendation model. We did a show with Andrew Foxwell on that. This is sort of the second brain that ranks which ads actually get shown after Andromeda selects candidates for being shown in the newsfeed. So this changes how you think about creative scoring, changes how you think about which ads are your most effective ads. Everyone says just shut off like my least effective ads. But sometimes your least effective ads are actually your most effective ads. They might be the ones that are getting the most ad spend and John talks about that here. Pretty in depth. Andromeda now analyzes creative at a far more granular level. We have now realized this in the six Months since we aired this show for the first time. Hook quality in the first three seconds or hook rate. The first three seconds is an extremely important secondary and or really primary in many cases metric on screen, text, audio signals, creative fatigue, prediction hold rate, which is how long people are actually staying after you hook them in. Are you getting your message across in the right way? None of this was fully live when we first aired this episode. And for anyone who has been watching it ever since then, these are some of the updates that you can expect. So in this episode we also Talked about running 25 UG ads simultaneously for diversity. This is when we were still sort of trying to figure out this creative diversification thing. We now just call it creative. That's our creative strategy. Our creative strategy really is creative diversification. It's not. Creative diversification unto itself is not a strategy. It is a creative system that we now follow. And we look at these things, look at each individual creative and each individual ad as just doing an individual part of the job to ultimately lead to the sale. It might be one impression on a video ad for someone right to the bottom of the funnel where they just buy the thing. Or it could be one impression at top of funnel for a video ad, but then 17 other impressions or clicks or touches or views in the middle before they actually do that last click. And it might be over on Google, it might be over on Amazon. So as long as you're looking at everything globally and how all the channels interact with each other, that's how you win in today's digital marketing age. And last but not least, the feeder strategy, which was originally Google strategy that we talked about many shows we'll leave links in the show notes on that has now been adapted for meta and we talked about this in episode 757 using separate creative campaigns. Now to train the algorithm using specific SKUs and not just the product it defaults to, we're actually so we're starting to run campaigns and we'll leave another link in the show notes for this one. For specific SKUs we have specific campaigns. So we, we didn't really know this back in October, November. That's how fast this stuff is evolving. So still pausing is still true. The new structure matters as well. Still true. Don't pause ads based upon in app CPA alone. Yes, look at your in app cpa but also see how it's affecting the entire ecosystem. But in 2025 and 2026, the radical change is that we are really starting to look at everything in a top of Funnel, middle, funnel, bottom, funnel, way in which we'll be doing more shows on coming up. So the bottom line is this is fewer campaigns, more ad diversity within them, and that includes creative diversification. Yeah, I've been doing digital marketing for brands for well over 20 years, and I can tell you the number one reason growth stalls is that it's never just one thing. It's your creative talking to the wrong people, your landing page losing half the traffic, and your data telling you that everything's fine when it actually isn't. That's why our audit doesn't look at one piece. We look at everything. It's a $10,000 process, and we're giving it away to a small number of brands right now, because once you see what's really going on inside your business, you can never unsee it. Apply for your free audit today over@211.com forward slash audit. So, without further ado, let's get into today's episode with myself and John and sort of keep some of these things in mind. What we got right, what we didn't get right, we didn't really know at that point in time. And like said, everything is evolving. And we're going to continue to go back to these shows, which have gotten lots of views and lots of downloads, and revise them as this new information takes hold and we continue to test it with our own money. So take it away, boys.
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B
We're testing different ads, different creatives, different users, different targetings, and we're getting the sequence more streamlined. So when it says, cut your losers, let your winners run, the losers are not CPA defined, like, in my opinion, and you correct me if I'm wrong, when they say, cut the losers and let the winners run. You probably heard that from a CPM perspective or it's like a CPA perspective. It's typically how people say, well, a winner must be in cpa. But again, in a hierarchical model where you have, you know, sometimes one. I mean, if you follow this, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I missed one, but, you know, 7, 8. Basically how those users are moving through the ad sequencing, if they click and buy, it could be on the first one before they retarget them. It could be on the second one before or, like after they got hit with the first one. I mean, you only get one checkbox out of all of these here that says that this is running. This is why I've always said since day one, focus on spend, don't focus on CPA. Attribution model is poor spend model is actually 100% accurate because it's being spent on. If we look at the spend descending and you look at the cpa, it's like, well, John, that one's better than that one. That one's better than that one. That one's better than that one. Like, you know, this one here, this one here and this one here, John, these are doing better. Like if you look at like you got a 263 compared to a 279. You got a 251 compared to 279. This one actually is something that we're reiterating the SIB with Red Boost and it's like, man, you got a 661. That's pretty terrible. So why are you not spending more on those? Why are you still spending on that? And this is where CPA is a poor judge of performance. We don't think exactly what we're talking about, the green group is ugc, the blue group is non ugc. They're product highlights. What we've identified is that Andromeda has a very specific way that it likes to optimize, which is showing all ads to all users and developing the sequence of what needs to see first, second, third, fourth. On top of that matrix, you're layering in your pain points, your hooks, your offers. So you're, you're trying to basically have product market fit. That's all you're doing when you're doing that with creative. Right. So, but not everyone is going to see everything 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th. Not everyone's going to click the 1st, 2nd, third, fourth. Not everyone's going to buy from the 1st, 1st, 2nd, third million and click. So we have identify what is the trends analysis that we're doing on the users and you're going to notice that in the green. And I'm not going to use the same color green because I'm not that good in selecting RGB wheels. But you're going to be able to see that this has some fairly good amount of cold traffic. He got 63, 77, 71. And then in the bottom row about the same. 70, 74. Okay, good. Now you're going to also notice do
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C
visit percentage, by the way.
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B
Yes, is a percentage exactly 60 to 70%.
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C
Like that's really good.
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B
Exactly. Yeah, that's, that's actually very good. That's a, that's a hefty amount of cold traffic in terms of metaland. Correct. But you see the blue is in the 40s. So now you're seeing, okay, more first time visitors on UGC, more second time visitors on the product ads. Okay, so we're starting to establish a trend now. Let's dive a little bit deeper into that trend. Now the first trend that we're going to notice is okay, what how many clicks before how many add to carts? So we got 10,000 clicks, 189 add to carts. Okay, 63,000 clicks, 62 add to carts. Okay, 24,000 clicks, 79 add to carts. All right, so kind of, you know, all over the board but a lot of clicks, tens of thousands for not a whole lot of conversion. Not a lot of add to carts. Right. That's because that's the first interaction that they've had with that product, that add our brand, etc. It is like, hi, I'm John. Next thing out of the customer's mouth is going to be like, I'll buy one today.
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C
Right.
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B
We're skipping the middle part. So next we have to look at. Now how did the blue do?
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C
The blue, about 1% thereabouts. It's about 1%. Well maybe not the 24,000, but it's about 1% which is about. That makes sense. Like we usually say like 1% of your traffic is going to click and buy. In most cases this is an add to cart. So it's not entirely accurate.
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B
But yeah, yeah, it's like we're starting to see that the trends analysis. Now let's go down to the blues. Now after they click, they look, look at the product. You know, they've maybe added the cart. Most of them didn't. But you got a lot of understanding about what this is. So actually let me, let me, I did run a disservice. Let me back up one step. What has happened so far that we discussed is we've shown a UGC ad to fairly cold traffic. We say, hey, look at this dog. This dog was sick and now they're on the mend. And look at the before and after. They were kind of like, you know, not that great. Now they're happy, healthy. And they said, wow, I love success stories about dogs being healthy. I wonder how that happened. I'm going to click the other ones say, you know what, great for the dog, Happy, fun story. I'm scrolling on great. So the people that click, they say aha, that's the product. They're learning about it and they say that's interesting. You know, maybe I'll come back to this, I'll look at this later. They leave. Now the second thing that happens most Often based on percentiles of user journeys is we identify that the product ad has most often the second click. Because we have a lot warmer traffic. We also have a lot fewer clicks. Now these, these fewer clicks will highlight these the same that we highlighting the green. Now we have 303,752 compared to 76. That's a vast difference because if we look at 24,000 got a 79, only 3,000 got us almost 79. So you can see that these people are much more warmer.
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C
Right.
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B
And there's a lot fewer visits but a lot higher out of cards. Look at the next one down 3900. I just don't think that civil red boost is working at 660. Remember the meta Andromeda engine is last click. We're importing though first click conversions. So when you import first click and it says hey, this is the amount of people that did the last click, it means that this is getting the highest amount of add to cards per click. But that is not where they started or where they necessarily ended. Okay, that's fine. But I'm not going to take one of my biggest add to cart performers and shut it off because the CPA isn't there.
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C
If you didn't have tier 11 data suite plug plug tier 11 data suite of course you would have made a very large error.
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B
We probably would have paused it. Yeah. I mean if all lines pointed to well yes we would. This would absolutely be something that we would end up pausing but this is something that we're going to be continuing on with further.
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C
Right. So it's early days anyway. Like the ads only been live what, a day or two?
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B
Yeah, yeah, it's been like three days now. What's the first thing? I launched it in the first three days and doesn't look that good. So I paused it. Every freaking person I, you know, I launched the campaign or launched ad and in the first week I started hacking off ads that are having low CPA or high cpa.
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C
Again, the old way of doing things.
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B
Exactly. You cannot do it that way. I mean this is a crazy, crazy, crazy endcack$857 I'm like I don't care us delivering the highest amount of ad cards we've ever seen. I mean that isn't a fantastic. And majority of them are cold. Three quarters of them are cold. I would have taken 200 cold Add to carts and just chucked out the window because Andromeda didn't say last thing that they ever did ever to the was there like if you just said, hey, what have we increased? We increased. We doubled this last two weeks. Cool. What happened? NCAC is still below goal. All right, keep going. Thanks everybody. Keep going. That's pretty much it. Like and cool. There's 72 more new customers now. If I didn't have data suite, I would have killed my middle which absolutely would have hurt. If I lose 200 new Add to carts a week, I'm totally feeling that now. Could it be picked up by another ad? Perhaps. Could the other ad do better? Perhaps. But you know what this is telling me right here is follow Andromeda, which means is it a winner? Yes. In my book when I don't measure by just last click cpa. Otherwise my dumb ass would be just scaling brand campaigns all the time because it's last click. It looks so great for last click. Yeah, yeah. This is where they ended. Let's just end more. Cool.
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C
All right, I'm going to make you a bet. Give us two weeks with all your ad accounts, your creative, your funnel and your data and we'll find at least one thing that's costing you real money that nobody has ever told you about. Now we do this audit for $10,000. But right now we're opening up for free to a select group of brands because we're so confident that we're going to find at least one thing that is costing tens of thousands of dollars that nobody has ever discovered before. So if we're wrong, you lose nothing. If we're right, you'll wonder why nobody showed you this sooner. Head on over to tier11.com audit today and apply for our free ten thousand dollar audit.
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B
Should we start more? No, no, don't just kill the starters. Let's just end more there. That's what you're doing.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So when we look at this, is, is it a winner? Absolutely. 4, 000 add to carts 200 or 4000 clicks. 232 add to carts is the biggest add to cart. It's literally more than a quarter of all of my add to carts.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Oh yeah, yeah.
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B
That's.
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C
That's your bottom of funnel ad right there.
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B
That's like kind of middle bottom. That is a winner for sure. You know what we're gonna do? We're gonna create five new versions of these.
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C
All right. Hope you enjoyed today's show. We're gonna go back into the archives quite a bit and revise some of the episodes and give our own take. Myself and John in some cases on some of the newer nuances with all of this stuff that we're doing right now with Meta and with Google. So hopefully when you listen to this episode or you might want to listen to it again, keep those developments in mind. The principles that we talk about here are not based upon last click CPA in app. So let Andromeda sequence the creative. Use your data to see the first click behavior and the last click behavior. All that is foundational and is still accurate. What's changed is that the scale of what's possible now we're seeing this just be able to scale up brands like we've never been able to experience in the past and we'll do some case studies on that in coming shows and you now have the precision as long as you have all that Qlik data and a very reliable attribution platform. Our preferred attribution software right now for mid level businesses is Wicked Reports. But we power that and make that information even more granular. That data even more granular. So we literally do not miss a single click. So that we literally do not miss a single click. By using Edge servers, we combine that together with our friends over at Bloodout to create the Tier 11 data suite and that's how we were able to get these types of results. But you can formulate these pretty closely yourself even without all of that additional tech. So like I said, all the links that I mentioned here on today's show, as well as the references to other shows are in the show notes over@perpetualtraffic.com make sure you leave a rating and or a review wherever you listen to podcasts allows us to get this show out to a wider audience and teach people how to do digital marketing the right way in 2026 and beyond through metrics that matter and growth that scales. So until the next show. See ya.
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B
You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.