Insights
How paid media actually works
Plain answers to the questions founders and marketing leads ask before they spend: what campaigns cost, how platforms decide what to show, and which numbers are worth watching. No jargon, no case-study theatre.
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Meta Ads
How Meta's attribution changes redefine a click, a view and a reported conversion
Meta narrowed click-through attribution to link clicks, renamed engaged-view attribution and removed long view windows from its API. Here is what each change does to reported results.
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Google Ads
How Google Ads match types decide which searches trigger your ads
Broad, phrase and exact match set how far a keyword stretches, which keyword wins when several match, and what AI Max changes. The settings to review first.
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Measurement
How Google consent mode models conversions when users decline cookies
Consent mode v2 lets Google Ads and GA4 estimate conversions from users who decline cookies. Here are the thresholds, the basic and advanced split, and what stays unmeasured.
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Email Marketing
What spam rate Gmail and Yahoo allow bulk senders, and what going over means
Google wants user-reported spam below 0.1% and treats 0.3% as the ceiling. Yahoo also sets a limit below 0.3%. Here is how the rate is measured and which list practices bear on the rate.
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Google Ads
How Google Ads daily budgets work: the 2x rule and the 30.4 monthly cap
A Google Ads daily budget is an average, not a hard daily limit. Google's help pages explain how overdelivery, the monthly cap and shared budgets affect what you spend and are billed.
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Measurement
How incrementality testing works, and what Google's $5,000 Conversion Lift minimum changes
Holdout tests estimate which conversions ads caused. Google's reported $5,000 Conversion Lift minimum, down from about $100,000, changes who can run one.
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Email Marketing
How Apple Mail Privacy Protection distorts email open rates and what to track instead
Apple's Mail Privacy Protection loads tracking pixels automatically, so open counts are not a reliable measure of who read a message. Here is which email metrics it breaks and which hold up.
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Google Ads
How Quality Score changes what you pay per click on Google Ads
Google says Quality Score itself isn't used in the auction. The quality signals behind it still decide who wins and what they pay.
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Email Marketing
How SPF, DKIM and DMARC decide whether a marketing email gets rejected
Gmail and Yahoo can now reject noncompliant bulk mail outright. Here is what each authentication record checks and why alignment decides delivery.
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Meta Ads
How the learning phase decides when a Meta Advantage+ campaign is ready
Meta says an ad set needs about 50 optimization events within a week to exit its learning phase, a rule that shapes how Advantage+ campaigns are built and funded.
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Google Ads
How Google Ads' Smart Bidding decides how much to bid in every auction
Smart Bidding sets a different bid for every auction using AI. Here is what data each strategy needs and what changed for budget-limited campaigns in 2026.