Blog
Bridging commentary on the art & science of content; content marketing, branded content, native advertising and the analytics, attribution and intelligence that powers it.
Edition #496 UGC/influencer spend surpasses traditional media, Cannes & loads of AI stories. For readers heading to Cannes, you might enjoy this fun/informative guide I put together How to Sound Smart (and Stay Sane) at Cannes. Grab the PDF to read on the go. Safe travels. There’s even a section for those whose partners are going but they aren’t! AdAge has a piece on how e.l.f and Microsoft quickly turned around content collaborations with TikTok influencer Oliver… Continue reading
Edition #495 On AI’s infinite use cases, NY tech week & entry level jobs. We don’t create enough content anymore, which is why algorithmic feeds are needed to help find other content we might like. But with AI tools, ironically that may change, with people using AI to create more responsive memes, or responses or dynamic content. It’s been New York Tech Week this week, which just seems to get bigger and bigger! AI dominated the conversation with… Continue reading
Edition #494 Einstein – “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. Last week I swapped out how we send this, so you may notice some changes as we fine tune the set up. Love your feedback! This makes my process to send a bit easier/streamlined. I really enjoyed Alex Schultz’s post on how to do things you can’t measure, this is my approach or lens on measurement, simple, practical and anchored in the business… Continue reading
Edition #493 What diffusion models have to do with advertising (and what are they?) Google AI Mode & managing expectations. I’d kept hearing about diffusion as it relates to AI, and didn’t actually know what it meant. So this week I took a gander, in essence a diffusion model, builds an understanding of how diffuse something this, so that you can work it back to a high fidelity result. How it works is by taking (say a picture) and… Continue reading
Edition #492 Lots of AI changes in flux, WhatsApp sponsored content on Netflix & Microsoft Ads 2.0. I think it’s kind of interesting that Google is talking about re-building search with AI at its core. It makes sense, AI slop could mess up results, what’s the best tool to handle it? AI itself. Checks out. Google has also been hitting its stride with its AI solutions. BUT also, Microsoft opted to scrap Xandr DSP, in light of just building for… Continue reading
Edition #491 On is Google growing or not? AI trends & Linkedin as the new creator spot. So is Google search usage up or down? In questioning Eddie Cue said April was the first time Google searches from the Safari address bar was down. Yet Google said, the queries have only gone up. Google stock dropped on the news. But you have to imagine, that Apple have some incentives here to play down how mission critical Google… Continue reading
Edition #490 On the outpost play, zero followers required and Bernard Arnault. Thanks to Ben for his tweets out of Possible this week, he had a couple of Gary Vee bangers. I remember watching Gary in the very early days, where he was mostly focused on the wine (and then some bangers). But one thing shared was this idea: And that’s super interesting, basically, the algorithms and ‘For You’ tabs are so powerful, if you get the… Continue reading
Edition #489 Punditry, Lyft ads & cookies. After a spring break road trip I am back in the hot seat! I am happy to inform you of a couple of milestones, I have now dined at the place which invented the hamburger. And had a pint at the oldest pub in the US. A lot to dig in to this week, some things I might pick up next week and go a little deeper. The surprising news was Google Chrome… Continue reading
Edition #488 Asking the right questions, the platform generated content era & Quake. One thread of chat at this weeks breakfast was on this idea of the fourth content era, content created by platforms. And that this now, is the aim for brands, to make sure platforms are fed with the right ingredients, to represent your brand when queried by their users. I liked the framing, and asked if they could write it up. So hopefully have something in… Continue reading
Edition #487 On CHIPS not Cookies, AI driving content quality & new Spotify ad announcements. CHIPS not cookies, CHIPS stands for: Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State. I mean who is in charge of naming these things ha. And it is an interesting novel concept, it enables a ‘third party’ cookie to be set, but partitioned within the site it is shown in. Thus retaining the privacy benefits. This rolled out to Safari 18.4 this week. Even simple examples like, hey… Continue reading