Notes on Paid Media

Real-time dashboards: what to watch daily and what is only worth checking monthly

Real-time dashboards give a sense of control, but not everything is decided by the minute. Many daily numbers are noise, and looking at them too often…

Decision rules: when to pause, scale or wait with incomplete data

When should you pause a campaign, raise the budget or wait? With incomplete data and attribution delays, the answer is rarely obvious. Decision rules…

Statistical significance in PPC: the minimum for drawing conclusions in small accounts

In small accounts it is easy to draw conclusions from results that are only luck. Statistical significance helps tell a real effect from random variation…

Quality events instead of volume: defining the conversion that matters to the business

What counts as a conversion determines where the money goes. Counting everything that is easy to measure (clicks, visits, forms) rewards volume. Defining…

New vanity metrics: CTR, reach and engagement in the short-video era

Short video has brought new metrics that seem important: views, reach, interactions. They can be useful, but they are also easy to inflate and hard to link…

Auditing Consent Mode in practice: three tests any team can run

Consent Mode adjusts tag behaviour according to the visitor’s consent. Configuring it is one thing; making sure it works is another. Three simple tests…

Customer lists: hygiene, segmentation and refresh cadence for platforms

Customer lists are among the most valuable assets for ads: they work as signal, exclusion and the basis for lookalike audiences. They are worth as much as…

Zero-party data: quizzes, preferences and asking for what people want to share

Zero-party data is what a person shares voluntarily and intentionally: preferences, interests, needs. It is more reliable than inferred data and easier to…

Data clean rooms for small advertisers: myth, reality and alternatives

Data clean rooms let two parties cross information without either seeing the other’s data. They promise measurement and targeting with privacy, but are…

First-party cookies and identifiers: what survives the next round of restrictions

First-party cookies and identifiers are created by the site itself and remain more stable than third-party ones. But browsers and regulations limit them…