Garrett Gray

Google & Meta suck at new customer acquisition. We fix that.

Sharing my two cents on performance marketing, 1st-party data ops, & psychology

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

Your Meta ads playbook is obsolete, and most marketers have no idea.

While they chase outdated tactics, the game has fundamentally changed. Post-Andromeda, success is driven by two things: powerful creative and a strategy called Signal Engineering.

Here’s the new formula 🧵

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@iamshackelford 😂

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@iamshackelford coming for your job dad

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@BlackLabelAdvsr @GuntherEagleman He’s a pretty young guy with lots of growing & learning to do but seems genuine so maybe let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@dtcprophet

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@_xospadi_ we have helped dozens of health & wellness brands by implementing HIPAA compliant 1st-party data infrastructure

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

If you're running Meta ads for health or wellness and haven't been flagged yet, don't celebrate.

You're on borrowed time.

Over the last 12 months, Meta has been rolling out restrictions in waves. Sporadic. Unpredictable. No warning emails. No account notifications.

They're tightening enforcement around privacy and compliance regulations, and health brands are in the crosshairs.

Just sudden, brutal performance drops that tank your entire funnel.

On a sales call a few months ago, a health and wellness brand shared how their cost per lead went from $10 to $80 overnight. Same creative. Same audience. Same offer.

Meta had silently restricted their account.

Here's what most brands don't realize is happening:

• Level 1: Custom parameters and URL data get hidden
• Level 2: Bottom funnel events like Purchase get restricted
• Level 3: Conversion optimization gets blocked entirely

And once you're flagged, the panic starts.

Brands start trying UTM tricks. Domain rotations. Pixel swaps. Every band aid solution they can find on Reddit or in Facebook groups.

But Meta's AI learns faster than you can pivot. Every workaround is just buying time until the next restriction hits.

I've spent months working with health brands navigating this exact problem. The ones who stabilize their accounts long term aren't using workarounds.

They're building proper data infrastructure:

• Scrubbing PII and PHI before it reaches Meta
• Implementing server side tracking correctly
• Neutralizing event names to avoid triggers
• Managing consent in a compliant way

The brands that implement this foundation before getting flagged are the ones who avoid the chaos entirely.

So you have two options:

Cross your fingers and hope Meta doesn't notice. Keep running the same setup until your CPAs spike and you're scrambling to figure out what broke.

Or actually fix it now.

Build compliant infrastructure that aligns with Meta's requirements. Stop gambling with your ad account and start running on stable ground.

One approach is hoping. The other is handling it.

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@ToriiRowe

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@dtcprophet
@thedanielokon
@andrewjenningsx

we have started doing this with our clients so if it would be of interest to anyone, I'd value the opportunity to jump on a call & pick your brain

NOT a sales call, a conversation about what would be most valuable to you in terms of using data to make better decisions for your business

[DTC Prophet @dtcprophet]

Can someone tell Triple Whale that all we want is a direct integration with Claude and that's it?

Enough of the Moby stuff and this new automation platform, please

Integrating with Claude makes your tool 5x more useful. Not integrating makes it 5x less useful

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@CollinRugg He should have been escorted right out front of the courthouse and hung

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@Protestia this is one of the wilder takes I've seen

so what exactly does this guy believe then?

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@herrmanndigital @ecom_cork 🤚

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

The opportunity cost piece is what nobody wants to hear. Every dollar locked in a testing silo is a dollar the algorithm can't use to optimize across your full creative pool. You're literally starving the system of signal to protect a workflow that makes you feel in control.

That's the real shift post-Andromeda control didn't disappear, it moved. From 'which audience do I target' to 'what structure do I build so the algorithm can perform and I can still read the signal.'

CBOs for the win, amount spent doesn't lie. But without funnel segmentation, one king creative eats everything and you're scaling retargeting without knowing it.

Give spend lanes to speak through and it becomes a diagnostic, not a mystery

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@dtcprophet Quality > quantity

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

Jon, I hear you and I don't doubt your barber's sincerity. But I want to point out what's happening in this conversation:

You keep testifying.
I keep asking you to engage with Scripture and history. You don't.

I've raised specific points: Matthew 16, Peter's keys, the early Church Fathers, the biblical basis for grace in Catholic theology. Your response each time is essentially: "I know a guy who left, and I hope you get saved." That's a testimony, not a theological argument.

On the Rosary and prayers to Mary: The Rosary is 90% Scripture. It's meditating on events from the Gospels -the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection while praying the words of Gabriel and Elizabeth from Luke 1. If your barber "cringes" at that, I'd gently ask: does he cringe at Luke 1:28 and Luke 1:48? Because that's what the Hail Mary is.

On "true salvation": What do you think I believe salvation is? Because I suspect you think Catholics believe we earn our way to heaven through rituals. We don't. The Council of Trent (1547) explicitly declared: "None of those things which precede justification — whether faith or works — merit the grace itself of justification." Grace alone initiates salvation. Catholics have always taught that.

On the Holy Spirit showing me truth: I agree completely. And I'd ask you to consider the possibility that He is. . . just not toward the conclusion you expect. The Spirit led people to truth for 1,500 years before the Reformation. Where was He leading them?

I'm simply taking Scripture seriously enough to ask where the fullness of the faith actually resides. If you'd like to discuss a specific passage or doctrine, I'm here. But "I hope you get saved" isn't a conversation, it's a conclusion dressed as concern.

Peace, brother.

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

Jon, I appreciate your concern for my soul, I truly do. I never claimed to be Catholic, I simply was making the case for you to lighten up on the rhetoric.

1. I do read the Bible, including John's Gospel (many times). Catholics read more Scripture at Mass in a three-year cycle than most Protestant services cover. The Gospel of John is proclaimed multiple times each year, and I've read it cover to cover. The assumption that Catholics don't read the Bible is one of the most persistent and easily disproven myths out there.

2. There is no "perverted Catholic version." Catholic Bibles contain the same New Testament as yours — word for word in the Greek. The only difference is the Old Testament includes seven books (Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, etc.) that were in the Septuagint — the Greek Bible the Apostles themselves quoted. Luther removed them in the 1500s. So if anything, Catholic Bibles have more Scripture, not less.

3. Your barber's experience doesn't prove a doctrine false. I'm glad he found a deeper relationship with Christ. But personal testimony isn't theology. Millions of people have had equally powerful conversions into Catholicism: G.K. Chesterton, John Henry Newman, Scott Hahn, thousands of former pastors. If "someone left and feels better" is the standard, then every religion and none can claim victory.

4. Calling me a "victim" isn't an argument. You haven't engaged with a single point I raised — about Peter's keys, about grace, about the early Church. Instead you've moved to personal appeals and emotional language. I'm not offended, but I notice the pattern: every time I bring up Scripture and history, the response shifts to "just read the Bible". . . as if I haven't.

I have given the Bible a chance, Jon. And the more I read Scripture and study the history of the Church that compiled, preserved, and canonized it the more I find Catholic teaching consistent with what the Apostles actually believed. I'm still on that journey, but dismissing me as a "victim" doesn't engage with anything I've raised.

I'd be happy to continue discussing specific passages anytime but the conversation has to go both ways.

God bless you, brother.

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

Presumptuous of you to assume my 'spiritual blindness'

Appreciate the additional context about you and your parents but your parents serving as missionaries doesn't mean YOU understand the Catholic faith

First, Catholics don't believe in salvation by works. That's a misunderstanding. The Catholic Church officially teaches that salvation is by grace, through faith, and that no one can earn it. The Council of Trent (1547) literally says: 'None of those things which precede justification—whether faith or works—merit the grace itself of justification; for if it is by grace, it is no longer by works.' If you don't believe me, read the Catechism paragraphs 1987–2029.

Second, calling Catholicism 'worse than Islam' is not something I can take seriously as a theological statement. Catholics confess the Nicene Creed, believe in the Trinity, the full divinity and humanity of Christ, His atoning death and bodily resurrection, salvation by grace, the authority of Scripture, and the return of Christ in glory. Islam denies every single one of those things. To say Catholicism is 'worse' than a religion that denies Christ's divinity and crucifixion is not a defensible position.

Third, you say 'faith alone.' I'd point you to James 2:24: 'You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.' That is the only time the phrase 'faith alone' appears in Scripture—and it's a negation of it. Catholics and Protestants can debate what James means alongside Paul, but you can't say 'the Bible clearly teaches faith alone' when the one verse that uses the exact phrase says the opposite.

Fourth, the 'true gospel' you're contrasting with Catholicism—where did it come from? Who decided which books belong in your Bible? Who preserved, copied, and transmitted those Scriptures for 1,500 years before the Reformation? Who formulated the Trinity and the two natures of Christ at Nicaea and Chalcedon? The Catholic and Orthodox churches. If they were preaching a 'false gospel' the whole time, then Christianity died in the first century and an apostate church somehow still managed to give you an infallible Bible and an orthodox Christology. That's a hard position to hold.

I'm not asking you to become Catholic. I'm asking you not to call a ten-year-old's faith in Jesus a 'false religion.' That boy believes Jesus is Lord, God, and Savior. So do you. Start there."

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@nkecom let's catch up, hit me back on here or Slack

it's been a bit since we spoke & I have quite a few learnings that I can share from what is & isn't working with clients across all sorts of industries

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

Jon, brother, you gotta chill with the demonization of Catholicism

This is coming from someone who grew up Protestant who finally decided to look into the Catholic church for myself & I would encourage you to do the same.

I guarantee if you spent a few months earnestly reading the early church fathers & digging into why they believe what they believe you wouldn't be saying these things.

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@CTtheDisrupter Noice 👌

This approach gets leveled up when you’re able to store behavioral data for 365 days with the ability to reactivate those NewCustomers along with their behavior in Meta.

I know a guy 😏

[Garrett Gray @avantgray]

@CTtheDisrupter Curious how you were executing on that in 2019?

We’ve been implementing data infrastructure for clients since 2021 so they can optimize off of granular custom events but optimizing for new customer acquisition really took off last year