Welcome to Intelligent Artifice, your weekly dose of insights to help you win with performance marketing in a Generative AI world.
Intelligent Artifice features hard won insights from the front-lines of performance marketing in a Generative AI world - delivered straight into your inbox. For free.
Top 1% energy
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Hi Reader After I sent that last email about building on winning ads… I got hit with some replies that all sounded kinda like this: “Okay… but what about new ideas?”
“What about new formats? New audiences?”
And look: I get it. Most marketers hear “optimize what’s working” ….and just assume you’ve stopped trying to grow. But here’s the truth: that is a false dichotomy.... The smartest marketers dont pick... between optimizing what's working and what's new. They build off what works AND go after new winners. Because the real game is about managing your risk well. Let’s talk about that risk for a second. If you only stick to past winners? Eventually… 💣 You hit local maxima 💣 Audiences get saturated 💣 Fatigue hits and metrics slow down And if all you do is chase new concepts? 🎯 You MIGHT strike gold 🚫 But more likely, you might also burn time & $$$. ...cos the odds of winning on a new concept are LOW. So when people ask: “Should I double down on what’s working… or try something totally new?” Here’s my answer: Yes. And yes.
It’s like that university FAQ that I’ve quoted before: “Should I take easy classes and get A+s… or hard classes and get Bs?” Answer: “The best students take hard classes—and still get A+s.” Is it hard? It’s supposed to be hard. That’s what the top 1% do. They do both: and that’s why they win. They respect winners AND take calculated shots. …and that’s exactly what we’ve built our creative system to do. …with the help of our army of agents…. 🔍 ReviewMiner → Scans thousands of reviews, comments, and transcripts to surface golden messaging insights 🖼 Frida AI → Generates scroll-stopping visual variations of your best ads to bottle the magic and extend the run 🧠 Brute Force AI → Dissects top-performing videos frame by frame to find what’s really driving performance 💬 Takuan → Lets you “talk” to your Meta ad data like an analyst: without dashboards, spreadsheets, or SQL ….all these powered by our team of amazing humans that have managed over $100mm+ in ad spend. That is how we do both: without losing focus, time, or control. It’s how we de-risk new testing. AND scale what’s working. At the same time. If you’re spending over $50k/month… and want to scale your creative in a way that builds on past winners AND unlocks new ones… Hit reply with “A+.”We’ll show you how to win like the top 1% do. Later - Shamanth PS: 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘂𝘀. I wrote about it here. PPS: Some deconstructions from our socials here. |
Welcome to Intelligent Artifice, your weekly dose of insights to help you win with performance marketing in a Generative AI world.
Intelligent Artifice features hard won insights from the front-lines of performance marketing in a Generative AI world - delivered straight into your inbox. For free.
Hi Reader Last time I told you how our “lazy” variations crushed the bold new ads in the account. What I didn’t say? If we hadn’t figured that out, the whole account would’ve gone off a cliff. I didnt realize how close to a crazy drop we were. It’s easy to think ‘haha lazy’ - and move on. and hard to appreciate how hard it is to build a rock-solid testing system. This is why I see most teams(even well intentioned) bleed out. Because this is what their tests can look like: No structure 20 new...
Hi Reader In 2013, I was running user acquisition for a mobile app called Bingo Bash. Our monthly ad budget? $1.75 million. When I’d just joined, I honestly couldn’t believe it was humanly possible for a single product to spend that much. I thought Bingo was for a tiny niche of middle-aged women. But this was the wild west of mobile growth: when platforms were exploding ...and anything was possible. So we spent. Scaled up. And one ad quietly started hogging a huge chunk of that budget. This...
Hi Reader The account was tanking. ROAS cratered. CPAs spiked. We’d tested everything we thought would work… Soo we fell back on what we believed was our edge: ideation. After all, we’d managed over $100M in ad spend. Of course we could come up with new ideas. We had a TON of experience ideating. ..and winning w/ new concepts. We said to ourselves: “Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”...