Seb Evans
1.2K posts
Trying to give the algo what it wants.
Working out if im in some sort of reach jail. Have loads of historic followers from pre-growth/tech days, and worry that its a bit wasted. so doing the 'high volume, do the format' thing first see if i can break out of reach jail b4 new account
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I figured something out about ad copy that feels backwards.
AI can scrape Reddit in seconds.
It can summarise Trustpilot reviews almost instantly.
It can spot patterns across hundreds of comments faster than any strategist could.
And yet, specific language is getting harder to find.
The richest source is still customer interviews.
A 30-minute conversation can give you the phrase that stops someone mid-scroll.
Not because the customer says something polished.
Usually the opposite.
They say the awkward, specific thing a brand would never put in a first draft.
That's often the line.
Ogilvy didn't get "At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock" by asking a model to brainstorm luxury car angles.
He visited the factory and interviewed people.
Use AI for summaries, patterns and volume.
But don't skip the human bit.
That's where the copy usually lives.
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@jacob_posel Yes this "London is unsafe" narrative is complete X hysteria perpetuated by people who have never even been there!
Now living in USA, London *feels* significantly safer than most US cities I've been to. And the data agree!
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Right …
Anyway I flew over to London for the weekend. Beautiful city. Enjoyed the Guinness.
Felt completely safe the entire time.
Phone was very much not stolen and very much out.
Paul Graham@paulg
Stockholm is remarkably walkable. At one point we were walking somewhere and we needed to check a map. It was such a relief not to have to think about the phone being stolen. In London we always duck into a doorway before checking a phone on the street.
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@VenmoSupport my new phone number is currently registered to another venmo user. I am unable to get past onboarding due to this and can't contact you in app. Please help.
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I interviewed all of the best creative strategists in the world.
@binghott. @iamshackelford. @DenneyDara. @sourfraser. @MatthewGattozzi. @pkennedy93 @thedennis. @harrydelmege_. @heyitsalexP. (thank you so much guys, you're all the best)
If you read this document you will be able to become, train, & hire the best advertiser/creative strategist in the world. I promise you that.
Hiring and training creative strategists is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make if you get it wrong.
So I asked the best in the world:
what separates the ones who actually produce winners from everyone else.
I wrote it all up in one doc.
I put a lot of time into this and there literally 0 AI, just 14 pages of straight sauce.
reply "STRAT" and I'll send it over.
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I work in advertising.
I love ads. Make my living off ads.
But $16 for YouTube premium is such a no brainer. Huge quality of life unlock. Has become my de facto music and podcast player.
They have SHOVED ads into the platform. Ad load is near TV and becoming unskippable.
Plus, creator rev share is so much higher on premium.
If you can afford it, it’s worth it.
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Sf got really bad during the pandemic.
It has a new mayor and it’s getting back to a safe, wonderful place to live.
LA can do the same thing!
Austin Justice@AustinJustice
San Francisco is now a model for how to fight crime. A few years ago it averaged 86 car break-ins per day. Today: 15. SF did two things: 1. Got a DA that prosecutes criminals: Following the successful recall of Chesa Boudin, DA Brooke Jenkins started prosecuting prolific offenders and said so loudly. Crime dropped every year since she took office. 2. Put tech to use: In 2024, SF activated 400 license plate readers and deployed 80 drones citywide. This tech feeds officers live intelligence on suspects in motion. Drones alone have assisted in 1,000+ arrests since then. The technology lets authorities solve crimes as they happen rather than depend on much more intensive, legally perilous post hoc investigations (which ironically are often more intrusive than using tech). The results: - Car break-ins down 85% - Robbery down 30% - Burglary down 33%. - Homicides hit their lowest level since 1954. Plate readers, drones, a prosecutor who prosecutes. That's the whole formula! Austin has the opposite approach. License plate cameras are effectively banned. Jail bookings are down despite repeat offenders victimizing innocent people regularly. Bond violations went from 37 in 2020 to 250 last year. SF proved crime is a choice. Austin, so far, keeps making a different one.
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The best thing about building landing pages with AI is the speed at which you can deploy them
there is no longer any excuse not to have a unique landing page for every winning angle you run
Example here:
We tested a completely new angle (going straight to PDP)
Saw it was picking up spend and performing decently
Took ad transcript, got AI to build a simple listicle based on the transcript and had it live within 20 mins
Duplicated the original ad in same campaign and is now outspending the original ad at half the CPA
Screenshot here shows total spend for each ad so far (original has been running 5 days longer than new one) but new one now spending around 3x what the original is today)
Will now shut off original and and start making improvements to new landing page
But I genuinely feel this is the way. Don't worry about making every funnel perfect before launching
Just get it out the door quickly, see if it shows signs of life then invest more time and money
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I never understood why Shopify has not gone after Checkout Champs feature set.
Just seems like the easiest way to bump up GMV by double-digit percentage points - “and to arm your rebels”
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Listen, if you’re thinking this is a good idea just hear me out.
Vertical farming gets brought up every year. It looks amazing.
Then the electricity bill shows up.
The problem is you’re literally paying to replace the sun.
The sun is free.
How do you compete against free?
I love science fiction as much as the next guy, but vertical farms are one of the few cases where it doesn’t hit the mark.
Dominic Lee 李梓敬@dominictsz
This isn’t science fiction. It’s a real farm where planting, growing, and harvesting all happen automatically! Fully automated technology is changing agriculture in China!
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@ron_ecomm @gwilson258 Interesting - where do you hire CS and editors from?
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better ads, new products unlocking new avatars, better process to produce a reasonable amount of volume, review every single ad yourself to ensure the quality goes up
its just the fundamentals. we don't have any special unique workflow to consistently produce banger.
just watch the ad and make your own judgement if it's a banger or not.
is it boring? is it speaking to a new audience?
if the ad is bad just say "its bad" to the producer and provide feedback to say why it's bad and how they can make it better
if you do the reps you will know
people are too lazy and they don't do the reps
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100% ignore the doomer energy
our Jan-2026 is better than Nov-2025 and Feb is better than Jan
i have been on both sides of this over the years:
- doing terribly when everyone is gloating
- doing well when everyone is dooming
it's always your fault. don't you dare to think otherwise when you chose the highest agency path - entrepreneurship
it's always because your product is unremarkable or your TAM is too small
the internet is only becoming more meritocratic and efficient at discovery, not less (challenge anyone to provide a counter take on this)
if you have something special, it will be discovered *rapidly*
focus on the fundamentals of advertising which is copywriting
focus on building a company
focus on developing products that differentiate and INNOVATE (caveat is if this is not your first business, you can win on efficient supply chain or 200 IQ brand positioning like Liuqid Death instead of product innovation but this rules out 99% of you). no matter the size of your company, eventually they will all have to focus on product development though.
focus on learning all the things PARTICULARLY outside of marketing.
and focus on doing all the above with discipline consistently for the next 5 - 10 years
DTC Prophet@dtcprophet
Way too much doomer energy out there now, ecom included. Don't get suckered into it Our Meta performance has literally never been better Hitting record spend days and weeks Up 50% YTD and will 2-3x this year while shrinking opex and growing revenue per employee CAC is down YoY and CVR up Brands are getting the much needed leverage back, software is becoming out of vogue and feeling the heat The tools being released are incredible, winter is coming for the expenses on our PnL Real killers in ecom are printing right now, it's arguably one of the best times to be building a real brand Meta and the algo, if you work with it and not against it, has never been better. If you let it print for you it will Quality ad creative is getting cheaper to produce and testing is getting faster Doomer and fear monger voices are loud until everyone but them starts winning. Doomers always lose in the end
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@zachmstuck @SebREvans Bonus points if it’s using an Outersignal LLA
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And I’m now pushing pixel perfect on brand designs in shopify. It’s amazing how much progress you can make with some grit, tokens, and a couple cross country flights.
Cody Plofker@codyplof
I've been determined to use claude code to be able to create pixel perfect designs and I had a major breakthrough today. I'm fairly confident we're have a human in the loop AI CRO system in the next month that can be done end to end, at a super high level, with one mid level person.
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@zachmstuck @codyplof What does account structure / creative testing look like when you split traffic across persona based LPs?
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@BryanECano Yep! We run a DTC wine app so have a few devs + founders also running Claude code workflows.
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Are you coding & building internal tools? Starting a slack group for us to share notes and code with each other.
Talking to different people who are having success coding internally to make their teams more efficient and impactful.
Ideally we can create a github and trade code.
If you want to join comment below so I can msg you the slack invite. Brands only.
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Seb Evans retweetledi
Meta reports that partnership ads deliver 19% lower CPAs and 13% higher CTRs on average vs standard brand ads.
That’s why the most advanced Meta accounts are now allocating 20–50% of spend to partnership ads as a core growth lever.
So we’ve just released our Partnership Ads Playbook (Updated for 2026) built off what we’re seeing actually scale inside Meta accounts right now.
Inside, we break down:
- Why partnership ads outperform (and why it’s not about creators or follower count)
- How Meta actually interprets identity, creative, and signals
- The creative diversity multiplier and how identity unlocks incremental reach
- Benchmarks for CPA, CTR, FTI, frequency, and what “good” really looks like
- When to use founders, team members, existing creators, or persona pages
- How to source creators using Meta’s own tools (without wasting time in DMs)
- What to brief creators so content performs and still feels native
- Exact setup flows inside Ads Manager (including dynamic identity)
- Contract terms, usage rights, and what to negotiate (so you don’t get burned later)
- A full measurement framework to know what to scale, what to kill, and when
- Real examples from brands doing this well and why they work
Want it?
Retweet this post
Comment “partnership” and I’ll send it over
GIF
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We used to run nearly all of our ads through quizzes.
A few thoughts:
1. Good ones genuinely help product or variant discovery. In our case shade matching is the biggest challenge online.
2. People’s favorite subject is themselves. People love taking quizzes where they have to answer questions about themselves and get personalized recommendations.
3. Allows for personalization based on their answers.
4. Collects a ton of first party data which can be valuable for general learnings as well as owned channel segmentation
5. We’ve always seen higher CVR and AOV, likely for many of the reasons above.
I think the effectiveness depends on the niche and product. The harder the choice is, the more it can help.
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