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The shift away from Google search signals a broader recalibration: marketers are chasing commerce media that can prove it converts.

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The 49MB Web Page
22 Mar 2026
thatshubham.com

A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.

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Browser Ad Bidding Process
16 Mar 2026
chatgpt.com

ChatGPT helps you get answers, find inspiration, and be more productive.

How I block all online ads
8 Dec 2025
troubled.engineer

A couple of years ago, I decided I'd had enough of ads. Not just the occasional banner or a quick pre-roll video — I mean all of them. They have to go.

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Do you know who you’re really competing against? Here's how the Google Ads Auction Insights report can give you a huge competitive advantage.

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Privacy-Safe Attribution Avoids User Tracking
18 Aug 2025
practicalecommerce.com

A new attribution approach uses large sets of anonymized data to infer which channels and campaigns led to conversions.

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In this edition of our Confessions series, a growth marketing veteran explains why they’ve they pulled all ad dollars from Google's PMax.

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Google Ads Keyword Planner: What you need to know
8 May 2025
searchengineland.com

Learn how to use Google Ads Keyword Planner — from finding high-impact keywords to understanding search volumes and forecasts.

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The way Perplexity is sharing ad revenue with publishers depends on a number of factors. Here’s how Perplexity is making those calculations.

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#60: Break Into Google Spanner Architecture (5 Minutes)

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Digital advertising is developing at the speed of light, and things like Attekmi white label ad exchange are becoming an

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The tech giant, which wrapped up its arguments in the federal monopoly trial, simply says it has the best product.

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The final days of the trial approach.

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Is such a thing possible for an industry that never respected people's wishes?

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The third-largest US retailer is planning on rolling out targeted ad capabilities on and off its website.

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Investigating Google's Ad Business
4 Jun 2024
open.substack.com

Here's a methodology for identifying piracy sites making money with Google ads

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A guide to investigating digital ad libraries
4 Jun 2024
open.substack.com

How to dig into ad libraries from Google, Meta and other platforms to track spending, narratives, campaigns and more

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Free tools for investigating digital ads
4 Jun 2024
digitalinvestigations.substack.com

Originally published Feb. 17, 2022

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WTF is ID spoofing?
23 May 2024
digiday.com

ID spoofing, cookie stuffing, ID stuffing, etc. What does it mean when an SSP's user ID doesn't match the DSP's ID?

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Many ad executives have found Amazon's DSP to be cumbersome to use, lacking in measurement capabilities and limited in the range of inventory it offers for purchase.

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The images offer a rare glimpse inside murky enterprises that artificially generate social media likes, comments and shares for less than a cent a click.

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Meet the guy who taught US intelligence agencies how to make the most of the ad tech ecosystem, "the largest information-gathering enterprise ever conceived by man."

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A deep dive into why the DOJ thinks RGSP makes ad auctions unfair, and why Google believes it creates a better user experience.

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Amazon's $43B ad business, explained
6 Oct 2023
substack.com

Jeff Bezos long shunned ads. However, Amazon's juicy first-party data has enabled it to compete with Alphabet and Meta in the new digital advertising landscape.

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Google's targeted ad initiative AdSense was initially launched as “content targeting advertising” 20 years ago this month. Here’s how it changed the internet.

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How to set up a Google Ads account
21 Dec 2022
searchengineland.com

Getting started with Google Ads is a bit more complex than it used to be. This guide walks you through the initial steps of account setup.

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Lost in the Sturm und Drang of Q4 (Q for quarantine) 2020, Google introduced a beta program called Performance Max, its first ad product spanning all Google-owned media. A year later, Performance Max exited beta. And fast-forward another year to today, and Performance Max has quietly become the fastest growing and potentially most controversial product […]

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Learn everything you need to know about an ad exchange, from how they function to their impact on advertising success. Here's an A to Z guide.

by John MahoneyThis is a bucket of chum. Chum is decomposing fish matter that elicits a purely neurological brain stem response in its target consumer: larger fish, like sharks. It signals that they should let go, deploy their nictitating ...

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How Bots Corrupted Advertising
18 Oct 2022
wired.com

Botmasters have created a Kafkaesque system where companies are paying huge sums to show their ads to bots. And everyone is fine with this.

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Apple robbed the mob's bank, part 3. Mobile marketing and advertising, freemium monetization strategy, and marketing science. Mobile Dev Memo.

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How much does Google Ads cost? Google Ads costs $100 - $10,000 per month with an average CPC of $0.11 - $0.50. Learn more about Google Ads pricing here!

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Here's some common AdWords mistakes that make affect your campaigns, as well as how to fix them.

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How To Easily Manage & Test Millions Of Ads
18 Jul 2022
searchengineland.com

You must test ads to make your paid search account grow and thrive. That fact is no longer debatable – it is just a best practice fact. Ad testing in

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Easy statistics for A/B testing and hamsters
18 Jul 2022
blog.asmartbear.com

A/B testing tools often lie about whether something is "statistically significant." Here's an extremely simple, mathematically sound formula to compute it for yourself.

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How Savvy Is Your AdWords Account? 7 Areas To Audit
18 Jul 2022
searchengineland.com

When you do AdWords account audits, you need to go beyond the data to see how savvy the AdWords account is overall. If the account is well put together,

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Finding the right mix of keywords is as much science as it is good common sense. When it comes to your brand, there are typo and URL derivation techniques

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For B2B businesses in competitive markets, AdWords can be difficult to manage effectively. Columnist Todd Saunders provides some tips that will keep costs low and boost Quality Scores.

List of Advertising networks and Affiliate networks, which include CPA Networks as well as contextual and keyword targeted advertising services. Basically networks and services that provide the means for webmasters to monetize their websites. Pay per click search engines should be listed in a different category. The content network version of search engine's PPC services belong in here though.

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How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers
23 Jun 2022
dylanpaulus.com

Many sites try to avoid our ad blockers through limiting content or just straight out pleaing. Other companies are looking at encrypting any kind of indicator that screams “AD!” through obfuscation and other fancy techniques—confusing ad blockers. Here we’ll look at some interesting techniques Faceb...

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Being able to get in front of trending keywords can be a valuable but difficult task. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, we'll be talking about predicting keyword volume - before the data is even in adwords!

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Brave browser's policy officer questions efficacy of personalised ads

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The LinkedIn Hack That Made Me $120,000
7 Jun 2022
thehustle.co

Here’s why a writer at TechCrunch called me the biggest hustler he has ever met.

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Google AdWords is a good opportunity to boost sales in a short period of time for both small and large businesses alike. Learn the basics here.

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We analyzed 7,000+ websites with reviews of more than 4 stars on Trustpilot. Here are some SEO factors we noticed they had in common.

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Current privacy laws don’t shield people from the pervasive surveillance of Big Tech. Guerrilla tactics are all we’ve got.

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Managing a Google ads campaign requires understanding how to check, optimize, test, and change your ads. Read this post to learn more.

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Algorithms are meaningless without good data. The public can exploit that to demand change.

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Can Apple change ads? — Benedict Evans
14 Jun 2021
d2dadvisory.us6.list-manage.com

20 years ago Apple seized music, and turned it into a lever for its broader business. It failed to do the same to TV, and lost control of music, but won massively in games, where it now makes more money than the entire global digital music industry. Now, perhaps, it’s looking at advertising.

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Google’s Privacy Sandbox is under increasing scrutiny throughout the digital media industry and now from the U.K. government as well.

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Tests show advertisers can expect at least 95% of conversions per dollar spent on ads, compared to cookie-based advertising, Google said.

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Learn the exact way that I perform keyword research that generates profitable, scalable ROI for eCommerce stores.

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For the advertising industry, ad blocking is an existential crisis. For the Pi-hole community, it’s a sport.

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Google’s proposals for machine learning-based frequency capping are questioned.

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WTF is authenticated consent?
20 Aug 2019
digiday.com

Authenticated consent is a term that has started to crop up more and will likely gain more steam in the future. Here's what it means.

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If it feels like the ads chasing you across the internet know you a little too well, it’s because they do (unless you’re an avid user of ad blockers, i

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Digital ad fraud is a volume game. Here’s a primer on how to spot the core techniques used to generate CPM fraud.

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Four ways advertisers can improve transparency, control and efficiency of their programmatic buys are detailed here.

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Ad tech is riddled with jargon. For those attending the digital marketing conference Dmexco in Cologne this week, here's a primer to help keep up.

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Timehop's 15-person team ended up creating its own ad server. A year and a half later, CPMs have grown from $2 to $28.

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Like Google and Facebook, Amazon wants to take credit for the success of ads outside its own platform.

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From industry terms like "header bidding" to "AdX" to "DSPs" to internal Google terms, such as "Jedi Blue," there's a lot to wrap your head around.

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10 advanced strategy ideas for Google Ads
24 Aug 2005
searchengineland.com

Discover 10 key tactics to optimize your Google Ads campaigns, whether you run large ecommerce accounts or low-volume B2B campaigns.