Finding the Funnel MVP
🏃♂️ Stop Giving the Gold Medal to the Wrong Runner: Why Your Funnel’s MVP Isn’t Who You Think It Is, Bing’s lastmod Boost & Microsoft Ads’ New Exclusion Tools, and more!
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In this newsletter, you’ll find:
🏃♂️ Stop Giving the Gold Medal to the Wrong Runner: Why Your Funnel’s MVP Isn’t Who You Think It Is
🔍 Bing’s lastmod Boost & Microsoft Ads’ New Exclusion Tools
🚀Quick Hits
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Together with Shipfusion
📦 The Most Overlooked CX Opportunity in DTC? Post-Purchase
What happens after “buy now” could be leaking your next 1,000 customers.
Shipfusion ordered from 30+ DTC deodorant brands, and here’s what they found
⏳ 73% failed to set delivery expectations
🛍️ 74% didn’t offer post-checkout upsells
📦 Only 1 in 10 included free samples
From missed tracking pages to lifeless unboxing moments, the final stretch of the customer journey is where most brands lose retention.
This report breaks it down: what great CX actually looks like in 2025, from branded fulfillment to sustainable packaging and reactivation triggers, it’s a teardown you can action immediately.
It’s not just about deodorant. It’s about fixing the invisible friction that’s hurting LTV across every DTC category. Whether you're selling skincare, supplements, or pet care, this is the audit you can’t skip.
Get the DTC Delivery Files and plug the holes in your post-purchase journey today!
🏃♂️ Stop Giving the Gold Medal to the Wrong Runner: Why Your Funnel’s MVP Isn’t Who You Think It Is
If your media reports make one ad look like it’s single-handedly carrying your business, there’s a good chance you’re looking at fraud.
Not because the numbers are fake, but because your attribution logic is.
Here’s the truth: your funnel is a relay race. And you’ve been handing all the medals to the anchor leg.
1. The Anchor Isn’t the Whole Team
In track, the fastest runner is often saved for last. But without the first leg exploding off the line, the second leg holding the pace, and the third keeping position, the anchor never even gets the baton.
That’s your funnel. The “winning” ad, you keep scaling to the moon? It’s just the closer. The credit belongs to the prospecting ad that made the introduction and the mid-funnel piece that kept the customer warm.
Ignore them, and your closer eventually has no one left to close.
2. How Misattribution Starves Growth
When you judge performance by last click, you inflate the ROAS of retargeting campaigns and undercut cold traffic. This looks great in the short term, lower CPCs, higher conversion rates, but it’s a funnel starvation strategy.
As you pull budget from top and middle stages to “feed the winner,” the pipeline dries up. That shiny ad suddenly “fatigues” not because the creative died, but because you cut off its supply chain.
3. Measuring the Full Relay
You don’t need a six-figure attribution tool to see the truth. Your analytics already show the handoffs if you know where to look:
First-touch reports → Who introduced the customer?
Assisted conversions → Which ads kept them in play?
Last-touch reports → Who closed the sale?
When you see the baton pass, you stop killing top-of-funnel ads that look “weak” but are the reason your closer is even in the race.
4. Scaling Like a Relay Coach, Not a Fanboy
Great relay coaches don’t just train the anchor; they train the squad. Your budget should fuel all legs proportionally to their role:
Prospecting = Lead leg → Needs volume and reach
Mid-funnel = Middle legs → Needs depth and relevance
Retargeting = Anchor → Needs precision and confidence
Get this right, and you’re not chasing a “winner.” You’re scaling a system.
Last-click obsession is why brands burn through “winning” creatives and blame fatigue. Funnel-aware attribution is why elite operators scale sustainably. The medal ceremony might look less dramatic when three ads share the podium, but your growth curve will look a hell of a lot better.
🔍 Bing’s lastmod Boost & Microsoft Ads’ New Exclusion Tools
Bing has updated its sitemap guidance, making the lastmod tag a top AI indexing signal, and Microsoft Ads has rolled out large‑scale website exclusion tools. Both aim to improve content visibility, crawl efficiency, and ad placement control.
The Breakdown:
1. Microsoft Ads Adds Bulk Website Exclusion Lists - Advertisers can now block up to 10,000 sites per list and manage 100 lists per account, applying them across campaigns. Exclusions can be set at account or campaign level, with campaign-level recommended for consistency.
2. Bing Prioritizes lastmod for AI Recrawling - Bing now uses the lastmod field in sitemaps as a key factor in deciding whether to recrawl a page. It recommends ISO 8601 format with date and time, avoiding updates unless content has changed. The "changefreq" and "priority" tags are no longer used for crawling or ranking.
3. Boost Indexing with Accurate Sitemaps and IndexNow - Submitting sitemaps via robots.txt or Bing Webmaster Tools ensures immediate fetching and daily rechecks. Pairing them with IndexNow allows full‑site coverage plus real‑time URL updates. Bing supports up to 50k URLs per sitemap, 50k sitemaps per index file, and 2.5T URLs for enterprise‑scale sites.
Accurate sitemap signals help AI-driven search prioritize crawling, keeping content visible and fresh, while bulk website exclusions give advertisers tighter brand safety and placement control at scale. Together, they reduce wasted resources, improve efficiency, and ensure both content and ads are shown in the right place at the right time.
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