Great hooks stop working because
š The audience learned is curious, not committed, and it compounds. TikTok tightens commerce and ads, and more!
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In this newsletter, youāll find:
āGreat hooks stop working because
š¦ Control In, Control Out: TikTok Tightens Commerce and Ads
š Tweet of the Day
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āGreat hooks stop working because
Every ad account eventually hits the same moment. Everything is fine, yet every incremental dollar buys less revenue than the one before it. Most teams respond by hunting for better hooks. Thatās already too late. Whatās breaking isnāt creative performance. Itās intent density.
Intent density is the concentration of buyers inside the traffic your ads attract. Not engagement. Not curiosity. Buyers.
Platforms donāt optimize for intent directly. They infer it from behavior. Scroll depth. Dwell time. Return visits. Purchase latency. When those signals weaken, the system compensates by widening delivery. Thatās when costs climb without any visible mistake.
Hereās the non-obvious failure mode.
Curiosity-driven ads donāt just waste spend. They teach the system the wrong audience shape. Once enough low-intent behavior accumulates, Smart Bidding starts prioritizing people who behave similarly. Performance doesnāt collapse instantly. It erodes.
That erosion is why āgreat hooksā stop scaling.
This is also why lower-CTR ads often win over time.
A narrowly framed message that only resonates with a specific buyer situation sends fewer signals, but theyāre cleaner. Those users read longer. Compare alternatives. Return days later. That behavioral pattern clusters. The system learns faster, not louder.
The mistake advanced teams still make is treating intent as a creative trait instead of a system constraint.
Hereās the rule that actually changes outcomes:
No ad is allowed to scale unless it improves post-click behavior density, not just CTR.
If scroll depth drops while CTR rises, you are diluting learning.
If time-to-conversion stretches, you are softening buyer quality.
If retargeting CPAs rise while prospecting ālooks good,ā your top-funnel is poisoning the pool.
This is where creative sourcing becomes structural, not aesthetic.
Intent-dense ads require creators who live inside the buyerās context. Generic UGC produces generic behavior.
Tools like Insense matter here not because they increase volume, but because they increase alignment, matching brands with creators who can produce multiple raw, context-specific assets per brief, with lifetime usage rights, fast enough to maintain signal purity. Thatās how you scale without reintroducing noise.
You can book a discovery call by Feb 6 and get a $200 bonus for your first campaign.
There is a real tradeoff.
Higher intent density usually means slower early results. Fewer clicks. Less dopamine. Thatās why teams abandon it too early. But speed built on diluted signals always gets repaid with interest later.
The accounts that scale cleanly enforce one uncomfortable discipline.
They optimize for who the system learns, not what the dashboard celebrates this week.
Hook rate measures attention.
Intent density determines whether learning compounds or decays.
Everything else is cosmetic.
Together with Shipfusion
Your Checkout Isnāt the Problem. Fulfillment Is.
You can have great ads, a clean PDP, and a perfect checkout. And still lose the customer the moment the order is placed.
Shipfusion placed five real orders across leading clear protein brands within the same hour and tracked every step after purchase. Same cart moment. Completely different delivery realities. That inconsistency is where loyalty breaks quietly.
Hereās what the audit exposed:
Only 1 brand offered subscriptions in both cart and checkout, even in a habit-driven category
80% showed star ratings on PDPs, then removed social proof at checkout
Only 2 brands upgraded tracking beyond Shopify defaults
50% of shipping labels didnāt show the brand name
This is the churn layer you canāt fix with better creative.
Clear protein was just the test case. If you ship products to customers, this report is for you, showing exactly how your brand compares with benchmarks you can act on immediately.
Download the DTC Delivery Files and benchmark your post-checkout reality!
š¦ Control In, Control Out: TikTok Tightens Commerce and Ads
TikTok is quietly tightening its grip on how brands sell and advertise on the platform. One update centralizes fulfillment for U.S. Shop sellers. The other deepens reliance on Smart+, TikTokās AI-driven ad system.
The Breakdown:
1) TikTok Shop ends seller-controlled shipping - Starting Feb. 25, TikTok will phase out Seller Shipping in the U.S., requiring brands to use its proprietary logistics network to fulfill orders sold through TikTok Shop.
By the end of March, any brand selling to TikTokās 170 million U.S. users must hand fulfillment to TikTokās logistics system or risk being removed from the platform entirely.
3) Smart+ gets clearer guidance and structure - TikTok released a 23-page Smart+ guide explaining how its AI-powered campaigns automate targeting and delivery, positioning Smart+ as the default system for reaching users without manual audience setup.
New Smart+ updates add Auto-select for top-performing creatives, full ad previewing in Ads Manager, plus duplication, draft mode, automated rules, and bulk editing to balance automation with advertiser oversight.
TikTok is reducing flexibility in exchange for scale. Commerce is becoming platform-managed, while ads are increasingly AI-led. Brands that want access to TikTokās growth now need to adapt to its systems, not work around them.
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