> [!info]- meta > **Author**: [[andrewchen.com]] > **Full Title**: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs > **Category**: #articles > > **Summary**: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs states that all marketing strategies eventually lose effectiveness over time. As customers become accustomed to marketing tactics, clickthrough rates decline significantly, exemplified by the drop from 78% in 1994 to 0.05% in 2011 for banner ads. To combat this decline, marketers should constantly seek new, untapped channels and keep their strategies fresh and innovative. > > **Source**: [Original URL](https://andrewchen.com/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/) ## 🔦 Highlights & Commentary - humans seek novelty yet are pattern-recognition machines. Your initial marketing strategy will work quite well as your users try it for the first time, but afterwards, they learn to filter your marketing efforts out unless they are genuinely useful (more on that later). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsh9b7wd8373hs166adwv9pj)) - fast-follow ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsh9cwdbx44cpm0b21srx0v7)) - Note: “Fast-follow” GTM via frameworks and AI are key drivers to [[enshitification]] of experience. Marketing judgment is how you break the pattern. - If you’re a SaaS or ecommerce company that’s road-tested your marketing strategy by acquiring limited batches of customers, the problem is that whatever assumptions and projections you make off of this base end up fundamentally skewed positive. If your model indicates that you can acquire customers at $10 and break even within 6 months, it’s not hard for a 30% increase in CAC and 30% decrease in LTV to double the time it takes to get to profitability. This could be the difference between life and death for a company. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsh9kdsvbr7c33xgsdbxhrhk)) - Tags: [[gtm/marketing/marketing-effectiveness]] - Note: “Quant marketers” is a new one, but a good way to describe PE/VC backed players. Once you’ve harvested a niche segment your “direct” volumetric performance might suffer as you shift more budget to broad coverage affinity-driving work (e.g, “marketing generated pipeline”) as you also become less effective at converting in funnel (worse fit). Why it’s critical to have and articulate a more expansive perspective on marketing effectiveness. - The 10X solution to solving the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs, even momentarily, is to discover the next untapped marketing channel. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsha107t03vsrbxtm1rsm42e)) - Note: Nomad strategy as “adaptive system?” Good way to burn out.