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.
Ethnicity Pay Gap in Marketing Industry: Progress Is a Lie and Diversity Is Just Lip Service
The marketing industry's ethnicity pay gap remains stubbornly flat, exposing diversity pledges as performative and leaving diverse talent feeling sidelined and underpaid.
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B2B Marketing’s Humor Crisis: Why Playing It Safe Is Killing Your ROI
B2B marketing’s fear of humor is a lazy excuse that’s killing engagement and ROI. It’s time to ditch the corporate-speak and embrace the effectiveness of being funny.
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Disney’s Super Bowl Ad Playbook: Why Cash Alone Won’t Buy You a Spot in 2027
Disney’s Super Bowl ad strategy for 2027 isn’t about money alone — it demands integrated campaigns and strategic partnerships that weed out lazy advertisers.
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SEO Agencies in 2026 Are Still Grifting You—Here’s How to Cut Through Their Bullshit
In 2026, the SEO agency racket is as broken as ever. Despite promises, 73% of clients report zero measurable ROI from “10x agencies.”
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llms.txt and Perplexity: Why This New Fantasized Ranking Signal Is a Total Joke
llms.txt emerged in 2023 as a supposed breakthrough in SEO ranking signals, yet it remains a glorified placebo with zero verified impact.
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AI Content Detectors in 2026 Are Still Bullshit—Your Site's AI-Generated Content Is Safe
As of mid-2026, popular AI content detectors like OpenAI's GPTZero and Copyleaks still fail to reliably flag AI-written text, making fears about AI content penalties mostly unfounded.
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Disney’s Super Bowl Ads Are No Longer Just About Cash—Welcome to the Era of Strategic Bribery
Disney’s ad sales chief Rita Ferro reveals that scoring a Super Bowl 2027 spot requires more than just writing a big check—it demands strategic integration and partnership value.
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Omnicom’s Sneaky Shuffle: Flywheel Moves Into Media Group to Mask Outcome-Driven Weakness
Omnicom’s stealthy move to fold Flywheel into its media group highlights the agency world’s ongoing struggle to genuinely integrate outcomes with media spend. It’s a defensive pivot disguised as innovation.
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Marketing’s Gender Pay Gap Just Hit a Five-Year Peak—Wake Up or Keep Pretending
The marketing industry’s gender pay gap has reached a five-year high, exposing the hypocrisy behind its diversity claims. Real change is overdue.
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BBC Studios’ Shelley Macintyre Calls Out Corporate Complacency: ‘Take Risks and Be Humble’ Is the Real Leadership Mantra
Shelley Macintyre of BBC Studios calls out the lazy status quo: lifelong learning, risk-taking, and humility are the real leadership essentials in a sea of marketing grift.
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Penguin Random House’s $1M Media Gamble Exposes the Hollow Promise of ‘Content Marketing’
Penguin Random House spent $1 million turning a newsletter and podcast from content marketing into a standalone brand, highlighting what lazy publishers get wrong about content strategy.
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The Trade Desk’s Chief Strategy Officer Samantha Jacobson Jumps Ship to OpenAI—Here’s Why It Matters
Samantha Jacobson’s move from The Trade Desk to OpenAI is a wake-up call: the future of adtech is AI, and legacy platforms are running out of time to catch up.
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Vanity Metrics Are the Silent Killer of Social Media Strategy—Here’s Why You Should Stop Chasing Likes
Chasing likes and follower counts without linking social media metrics to real business results is a recipe for failure. Richelle Batuigas exposes why vanity metrics are killing your social strategy.
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From Cadillac Ads to CEO Moves: Melissa Grady Dias Breaks the Mold in Preventive Healthcare Tech
Melissa Grady Dias, formerly Cadillac’s marketing lead, is now CEO of a tech-powered preventive healthcare startup, aiming to disrupt the industry’s stale growth playbook.
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The Trade Desk’s Growth Stalls to Pandemic-Era Lows Amid Publicis Acquisition Chatter
The Trade Desk’s revenue growth has slowed to its weakest rate since the pandemic, signaling trouble in programmatic’s growth story. Meanwhile, acquisition talks with Publicis are heating up.
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Publishers Pin AI Licensing as Programmatic Ad Revenues Crater — But Don’t Hold Your Breath
Publishers are cautiously celebrating AI licensing revenue as programmatic ads plummet, but this so-called lifeline is more stopgap than salvation.
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Possible’s Lisbon Expansion: A Marketing Agency's Bold Bet on Tech and Culture in 2027
Possible plans to expand to Lisbon by 2027, doubling down on its unique blend of marketing, tech, culture, and creativity — but can it escape the usual agency grift?
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Why Mega Creators’ Personal Brands Are Failing As Media Empires
Mega creators like MrBeast and Alex Cooper are crashing into the harsh reality that their personalities alone don’t build scalable media companies. The creator economy grift is real.
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