Andrew Chen, former Head of Growth at Uber, coined one of the most important principles in marketing: The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs.
The law states that over time, all marketing tactics decay toward zero effectiveness.
Understanding why this happens—and what to do about it—is fundamental to sustainable growth.
The Mechanism
Every effective marketing tactic follows the same lifecycle:
Discovery phase: A few early adopters find an opportunity. Banner ads in 1994. Facebook ads in 2012. TikTok organic in 2020. These pioneers get extraordinary results because competition is near zero.
Exploitation phase: Word spreads. More players enter. Results are still good, but declining. Best practices emerge. The tactic becomes "mainstream."
Saturation phase: Everyone's doing it. Audiences are fatigued. Platforms raise prices. What once generated 5% CTR now generates 0.5%.
Commoditization phase: Only the most sophisticated players can extract value. For everyone else, the tactic is either unprofitable or marginal.
This cycle is inevitable. It happens to every channel, every format, every approach.
Why Decay Is Guaranteed
Audience fatigue: Humans adapt to stimuli. The first banner ad was novel; the millionth is invisible. Attention requires novelty.
Competitive dynamics: Effective tactics attract competitors. More competition means higher costs and lower response rates.
Platform incentives: Platforms want you to pay for what you used to get free. Organic reach declines, paid costs rise.
Selection effects: Early adopters of any tactic are disproportionately skilled. As tactics mainstream, average skill level drops, bringing average results down.
All four forces push in the same direction: decay.
Case Studies in Decay
Banner ads: First banner ad (AT&T, 1994) had 44% CTR. Current average: 0.05%.
Email open rates: 1990s email had 90%+ open rates. Current average: ~20%.
Facebook organic reach: 2012: pages reached 16% of followers. 2024: ~2-5%.
Influencer marketing: 2015 micro-influencer campaigns saw 5-10% engagement. 2024: often under 1%.
The specific numbers vary, but the trajectory is universal.
What This Means for Your Strategy
1. Sustainable Growth Requires Constant Reinvention
You cannot "figure out" growth once and ride it forever. What works today will stop working. Your job is to find the next thing before the current thing dies.
Implication: Reserve 15-25% of your marketing resources for experimentation on emerging channels and tactics.
2. Speed of Learning Beats Size of Budget
The winner isn't who spends the most—it's who learns fastest. Finding tactics early in their lifecycle is worth more than perfecting tactics late in their lifecycle.
Implication: Build measurement and experimentation infrastructure before scaling spend.
3. Defensibility Comes From Brand, Not Tactics
Tactics are replicable. Brand isn't.
When everyone is bidding on the same keywords, paying the same CPMs, and using the same formats, what differentiates? Brand awareness. Brand preference. Brand loyalty.
Implication: Brand investment isn't optional—it's the only sustainable competitive advantage in marketing.
4. Platform Dependency Is Strategic Risk
If all your growth comes from one platform, you're one algorithm change away from disaster. Facebook 2024 is not Facebook 2020. TikTok may not exist in its current form for long.
Implication: Diversify channels. Own your customer relationships through email and direct channels.
The Counter-Intuition
Knowing that tactics decay should make you more, not less, willing to experiment aggressively.
Why? Because the expected value of experimentation is higher than it appears.
If you find a tactic early, you capture the entire exploitation phase. If you find it late, you capture nothing.
The math rewards rapid experimentation, even if most experiments fail.
What Doesn't Decay
While tactics decay, some things compound:
Brand equity: Awareness and preference build over time.
Owned audience: Email lists, communities, direct relationships.
Knowledge: Understanding of customers, markets, and what resonates.
Systems: Processes for experimentation, creative production, and optimization.
Taste: The judgment to know what will work before testing proves it.
The game is to use decaying tactics to build compounding assets.
The law isn't pessimistic—it's clarifying. Knowing that decay is inevitable makes sustainable strategy possible. Build what compounds. Use what decays while it works. Don't confuse the two.