Blog

Notes on running an account that remembers

Field notes and research on paid media, memory, and the difference between a number and a decision.

124 posts in Reference

An analyst in a grey jacket staring past a monitor in a dark office at night

ReferenceJuly 4, 2026

Share of Model

Share of Model is the AI-era share of voice: how often a brand appears in, or is recommended by, the outputs of AI models.

2 min read

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ReferenceJuly 4, 2026

AI Mode Ads

AI Mode ads are Google's formats inside AI Mode — Conversational Discovery ads and Highlighted Answers — introduced at Google Marketing Live on May 20, 2026 (US testing).

2 min read

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ReferenceJuly 4, 2026

ChatGPT Ads

ChatGPT Ads are OpenAI's in-chat ad placements. A pilot launched January 16, 2026; a self-serve Ads Manager beta with CPC bidding and a Conversions API followed May 5, 2026.

2 min read

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ReferenceJuly 4, 2026

Engage-Through Attribution

Engage-through is a Meta attribution bucket added March 3, 2026 that credits a 1-day conversion after ad engagement (a 5-second video view) without a click.

2 min read

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ReferenceJuly 4, 2026

Budget Pacing

Budget pacing is how evenly a campaign spends its budget across its flight dates. Pacing alerts warn when spend is tracking toward overspend or underdelivery — ideally forecast-based, so the warning arrives while there's still time to act.

2 min read

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ReferenceJuly 4, 2026

Ad Change Tracking

Ad change tracking is the practice of recording every configuration change across ad accounts — who changed what, when — in a permanent, queryable record, because the platforms' own change histories are thin, short-lived, or missing.

2 min read

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ReferenceJuly 4, 2026

Causal Inference in Advertising

Causal inference in advertising is the discipline of identifying which specific change caused a metric to move — as opposed to correlation, which only shows that two things moved together. It operates at two levels: channel-level (incrementality, MMM) and operational (which account change moved which metric).

2 min read

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ReferenceJuly 4, 2026

Ad Anomaly Detection

Ad anomaly detection is the automated flagging of metric movements that break from an account's own baseline — as opposed to static-threshold alerts, which fire on fixed numbers and generate noise. Good systems attach the likely cause to each anomaly.

2 min read

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ReferenceJune 12, 2026

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Cost per acquisition explained. 2026 benchmarks: Google Search CPL $66.69, Meta e-commerce CPA $38.19, LinkedIn CPL ~$94.

2 min read

ReferenceJune 9, 2026

2026 Google Ads Benchmarks: CPC, CTR & Conversion Rates

2026 Google Ads benchmarks from 13,474 US campaigns. Average CPC $5.42, CTR 6.64%, CVR 8.18%, CPL $66.69 — the first CPL decrease in five years.

2 min read

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ReferenceJune 5, 2026

Cost Per Click (CPC)

Understand cost per click. 2026: Google Search $5.42, Meta e-commerce ~$0.66 effective, LinkedIn ~$5.74. See benchmarks by industry.

2 min read

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ReferenceJune 2, 2026

Google Ads Benchmarks for Legal Services 2026

2026 Google Ads benchmarks for legal: CPC $9.87, CTR 5.87%, CVR 5.55%, CPL $131.63 — the most expensive vertical on Search.

2 min read

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