Chief Strategy Officer, Embryo · Manchester
Dom
Carter
I write about what AI is actually doing to industries, marketing that works, and the business of sport.
Latest
All articles →The AI pilot that never lands
Most agencies are running AI pilots that will never become anything else. The problem isn't the technology. Nobody was ever asked to stop doing the old job.ChatGPT ads will take your customer list
OpenAI lets advertisers upload 25,000 emails or phone numbers to reach matched ChatGPT users. The targeting is old. The context, a private conversation, is not.The checkout is leaving your website
TikTok has put an AI shopping assistant and one-click buying in the feed. Google has a cart that follows you round the web. Retailers are about to lose the customer.The $29 cap on the tool that was working
Accenture has capped staff Claude spend at $29 a month. Meta and Microsoft are rationing too. The firms selling AI transformation hit the bit nobody budgets for.The ad slot that delivered spyware
Researchers found government spyware delivered through ordinary ads on the BBC and the New York Times. If you buy programmatic media, this is your supply chain.Playbooks
All playbooks →The long versions. Methods I’ve built and run, written up in full, each with the short version at the top.
- Reaching the unreachableAd platforms find people who were going to buy anyway. The 4-step method we used to fund and measure the customers they ignore, without missing a revenue target.Read →
- Paid media as a creative test labHow a luxury cycling brand kept its loyal performance audience and won a younger one, using paid campaigns to test creative and judging on resonance, not return.Read →
- Where AI earns its place in ecommerce contentMost product pages on a luxury site get no video, no model and no campaign shot. How to tier the catalogue and point AI at the pages production never reaches.Read →
Three things I keep writing about
- AI, and what it’s actually doingMost writing about AI is either a sales pitch or a eulogy. This is neither. It’s about what the technology is actually doing to industries and to the people who work in them: who wins, who gets quietly replaced, and what it means for the teams in the middle.Read the topic →
- Marketing that worksMost marketing fails because someone built something for an audience they never talked to. These pieces take campaigns, brands and agency habits apart to see what actually drove the result, good or bad.Read the topic →
- The business of sportSport is the most honest mirror we have. It shows you exactly who’s in charge and who gets left behind, usually within 90 minutes and in front of a live audience.Read the topic →
Talking, writing, advising.
If you want me to speak, write for you, or look at a problem, email dom@domcarter.com or use the contact form. I reply to everything that isn’t a sales pitch.