The Take Timeline

Paid Media

How the cowboys’ take on Paid Media has evolved.

1. 2026-01-09high confidence 90%

   Programmatic advertising offers significant reach opportunities for brands outside Meta's ecosystem with proper performance-focused packaging

   programmatic channels present a huge opportunity with inventory. Effectively, anyone that doesn't exist within Meta's ecosystem can be reached even if they don't have a phone through programmatic ads.

2. 2026-01-15moderate 75%

   Meta's support and transparency are exceptional despite legitimate platform issues

   I don't hate Meta... my support that I have is far and away the best I could ask for. They're very transparent with me

3. 2026-01-15Predictionmoderate 55%

   AI will automate approximately 70% of ad buying work, freeing professionals to focus deeply on creative strategy where they excel

   Artificial intelligence is going to take up 70% of our job and help us just become a lot deeper and focused in areas that we want to be

4. 2026-01-17Predictionmoderate 55%

   LLM platforms and advertisers will inevitably gain access to enriched consumer conversation data, creating unprecedented targeting opportunities.

   I do think that the the advertisers and Meta and everyone else is going to get this data.

5. 2026-01-20Predictionhigh confidence 88%

   OpenAI capturing 20-30% of Google and Meta's ad spend would force prices down, benefiting all advertisers

   If Open AI just gobbles up maybe a 20, 30% market share away from your average spend on Google and Meta, everybody wins because then everybody has to lower the prices for auction

6. 2026-01-20Predictionhigh confidence 85%

   OpenAI's ad platform will have a brief window of underpriced inventory before competition normalizes pricing

   you're going to have maybe like a month window where you can just go absolutely crazy and find some dispriced value

7. 2026-01-23moderate 60%

   Retail is undergoing transformation where every physical surface becomes a monetized advertising platform.

   Everything just becomes an ad platform. This this the final form. Everything just becomes an ad platform and we're all just constantly consuming ads 24/7.

8. 2026-02-04moderate 55%

   Boomers are highly responsive to detailed advertorial-style ads and long-form copy, making them a valuable audience for Bing Ads landing page campaigns.

   They actually read the ad... they will literally click the description and read the entirety of it... leaning into something like spinning up a few advertorials, different landing pages and things to test

9. 2026-02-07high confidence 88%

   Spending $75M on a single platform like Snapchat without testing other ad channels seems strategically suspect.

   75 mil solo platform and you're going to tell me that the entire time there was no reallocation of capital to other ad platforms, even on a test level, that doesn't seem right. It's a little sus.

10. 2026-02-13high confidence 90%

    Direct mail targeting to specific wealthy neighborhoods is a highly cost-effective channel for high-ticket products ($600–$700+), costing roughly 50 cents per name.

    I can just fill out these little zip codes and be like I'm gonna hit that whole neighborhood... $600 product, $700 product

11. 2026-02-21high confidence 80%

    When CPMs increase significantly, the issue is often a platform algorithm problem rather than a solvable marketing problem

    if your CPM keeps going up, then it's not really a problem you can solve with marketing if the meta account is greedy.

12. 2026-02-24moderate 62%

    High-agency unconventional tactics like setting up affordable TV-based ad networks in alternative venues can effectively scale marketing reach with minimal capital.

    Why not just push into that thing and get sweaty and go set up some free TVs inside of dive bars... start building out your own ad network.

13. 2026-02-27moderate 62%

    Meta's removal of credit card points creates serious doubt about whether commerce remains viable for DTC brands.

    Meta says, 'No more credit card points, big boy.' And the internet now wonders, is it even worth being in commerce at all?

14. 2026-02-28moderate 60%

    Precision direct marketing with personalized touchpoints achieves dramatically lower customer acquisition costs than expensive paid advertising

    Cost me about $8 to get a new customer. Cost somebody else over a thousand.

15. 2026-03-06high confidence 85%

    $30 CPMs backed by Amazon's real-time shopping data represents exceptional advertising value that other streaming platforms should model by integrating shopping platform data.

    $30 CPMs with Amazon's data for what people are currently shopping for, that is bananas.

16. 2026-03-10moderate 72%

    Meta is justified in permanently banning accounts that use unauthorized third-party developer apps to access ad accounts, even though it collaterally punishes well-meaning operators just trying to make a living.

    Meta system sees the app ID suddenly hitting hundreds of unrelated ad accounts and looks like unauthorized scraping or a security breach... So, that violates their terms which is totally fair.

17. 2026-03-18moderate 75%

    The Meta outage caused significant wasted ad spend and advertisers should push reps for refunds or credits.

    It caused tremendous overspending, and nobody's happy about what their budget is looking like now. Call your rep, prepare your refund paperwork.

18. 2026-03-18moderate 70%

    Attempts to disguise a health-and-wellness ad account under a different category are futile because Meta's automated review scans both the data sent and the website's content.

    as soon as you start sending data to Meta, it's going to know what it is and categorize you. Unfortunately... that's not something you can avoid

19. 2026-03-21moderate 65%

    Brands should push into out-of-home this year because it builds shareability and gives a foundation for social campaigns beyond pure online spend.

    we're making a very big push this year in out-of-home... if you make a billboard worthwhile, people will post it on their own socials

20. 2026-03-24high confidence 85%

    The VC narrative that paid ads are inherently bad is detached from reality, and even organically strong brands should layer paid spend on top rather than treat it as an either/or.

    I just think that this overall view of paid ads being bad is stupid, honestly. I think it's dumb and it's totally detached from reality.

21. 2026-03-24Predictionmoderate 55%

    Google, Meta, and Amazon combined will out-earn all of traditional media ad spend by 2028, undercutting the idea that social/platform advertising is a lesser channel.

    Google, Meta, Amazon each bring in more ad revenue than all of traditional media ad spending combined combined by 2028.

22. 2026-03-26moderate 60%

    A new Meta campaign structure shows essentially zero overlap with existing customers, and its value may be a longer-term brand-building role rather than an immediate performance win, requiring new account structuring to pair it with cost-cap campaigns.

    I see absolutely zero, which is the most interesting thing... I don't know if it's going to be one of those things you flip on and see an immediate performance. This might be the more long-term role here.

23. 2026-03-27Predictionmoderate 60%

    The wave of Meta-related harm lawsuits echoes the big-tobacco precedent and could eventually force real limits on how ad platforms are allowed to advertise if it plays out over several years.

    this precedent I mean, this was set with the big tobacco... there is a reason why... they have been limited and they cannot advertise in certain ways

24. 2026-03-31high confidence 85%

    Businesses that end up near bankruptcy commonly share the same root cause: all of their traffic and media spend is concentrated in Meta with no other channel diversification.

    There was a very common trend in the businesses that were having a lot of financial struggles... they had all of their media spend in Meta and they had no other channels.

25. 2026-03-31moderate 60%

    New third-party research suggests Reddit is an undervalued ad channel where scaling spend actually lowers CPA and raises ROAS, defying the usual diminishing-returns pattern.

    Fospha's The State of Retail Commerce 2026 study found that businesses that scaled their investment in Reddit saw cost per purchase improve by 34%... increased ROAS.

26. 2026-04-03moderate 60%

    Running tens of thousands of ads at once at very high spend velocity produces dramatically faster learning than conventional testing pace.

    I would be running uh like tens of thousands of ads at a time. And you can imagine if you're spending uh a couple hundred K in an hour, uh you're learning super super fast, right?

27. 2026-04-08moderate 62%

    If genuine, Google's AI Max conversational advertising approach (as demonstrated by Aritzia) is an effective way to use conversational data to convert customers late in the funnel.

    if this is real everybody needs to hear about it because uh this seems to be an effective way to deploy conversational advertising, conversational data and work your work your way in at at the goal line

28. 2026-04-10moderate 75%

    You can outperform automated bidding-algorithm competitors in Google Shopping/feed management through manual expertise rather than automation.

    We're just really, really good. Like, we don't use bidding algorithms... We beat them head-to-head.

29. 2026-04-10moderate 60%

    TikTok's upper-funnel value should be proven with a free trial of dynamic remarketing before committing budget, since actual buyer demographics on the platform can differ sharply from assumptions.

    their demographic on TikTok 30 to 45-year-old women... we'll set it up and manage it for free for 3 months just to get some data for you

30. 2026-04-10moderate 75%

    Bing is an underrated, cheap ad channel with higher conversion rates that's trivially easy to set up because it imports your existing Google account and bids automatically.

    It's cheaper. Conversion rates are higher. This is huge... It's so damn simple.

31. 2026-04-24moderate 70%

    Brands that dump their entire budget into Meta and set it and forget it will get crushed, because Meta doesn't listen to sellers and consumers the way TikTok does.

    I'm so tired of people just saying like, 'Oh, let's dump everything into Meta, set it and forget it.' You're going to get crushed. You're going to get absolutely fleeced.

32. 2026-05-01moderate 65%

    AppLovin's radically simple ad-launch flow is letting advertisers scale spend to $100k/day within a week.

    You can be in running ads inside of an hour... You can scale up to $100,000 per day inside of a week.

33. 2026-05-01Predictionmoderate 70%

    X (Twitter) is poised to become the next major breakout advertising channel, following TikTok Shop and Whatnot.

    2025 early 2026 is Whatnot... the next one that's coming is X baby. It's coming. I believe it.

34. 2026-05-02moderate 65%

    Standard cookie-cutter growth playbooks (landing pages, ads, YouTube) don't work in a compliance-heavy vertical like telehealth, and retention matters just as much as acquisition.

    cookie cutter strategies like they really they really don't work at all specifically for tele... something that is very important as well... is retention.

35. 2026-05-07moderate 60%

    Advertisers testing ChatGPT's new self-serve ad platform should start conservatively with CPC bids in the $3-5 range while the channel is new.

    We recommend starting a max bid of $3 to $5 USD per click.

36. 2026-05-09high confidence 85%

    AppLovin has grown from an untested beta channel into a always-on, high-volume performance channel worth multi-million dollar spend without it even being considered testing anymore.

    We ended up spending more money on Apple 11 in Q4 2024 than Meta... I spent over $3 million last year on it. And it that wasn't even testing. That's just good results.

37. 2026-05-12moderate 65%

    Layering Amazon's consumer data onto Netflix CTV ad inventory makes CTV a highly bullish ad-buying opportunity for brands in 2026.

    This makes CTV a super bullish opportunity in 2026. It makes it really, really interesting to have even more data, consumer data, layered on top of that.

38. 2026-05-14moderate 68%

    Meta is unlikely to issue refunds for its confirmed March ad outage, and it should be giving out ad credits the way Universal Ads does.

    I've heard that we won't be getting refunds for that despite it being a confirmed outage... I'd love to see Meta give out some ad credits, cuz you know who's giving out ad credits? Universal Ads.

39. 2026-05-14moderate 70%

    Meta's ads status/reporting page is unreliable and understates real outages, so third-party monitoring tools are necessary for advertisers.

    Meta's like status reporting page is not always accurate, okay? There have been several times where there is a complete outage, and everything said, 'Fine. Everything's fine. No problems.'

40. 2026-05-16moderate 55%

    Shifting ad spend to Axon by AppLovin rescued new-customer acquisition when Meta performance collapsed in Q4.

    We moved spend over to Axon by AppLovin and Axon resurrected and saved the quarter for acquiring new customers.

41. 2026-05-19moderate 72%

    DTC brands should revive old-school TV infomercials and TV advertising as a serious growth channel.

    infomercials, baby, and TV advertising and leaning into that... I've been so bullish on this, which is why I'm so pumped to find this article.

42. 2026-05-19moderate 58%

    When Meta's auction hunts cheaper inventory as CPMs drop, the fix is consolidating conversion volume per ad set rather than launching new creative.

    Fix is usually consolidation more conversion volume per ad set, not new creative.

43. 2026-05-21moderate 70%

    The real reason Meta ad scaling gets harder every year is that ad impressions/ad load have grown far faster than the user base, not that targeting has gotten worse.

    Meta serving 200% the ads it served in 2020, yet users have only grown 38%... This is the real reason scaling on Meta gets harder every year.

44. 2026-05-21moderate 60%

    Brands should hope for and lean into other ad platforms (AppLovin, TikTok Shop) rising in targeting capability as an alternative to over-reliance on Meta.

    Other platforms continue to rise in their capabilities for accurately targeting and netting you new customers... It's happening with app 11. It's happening people are finding their way on TikTok shop.

45. 2026-05-22moderate 75%

    Falling CPMs alongside falling conversion rates mean traffic quality is degrading on Meta, forcing brands to diversify their acquisition channels.

    This is the direct correlation to we have to diversify our customers as they're scaling outside of these current thresholds, and Meta just can't support it anymore

46. 2026-05-22moderate 60%

    Meta is tone-deaf about valuing the people, like departing ad exec Yoni, who serve as its critical bridge to the D2C advertiser community.

    There's just this tone deafness from Meta on who should be valued within the company

47. 2026-05-23moderate 58%

    Rising fatigue and cost on Meta means brands should actively test and diversify into other ad platforms like AppLovin.

    Now I'm like, it's time to time to dabble. Time to diversify and let's see... Test test test with Apple 11

48. 2026-05-28moderate 75%

    Brands make a costly mistake spreading effort evenly across every retail/ad channel instead of concentrating on the one or two with the best return, like Amazon.

    Another massive mistake people make is they try to boil the ocean... spend just as much time on a 10-store chain as they would on Amazon, even though Amazon energy and revenue out ratio is way, way better

49. 2026-05-29moderate 75%

    Meta's new consumer subscription tiers are a quick-cash band-aid that doesn't solve the platform's real need to innovate on ads.

    I just think this is a band-aid. But it's I mean, they have to do something to recoup the investment that was the failed metaverse. And I think this is their answer to that.

50. 2026-05-30moderate 75%

    Product discovery on YouTube happens almost entirely through ads rather than organic merchandising, and Universal Cart is about to change how those ads function.

    most people aren't merchandising products on YouTube. You are getting products merchandised to you on YouTube through ads.

51. 2026-06-04moderate 70%

    Hyper-localized geographic targeting around college football fanbases, layered on NIL athlete partnerships, drove outsized order volume and site traffic compared to broad campaigns.

    this company bought specifically in Texas and the markets... surrounding Texas that had really big fan bases. Did it geographically... hyperargeted... the numbers were kind of off the chart.

52. 2026-06-05moderate 78%

    Ecommerce brands should fully saturate existing non-brand Google Shopping and search demand before expanding into demand-generation channels like YouTube.

    the number one thing you should do if you're an e-commerce brand is soak up all the saturation of search demand that's out there with your shopping and search campaigns and then you move to opening up these other channels

53. 2026-06-10moderate 58%

    Relying solely on Meta ads is risky because account bans can wipe out a business, making diversification into channels like Axon mobile-game ads essential insurance.

    once your meta ads account goes down, you need

54. 2026-06-12moderate 68%

    DTC brands wrongly assume Google's ad-bidding algorithm is as capable as Meta's, when in reality Google campaigns need deliberate manual segmentation to perform.

    they assume that Google's bidding algorithms are as smart as meta, and that's just not true at all... you really do need to have some degree of smart segmentation to tell it where it needs to go.

55. 2026-06-17moderate 60%

    Betting a career on AppLovin was justified because the company's core differentiator is its ad-tech/optimization layer, not the creative or sales side that most ad platforms lean on.

    ad tech is typically this vertical and everyone has the ad ... but it was the tech part is what apploving really relishes on

56. 2026-06-17moderate 65%

    Shifting ad spend away from Meta into a newer channel earlier than the market consensus paid off with better CAC and healthier LTV.

    you want to talk about new customer acquisition that was better priced, better CAC than what we were getting on Meta that ended up with a healthier LTB

57. 2026-06-17moderate 68%

    Advanced Meta strategies like cost caps and inflated-budget tactics are unnecessary until a brand reaches seven figures a month in spend; simplicity wins below that.

    Once you get to seven figures, yeah, you can start exploring that those those things. ... It's not that deep, guys.

58. 2026-06-25moderate 75%

    Meta should keep prioritizing investment in its core ads product over speculative side projects like a prediction market.

    I want to see more investment in the ad product just because that's like what's most important to our community.

59. 2026-07-01high confidence 85%

    Meta will never issue refunds for its own ad-serving bugs even as it keeps demanding advertisers keep spending.

    Absolutely no refunds are coming from meta, ever. You're never going to get a refund ever. Ever.

60. 2026-07-02Predictionmoderate 65%

    As AI chat assistants erode Google search traffic, Google will push harder into YouTube advertising, making GEO investment and YouTube ad spend the smarter channel bet going forward.

    GEO investment is probably one of the best path forward... making it bullish for YouTube advertising because I feel like Google, as a response to all of this, will probably push a lot more of the chips in on YouTube ads

61. 2026-07-11Predictionmoderate 65%

    Cheap, undiscovered ad inventory on LLM/chat platforms like ChatGPT won't last because ad budgets will find and bid up any cheap clicks almost immediately.

    I don't think we're going to get all of a sudden cheap clicks because the budgets are going to find it quick enough that there's not going to be, hey, we're going to find 5-cent clicks on chat GBT

62. 2026-07-14Predictionmoderate 55%

    Colin predicts connected TV will make a comeback as an ad channel because it functions as a trackable household device, improving CAC visibility.

    your literal house is the connected device... I'm pretty bullish on products like this... I think TV's TV is gonna make a comeback.

63. 2026-07-17Predictionmoderate 60%

    Ad costs today are cheap relative to where they're headed, echoing Gary Vee's early conviction on Facebook ads, so brands should spend aggressively now before costs rise like real estate.

    He's telling us all, 'You think they're expensive now, guys? This is like buying real estate in Malibu.' Things are going to get expensive. They're not expensive now. Spend as much as

64. 2026-07-21moderate 72%

    Meta's Andromeda update means an AI now grades and selects ad creative before it's ever shown to a person, so advertisers have little choice but to keep feeding it more material.

    I find it fascinating that essentially now AI is grading our ad before it's ever shown to a person

65. 2026-07-21moderate 70%

    Performance marketing doesn't reliably work in the sparkling water category; Liquid Death's breakout success came from brand-building, not paid media.

    their success had nothing to do with performance marketing, right?

66. 2026-07-21moderate 68%

    Samir Balwani is notably bullish on CTV and audio as paid-media channels heading into the back half of 2026.

    I'm uh really bullish on CTV and audio

67. 2026-07-24Predictionmoderate 75%

    TV advertising has become dramatically cheaper (up to 10x) with better targeting, making it one of the most attractive channels for DTC brands going into 2026.

    TV advertising has quite literally become in some cases for some of my friends um and their brands has quite literally become 10 times cheaper

68. 2026-07-28moderate 58%

    Legacy TV should embrace ad-supported distribution deals with YouTube since viewers tolerate ads fine and it opens a new monetized surface for old content.

    Kind of surprised that I still had ads, but I do and ads are not bad... I want there to be ads for our... Now, people are watching The Office on YouTube

69. 2026-07-28moderate 62%

    Because Performance Max under-allocates to YouTube relative to shopping and search, brands should validate and run YouTube as its own separate campaign rather than leaving it folded into PMax.

    PMX was 53% shopping and 35.1% search, right?... this gives you validation for setting up YouTube as a separate campaign

70. 2026-08-01moderate 70%

    Brands overly reliant on Meta for revenue are fragile; a healthier strategy diversifies channel mix so no single platform outage threatens the business.

    If you are 50% of your revenue coming from meta and one week of turning that off or one algorithmic change threatens your entire business, that's a fragile business.

71. 2026-08-05moderate 65%

    In-car ad placements like the BMW Spider-Man screen ad are acceptable when high-quality and non-intrusive, but must never force a wait before a basic car function.

    If they're bad ads, I don't like it, but if they're really nice, I'm a fan of it... As long as it doesn't make me have to wait to watch an ad to do anything with the car.

72. 2026-08-07moderate 68%

    OpenAI's ad and checkout rollout has been fumbled despite the platform's massive revenue potential, which has inadvertently benefited Shopify.

    this thing has been like fumbled out of the gate when it's got such a huge potential to rake in dollars for them

73. 2026-08-07moderate 65%

    AppLovin is delivering real results for brands roughly in the $1M-$50M revenue range because its low-risk, repurposable creative model makes the channel accessible.

    The one to like 50 million-dollar businesses are seeing some real results... it's it's risk is adverse

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