Happy Sunday, Everyone!
I hope you’re all surviving the final sprint of the year. The holiday out-of-office replies are starting to trickle in, the NFL playoff picture is getting chaotic and the winter chill has officially settled in (at least, here in MD).
December is - for whatever reason - always that weird time of year where everyone simultaneously tries to close out Q4 on a positive note and check off every last-minute item from the 2025 priorities, all while frantically finalizing 2026 plans/goals/budgets/strategies. Mix in some must-attend holiday parties, plus the obligatory shopping, and it’s not difficult to see why December feels like a blizzard in more ways than one.
And that brings me to the topic of this week’s newsletter.
As you start planning for next year, I want to share a belief that tends to make people uncomfortable. It goes against the grain of what we’re taught in school, what we hear in meetings and what feels "intuitive."
But if you want to win in 2026, you need to accept one brutal reality:
There’s no-where worse to be than in the middle.
The middle isn't "challenging." It isn't "hard." It is a death sentence.
The reason is simple: almost every component of the world runs on power laws - whether it’s ad markets (the top-20% of Google advertisers are subsidized by the bottom-80%), creative (your top-5 ads likely generate more profit than your bottom 500), talent (100x engineers are really that good), even SEO (the top-3 blue links will get ~50% of the total clicks from that entire SERP).
Power laws are everywhere. And while not every system is a pure power law, most competitive, attention-driven markets behave like one once scale and choice enter the picture. It’s a winners-take-most world, most of the time and in most of the places.
The above sentence probably comes as a shock to most people reading this. That’s because most of us have been taught to believe that the normal distribution (aka the bell curve) - where the vast majority of people (and businesses) sit comfortably in the middle - applies to both inputs and outcomes.
But that’s simply not true in power law systems. Sure, the inputs - test scores, ability, content quality, etc. - will follow a normal distribution…but the outputs? Those look like this:
- The Top 10%: Reap 80% of the rewards (revenue, profit, recognition)
- The Bottom 20%: Receive 80% of the attention/support (the proverbial squeaky wheel)
- The Middle 70%: Fights over what’s left
Those in the middle - despite comprising the majority of the things (articles, creatives, pages, people) - often ends up with next-to-nothing - no resources, no special treatment, no attention and virtually no rewards.
The default reaction when I share this in meetings is something like, “That’s not right” or “being in the middle of the pack is fine” – but, after a few minutes of processing, almost everyone gets it. We’ve all been lied to. We’ve been told the middle is “safe” or “stable” or “non-objectionable,” when the reality is that the middle is one of the most dangerous places you can be. It offers the illusion of stability right up until the moment it destroys you.
This lesson is as applicable to how you structure your business as it is to how you create your marketing strategy or run your ad account. In any environment where a power law applies (and I’d argue, that’s most), the middle is not the safe haven it’s made out to be.
The Digital Graveyard: Why Nobody Cares About Rank #6
This reality is most brutal in the one place where we all compete: the SERP.
If you work in SEO (or if you work with SEOs), you’ll often hear that being on Page 1 of Google is a win. And, in some sense, it is. Being one of the top-10 results is good. But it’s still the middle.
Don’t believe me?
Look at the demand curve for search. For every 100 organic clicks (excluding the zero-click stuff + paid ads clicks) on a SERP, 68-74 go to the first 3 blue links. By the time you get to position 6, 7 or 8 - the literal "middle" of the SERP - the click-through rate flatlines to 2% to 4%.
That leads to a perverse truth: being in the middle of the P1 SERP can actually be worse than being on Page 2.
Why?
Because, if you’re on P2, you know you're failing so you direct resources to improvement. You refine your content. Improve your distribution. Add new types of media (videos, infographics, podcast snippets). You (or your SEO team) does something different - maybe a study/survey, or a different approach, or a contrarian PoV. Whatever it is, you expend resources to improve it.
But on P1 position 6? You have the illusion of visibility. You think you're in the game, but you are digital wallpaper. You’re Darius Cooper on the Eagles (who? exactly).
The same thing is true everywhere else in your organization (not just your marketing) – if you’re a middle-of-the-road product, you’ll quickly find yourself competing on price. If your creative is unremarkable? You’ll see higher CPAs, higher rCPM, lower return on ad spend (applies to broadcast, too – if your commercials aren’t good, you’ll have to spend more to get the same mindshare/market share). If your landers/website UI/UX is “fine” - you’ll find yourself working 5x harder on the acquisition side of the equation (organic, paid, referral, whatever) just to get the same kind of growth that the brands with a remarkable experience are able to achieve.
It’s a vicious cycle. The more you’re in the middle, the harder you have to work and the more resources you have to expend just to stay in sight of the leaders.
To win, you have to escape the middle. You can do it in multiple ways, but you have to get out.
Either:
- You fight/claw/innovate your way into the Top 3 (Elite)
- You target the long-tail niche where you can dominate (Efficiency)
- You stop playing that particular game
Since it’s the season, a personal example. My favorite Christmas present EVER was given to me in December, 2000. A brand-new PS2. My parents saved up for a long, long time to be able to give it to me, along with a single game: Madden 2001 (I still have it, with Eddie George on the cover). I played the Eagles on franchise mode for WEEKS. And quickly, I got frustrated – back then, PHI was a mediocre team. Like most brands, that team had some good pieces, but on the whole, it was mediocre at best. It didn’t matter what I tried to do to improve - free agents, trades, drafting - getting the team into contention was next-to-impossible.
The only way I managed to do it was (according to my Dad) categorically insane: I tanked. I traded away all of my “average” to “above-average” starters. I traded away Donovan McNabb (yeah, I know). I massively over-invested in scouting, gave all the playing time to rookies/2nd year players with interesting profiles/skill sets and when it looked like I’d win a game, I’d lose on purpose. The first franchise where I won a SB? I was 0-16 in the two prior seasons, which is how I had the resources to assemble a star-studded team capable of winning it all.
The point of that story is twofold: (1) I’d probably be fired as an NFL GM, and (2) that often, you have to play a different game in order to escape the middle. In my Madden situation, escaping upward was impossible - so I escaped downward, then used those assets to assemble a winning team.
The "Fence Sitter" Trap
I’ve talked about moving people from the middle in depth many times - specifically in the context of the 95-5 framework.
Here is the twist: The "middle is structurally disadvantaged" rule doesn't just apply to you—it applies to your customers.
We know that 95% of your audience is not currently buying. But within that group, there is a distinct "Middle" that matters more than anyone else: The Fence Sitters.
- Top 5%: Ready to buy. High intent. They will convert regardless of your marketing.
- Bottom 65%: Not interested. Low intent. Marketing to them is waste.
- Middle 30% (The Fence Sitters): These people are stuck. They have a problem, they are aware of solutions, but they are paralyzed by indecision.
This middle is your Opportunity Zone.
The problem is that most agencies and marketers obsess over the Top 5%. They fight over the people who were going to buy anyway. But the math shows that the 30% in the middle have the same conversion potential as that top tier—if you can get them to move.
This is why you cannot be in the middle.
These Fence Sitters are trapped in their own "Middle." They are scared of making the wrong choice, overwhelmed by options and looking for a reason to act.
If your marketing is "middle" - average copy, safe positioning, generic benefits, then you will never move a Fence Sitter. You will only catch the Top 5% who stumble into you.
To move the Fence Sitters (the only place where you can actually generate incremental revenue), you need to pull them out of the middle. You need to focus your resources on them and hit them with something exceptional:
- Elite Emotional Connection: Address their specific fears (Guilt, Survival, Status).
- Elite Specificity: Speak to their exact problem, not a general category.
- Elite Offer: Give them a reason to act now.
You cannot save your customers from the middle if you are stuck there yourself.
3 Rational Moves If You’re Stuck In The Middle
If you accept that the world tends to run on power laws (and you should), then you should also admit that staying in the middle is suicide.
If you find yourself there, you have 3 rational moves:
(1) Escape Upward This is the obvious path, but (as my Madden story illustrates), it’s the most difficult. You must relentlessly push to reach the top 5% of your domain. This is where the asymmetric upside lives. You stop competing on price and start competing on value, brand and scarcity.
(2) Tank (Intentionally) Take a page from Stan Hinkie’s playbook—the architect of the Philadelphia 76ers’ “Process.” This is not about surrender. It’s about recognizing when incremental improvement cannot overcome structural disadvantage.
If you cannot realistically win on quality, brand, or differentiation in a given market, the rational move is to collapse costs and extract maximum economic value while you reposition. This means you stop pretending to be competing for the top and instead design the business to win on efficiency.
Note: this is not “being cheap.” It’s owning the low-cost, high-throughput position intentionally - with discipline, clarity and ruthless focus. No one is arguing it’s glamorous to be the dollar store of your category, but there’s a reason they’ve been operating profitably for 70 years.
In an agency context, this means:
- Aggressively standardizing delivery
- Automating or offshoring anything non-differentiated
- Compressing fees in exchange for volume and predictability
- Optimizing for margin per employee, not prestige per client
You’re not trying to be admired - you’re trying to be unkillable.
On the brand side, it often means something even harder:
- Selling off or shutting down product lines where you are structurally mid-pack
- Shuttering channels (i.e. Meta) where you don’t have the resources to win
- Redirecting capital, talent and attention away from “defensible mediocrity”
- Using the freed-up resources to either dominate a niche or fund a genuine attempt at differentiation elsewhere
No matter how you do it, the idea is the same: strategic retreat in service of future optionality, not permanent austerity.
It goes without saying, but this approach is not appropriate in markets where trust, regulatory position, reputation or long-term brand equity are the product - think: healthcare, financial services, mission-critical infrastructure, defense, iconic/heritage brands. In those spaces, this kind of strategy can often destroy future optionality instead of preserving it.
(3) Stop Playing Some games will simply never reward you, no matter how hard you try. If the game is rigged against you, or the market is too crowded to crack the top 5%, the only winning move is to take your scarce resources and go play a different game entirely. That might mean abandoning a channel entirely if you’re not able to win. That might mean pivoting to a different audience. That might mean shifting your offer. That might mean completely re-thinking your product. That might mean an entirely different go-to-market strategy. It might mean all of the above.
None of these paths comes without risk. If you try to escape upward, you must have capital, time and an appetite for risk. Going from the 7th or 10th best in a particular area to the 1st, 2nd or 3rd is not easy and it is certainly not for the faint of heart. Similarly, tanking (the strategic retreat) often comes with brand + reputational risks, and stopping playing requires everyone involved (especially executives and investors) to accept a sunk cost – something far too many are unwilling to do.
When you’re in the middle, there are no easy paths out – but, as the saying goes, “easy choices, hard life; hard choices, easy life.” Choose your hard.
Where Tools Like Optmyzr Make This Possible
If you accept that the middle is death, why are you still manually managing the "middle" of your Google Ads account?
Most PPC managers spend 80% of their week tending to the "average"—routine bid adjustments, checking search terms, and fixing broken links.
This is the Middle. It feels like work, but it offers zero leverage. It is a sinkhole for your time and mental energy.
To win in a Power Law world, you need to be Elite or Efficient. Optmyzr allows you to be both.
- Be Efficient (Tank the Costs): Optmyzr automates the "middle" work. Its rule engine and scripts handle the routine hygiene—bids, budget pacing, and anomaly detection—so your operational costs drop to near zero.
- Be Elite (Escape Upward): With your time freed up, you can use Optmyzr’s advanced insights to focus entirely on the Top 5%—the creative strategy and high-leverage experiments that actually drive asymmetric returns.
Stop drowning in the middle of your ad account. Let the machines handle the average so you can focus on the exceptional.
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As you head into 2026 planning, the single most valuable thing you can do isn’t to brainstorm new ideas or set more aggressive goals - it’s to be brutally honest with yourself:
- where is your organization truly exceptional/elite?
- where is it structurally efficient?
- where are you simply stuck in the middle?
That applies to everything - product, offers, marketing, channels, people/team, roadmap - all of it. Anywhere you can’t clearly say why you win, you’re relying on habit or hope. Neither is a winning long-term strategy.
The real trap heading into 2026 is believing you can optimize your way out of the middle. Nothing could be further from the truth. Optimization only works after you’ve identified an elite capability and chosen a lane for the rest. Before that, it just preserves mediocrity.
The irony is this: your target audience is full of fence sitters - and the only way to capture them is to eliminate everything inside of your organization that is stuck in the middle.
Every organization has initiatives (or channels, products/services, offers, content or creative) it keeps alive because killing them would be uncomfortable - not because they’re effective. They feel safe, soak up resources and crowd out the work that actually creates durable advantages. That’s the middle.
So the question you ask shouldn’t be, “What should we add in 2026?” The question to ask is, “ Where are we willing to be extreme?”
- extreme differentiation (Elite)
- extreme efficiency (Efficient)
- extreme focus (Exit)
If an initiative doesn’t push you toward one of those outcomes, it isn’t a strategy - it’s a liability.
Don’t drift into next year; declare a position and ruthlessly cut everything that doesn’t help you attain it. Sometimes you have to trade the franchise player to build a championship team.
Cheers,
Sam
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