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.
The Trade Desk Ditches Its Overhyped ‘Periodic Table’ Dashboard for Customizable Metrics—and It’s About Damn Time
The Trade Desk is quietly retiring its infamous Periodic Table dashboard in favor of customizable metrics, finally dumping a bloated, one-size-fits-all design that frustrated advertisers for years.
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Why PR’s Obsession with Influence Is the Brand Growth Scam Nobody Calls Out
The PR industry's obsession with influencer marketing is a smoke-and-mirrors hustle selling vanity metrics over real growth. It's time brands demand accountability.
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Vox Media’s Roll-Up Bubble Bursts: The Grim Reality Behind the Acquisition Frenzy
After a decade of aggressive acquisitions, Vox Media is offloading many of its brands, exposing the harsh realities behind the digital media roll-up craze.
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UK Retailers Are Blind to AI Shoppers Because Their Sites Are Garbage for Machines
AI-driven shopping is booming, but most UK retail sites remain unreadable to AI, killing their visibility and sales. Here’s why that’s a colossal mistake.
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Midlife Women Are Being Erased by Lazy Marketing — Here’s Why Brands Must Stop Ignoring Them
Advertising’s depiction of women over 40 is a lazy, male-driven echo chamber that ignores a powerful audience. Brands must overhaul their creative teams or keep losing relevance.
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‘Who Owns Growth?’ The Marketing Industry’s Hollow Role Inflation Crisis
New ‘growth’ roles are more window dressing than real change. Without structural shifts, marketing’s latest trend is just cargo cult bullshit.
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Clicks That Don’t Convert Are Just Vanity Metrics: Stop Worshipping Volume Over Value
Clicks alone are a vanity metric that mislead marketers and waste budgets. It’s time to shift focus from volume to value and demand real business impact.
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AI Isn’t Just Buzz: It’s Destroying B2B Buyer Illusions and Apple’s Playing CEO Musical Chairs
AI is tearing apart the outdated B2B buyer journey and Apple’s CEO swap signals a tech leadership shift no one in marketing can ignore.
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Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement’s Identity Infrastructure 2.0: A Privacy Trainwreck Disguised as Progress
The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement’s latest Identity Infrastructure 2.0 proposal promises to fix TV and streaming’s fractured identity problem but at a steep privacy cost.
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Financial Times Gambles on Personality-Driven Vodcasts to Fuel Subscription Growth
The Financial Times is betting on personality-driven vodcasts on YouTube to forge deeper audience ties and boost subscriptions, recognizing that star power off-platform may be their best shot at growth.
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The IRL Event Comeback: Why Creators Are Ditching Vanity Metrics to Own Their Audience
Creators are rejecting the hollow vanity metrics of social platforms in favor of IRL events that let them control their audience and unlock real engagement and revenue.
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AI’s Predictability Is Killing Marketing Creativity — And No Agency Wants to Admit It
Marketing strategists are confronting the grim reality that AI’s predictable outputs stifle creativity, forcing a reckoning over how much machines should drive strategy.
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Live Streaming Isn’t Just TV’s Future — It’s a $4 Billion Reckoning Publishers Can’t Dodge
Live streaming has shattered the old TV model, creating a $4 billion global market that legacy publishers can no longer ignore. The future belongs to those who build scalable, real-time streaming infrastructure.
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PayPal’s Streaming Adtech Play: A Cash Grab Disguised as Innovation
PayPal’s new streaming adtech partnerships with Spectrum Reach, Tubi, and Warner Bros. Discovery promise better ad measurement but mostly serve as a cash grab disguised as innovation.
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Social Media Week 2026: What the Real Players Said and Why Most Panels Missed the Point
Social Media Week 2026 finally gave us unfiltered insights from the people who actually run social media — and it’s a brutal reality check for brands still chasing hype.
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Code and Theory’s New President JJ Schmuckler: Another Overhyped AI Guide for CMOs Lost in the Noise
Code and Theory’s new president JJ Schmuckler is being hailed as the AI guide CMOs need, but it’s just another agency playing the tired AI transformation grift. Real AI help requires more than buzzwords.
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John Ternus Faces the Real Apple Ad Challenge: Scaling Stealthy Services in Cook’s Shadow
John Ternus inherits Tim Cook’s stealthy Apple ad empire — but scaling it without losing discretion and trust is a far tougher play than most realize.
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Hulu’s ‘Get Real House’ Sells Out to Brands, Turns Reality TV into a Marketing Circus
Hulu’s ‘Get Real House’ has morphed from reality TV experiment into a branded content circus, turning authentic moments into scripted sales pitches. This is what selling out looks like.
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