I'm relatively new to this so my apologies if I'm asking a naive question. I wanted to know as agency owners, whether you follow any specific playbook to help your clients grow in AEO/GEO world, any techniques you use etc.

Every week the platforms make changes they don't announce loudly. The data quietly shifts. Media buyers start scratching their heads at numbers that don't match reality. And brands either catch it — or they don't.

This is that weekly catch.

🔴 The Big One: Meta's March Attribution Rebuild Is Still Confusing People

If your year-over-year ROAS comparisons looked off in March and April, you're not imagining it.

Meta redefined what counts as a "click" in March 2026. Previously, a like, share, save, or comment could be attributed as a click-through conversion if a purchase followed within seven days. Under the new rules, only actual link clicks count. Somebody tapping a heart emoji on your ad is no longer getting credited as a conversion — even if they bought three days later.

What this means in practice: Reported conversions dropped for many accounts. Not because ads stopped working. Because Meta cleaned up its own attribution bucket — and a lot of what was being claimed never should have been.

This is the platform grading its own homework and finally marking some of the wrong answers red. The underlying business didn't change. The reported number did.

If your media buyer panicked and cut budget in March or April based on the dashboard drop, that's worth auditing.

🔴 Advantage+ Is Quietly Inflating Your ROAS — Here's the Mechanism

Meta added engaged-view attribution to Advantage+ Shopping campaigns in early 2026. The video threshold dropped from 10 seconds to 5 seconds. That means if someone watches 5 seconds of your video and then buys your product within a day — via any path — Meta is now claiming that as an attributed conversion.

The result: reported ROAS on most accounts has been inflated by roughly 15–25% since this change rolled out. Most advertisers don't know it happened.

There's a second mechanism compounding this. Without a cap on existing customer spend, the Advantage+ algorithm tends to over-index on retargeting existing customers because they convert more easily — inflating ROAS numbers while limiting new customer acquisition.

So you may be looking at a 4x ROAS number that is actually built on two distortions:

1. Engaged-view conversions that shouldn't be there
2. Retargeting spend being claimed as prospecting wins

The number looks great. The business growth might be flat. These are different things.

🟡 The Signal Loss Problem Isn't Getting Better

This one is slow-moving but compounding.

iOS tracking restrictions have created 40–70% attribution gaps since 2021. For a business spending $50K/month on Meta ads, this translates to $7,500–10,000 monthly in lost optimization opportunities and misallocated budget.

CAPI helps. But CAPI alone doesn't close the loop on where that spend actually went — it just returns more conversion events to Meta's black box. The platform still decides how to model the gaps.

If you haven't audited your Meta Conversions API setup since 2024, do it now. The underlying signal quality issue has been growing for years — the attribution rebuild just made it more visible.

The brands winning right now are the ones who have a number independent of Meta to validate against. When your internal attribution disagrees with the dashboard, you need to know which one to trust. Right now, most brands have no way to answer that question.

🟡 What This Looks Like at Ground Level

I've been talking to eCommerce operators running between $50K–$500K/month in paid spend. The pattern is consistent:

• Meta dashboard shows strong CPA and stable ROAS
• Actual new customer acquisition is flat or declining
• Repeat customers are being claimed as "new" conversions
• Ad spend is growing into the wrong cohort

The platform is not lying on purpose. It's optimizing for the signal you give it — and if the signal includes existing customers, that's what it will chase. It will be very efficient about it. It will report excellent numbers. Your new customer count won't move.

This is the distinction that matters in 2026: CPA vs. new customer CPA. They are not the same number. Most dashboards only show you one of them.

What to Do This Week

1. Pull your Advantage+ ROAS in two views: 7-day click only vs. the full attribution window including engaged-view. The gap between those two numbers is your inflation figure. Know it.
2. Check your existing customer budget cap in ASC. If it's not set or is set above 30%, you're optimizing for retention under the label of acquisition.
3. Compare your Meta-reported new customer count against your CRM or Shopify new customer report for the last 90 days. If they diverge by more than 20%, you have a real attribution problem — not a performance problem.
4. Run a holdout test. Turn off one geography or segment for two weeks. Measure the actual revenue difference. That number — not the ROAS — tells you if the ads are working.

The platforms will keep changing the buckets. The numbers will keep moving. The only anchor is first-party data that sits outside the platform's reporting layer — data the algorithm can't touch, model over, or claim credit for.

I’ve noticed something confusing while setting up LinkedIn campaigns.

Initially, with a specific targeting setup, LinkedIn showed an audience size of 11,000+. But later, when I created a completely new campaign using the exact same targeting settings, the audience size dropped to around 4,700.

Audience expansion was OFF in both cases, and the targeting conditions were practically identical.

Why does LinkedIn show such a huge difference in audience size for seemingly the same targeting?

Has anyone else experienced this inconsistency while creating campaigns?

Hi everyone! I just started a new job as a senior PM in the manufacturing industry. I just left my last job I held for 3 years in manufacturing as a senior PM. I do not like manufacturing and would love to get into a different industry like tech or marketing. I am so afraid of getting stuck in the manufacturing industry and being unhappy in my career.

I’m looking for advice from experienced people on this channel - is it possible for me to get stuck in this industry? Anything you can offer helps - this has my mind running.

If you look at my post history you'll see me posting pics/comics every few days. I'm looking for someone who would like to help me find a product/target group.

My mindset and daily schedule are really bad to get marketing done on top. Willing to pay a little for the consultation but, money is tight with artists. Maybe a co-op and we split proceeds 50/50 or so?

Hey everyone

I’m currently available for remote Account Management / Client Success opportunities within marketing agencies and growth-focused teams.

My background includes:

• Account Management & client communication

• Meta/Facebook lead generation campaigns

• GoHighLevel CRM systems & automation workflows

• Client onboarding & retention

• Pipeline management & reporting

• Coordinating fulfillment between clients and internal teams

• MedSpa & local business marketing operations

I’m strongest in environments where communication, organization, and proactive client management are critical. I work well bridging the gap between clients, media buyers, developers, and operations teams to keep accounts moving smoothly and clients retained long-term.

Additional experience:

• GHL workflows & automations

• Lead nurturing systems

• Appointment booking processes

• Social/content coordination

• Marketing operations support

AGT Trained & Endorsed Candidate

Open to:

• Full-time remote roles

• Contract work

• Account Manager / Client Success roles

• Operations coordination roles within agencies

Feel free to DM me if you think I could be a fit for your team or know of any opportunities.

i run a small ecommerce email marketing agency (right now, we handle 7 stores and their email flows and campaigns) , i want to automate our everyday engagement emails and focus on fixing the technical side of things. i have only 3 people working for me and i want to focus more on the things that give my clients the roi they expect and automate the ones that are everyday emails but brings engagement. what do you think is the right tool or I would love to hear any workflow strategies that worked for you before you scaled!

One thing I keep seeing in agency work is that AI makes the first version easier.

That is useful. A faster first pass can help with:

• campaign outlines
• concept variations
• client email drafts
• reporting summaries
• first-pass landing page copy
• rough creative directions

But I am less convinced that the first draft is the main bottleneck in client work.

The harder part often seems to start after the draft exists:

• does this match the client's actual strategy?
• did the client reject this angle before?
• is this claim supported?
• does it fit the brand voice they approved?
• did legal or compliance already flag similar wording?
• did a senior person review it?
• can the next person understand why this version changed?

The part that feels under-discussed is account memory.

If the creative director or account lead is the only person who remembers what the client hated in February, which claims are safe, which examples are overused, and which stakeholder cares about what, then AI may just create more things for that person to inspect.

That does not mean AI is bad for agency work. It means the operating system around the draft matters more than the draft itself.

Curious how other agency owners and operators are seeing this:

Has AI actually reduced client-ready production time, or has the bottleneck mostly moved into review, approvals, and account context?

Who here has an agency over $1m and is getting new business and how?? How have inquiries been this year and are you looking at a year for growth or shrinking.
(Nervous business owner)

I run an agency and I’ve been testing a workflow for local business outreach.

I’m posting this to sanity check whether this would help other agency owners too, or if it only works because it’s built around how I personally sell and build.

The workflow is basically:

1. Pick a local business from Google Maps

Usually restaurants, barbers, contractors, salons, lounges, clinics, etc.

I look for obvious public gaps:

- weak or outdated website

- no clear CTA

- bad mobile flow

- menu/services buried or missing

- weak Google profile

- no trust signals

- bad photos

- no booking/order path

- no local SEO structure

2. Run a public footprint audit

The audit is not “your site looks bad.”

It’s more like:

- where they’re losing calls, bookings, orders, or trust

- what a customer can’t figure out quickly

- what should be above the fold

- what pages/sections are missing

- what proof they should show

- what local keywords/services should be visible

- what the next version of the site should actually do

3. Convert the audit into a client-facing report

Plain business owner language.

No technical jargon. No “AI transformation” nonsense.

Just:

- what’s leaking

- why it matters

- what can be improved

- what the business owner gets out of it

4. Turn that into a website plan

Usually 5 to 12 pages depending on the business.

Example:

- home

- menu/services

- about

- gallery/work

- reviews

- booking/order/contact

- location pages

- FAQ

- offers

- landing page for a specific service

5. Generate a build-ready prompt/spec

This is the part I’ve been turning into an agent.

It takes the audit + report + page plan and outputs a structured website build prompt for tools like Lovable/Replit/Webflow-style builds, or even for a human designer/dev to execute faster.

It includes:

- design direction

- page structure

- copy blocks

- CTAs

- SEO notes

- mobile behavior

- forms

- animations

- trust signals

- local conversion flow

6. Build a fast demo or mockup

Then the outreach becomes much easier because it’s not:

“Do you need a website?”

It becomes:

“I noticed these specific leaks. I mapped what I’d fix. Here’s a demo of the better version.”

That has been way easier to explain to local owners.

My question for other agency owners:

Would a packaged version of this workflow help in your agency?

I’m thinking something like a local business audit + website blueprint agent that takes a business name / URL / Google profile and gives you:

- client-facing audit

- website opportunity map

- page plan

- outreach angle

- build-ready prompt/spec

- recap script for Loom/video

- reusable template for future local leads

I’m not running a small agency, so the question for me is whether this stays useful outside my own workflow.

Would this help with:

- prospecting?

- sales calls?

- quick paid audits?

- demo builds?

- onboarding new clients?

- training junior team members?

- speeding up strategy before design/dev starts?

Where would this actually plug into an agency workflow, if at all?

Hey everyone,

I’m 18 and based in Canada, and I’m looking for a like-minded person (around 18–25) who’s serious about building an AI agency focused on helping businesses scale.

The idea is to use AI (automation, chatbots, lead generation systems, etc.) to solve real problems for businesses and help them grow faster and operate more efficiently.

I don’t want to do this alone — I’m looking for someone I can:
- brainstorm and validate ideas with
- hop on calls consistently
- build systems and offers together
- reach out to businesses and actually execute

You don’t need to be an expert in AI yet. What matters more is:
- you’re genuinely interested in AI + business
- you’re willing to learn and take action
-you’re consistent and reliable
- you’re based in Canada (so we can align better long-term)

I truly believe the right partner can make a huge difference. When one of us is stuck or losing momentum, the other keeps things moving. It’s about growing together and building something real.
If you’re trying to get into AI and start an agency but don’t want to do it alone, let’s connect.
Comment or DM me — we can talk more and see if we’re a good fit. Let’s build something real.

My agency has been a side hustle for the last 3 years. I've had an agency manager in place and have only spent a couple hours a week on it while running our primary business. She is leaving and I'm stepping in to run the business full-time.

While I am an experienced marketer and operator who was grown businesses to seven figures and beyond, I have never grown agency past seven figures.

I'm looking for resources in the form of courses, mentors, or people to follow who can give me a blueprint (or portions of it) on how to take this thing from high six figures to mid-7 figures.

We have a very appealing offer and model. Execution has a lot to improve upon but I'm excited about where we are at and the opportunity.

Open to all wisdom from those who have done this before. Thank you in advance.

Hi

I recently built a free tool that extracts businesses from Google Maps along with validated email addresses. Right now, I'm looking for people who can try it out and share feedback - mainly whether the data quality is actually useful for lead generation compared to other tools.

Current Features:

Fetch businesses based on rating (e.g., less than or more than 3 stars)

Fetch reviews from within specific years

Find businesses with a low review count

Find Businesses without a website

Extract negative reviews from businesses

I'd love to know if this gives you valuable results or if something feels missing.

I run a small social media marketing agency of 9 people.

I saw on linkedin that a lot of people are already super advanced with ai. I understand nothing about it and I feel kinda late.

All I did is giving some chatgpt licenses to my team but that’s it 😅

I'm thinking about hiring a tech guy who is good with ai to help me implement ai in my agency.

For those who have already automated some stuff in their agencies or hired some guys to do it:

What task have you automated ?

How to prioritise what to automate first ?

And how to automate (or how to choose the right guy to not get ripped off)?

This is a longer post than usual but i think a lot of people in here are quietly feeling this and not saying it.

i ran paid media for clients for about a decade. mostly meta, google, some tiktok later on. across that run i managed something north of $60m in ad spend for a couple hundred clients. agencies, dtc brands, b2b, the whole spread. i'm not saying that to flex, i'm saying it because what i'm about to write only makes sense if you know i wasn't watching from the sidelines.

paid media is cooked. it's not collapsing tomorrow but the math has gotten brutal:

cpms keep climbing while ios14 made attribution mostly vibes. half my clients in 2019 ran campaigns where we could literally see the customer journey, now we report on "modeled conversions" and pretend it's the same thing. then google started rewriting search results themselves and organic traffic to client sites dropped 30-60% across the board. now meta's testing ai-generated ad creative directly inside the platform, which means the "creative + targeting + landing page" stack the entire agency world was built on is getting eaten from inside the platform.

so the question every marketer i talk to is asking is, where does the actual edge move next.

after sitting in the paid media seat for a decade and now spending the last couple years on the other side (i work on a voice ai platform now), here's the shift i'm watching happen in real time:

1. the new edge isn't getting them to click. it's owning what happens when they call. paid media used to end at the form fill. now most of the buying decision happens after the form fill, in a phone call or sms thread or chat. agencies that only own the "before the call" part are getting squeezed. the ones moving into the conversation layer are the ones still growing margins.
2. white-label voice ai is quietly becoming the new "we'll run your ads" service. agencies who got beaten up by margin compression on paid retainers are bolting voice ai onto their offering. they pay a platform fee to a white-label provider, sell the agent setup to their clients for $500-2500/mo, and pocket the spread. the unit economics are insane compared to running ad campaigns. nobody on linkedin is writing about this because the agencies doing it well are too busy onboarding clients to make content.
3. the conversation layer is where attribution gets clean again. a phone call you can fully transcribe, intent-classify, score, and tie back to the click that generated it. the actual sales conversation is the truest signal of intent. paid media trained marketers have a huge advantage here because we already think in funnels, cost per qualified lead, ltv. we just have to extend that thinking past the lead form.
4. tbh the people who'll win in marketing over the next 5 years aren't the ones learning prompt engineering. it's the ones who already understand consumer psychology, funnel math, and channel economics, and apply that thinking to the conversation layer. the prompt is the new ad copy. the call outcome is the new conversion event. if you can think in those terms you're already ahead.
5. the failing pattern i keep seeing: marketers treating voice ai as "another tactic to layer on" instead of recognizing it's the next channel. it's not a feature inside your stack. it's the part of the funnel that nobody had real visibility into before, that now you can actually control and improve. treating it like an add-on is the same mistake people made with paid social in 2013.

zooming out, i don't think paid media is going to die. it's just going to be one piece of a wider conversation-first stack. the ad gets them to call or chat. the conversation closes them. the marketers who can think across that whole arc are going to be way more valuable than the ones who only know the click-to-form-fill part.

ngl this is the most clarifying career shift i've made and i was extremely skeptical of voice ai when i started. coming from paid media, where everything is measurable, i thought ai-driven calls were going to be a black box. they're actually more measurable than ads at this point, because every call is a transcript with structured outputs.

curious what other paid media / marketing folks are seeing. is anyone here actually moving into the conversation layer, or is your agency still running the same retainer model from 2019? what's holding the industry back from making this shift faster?

So my SMMA is fairly new I’ve done it for about 3 months I’ve gained some customers and I just did one month of work for a client where I’d be paid per vies on tiktok. We never signed a contract but I have everything confirmed in chats about payments and rules etc. Also on his website he has an affiliate program with the same guidelines as our agreement.

Anyways I did a month of work for him and asked multiple times also during meeting and in written format if there was any payment limit or problems and the answer was always no.

About I week ago the work for the month was done and it was time for the payment, I sent him my bank transfer details and a day later he replied that he can’t afford to pay everything right now and that he’d need to spilt up the payments over about 3 months. The payment was for a total of about $1000 and at first I was against a payment plan but after some thinking I thought it was better than nothing.

The the ghosting started, at first he would reply but then he’d start to ghost more and more and yesterday I tried calling him, it went through but no answer, then today when I send him a message only one check appears on WhatsApp I try to add him to a group to see if he blocked me and sure enough I wasn’t able to add him to the group (a test to see if a person has blocked you on WhatsApp)

I feel like I’ve messed up big time by just trusting him and is it even worth doing any legal action? I’ve got his name, website and phone number + TikTok and instagram

Any tips on what I should do or is it over?

I keep seeing people get screwed on contracts. I used to hate them but I just kept refining them and now I've got nine standardized contracts with years of experience behind them.

What real problems have people had that "oh, all you need to do..." explanation would make someone's life much easier? Thank you in advance to constructive and thoughtful replies!

I have a marketing agency, we recently started it (3months)
We have served 4-5 clients mostly boutique and cafe.
A gym approached us in delhi for marketing and smma. As it is our first gym, how much do you think we should charge and what services to sell and how do i convince him for the price too. Also, is the gym niche good for marketing?

Ive founded and still hold large equity in four different agencies. Two SMMA, one in emergency plumbing/ electrical and one for lead generation.

Would love to answer any questions to help newcomers get over the hump of getting the ball rolling 😄.

Currently, I’m running a LinkedIn Ads campaign for webinar registrations targeting the ANZ region. Alongside that, our BPO team is also doing cold calling to the targeted database for outreach and follow-ups and also we are doing email marketing campaign.

The webinar is B2B-focused, and while LinkedIn Ads are generating some traction, I’m still unsure whether relying mainly on LinkedIn + email marketing + cold calling will be enough to drive strong registration numbers.

I’m curious what other channels or strategies marketers here would recommend for improving webinar registrations in a B2B setup like this.