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.
Budweiser’s 150th Anniversary Campaign: A Red, White, and Blue Overkill
Budweiser’s 150th anniversary campaign drowns audiences in patriotic clichés, exposing how big brands use flag-waving as a lazy shortcut instead of genuine storytelling.
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Rao’s Hires Goodby Silverstein & Partners to Fake Iconic Status—Because Authenticity Was Too Hard
Rao’s pasta sauce is hiring Goodby Silverstein & Partners to manufacture an 'iconic' brand image—because real authenticity takes work no one wants to do.
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AI Content Detector Accuracy in 2026: Why Your 'Safety Net' Is Garbage and Hurting Your Strategy
The AI content detectors you’re relying on are paper tigers—clunky, outdated, and actively sabotaging your SEO and content game in 2026. Here’s why dumping them is overdue.
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Why IndexNow Is a Peak Nothingburger: Debunking the 'Instant Indexing' Cargo Cult for Publishers
IndexNow promises instant indexing nirvana, but the reality is a lazy agency grift dressed up as innovation. Here’s why it’s a peak nothingburger for publishers.
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Agentic Marketing’s Multicultural Mirage: Why The Industry Still Can’t Get It Right
The so-called agentic marketing wave championed by agencies and brands alike is just another hollow buzzword, masking a persistent failure to truly serve multicultural audiences.
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Publishers Ditch Old-School Ad Sales for Outcome-Obsessed Teams — About Damn Time
Publishers are finally shaking off the dead weight of legacy ad sales, replacing checkbox hunters with outcome-driven teams focused on real client success. The era of meaningless impressions is over.
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Middle East War Shatters Advertising Budgets with Unpriceable Uncertainty
The Middle East war has exposed the advertising industry's fragile illusion of control, turning predictability into chaos no algorithm can tame.
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TJ Palma: From College Athlete to Airbnb Hustler to Love Island’s Reluctant Content King
TJ Palma’s leap from college athlete and Airbnb host to Love Island star isn’t your typical influencer fairy tale. He’s rewriting the playbook on how creators build real business, not just fleeting fame.
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Push Notifications and Peer Sharing Are Quietly Hijacking Publisher Traffic — And No One’s Talking About It
Push notifications and peer-to-peer sharing are quietly overtaking Google as the primary traffic sources for publishers, according to new Chartbeat data. It’s time to ditch SEO grifts and build real engagement.
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AMC’s Upfront Playbook: More Than Just Nostalgia, It’s a Sports and Franchise Power Grab
AMC Global Media is redefining upfront season by ditching generic ad slots for tailored sports and franchise opportunities that actually engage audiences and advertisers alike.
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Meta Throws Open Its Ad Platform to Third-Party AI — Brace for the Next Wave of Marketing Automation Bullshit
Meta’s new AI connectors for ads are just another layer of automation hype in a space already drowning in vendor grift and lazy marketing tactics.
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UK Ad Spend Soars to £46.7bn in 2025 — Yet It’s Not All Roses for the Market
UK ad spend hit a staggering £46.7bn in 2025, nearly doubling since 2018 and outpacing GDP growth. But this explosive growth masks a bloated, inefficient market still dominated by legacy platforms and outdated practices.
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Retail Media’s Growth Nightmare: Silos, Shitty Metrics, and Industry Spin Are Killing Profitability
Retail media’s growth is being throttled by siloed data, unreliable metrics, and a lack of industry collaboration, according to execs at ADWEEK House in Miami.
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Evening News Ratings Collapse: CBS Tanks Below 4 Million, WNT Alone Shows Growth
CBS Evening News hits a three-week low under 4 million viewers, while NBC’s Nightly News stands alone with week-to-week growth. Legacy media’s complacency is showing.
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GMA Shrinks Today’s Morning News Demo Lead as All Networks Show Gains — But Don’t Call It a Comeback
ABC’s Good Morning America narrows the gap on Today’s demo lead as all three major networks post modest gains in the advertiser-coveted morning news ratings. But don’t call it a comeback.
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Linda Yaccarino’s Defense of X’s Ad Business: A PR Smoke Screen for Elon’s Revenue Collapse
Former X CEO Linda Yaccarino claims the platform’s ad business isn’t falling short, but the numbers and reality tell a brutally different story.
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Amazon’s $70 Billion Ad Revenue Is the Real Reason AWS Keeps Roaring and AI Gets Fed
Amazon’s ad revenue just hit $70 billion, fueling AWS’s AI-driven growth and rewriting the rules of ecommerce and advertising. The SEO grift can’t keep up.
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Omnicom’s AI Gambit: Finally Ditching the Ad Tech Parasites That Bleed the Industry Dry
Omnicom is testing AI-driven media buying to cut out the ad tech middlemen that have long bled the programmatic ecosystem dry. This is a rare sign the industry’s finally serious about change.
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