Digital marketers have gotten used to a world of dashboards, attribution windows, and conversion reports that make it feel like every dollar has a neat explanation attached to it. Then you start investing in channels like display, video, CTV, audio, influencer partnerships, sponsorships, upper-funnel social, or broader awareness campaigns, and suddenly things become uncomfortable. The neat lines disappear. The reality is that less-trackable channels require a different mind

A Working Planet client thought they had it figured out: a finely tuned predictive model delivering real-time performance insights. But after months of testing, we uncovered gaps in what looked, on paper, like a perfectly sound approach.

We rolled out AI Max for Search across campaigns for clients in multiple verticals, including eCommerce, online education, and nonprofit. In most cases, it captured 5–10% of Search spend, produced ~30% stronger ROAS than non‑AI Max traffic, and uncovered incremental volume. However, it also proved to “cherry-pick” volume from existing keywords, which masked some inefficient spend, emphasizing the need for strong conversion signals and constant guardrails.

You may find yourself wishing you had more data to help you understand the value of your leads. In a perfect world, every new column would be filled out consistently, giving you richer, more precise insights. But the reality? Between chasing follow-ups and keeping existing scoring systems updated, asking sales to fill out multiple new fields just isn’t realistic. The good news: you may not need more fields. The data you need could already be sitting in your CRM, just waiting