Stop Building Funnels for Google and Meta: The Great Decoupling of Demand

The real shift: demand is decoupling from your channels

Look past the AI hype cycle and the “how to rank in AI overviews” content. The pattern that actually matters to operators is this:

Demand is decoupling from your traditional discovery and conversion channels.

People are:

Searching in ChatGPT, Perplexity, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, and niche apps
Buying inside TikTok Shop, retail media, and marketplaces
Getting “answers” from AI overviews and answer engines instead of clicking through
Trusting creators, communities, and “superfans” more than your ads or site

Meanwhile, your stack is still built around a 2018 reality: Google search + Meta ads + your website as the center of the universe.

That gap is what’s killing efficiency, not your lack of the latest AI tool.

What “The Great Decoupling” looks like in practice

The headlines tell the story:

AI search and answer engines: ChatGPT is being “Googled” more than YouTube and TikTok. Perplexity is explaining how AI search works. Answer engines are being called “the new fake news.”
Platform-native commerce: TikTok Shop is driving viral but chaotic retail outcomes. Netflix is redesigning its app and building a $1.5B ads business while competing with social platforms for daily engagement.
Loop marketing and superfans: “Loop marketing” and “superfans” are trending because repeat, community-driven demand is now a survival tactic, not a nice-to-have.
AI failures and LLM-only pages: AI projects are failing in the wild, and “LLM-only pages” are being called out as useless for AI search.

Translation for operators: demand is being created, shaped, and captured in places your current funnel doesn’t even see.

Why your old funnel math is quietly breaking

The classic funnel assumes:

Discovery happens on a few big platforms (search, social)
Clicks flow to your site or app
You optimize landing pages, email, and retargeting to squeeze out ROAS

That model breaks when:

AI overviews answer the query and never send the click
People buy inside TikTok Shop or Amazon and never see your site
Communities and creators drive demand that never shows up in your attribution
Retail media and CTV grab upper-funnel attention, but you only measure last-click search

You feel this as:

“Brand search is up but organic traffic is flat”
“Our CAC looks fine in-platform but LTV is sliding”
“We’re spending more, attribution looks okay, but profit isn’t moving”

That’s the decoupling: demand is real, but it’s not flowing through the channels and metrics you built your model on.

The new job: design for decoupled demand, not tidy funnels

The question is no longer “How do we optimize the funnel?” but:

How do we architect a system that survives when discovery, consideration, and conversion happen in different ecosystems, often with no click to our own properties?

That requires three shifts:

From channel-centric to demand-centric planning
From funnel thinking to loop thinking
From AI as content factory to AI as connective tissue

1. Move from channel-centric to demand-centric planning

Most media plans still start with: “What’s our mix across search, social, display, etc.?”

In a decoupled world, you start with: “Where does demand actually show up, and how does it move?”

Map demand, not just traffic

Build a simple demand map for your category:

Where demand is sparked: creators, communities, TV/CTV, TikTok, Pinterest, events, retail media, PR
Where people research: Google, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, ChatGPT, Perplexity, review sites
Where they transact: your site, Amazon, TikTok Shop, app stores, retailers, B2B marketplaces
Where they talk about it after: Discord, Slack communities, social, forums, offline groups

Then ask:

Which of these surfaces are we visible on?
Which can we influence, even if we don’t own the transaction?
Where are we flying blind today?

This is your new media brief. Channels are just implementation details.

Accept that not all demand will touch your site

For many categories, your site is now:

A proof and education hub
A brand and story container
A conversion path for a subset of buyers

But it’s no longer the only or even primary place where money changes hands.

That means:

Stop treating “site sessions” as a proxy for total demand
Instrument marketplace, retail media, and social commerce data as first-class citizens in your reporting
Set explicit revenue and margin targets for off-site channels, not just “awareness” or “incremental” fluff

2. Replace funnels with loops

“Loop marketing” is trending because the market is finally catching up to what performance teams have felt for years: linear funnels don’t match how people actually buy or talk.

In a decoupled environment, the most resilient brands design loops where:

Every new customer increases future demand
Every interaction creates a reusable asset (data, content, social proof, insight)
Every channel feeds at least one other channel

Build at least one “superfan loop”

The “superfans” conversation isn’t just brand romance. It’s demand insurance.

A practical superfan loop looks like:

Acquisition: You acquire a buyer through paid or marketplace
Onboarding: You give them a fast path to value and a clear “win” to talk about
Capture: You collect one high-signal identifier (email, phone, handle) and one context signal (use case, segment)
Amplification: You make it stupidly easy to share: creator-style UGC prompts, referral hooks, public reviews, “duet this” style asks
Reward: You reward not just purchases, but influence-content, referrals, feedback, community leadership

The goal isn’t a fancy community platform. It’s simple: each customer should have a path to create more customers.

Instrument loops like performance channels

Most brands talk about community and superfans like brand theater. Treat them like media:

Measure referral-driven revenue and margin with the same rigor as paid
Assign “media value” to UGC and reviews based on downstream performance
Give community and advocacy programs hard targets: CAC relief, LTV lift, payback period

In a world where AI search can strip you out of the clickstream, your cheapest and most durable demand often comes from people, not platforms.

3. Use AI as connective tissue, not a content vending machine

The industry is obsessed with AI for content production. That’s why we’re already seeing “LLM-only pages” that don’t work and high-profile AI failures.

The real value of AI in a decoupled world is stitching together the messy reality of how people discover, research, and buy.

Three high-yield AI use cases operators underuse

Signal consolidation

You’re drowning in fragmented signals: search terms, social comments, reviews, support tickets, sales calls, community chatter.

Use AI to:
- Cluster questions and objections across channels into a unified “demand taxonomy”
- Identify emerging themes before they show up in your dashboards
- Feed those themes into creative, product, and media planning weekly
This is how you stay relevant in AI overviews, answer engines, and social feeds without chasing every micro-trend manually.
Experience adaptation

Instead of spinning up generic AI chatbots, use AI to:
- Adapt messaging and offers by intent cluster, not just by channel
- Route high-value or high-risk queries to humans or specialized flows
- Personalize flows for marketplace, retail, and social commerce buyers who never saw your “primary” funnel
The win isn’t “24/7 support.” It’s matching the buyer’s mental model, regardless of where they entered.
Creative feedback loops

AI won’t give you “taste,” but it can:
- Summarize which hooks, angles, and visuals are actually working across platforms
- Spot fatigue and cannibalization patterns faster than manual review
- Suggest variants grounded in your own winning assets, not generic templates
Treat AI as an analyst and assistant for your creative team, not as the creative director.

Rethink measurement: from last-click to “demand health”

You cannot manage decoupled demand with a last-click dashboard and a blended CAC number.

You need a small, opinionated set of “demand health” metrics that cut across channels and surfaces.

Four metrics worth promoting to the exec dashboard

Category demand share

Not just your brand search volume, but:
- Share of queries in your category where you appear in AI overviews, answer engines, and top organic placements
- Share of marketplace search and category pages where you show up
- Share of creator and community conversations that mention you vs. competitors
Off-property revenue and margin

Track revenue, contribution margin, and payback for:
- Marketplaces and retail media
- Social commerce (TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping, etc.)
- Affiliate and creator-driven sales
Treat these as core P&L lines, not experimental side projects.
Loop efficiency

For at least one superfan or referral loop, track:
- Customers per advocate (how many new buyers each advocate drives)
- Revenue per advocate
- Time from first purchase to first referral or UGC
Creative hit rate

Instead of obsessing over individual ROAS numbers:
- Measure the percentage of new creatives that beat your control
- Track performance by hook/angle cluster, not just by ad ID
- Use that to inform both media allocation and brand strategy

What to actually do in the next 90 days

If you’re a CMO, performance lead, or media buyer, here’s a concrete 90-day plan to adapt to the great decoupling without blowing up your stack.

Week 1-2: Audit for decoupling

Map your category’s demand surfaces: search, social, AI, marketplaces, communities, retail, CTV
Identify three places where you know demand exists but you have weak visibility or presence
Document where revenue happens off your own properties and how (or if) you measure it

Week 3-6: Stand up one loop and one AI connective use case

Design a minimal viable superfan/referral loop for a single segment or product line
Choose one AI use case from: signal consolidation, experience adaptation, or creative feedback loops
Ship something small but real-no 9-month AI platform projects