For most of Jordan Crawford’s career in paid media, the job was control. Every targeting parameter, every audience segment, every bid adjustment. Value came from how precisely you could operate all of it. That’s changed. “The job of paid media managers really changed from trying to control all of the levers to more focusing on… Continue reading Higher Ad Costs, Slower Growth, Wrong Leads: What Happens When You Let Paid Media AI Run Without Guardrails
Category: Measurement
Your Marketing Looks Profitable. Your Revenue Disagrees. Here’s Why.
There’s a particular kind of confusion Jordan Crawford recognizes immediately, because she’s seen it from both sides of the table. Two sets of numbers that should tell the same story, but they don’t. On one side: the marketing reports. Cost per lead, flat or improving. ROAS, climbing. By every metric the marketing team’s been trained… Continue reading Your Marketing Looks Profitable. Your Revenue Disagrees. Here’s Why.
Google I/O + Google Marketing Live: Key Announcements & What They Mean For Marketers
This year, the worlds of Google I/O and Google Marketing Live converged to deliver a singular, powerful message: “Google Search is AI Search.” The overwhelming theme was the complete incorporation of Gemini into every facet of the Google ecosystem, from the core Search experience to the mechanics of the Google Ads interface.
CTV Just Became a Performance Channel for the Mid-Market. Most Brands Haven’t Noticed Yet.
The economics of CTV haven’t fundamentally changed. What changed is the measurement infrastructure around it. Tools that were once enterprise-only—like incrementality testing, marketing mix modeling (MMM), brand lift studies, and household-level attribution—are now accessible to brands spending a fraction of what enterprise advertisers spend. That shift turned CTV from an awareness channel into a performance… Continue reading CTV Just Became a Performance Channel for the Mid-Market. Most Brands Haven’t Noticed Yet.
The Causal Pivot: Why Google and Meta Are Giving You the Tools to Grade Their Homework
The CMO-CFO relationship has always run on a reporting illusion. The dashboard shows a 10x ROAS. The bank account shows flat revenue. This gap, call it the CFO Gap, is the difference between what platforms claim to deliver and what actually shows up in your business. Since the late 1990’s, when digital advertising and web… Continue reading The Causal Pivot: Why Google and Meta Are Giving You the Tools to Grade Their Homework
Reporting to Leadership: Translating SEO & Paid Media Metrics into Business Impact
If you’re responsible for reporting in marketing, you already know the pressure: prove that your SEO and paid media programs are worth the investment. But the challenge isn’t just performance. It’s translation. Executives don’t think in terms of impressions, CPCs, or keyword rankings. They think in terms of profitability, efficiency, pipeline velocity, and the ability… Continue reading Reporting to Leadership: Translating SEO & Paid Media Metrics into Business Impact
Your CRM Attribution Is Lying to You. Here’s What to Do About It.
Here’s a conversation that happens in a lot of marketing organizations right now. The CMO wants to prove marketing’s contribution to revenue. Someone on the team identifies the culprit: messy CRM data. So the team runs a cleanup project: deduplicates records, standardizes entry fields, patches the integration between the marketing automation platform and the CRM. … Continue reading Your CRM Attribution Is Lying to You. Here’s What to Do About It.
AI-Powered Reporting: Making Monthly Performance Reports More Actionable
If you’re responsible for monthly SEO, paid media, or digital marketing performance reports, you know the drill: hours spent exporting, formatting, screenshotting, and explaining what happened, only to hand leadership a deck they skim for 60 seconds. Traditional reporting is data-heavy and insight-light. Marketers are drowning in dashboards. Stakeholders want clearer narratives, faster answers, and… Continue reading AI-Powered Reporting: Making Monthly Performance Reports More Actionable
Last Click Addiction: How We Fucked Up Marketing
Let’s start here:We fucked up. Not just us. The entire performance marketing industry. We let ad platforms define success. We optimized conversions, not the P&L. We built media plans on flawed data, patted ourselves on the back, and called it performance. And it worked. Until it didn’t. The Setup: Performance Marketing’s Dirty Secret On paper,… Continue reading Last Click Addiction: How We Fucked Up Marketing
There’s War in Your C Suite, And Growth Is The Casualty
The CEO wants growth. The CFO wants proof. The CMO wants credit. What do they get instead?Confusion, conflicting dashboards, and a standing meeting that feels more like group therapy. Sound familiar?Welcome to the marketing mess at mid-sized companies. Measurement Theater Let’s stop pretending. You’re measuring marketing the wrong way, and you know it. It’s not… Continue reading There’s War in Your C Suite, And Growth Is The Casualty