Topic
Marketing that works
Most 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.
Less theory, more mechanics. What the money did, what the audience did, and why the two so rarely match.
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 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.The brief nobody talked to a customer about
The most expensive marketing mistakes start in the brief, when a room of people describe an audience none of them have met. How to spot one before the money goes.Questions I get asked
- Why do most marketing campaigns fail?
- Because the brief described an audience nobody in the room had met. The creative is built for that imaginary person, who loves it, and the real ones scroll past. By the time the campaign is live the mistake is months old and the media budget takes the blame.
- Is programmatic advertising still worth it?
- Yes, if you shorten the chain. It is still the cheapest way to reach a specific audience at scale. The risk sits in the number of intermediaries between your money and the page, so buy through fewer exchanges, do direct deals with publishers you want, and insist on supply path reporting.
- What should a brand do about AI shopping agents and in-feed checkout?
- Decide on purpose what you are trading. Letting TikTok or Google complete the sale brings revenue and takes the customer relationship. For a brand with a strong email list that is a real cost and belongs in the forecast. For a brand that lives on paid acquisition it may be no worse than what Meta already takes.