Shauna Thoresen, who managed $2.5 million in ad spend in 2025, says messaging is the key to ads that work in 2026. She breaks it down into PB&J: identify the prospect's pain point, show how you solve it, and match your language to where they are in their awareness. In a trust recession, this framework keeps conversions up.
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I am going to tell you the single most important thing that is going to determine whether or not your ads and even your branding is still converting and successful in 2026. Now, in 2025, I oversaw over $2.5 million in ad spend, and over $2 million of that was in the Meta Special Ad category. So working with licensed professionals in regulated industries like insurance, Medicare, financial advisors, estate planning, and so on. In addition to that, I had the privilege of performing multiple different ad audits for both FMOs and also large agencies. And thanks to my membership, the Inner Circle, where I work closely with independent insurance agents who want to learn how to generate their own exclusive leads, I had the ability to see in hundreds of different independent agents' ad accounts. So I have seen what is actually working with agents that are spending anywhere from just $5 a day all the way up to $20 or trying to scale scale into a higher ad budget. All that to say, I have a very good pulse on what is working and what is no longer working and what is going to be changing in 2026. And that brings me to part 2, and that is the most important part of your ads is the messaging. You must have messaging that resonates with the user that is on the other side. Now, especially as we live through this trust recession where people are very cautious about who they're going to be trusting online, having messaging that hits home is going to be the most important thing that you can possibly do. Now, I have a very simple framework that I use to kind of break this down. I call it the PB&J. So P, you need to get really clear on what the pain point is that the people you want to attract are experiencing. Are they worried about their family? Do they want to make sure that their children are protected? Are they unsure if they have enough in retirement? Are they not sure what's going to happen whenever they pass? Do they have questions about if their doctor is in network? B is for the benefit that you bring. How are you going to be able to swoop in and rescue them like the hero that you are. You need to be able to verbalize it in a way that they can understand. And J stands for where they are at in the journey whenever it comes to becoming aware of your product. For example, there's many people that don't even know that annuities exist, but they do know that they need to be worried about their retirement. So if you hit them with an ad that talks all about annuities, you're going to lose them. But whenever you have an ad that speaks about how you need to make sure that you have enough to continue your lifestyle well into retirement, they're going to listen, and then you get to educate them along the way. So in 2026, the most important thing that you possibly can do is master your messaging and be able to speak to people about the pain point, the benefit, and then especially where they're at in the journey. Follow along while I show you how to stay ahead of the game in 2026.
