u/GrouchyGovernment784

we've been talking to a few over the last couple weeks and i feel like we don't know what to look at.
so far we have talked to block chain ads and a bunch of other ad networks and in their demos they keep saying about how they report, how they attribute, campaign optimization and so on. and all of this feels correct also like we should be considering it.
but the problem is every network has good things to say so we feel like we aren't asking the right questions or we are not looking at the correct metrics.
then i came across few commen ts here that says we need to ask where traffic is coming from or who their partners are, all that stuff. but idk..it feels too much to ask early on? also not sure if those things also matter?
so if anyone has any experience can you share how you people evaluate a programmatic ad network? or what questions we need to ask?

I have been thinking about how much SEO has changed over the past year.

With AI search experiences, answer engines, and more zero-click results, it feels like ranking #1 isn't the whole game anymore. I'm starting to wonder if SEO is becoming more about building a recognizable brand than just optimizing for keywords.

It seems like the sites that keep showing up across search, social, newsletters, podcasts, and communities are the ones staying visible, even when organic traffic fluctuates.

For those working in SEO or digital marketing:

• Are you shifting more effort toward brand building?
• Have you changed your content strategy because of AI search?
• What SEO tactics are you investing more (or less) in during 2026?
• Have you seen any noticeable impact on organic traffic or conversions?

Curious to hear what's actually working in the real world rather than just what's being recommended in blogs.

We have been optimizing campaigns around first deposit because that's obviously the biggest milestone after registration. but now we're noticing that a decent chunk of users deposit a very small amount and then never actually trade.

we've tried moving budget around between different channels and traffic sources, including blockchain ads and other paid ad platforms, but still the results seem to be somewhat same. In fact, it varies a lot by countries even though traffic wise almost all of our target geos are giving the same.

how to make people trade? is it advertising specific or should we do something else?

been running our own campaigns recently and spending a lot of time looking at what competitors are doing. the implied messaging across almost every trading platform ad is some version of ""you could be making a lot of money right now.""

which works for clicks i guess. but it also means you're acquiring users with completely unrealistic expectations who are going to churn the second reality doesn't match the ad.

we've been trying to run more honest messaging and the CTRs are lower. so maybe this is just what the market responds to. still feels weird doing these ads though.

we've been testing across a few different channels with some finance ad networks like blockchain ads and a few more and honestly this seems to be more of an industry-wide thing than a channel-specific thing.

are we all just accepting that this is how trading platforms have to advertise? or anyone has any example of honest messaging working?

we are losing deals because prospects are using chatgpt to shortlist tools and we're not in the answers. trying to find an agency that has actually fixed this for a SaaS company. names i have come across so far Accelerate Agency, Growthner, Refine Labs, Single Grain. has anyone worked with any of these or someone else for GEO specifically? what was the experience and did AI citation improve?

been freelancing 3 years and just realized my proposals might be the reason i'm losing clients i should be winning.
tested a few things this month. prospero was okay but generic. canva was a nightmare. better proposals was too pricey for where i'm at right now.
ended up on dochipo mostly by accident  someone mentioned it in a thread somewhere. took no time to figure out, first proposal i sent with it got a response same day. could be luck but the design quality is just cleaner than what i was sending before.
curious what everyone else is using though. is there something with open tracking that's actually affordable? that's the one thing i wish dochipo had.

been freelancing 3 years and just realized my proposals might be the reason i'm losing clients i should be winning.
tested a few things this month. prospero was okay but generic. canva was a nightmare. better proposals was too pricey for where i'm at right now.
ended up on dochipo mostly by accident  someone mentioned it in a thread somewhere. took no time to figure out, first proposal i sent with it got a response same day. could be luck but the design quality is just cleaner than what i was sending before.
curious what everyone else is using though. is there something with open tracking that's actually affordable? that's the one thing i wish dochipo had.

Genuinely curious what others in the space are experiencing right now.

A few things I've noticed that have shifted how I think about SEO this year:

1. Traffic is down, but visibility isn't Zero-click searches keep rising and AI Overviews are eating clicks. But brands are still getting discovered just earlier in the funnel, before anyone even visits a site. Are you still measuring success by sessions, or have you moved on?

2. E-E-A-T is no longer a checkbox it's your entire strategy Generic AI content is flooding the SERPs. What's cutting through? Real experience. Personal bylines, original research, case studies. Google seems to be actively rewarding smaller, opinionated blogs over faceless corporate content farms right now.

3. Reddit and community platforms are becoming SEO assets This one surprised me but brands are showing up in AI citations because of Reddit threads, forums, and UGC. "Search Everywhere Optimization" is a real thing now. Are you factoring community presence into your strategy?

4. The AI hype around ChatGPT traffic feels overblown Google still owns ~90% of search. I've seen marketers panic-pivot their entire strategy toward LLM optimization, but the numbers don't justify abandoning what's actually driving conversions today.

What's your take?

• Are you still investing in traditional SEO, or has your budget shifted?
• Has GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) actually moved the needle for anyone?
• What's one thing working for you RIGHT NOW that wasn't a year ago?

Drop your honest experience below tired of conference-talk, want real data.

Running paid across Meta, Google, and TikTok. Every month I sit in a reporting call where the numbers from each platform add up to about twice our actual revenue. Everyone nods, adjusts their spreadsheet, and moves on.
Started wondering if I'm the only one doing this.
The way I see it now, there are two separate problems that people lump together.
First is overlap. Same customer sees a Meta ad, clicks a Google remarketing link, buys. Both platforms claim the sale. That's a debate about credit allocation and honestly there's no clean answer, just different models with different assumptions.
Second is the one I think gets missed more. A big chunk of conversions never make it into any platform at all. iOS users who declined ATT, people on ad blockers, cross-device shoppers. They're invisible everywhere. So you're not just arguing about how to split credit, you're arguing about how to split an incomplete picture of what actually happened.
Once I accepted that, I stopped trying to reconcile platform numbers against each other. Switched to using MER (total revenue divided by total ad spend) as the primary metric and treat platform ROAS as directional only.
Also fixed the tracking gap separately. Was losing a lot of conversion signal on pixel-only setup. Set up PantoSource to handle server-side across all three platforms. MER improved without changing any campaigns, which kind of proved the point.
Genuinely curious though, is anyone actually happy with their cross-channel attribution setup? Or is everyone just managing the confusion differently?