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.
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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Possible Miami Reveals AI’s Double-Edged Sword: Promise Crushed by Hype and Half-Baked Execution
The Possible Miami conference exposed the stark divide between AI’s promise and the grift surrounding its marketing adoption, warning brands to stop chasing hype and start demanding real results.
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Omnicom’s Agency Graveyard Grows: 180 and adam&eveDDB NY Cannibalized Into Lola USA
Omnicom shutters 180 and adam&eveDDB NY, merging them into the new Lola USA brand — another grim reminder that agency consolidation is peak corporate theater, not innovation.
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Why Retail Media Budgets Are Getting Hijacked by Smart Shelves and No One’s Talking About It
Retail media budgets are quietly shifting from digital ads to smart shelf technology, turning aisles into data gold mines that directly influence buying decisions.
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The CW’s Streaming Hustle: ESPN and Roku Deals Reveal a Network Desperate to Escape Linear Mediocrity
The CW’s new streaming deals with ESPN and Roku are less innovation and more a last-ditch effort to escape linear TV irrelevance. This scramble highlights a deeper problem: content that just isn’t compelling enough to thrive in streaming’s brutal ecosystem.
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The Pop Star Collab Grift: What Maybelline, Nespresso, and Joaquina Got Right That Your Agency Didn't
Celebrity-brand partnerships often fall flat because agencies treat them as quick fixes. Maybelline, Nespresso, and Joaquina show what real collaboration looks like.
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iProspect North America CEO Liz Rutgersson Exits After Under Three Years—Dentsu’s Perpetual Executive Carousel Spins On
Liz Rutgersson, CEO of iProspect North America and longtime Dentsu executive, is stepping down after less than three years, spotlighting the agency world’s chronic leadership instability.
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Legacy Brands Aren’t Broken — They’re Just Boring: Why Reintroductions Trump Rebrands Every Time
Legacy brands don’t need shiny new logos; they need strategic reintroductions that leverage decades of trust and cultural capital. Rebrands are often lazy agency grift.
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The Rural Marketing Lie: How Brands Ignore 46 Million Americans While Peddling Stereotypes
Marketers have long misrepresented rural America with lazy stereotypes, ignoring the diverse realities of 46 million people and missing out on a vast market opportunity.
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Telemundo’s World Cup Play: The Biggest Spanish-Language Ad Blitz That Advertisers Have to Watch
Telemundo is doubling down on the World Cup with record-breaking Spanish-language ad investments, forcing advertisers to rethink their approach to Hispanic audiences.
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Omnicom’s Latest Agency Shuffle: Lola USA Swallows 180 and adam&eveDDB NY — Another Day, Another Identity Crisis
Omnicom folds 180 and adam&eveDDB NY into Lola USA, signaling yet another desperate agency consolidation that papered over deeper industry rot.
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Retail Media’s Dirty Secret: Why Your Aisle Is the Next Ad Tech Battleground
The physical retail aisle is evolving into a hyper-intelligent ad channel, forcing a seismic shift in how brands allocate retail media budgets.
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Publishers Are Fumbling Deepfake Verification While AI Fakery Runs Wild
Deepfakes have shattered the trust publishers once took for granted, exposing lazy fact-checking and hollow AI defenses as the industry’s fatal weaknesses.
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