Dave Rossborough

I help $1M+ businesses stop gambling on ad creative and turn video + image ads into one predictable growth system | Creator, Dynamic Influence Loop™

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

A potential referral client told me: "Meta doesn't work for my business. There are no keywords, so I can't get in front of someone who's ready to buy."

Reasonable belief. Wrong conclusion.

For 20 years, digital advertising trained us to chase last-click attribution: The one channel where you can draw a straight line from ad to sale. Search does that beautifully. It also has a ceiling, because it only converts demand that already exists. It doesn't create any.

Seven or eight years ago, being a good Meta advertiser meant hand-building interest profiles: age, gender, "reads Cosmopolitan," "shops at this store." You assembled an audience out of Facebook's own data yourself.

Most of that data doesn't exist anymore.

After Cambridge Analytica, privacy rules gutted it, and Meta has deprecated most of that targeting. In its place: Advantage+, Meta's own machine learning, built to read intent from behaviour instead of stated interests.

Meta's own guidance now is to stop using interest targeting because the algorithm does it better, as long as you feed it good first-party signal from your site, your CRM, your platform.

That's the real trade you're making: targeting-by-interest for targeting-by-behaviour, at a scale no human-built profile could match.

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I write about shifts like this one in Inside the Loop, my LinkedIn newsletter. Subscribe here: https://t.co/HYYJj5P28j

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Here's the number that matters more than any of that: 7-11-4.

Google's Messy Middle research found a customer needs roughly 7 hours of content from you, across 11 touchpoints, on 4 platforms, before they're ready to buy.

Someone may start on Facebook, drift to Instagram, watch something on YouTube, and that video sends them to Google to search your brand name directly.

Who gets credit for that sale? Old-school attribution credits Google search, that expensive click that looks like your whole cost-per-acquisition. But three or four other touchpoints got them there first, most of them unpaid.

Look only at the end of the journey and your numbers are lying to you.

The practical shift: Stop picking targeting options, and spend that time building creative for every stage of the journey: What triggers problem-awareness, what introduces your solution, what closes the deal.

I run many pieces of creative in client accounts now, each doing one job. Machine learning can test that volume; the old interest-group method never could.

If you're only running ads on one platform because "that's where my customers are".... that's missing the point. The average American scrolls the height of the Eiffel Tower on social media every day.

Which platform do you still think of as "not for my business", and is that actually true, or just where your tracking stops?

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

I almost lost a sale, and would never have known why.

Not the price. Not the product. The buyer found a competitor's blog post on day 11 of their research and nearly started over from scratch.

That's not a fluke. That's just how buying actually works now.

I made a video on why the marketing funnel (the model most businesses still plan and budget around) doesn't match how people actually buy anymore. And what to build instead.

In it, I get into:

→ Why Google calls this the "Messy Middle" (and why I just call it reality)
→ The buyer who visited my client's site 4 times over 23 days before booking, and what happens if you write someone off after visit one
→ What I call Exploration Anchors, and why being findable beats being loud

Full video below. 👇

If this kind of thing is useful, I just launched a newsletter called "Inside the Loop". Every issue breaks down one piece of how I build marketing systems that actually match how customers behave — real numbers, real client examples, no fluff. Hit subscribe on the newsletter page, top of my profile.

What does your re-engagement look like after someone bounces? Genuinely curious what's working. Drop it below.

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@GNev2 No, no, oh no, nooooo, no, oh no.

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@johngibbonsblog @Knox_Harrington Just pulled into Toronto on the train, see you in a few hours!

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@QuicklyKevin @GeoffNorcott Great episode, but demand a recount on the quiz! Shola Ameobi can't be an acceptable 90s footballer answer! Senior debut in 2000 according to the Wikipedia. /pedant

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@DanielPCollier Having a similar convo this very minute in our house

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@elonmusk I made my @SpaceX Starlink deposit in feb and today's my birthday and I'd consider it now "mid-2021" :) Got any birthday announcements for me? 🤞🤟

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@Greater_Napanee whenever I have tried to access the downtown public WiFi I've never been able to get connected. Is this a known issue?

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@JHenderson Congrats Jordan, you deserve it!

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@Adam_Smith_82 Yikes!!!

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@VivaNaturals I bought a diffuser from you in December 2019 and it came with a coupon for your essential oils... that expired in May 2017!

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@kingstonist @MIHomeYGK 669 from Montreal to Toronto is now canceled too. Scrambling.

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@Adam_Smith_82 Glad you're feeling supported, Adam! At the end of the storm is a golden sky, and I'm hoping your golden sky is not far away. Always enjoy your contributions on TAW. Here's to a fantastic 2020!

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@KingstonPolice is receiving dashcam footage of someone littering out of their car window (in 2019!!!) useful to you or a waste of your time?

[Melissa Reddy @MelissaReddy_]

Jordan Henderson. His face reflecting in the European Cup. The emotional scenes post-match showcasing what #LFC means to him and him to them. With exclusive quotes from Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Gareth Southgate

https://t.co/g1qMpGm7BS

[Liverpool FC @LFC]

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

#SixTimes

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@JHenderson my 8 year old daughter reckons you're scoring and lifting the trophy tomorrow, so she did a portrait :)

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@C_Hannan7 @Edge_Hill @Andrew_Heaton Do the cookstown sizzle hahah

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@C_Hannan7 @Edge_Hill @Andrew_Heaton Hanno knows what he's at. Cocktail sausages on a roast are epic. Next level is to cook them in maple syrup

[Dave Rossborough @daverossborough]

@robbohuyton Is right Robbo. I gained respect for him yesterday for the sheer professionalism, mentally as well as physically. You saw him manage his breathing and knew he would score.