For decades, marketers have lived and died by the funnel. We’ve been taught to meticulously guide customers through a linear journey: Awareness, then Consideration, then Conversion. We build complex campaigns for each stage, hoping to gently nudge people from one step to the next. But in the age of AI-powered advertising, this rigid, outdated model is breaking.
Your customers no longer follow a straight path. They bounce between YouTube reviews, Google searches, social media, and your website in a chaotic, unpredictable dance. Forcing them into a neat funnel is like trying to fit a river into a garden hose. The good news is that there’s a better way. The future of advertising isn’t about the funnel; it’s about marketing signals.
This guide will explain why the old funnel is obsolete and introduce a new framework for understanding the data that truly matters: the “Core 8” Marketing Signals that power modern Google Ads.
Why the Traditional Marketing Funnel is Broken
The marketing funnel was designed for an era of information scarcity. Today, we live in an era of information overload. A customer’s journey to purchase is no longer a straight line; it’s a complex web of interactions across multiple devices and platforms.
Google’s AI understands this. It doesn’t see a “funnel”; it sees a massive, interconnected cloud of data points—or signals. It can predict a user’s intent with terrifying accuracy based on the countless signals they generate every day. Trying to force this complex reality into a simple three-stage funnel limits your potential and ignores the power of the AI you have at your fingertips.
The New Paradigm: Understanding the “Core 8” Marketing Signals
To succeed with Google Ads in 2025, you need to stop thinking about a linear funnel and start thinking about the quality of the signals you feed the AI. We’ve broken these down into the “Core 8″—the eight core categories of signals that determine who sees your ads and when.
1. Search Intent (The Mind): The most powerful signal. What is the user actively typing into the Google search bar right now? This is a direct declaration of their immediate needs and wants.
2. Content Consumption (The Eyes & Ears): What content is the user engaging with? This includes the YouTube videos they watch, the topics of websites they browse on the Google Display Network, and the articles they read in Google Discover.
3. Location & Proximity (The Body): Where is the user physically located? Have they recently visited a competitor’s store or a location relevant to your business? This signal is crucial for local businesses and location-based targeting.
4. App Usage (The Hands): What apps does the user have on their phone? How often do they use them? This provides deep insights into their lifestyle, habits, and interests.
5. Past Purchase Behavior (The History): What has the user bought in the past? Google uses anonymized data to understand a user’s purchase history, making it a powerful predictor of future buying behavior.
6. Demographic & In-Market Data (The Identity): This includes the user’s age, gender, and parental status, as well as Google’s powerful “In-Market” segments, which identify users who are actively researching and close to making a purchase in a specific category.
7. Website Interaction (The Footprints): These are the signals you own. Has the user visited your website before? Which pages did they look at? Did they add a product to their cart? This data, collected via your Google Ads tag, is essential for retargeting.
8. Connected Devices (The Ecosystem): Is the user interacting with your brand via a smart speaker, a connected TV, or a tablet? Understanding their device ecosystem allows for a more holistic advertising approach.
How to Leverage Signals in Your Google Ads Strategy
Shifting from a funnel to a signal-based mindset requires a change in strategy.
- Trust AI-Powered Campaigns: Embrace campaigns like Performance Max, which are designed from the ground up to leverage the full spectrum of marketing signals. You provide the creative and the goals, and the AI finds the customers.
- Feed the AI High-Quality Data: Your job is to provide the best possible “first-party” signals. This means uploading your Customer Lists, building detailed retargeting audiences, and setting up robust conversion tracking.
- Use Value-Based Bidding: Don’t just tell Google you want “conversions.” Tell it which conversions are worth more. By assigning values to your goals, you teach the AI which signals lead to your most profitable customers.
- Embrace Broad Match Keywords: In modern search campaigns, broad match keywords combined with smart bidding allow the AI to use the full range of signals to determine if a user’s query is relevant, even if it doesn’t match your keyword exactly.
Essential Tools for a Signal-Based Strategy
- Google Ads: The platform where you put these strategies into action, particularly through Performance Max and smart bidding.
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Your primary tool for analyzing user behavior on your site and building the sophisticated audiences you need to feed the AI.
- A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platform: Essential for organizing your customer data so you can upload it to Google Ads as a Customer List, one of the most powerful signals you have.
Conclusion: Putting It All Together
The rigid, linear marketing funnel is a relic of a bygone era. Success in the age of AI is about understanding and leveraging the complex web of marketing signals that your customers generate every second. By embracing the “Core 8” framework, you can shift your focus from forcing customers down a path to simply feeding Google’s powerful AI the best possible data and letting it find your next customer for you.
What Should You Do Now?
- Audit Your Data Sources: Are you using all the signals you have available? Have you uploaded your customer list? Is your website conversion tracking set up correctly?
- Launch a Performance Max Campaign: If you haven’t already, create a PMax campaign. This is the easiest way to start leveraging a signal-based approach.
- Shift Your Mindset: The next time you build a campaign, ask yourself: “What signals am I giving the AI?” instead of “What stage of the funnel is this for?”
Frequently Asked Questions
What are marketing signals?
Marketing signals are the thousands of data points and user behaviors (like search history, videos watched, and location) that AI platforms like Google Ads use to understand a user’s intent and predict their future actions.
Is the marketing funnel completely dead?
It’s not “dead,” but it is an overly simplistic model for the modern, non-linear customer journey. It’s still useful as a basic concept, but a signal-based approach is far more effective for managing AI-driven ad campaigns.
How can I improve the signals my Google Ads account uses?
The best way is to provide high-quality first-party data. This includes setting up detailed conversion