Where Algorithms Fear to Tread

Welcome to the Bermuda Triangle of marketing. The mid-funnel. A place where intent thrives, interest simmers—and programmatic algorithms completely check out.

Platforms obsess over the top and bottom of the funnel like they’re at a marketing kegger: awareness is the loud entry point, conversions are the drunken exit, and the thoughtful, consideration-stage conversations in the middle? Completely ghosted.

Programmatic platforms are built to reward what’s measurable and immediate. If your ad isn’t sparking a click or racking up impressions, it might as well not exist. Which is exactly what happens to mid-funnel creative—a digital purgatory where nuance goes to die.

Try feeding a comparison guide or a customer testimonial video into your average DSP and watch it get buried faster than a bad startup pitch.
Mid-funnel assets—case studies, explainer videos, reviews—don’t deliver high CTRs or last-click conversions, so the algorithm shrugs and moves on.

💡 Pro tip: The machine doesn’t care if your ad educates. It cares if it converts. Immediately.

Brand lift? Scroll depth? Time-on-site? These are suggestions, not KPIs—at least to the machines.
Algorithms are trained to hunt hard signals: purchases, clicks, form fills. The softer stuff? Newsletter signups? Content downloads? Brand search upticks? That’s considered background noise.

So when a user searches “best project management tools,” guess what they get hit with?
A “Buy Now!” ad. No context, no courtship, just a demand for a ring on the first date.

Try to finesse the machine and it retaliates.
Manual bid adjustments? Creative swaps mid-flight? Audience tweaks based on actual strategy?
All of it can trigger algorithmic penalties—higher CPMs, auction losses, or downright campaign suppression. The system wants obedience, not originality.

Here’s the real danger: when the middle of your funnel dies, your long-term growth flatlines.

Your entire marketing machine turns binary: awareness or conversion, with nothing in between.

And what’s left is a brand that either screams into the void or begs for a sale—never both.

Mid-funnel is where the persuasion happens.
Where you move someone from curious to convinced.
But the algorithm doesn’t optimize for that—it punishes it.

So if you're not actively building out this stage with creative that meets users in their research phase, you’re handing market share to the brand that is.

The company that nails mid-funnel isn't just playing the game. They're rewriting the rules.

Retargeting was supposed to be the smart play. Precision over waste. Efficiency over spray-and-pray. But somewhere along the way, it stopped being strategy and became a crutch—a security blanket for marketers too scared to let go of the "easy win."

What started as a clever tactic to recapture interest has morphed into an industry-wide dependency, draining budgets, bloating CAC, and quietly killing growth. And worst of all? Most of those conversions would’ve happened anyway.

Here’s what the platforms won’t say out loud: retargeting isn’t magic. It’s margin erosion with a clean interface.

Platforms like Meta, Google, and TikTok are built to reward short-term conversions, not long-term growth. Their algorithms serve ads to users already showing intent—because that's where the data points, and where the credit is easiest to take. But optimizing for the easiest click doesn't build a business. It builds dependency.

You start spending more to recapture users already in your funnel. ROAS looks great. Your CFO is happy—for now. But under the surface, the economics are quietly unraveling.

Retargeting's efficiency is a mirage. Let’s look at the real numbers behind the addiction:

When 15 brands chase the same “high-intent” users—recent site visitors, cart abandoners, loyalty members—the auctions get brutal. CPCs on retargeting campaigns can be 180% higher than prospecting efforts.

You’re not just fighting competitors. You’re bidding against yourself, every time that user comes back.

Here’s the real kicker: 30–50% of retargeted conversions would have happened without the ad. You're paying a platform tax for what could’ve been free. In DTC, that can mean handing over 20% of your profit margin for zero incremental gain.

Over time, bottom-funnel spending starts cannibalizing your future. If 70–80% of your budget is spent on retargeting, you're not fueling new demand. You're not building a pipeline. You're just recycling the same users—until there's no one left to convert.

This isn’t just a DTC problem. Across retail, healthcare, finance, B2B, and CPG, the overuse of retargeting creates systemic issues:

Want out of the cycle? You're going to have to spend in ways that make the spreadsheet squirm—at least at first. Here’s how to do it smart:

Make it a tactic, not a strategy. Cap at 20% of total ad budget. If it creeps up, you're feeding the addiction.

Turn off retargeting for a clean test group (10–20% of site visitors). If conversions don’t drop significantly, congratulations—you just found your budget leak.

You won’t see the returns immediately, but video, influencer, branded content, and PR are what keep your pipeline full. Attribution may be fuzzy, but LTV will tell the truth.

ROAS lies. It rewards last-click behavior and punishes new user acquisition. iROAS (incremental ROAS) tells you if your spend is actually changing outcomes.

That's not an accident. That’s reality finally catching up to the spreadsheet fantasy.

Think you’re in the clear? Here’s how to know when retargeting fatigue is already setting in:

Used well, retargeting can sharpen your strategy. Used poorly, it will dull your brand. Over-reliance on it commoditizes your product, inflates your acquisition costs, and quietly erodes the trust that fuels real growth.

You’re not supposed to chase efficiency. You’re supposed to build demand.

And demand doesn’t come from chasing the same user around the internet until they finally click. It comes from stepping outside the comfort zone of attribution dashboards and investing in the harder, messier, but far more meaningful business of real marketing.