What we are thinking about.
Notes from running 8 publications and building tools for them. Restaurant SEO, local marketing, the boring parts that move the needle.
MrBeast’s Creator Platform: The Quiet Coup for a Programmatic Creator Economy
MrBeast is flipping the script on the creator economy with a new platform that ditches lazy agencies and grift for programmatic infrastructure.
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Ad Tech’s OpenAI Lovefest: Déjà Vu or Strategic Sellout?
Ad tech’s rush to embrace OpenAI is less partnership and more panic — a replay of past mistakes where dependency leads to obsolescence. The future demands real AI ownership, not buzzword worship.
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Mail Metro Media Throws In The Towel On Ad Volume, Bets Big On PMP Growth And Stack Unification
Mail Metro Media is ditching the ad flood for a smarter, leaner approach, aiming for 300% PMP growth by unifying its ad stack and cutting ad volume.
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Warner Bros. Discovery’s Programmatic Upfront: How Lazy TV Ad Sales Are Getting a Tech Makeover
Warner Bros. Discovery’s move to embed programmatic advertising into its upfront deals signals a necessary shake-up in the outdated, lazy world of TV ad sales.
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Disney’s ‘Rivals’ Season 2 Partners with Waitrose to Weaponize Streaming Launches as Cultural Landmines
Disney’s partnership with Waitrose for ‘Rivals’ season two is less a creative win and more a symptom of streaming’s lazy brand synergy epidemic.
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Marketing’s Socio-Economic Pay Gap Hits Four-Year High — And It’s Killing Your Bottom Line
The marketing industry’s socio-economic pay gap has surged to a four-year high, revealing a deeper crisis that’s more than just a PR headache — it’s a fundamental business failure.
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Why 1950s-Era Workplace Systems Are Destroying Parents’ Careers—and No One’s Fixing It
The corporate world’s outdated parental policies are stifling careers and reinforcing archaic gender roles. The Marketing Week podcast pulls no punches on why 1950s-era systems must die.
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Liquid I.V. and FLO’s Retro Summer Campaign: Nostalgia Meets Hydration in a Marketing Gimmick
Liquid I.V. leans on a retro flavor and a British R&B group to sell hydration this summer—classic marketing laziness dressed as innovation.
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TelevisaUnivision’s Upfront Pitch: Super Bowl Hype Meets Latino Media Ambition
TelevisaUnivision’s upfront event mixes music, microdramas, and a bold Super Bowl pitch to shake up how advertisers reach the Latino audience during football’s biggest night.
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Adobe’s AI Fantasy: How Brand Control Becomes Brand Chains in the Name of Creativity
Adobe’s claim to boost creativity with AI is mostly a cage disguised as a playground, locking brands into walled gardens under the guise of 'brand control.'
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BuzzFeed’s Streaming Pivot Under Byron Allen Is a Desperate Play for Living Room Relevance
BuzzFeed’s pivot to streaming under Byron Allen reveals the harsh reality: digital media’s living room dreams often crash into resource and relevance gaps. It’s a desperate gamble, not a masterstroke.
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Johnnie Walker’s Reinvention Is a Brutal Reminder: Creativity Isn’t a Campaign, It’s Survival
Johnnie Walker’s reinvention under Josh Dean demolishes the myth that creativity is a short-term stunt. It’s a ruthless, long-term growth engine or you get left behind.
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AI Content Detectors in 2026 Are Still a Joke — Here’s How Marketers Completely Outsmart Them
In 2026, AI content detectors from giants like OpenAI and Turnitin still fail to reliably flag AI-generated text, with false negatives exceeding 70%.
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Applebot-Extended Visibility: The Secret Black Hole No Publisher Talks About
Applebot quietly crawled 4.5 billion URLs in 2023, yet publishers see zero transparency or actionable data from it.
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IndexNow Is a Complete Waste of Bandwidth — Stop Pretending It Moves the Needle
Since its launch by Microsoft Bing and Yandex in 2021, IndexNow has failed to deliver measurable ranking improvements or crawl efficiency benefits.
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Johnnie Walker’s ‘Keep Walking’ Is More Than a Slogan—It’s a Blueprint for Long-Term Brand Survival
Josh Dean’s reinvention of Johnnie Walker’s ‘Keep Walking’ campaign exposes the industry’s obsession with short-term hacks and proves that real creativity is a long game.
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Duluth’s AI Media Buying Divide: Smart Bidding Yes, Brand Storytelling Hell No
Duluth Trading Company smartly trusts AI to handle ad bidding but draws the line at brand storytelling, exposing the overhyped promises of AI-driven creativity.
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OpenAI’s New Shopping Ads in ChatGPT: Another Layer of Algorithmic Bullshit for E-Commerce
OpenAI’s new feature automates product ads inside ChatGPT, but it’s less innovation and more a lazy repackaging of old e-commerce ad tricks. Brands beware.
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