Our most-read posts of H2 2025 (And why they hit so hard)🎯

Every month, thousands of founders and media buyers read the Inceptly blog to stay sharp - not with “best practices,” but with insights that actually move performance.
So as 2025 comes to a close, we looked back at what you clicked, shared, and talked about the most.

Here are the 6 most-read Inceptly blogs from July to December 2025 - each one capturing a key tension the industry wrestled with this year, from creative fatigue to AI ads.

🧠 July: FOMO & loss aversion in the YouTube ad playbook

This piece showed how the fear of missing out still outperforms every new hook formula out there - when used strategically.

We broke down how top YouTube advertisers use loss aversion not just as a gimmick, but as a conversion driver: shifting scripts from “look what you gain” to “look what you’ll lose if you don’t act.”

A must-read if you’re testing emotional levers inside direct response creative.

👉 Read the full blog post here.

🚀 August: Creative fatigue? Time for a moonshot.

By mid-year, creative fatigue hit everyone. CPMs rose, hooks died faster, and teams got stuck recycling safe ideas.

This article challenged that pattern - arguing that moonshot creatives (the ones that feel risky and uncomfortably bold) are often the only way out.

It walked through how to diagnose true fatigue, when to reset your testing system, and what it takes to build new creative cycles that scale.

👉 Read the full blog post here.

🔍 September: The Branded Search panic button - pausing PMax to “protect” traffic

One of the most heated discussions of 2025.
Should you pause Performance Max to protect your branded search traffic?

This post dissected what actually happens when you do - showing the hidden trade-offs between short-term savings and long-term visibility.

It’s a sharp read for anyone juggling attribution overlap, brand cannibalization, and executive “panic button” decisions.

👉 Read the full blog post here.

💡 October: The hidden power of CPM in Google Demand Gen campaigns

Demand Gen campaigns quietly changed the way performance media works - and this post broke the code.

Instead of chasing CTR or ROAS, the smartest buyers started using CPM as a predictive signal for auction quality, creative fatigue, and targeting health.

If you missed this one, it’s your field guide to reading Demand Gen data like a pro and spotting early signs of winning (or dying) campaigns.

👉 Read the full blog post here.

🥚 November: The genius egg mystery - the ad with an opening that makes no sense

An instant classic.

This teardown explored a viral short-form ad that starts with a line so strange it shouldn’t work - yet drove millions in spend.

We unpacked how confusion, curiosity, and pacing can beat clarity in the first three seconds, and why breaking logic is sometimes the smartest way to win attention.

👉 Read the full blog post here.

🤖 December: This AI-generated ad spent $2.5M on YouTube in 30 days

AI finally broke through the performance ceiling.

This analysis covered one of the first AI-generated YouTube ads to hit seven figures in spend - complete with breakdowns of structure, disclaimers, and the human psychology behind its success.

It proved that even as automation scales, old-school direct response rules still drive the wins.

👉 Read the full blog post here.

📈 Wrapping up 2025

Across every topic, one thing stood out:
Performance still rewards clarity, emotion, and control.

Whether you’re fighting creative fatigue, fine-tuning Google campaigns, or testing AI ads - these articles show the playbooks that actually held up this year.

If you missed any, now’s your chance to catch up before the next wave of changes hits.
👉 Dive into the full list above - and subscribe to get next year’s insights first.

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