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.
Code and Theory Hires JJ Schmuckler to Babysit CMOs Lost in the AI Fog
Code and Theory’s new president JJ Schmuckler is stepping into the AI chaos to help CMOs cut through the hype and grasp what actually matters in digital transformation.
Read →
Tim Cook Made Apple Ads Invisible Gold; John Ternus Faces the Nightmare of Scaling That Secret Sauce
Tim Cook turned Apple’s discreet ad business into a silent revenue powerhouse. His successor, John Ternus, faces the brutal task of scaling that success without selling out Apple's privacy-first ethos.
Read →
Tim Cook Made Apple Ads Invisible Gold; John Ternus Faces the Nightmare of Scaling That Secret Sauce
Tim Cook turned Apple’s discreet ad business into a silent revenue powerhouse. His successor, John Ternus, faces the brutal task of scaling that success without selling out Apple's privacy-first ethos.
Read →
Hulu’s Get Real House: Brand Cameos Masquerading as Reality TV Stardom in Year Two
Hulu’s Get Real House doubles down on branded content by weaving brands directly into its reality show this year, turning participants into walking commercials. It’s a move that highlights the ongoing grift of commodified authenticity in modern marketing.
Read →
Tom Fishburne’s Marketoonist Nails the Human Element Missing from Marketing’s Machine Age
Tom Fishburne’s Marketoonist exposes the marketing industry’s dangerous drift away from human insight toward soulless automation and AI hype.
Read →
Hulu’s Get Real House: Brand Cameos Masquerading as Reality TV Stardom in Year Two
Hulu’s Get Real House doubles down on branded content by weaving brands directly into its reality show this year, turning participants into walking commercials. It’s a move that highlights the ongoing grift of commodified authenticity in modern marketing.
Read →
IPA Calls Out ‘Opaque’ Walled Gardens, Demands Industry-Wide Measurement Overhaul
The IPA is calling out the marketing industry’s dangerous reliance on opaque walled garden data and demanding a shift to transparent, joint measurement standards.
Read →
Santander’s ‘Digital with a Human Touch’ Is Just Another Bland Global Brand Play
Santander’s new global brand positioning touting a “digital with a human touch” approach is just another shallow corporate play. It masks deeper strategic laziness with buzzwords and a one-size-fits-all creative platform.
Read →
Tom Fishburne’s Marketoonist Nails the Human Element Missing from Marketing’s Machine Age
Tom Fishburne’s Marketoonist exposes the marketing industry’s dangerous drift away from human insight toward soulless automation and AI hype.
Read →
Sanlorenzo’s Brand Playbook: Why Luxury Yachts Are Finally Learning from Fashion and Cars
Sanlorenzo is ditching specs-heavy yacht marketing in favor of emotional branding inspired by luxury fashion and automotive giants. It’s a necessary shake-up in a stale industry.
Read →
IPA Calls Out ‘Opaque’ Walled Gardens, Demands Industry-Wide Measurement Overhaul
The IPA is calling out the marketing industry’s dangerous reliance on opaque walled garden data and demanding a shift to transparent, joint measurement standards.
Read →
Santander’s ‘Digital with a Human Touch’ Is Just Another Bland Global Brand Play
Santander’s new global brand positioning touting a “digital with a human touch” approach is just another shallow corporate play. It masks deeper strategic laziness with buzzwords and a one-size-fits-all creative platform.
Read →
Sanlorenzo’s Brand Playbook: Why Luxury Yachts Are Finally Learning from Fashion and Cars
Sanlorenzo is ditching specs-heavy yacht marketing in favor of emotional branding inspired by luxury fashion and automotive giants. It’s a necessary shake-up in a stale industry.
Read →
Schema.org Adoption Gaps Are the SEO Industry's Biggest Unspoken Failure - Here's How Lazy Agencies Keep It That Way
The SEO world loves to pretend schema.org is a solved problem, but lazy agencies and clueless “10x” outfits have turned structured data into a joke. Here’s why ignoring schema means leaving money on the table—and how only brutal honesty can fix it.
Read →
IndexNow Is a Marketing Scam: The Truth About Its Zero Impact on Real Crawl and Ranking Signals
IndexNow promises instant indexing and better rankings, but it’s nothing more than a marketing stunt serving vendor egos, not site owners. Here’s why it’s a hollow band-aid.
Read →
Yoast and Rank Math's AI Features Are SEO Dead Weight in 2026: Why Plugin Bloat Kills More Than Your Site Speed
Yoast, Rank Math, and their AI gimmicks are nothing but SEO dead weight, dragging down sites with bloat while peddling hollow promises. It's time to call out this lazy plugin nonsense.
Read →
Why Consumer Brands Betting on LinkedIn’s ‘Creator Economy’ Are Smarter Than You Think
Consumer brands like The League are ditching the social media noise to capitalize on LinkedIn’s creator economy, targeting a wealthy, intentional audience rather than chasing empty scale.
Read →
Publishers Admit Defeat in Traffic Wars, Celebrate Commerce Conversion Gains Instead
As traffic declines, publishers like Forbes and Apartment Therapy prove that commerce conversions and CTR matter more than ever, exposing the futility of chasing raw audience numbers.
Read →