🔗 Safety first.

Google launches a cart quality check, and Meta rolls out new brand safety measures

No ID, no cart data.

But here’s Google with the fix: Google’s new Conversions with cart data diagnostics tool acts like a QA check for product-level tracking.

It verifies that cart data comes with every purchase, product details are complete, and item IDs match Merchant Center listings. Pretty cool.

Also, each setup gets a rating from Excellent to Urgent, with clear alerts on what needs fixing.

If you rely on precise conversion data to optimize campaigns, this should be a solid safeguard against underreporting and wasted spend.

Don’t worry, Zuck’s got this: Meta, meanwhile, is bulking up its Brand Rights Protection with two key updates:

• Expanded scam ad reporting. Brands can now flag misleading ads exploiting their name, even if no trademarks or logos are used.
• A redesigned takedown request flow. Clearer violation categories, better search filters, and fewer admin steps, making fraud removal much faster.

Clearly, both platforms are responding to demands for more proactive guardrails.

Google’s making sure the numbers are right from the start, while Meta’s double-checking the locks on brand safety.

Handy for an ad world that often feels like Times Square on a Saturday…

X pushes hard for new AI features, but advertisers are skeptical

Hold your finger here. Can you feel a pulse?

Maybe not, but it’s definitely moving: On X, you can now turn any image into a video just by tapping and holding.

X is also offering Grok’s text-to-video tool, Imagine, to US users for free for a limited time.

Clearly the platform wants users to adopt its AI features… and probably to stay on its app, too.

Hey, if this lifts engagement and gives you new creative marketing tools, we’re all for it.

There’s just one problem: Musk’s vision of letting Grok run campaigns end-to-end isn’t exactly landing well with advertisers.

Many are wary of handing over full control to an unproven AI on a platform with X’s… well, checkered track record.

They’re also put off by a lack of human support, not to mention brand safety concerns.

Something to be aware of if you were considering going all-in on X Ads.

From chaos to clarity: The tool that enabled the Stacked Marketer Crew to achieve peak efficiency

Believe us when we say, it was chaos.

Clients messaged us on Slack, deadlines lived in Asana… and our project management subscription bills were getting bigger every month.

Then Stacked Marketer switched to Basecamp, and everything clicked:

• Critical messages stopped getting buried because they live on dedicated message boards—not in endless threads.
• Projects moved faster since all files, feedback, and decisions stay organized in one place.
• Team members stayed aligned across three time zones without the need for constant meetings.
• We cut our software costs by 40% with Basecamp’s flat-rate pricing.

No onboarding saga. No more notification hell.

Our Crew now finds everything we need—files, convos, context—in a couple of clicks.

And now, we have one clean place to see who’s doing what, what’s in progress, and what’s been done.

Try Basecamp for free. Stay because it actually works.

Lessons from 640 incrementality experiments on Meta

Automation is on the rise, and now the question is: Is Meta’s AI delivering better results than you or your agency could?

Between early 2024 and mid-2025, Haus ran 640 Meta incrementality tests to find out, and Tyler Horner broke down the results.

Let’s look: On average, Meta delivered a 19% lift to brands’ primary KPIs, including total revenue or new customers, with 96% of campaigns showing significant lift by mid-test.

For omnichannel brands, 32% of Meta’s impact occurred outside of DTC channels across platforms like Amazon and physical retail. Pretty solid.

Yes, but: While Meta’s incrementality is generally strong, its automated campaign type showed mixed results.

Platform data showed a 2.4% higher ROAS compared to manual campaigns, but 58% of brands actually saw better incremental ROAS from manual setups.

Advantage+ was good at short-term impact but underperformed in the post-treatment window, generating +17% lift versus +32% for manual campaigns.

For every $100 of revenue reported, manual campaigns generated about $12 more incremental revenue.

That being said, Advantage+ still plays a critical role in new customer acquisition. It drove a higher share of new customers than manual setups, making it especially useful during launches or promotional pushes.

Attribution remains a challenge. Mid-funnel optimization drives 1.3x more incremental revenue than reported. Traffic campaigns generate 2.4x more, and reach or awareness campaigns drive up to 6x the incremental impact compared to what platform metrics show.

However, we have Meta’s new incremental attribution setting, which is built to focus optimization on outcomes truly driven by ads. So far, the feature shows a 43% success rate.

It’s early days, but the concept has strong potential, especially if Meta can use its vast dataset to distinguish between ad-driven and organic outcomes more reliably.

What should you take away from this? Approach Meta’s automation tools strategically. Accept that Meta delivers real impact for certain strategies, and focus on improving efficiency.

Test Advantage+ against manual setups. If you’re an omnichannel brand, remember that platform ROAS doesn’t always reflect full-funnel business performance.

Mid- and upper-funnel campaigns are valuable for building pipeline and long-term growth, even if they underperform in-platform.

Consider testing Incremental Attribution to get a clearer view of true ad-driven outcomes. And keep prioritizing creative quality, it’s still the strongest lever for performance.

Meta’s automation isn’t magic, but it’s also not something to ignore…

Free webinar: How to get predictable marketing results in a new consumer era filled with skepticism and impatience

If your current marketing results aren’t what they used to be, the free webinar we’re hosting with Andrew Temes should give you answers.

Andrew led marketing for giants like Colgate, Mars, and Rogers, and he’s a consumer behavior university professor.

And August 14th, he’s showing you how to win with predictability in the consumer era of dopamine-inducing social algorithms, AI, and insane market sophistication.

Want to get ahead and see results you can be proud of?

Reserve your free spot now, and hurry—seats are limited.

“Two strikes, and you’re out” —your customers, probably

The tolerance for bad customer experiences is super low.

How do we know this?

Well, we found lots of data proving this point when writing our latest Data Story. Check out this chart, for example:

Fool me twice: A quarter of all your customers will leave after one bad experience. Almost half will leave after two bad experiences.

The math is obvious. A whooping 70% of all customers leave after two bad experiences.

Ouch.

The Crew’s opinion: Great marketing can get customers in the door, but it’s service that keeps them. And clearly, the margin for error is thin.

One clumsy interaction—a late reply, cold tone, or confusing handoff—and the brand might not get a second chance. That’s brutal.

Here’s an out-of-the-box tip? Track service-related churn just like ad performance.

Make “saving the customer” a shared KPI between marketing and service. Every service touchpoint can be viewed as retention marketing in action.

… Because clearly, you don’t have many chances to thrill and keep customers around.

HOLIDAY GIFTS: Skip the sad festive socks and gift like you mean it! Impress your crew with personalized holiday magic that ships faster than Santa worldwide, and that’s sure to make even your grumpy co-worker smile. Click here to create your holiday gifting project.*

ADVERTISING: Running political ads for the EU elections? You’ll need to complete Google’s new verification process. Also, the platform is blocking EU election queries from its generative AI tools and making technical changes to the Ads API, so you may need to update your scripts to stay compliant.

SEO: If your search rankings went on a rollercoaster ride over the weekend, you’re not imagining it. Lots of people in the SEO community are reporting significant, unconfirmed ranking volatility. No word from Google yet, so keep a close eye on your analytics.

INSTAGRAM: If you want a simple way to get more reach for your content, Instagram head Adam Mosseri recommends using the Edits app, because it actually provides a slight reach boost. Chances are, Instagram wants to incentivize people to use Edits, so take advantage before this goes away…

GOOGLE: Apparently there’s a new generic crawler using the user agent “Google” that is not listed in Google’s official documentation. Also, some IPs don’t match Google’s ranges, raising spoofing concerns. Just letting you know in case you see some fishy “Google” behavior.

*This is a sponsored post.

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What am I?

You can find the answer here.

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