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.
Meta and Pinterest Pivot Hard on CTV APIs at Miami’s Ad Tech Circus
Meta and Pinterest paraded their CTV APIs at Miami’s ad tech jamboree, but beneath the gloss lies the same old scaling and measurement headaches. APIs aren’t magic.
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Adobe Bets Big on Firefly to Lock Down the AI-Native Creator Market
Adobe is pushing Firefly to become the Photoshop moment for AI-native creators, but can it escape its legacy and truly innovate in a crowded AI tool market?
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Allica Bank’s TV Blitz Is a Spotlight on the B2B Marketing Vacuum No One Wants to Admit Exists
Allica Bank’s bold TV campaign targeting underserved SMEs exposes fintech marketing’s lazy reliance on digital hype and the urgent need for real brand-building.
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Cable News Ratings Crash as Slow News Week Exposes Industry Fragility
The week of April 13, 2026, exposed cable news’s brutal dependency on nonstop breaking stories as every major network saw viewership plummet during a slow news cycle.
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Netflix’s Running Point Season 2: Branded Content or Just Blatant Ad Infiltration?
Netflix’s Running Point Season 2 turns from espionage thriller into a billboard for State Farm, DoorDash, and Lexus, exposing the streaming giant’s shameless brand infiltration.
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Inside CNN’s Control Room Chaos: How the WHCD Broadcast Pivoted from Banter to Breaking News
CNN’s control room transformed from casual commentary to crisis command during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, revealing the raw reality behind live breaking news coverage.
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Pinterest’s CTV Audience Extension: Another Overhyped Play in the Streaming Ad Gold Rush
Pinterest’s new CTV audience extension via TV Scientific is less innovation and more ad tech catch-up, promising cross-platform targeting that won’t deliver the ROI marketers hope for.
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Dentsu’s North America Revival Plan: New Leadership to Fix a Flailing Empire
Dentsu’s latest leadership shuffle in North America is a desperate bid to fix years of client neglect and operational inertia. But will new client-experience roles be enough to revive the flailing empire?
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Marketing’s Age of Opinion Is Dead: Why Data and Knowledge Are Taking Over
Marketing has been drowning in opinion-driven nonsense. The future demands real knowledge, data-driven strategies, and a ruthless rejection of lazy SEO grifts.
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VaynerX’s Tamara Group: A Production-Led Agency or Just More Buzzword Bullshit?
VaynerX’s new Tamara Group bets on a ‘production-led’ agency model—a repackaged content factory dressed as innovation that prioritizes volume over creative strategy.
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Marketing’s Dirty Little Secret: Succession Planning Is a Graveyard No One Wants to Visit
Brands’ failure to plan marketing succession isn’t just bad HR—it’s a strategic disaster waiting to explode when key talent leaves. Ignoring this is corporate malpractice.
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Channel 4 and Lloyds Double Down on Black-Owned Businesses With £200K Advertising Jackpot—But Is TV Exposure Enough?
Channel 4 and Lloyds Bank’s Black in Business initiative boosts its ad prize to £200K, but TV exposure alone won’t fix the systemic gaps Black entrepreneurs face.
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Royal Ballet and Opera’s Rebrand: Why Restlessness Beats Legacy Complacency Every Time
The Royal Ballet and Opera’s rebrand isn’t just a facelift; it’s a brutal wake-up call for legacy brands clinging to complacency. They prove restlessness and measurement beat dusty heritage every time.
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Hendrick’s Gin’s AI-Theater Mashup Is Marketing Bullshit Dressed as Innovation
Hendrick’s gin’s latest launch leans on AI and theater for buzz, but it’s marketing fluff disguised as innovation. The industry’s obsession with surface-level AI is producing flashy yet hollow spectacles.
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Walmart’s Streaming Ad Marketplace Is a Trojan Horse for Small Business Budgets
Walmart’s new Connect Select marketplace bundles connected TV ads into its DSP, targeting small businesses with promises of democratized access but delivering a walled garden with hidden costs.
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How Agencies Weaponize Creators as Human Guinea Pigs to 'Innovate' Campaigns
Agencies like Horizon Media are burning out creators by turning them into disposable test subjects for on-the-fly ad experiments — and calling it innovation. It’s exploitation disguised as strategy.
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‘Who Owns Growth?’ The Marketing World’s Latest Circus of New Titles and Zero Real Change
Marketing’s obsession with new ‘growth’ roles is just another rebrand stunt unless companies fix the organizational chaos beneath. Hiring titles without ownership is a waste.
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AI’s B2B Buyer Journey Shake-Up and Apple’s CEO Shuffle: What Marketers Need to Know
AI is rewriting the B2B buyer journey while Apple’s CEO change signals a privacy-first marketing era. Lazy agencies and grift sellers beware: the game has changed.
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