The magazine for advertising that works
Craft instead of gut feeling: channels, budgets, metrics and legal ground rules for everyone who plans, buys or signs off on advertising.
In focus
Online Advertising
Cost per click is the most widely misread number in online marketing. Look only at it and you will pay more per customer than the competitor with the pricier click.
Strategy & Craft
Seventy per cent on what works, twenty on scaling, ten on experiments. The rule is old, simple, and violated in almost every account.
Industries
Most trade firms have too much work and too few staff. That inverts the entire advertising brief, and almost nobody adjusts for it.
Print & Out-of-Home
Circulation has fallen and cost per contact has risen. What has also risen is the attention a printed page receives, and that changes the sum.
Future of Advertising
The production cost of advertising material has collapsed. What has not changed is that a good brief and a real idea are still the scarce inputs.
PR & Communications
An editor decides in eight seconds. What decides it is whether there is a story, and most releases do not contain one.
Search ads, social ads, programmatic, video, affiliate and email.
Online Advertising
Cost per click is the most widely misread number in online marketing. Look only at it and you will pay more per customer than the competitor with the pricier click.
Online Advertising
Most accounts grow wild. After two years nobody remembers why a given ad group exists. A structure that is still readable after a hundred changes.
Online Advertising
A campaign type that plays across every channel and shows you almost nothing. For some firms it is the strongest lever available; for others an expensive trap.
Briefing, positioning, copy, design, media planning and measurement.
Strategy & Craft
Seventy per cent on what works, twenty on scaling, ten on experiments. The rule is old, simple, and violated in almost every account.
Strategy & Craft
Percentage-of-revenue rules are widely quoted and mostly wrong. The answer comes from your own numbers in four steps.
Strategy & Craft
A bad brief produces bad work at full price, and the client pays twice. Eight questions, two pages, three hours of your time.
What actually works in each industry, with budgets and channel mix.
Industries
Most trade firms have too much work and too few staff. That inverts the entire advertising brief, and almost nobody adjusts for it.
Industries
Roofing demand is weather-driven, seasonal, and half of it is an emergency. Three different campaigns, not one.
Industries
Small callouts pay poorly and fill the diary. Advertising should be aimed at the three job types that actually carry the business.
Press ads, billboards, DOOH, radio, TV, cinema and direct mail.
Print & Out-of-Home
Circulation has fallen and cost per contact has risen. What has also risen is the attention a printed page receives, and that changes the sum.
Print & Out-of-Home
The rate card is a starting point, the position matters more than the size, and the readership figure is not the number you should plan with.
Print & Out-of-Home
Small circulations, high cost per thousand, and almost no waste. For business-to-business advertisers this is frequently the most efficient channel available.
AI, answer engines, cookieless targeting, retail media and connected TV.
Future of Advertising
The production cost of advertising material has collapsed. What has not changed is that a good brief and a real idea are still the scarce inputs.
Future of Advertising
Cheap, fast and legally unsettled. Three rules keep the saving without acquiring a problem you cannot see yet.
Future of Advertising
The draft arrives fluent, confident and frequently wrong. A four-stage check catches what fluency conceals.
Media relations, storytelling, crisis communication and corporate publishing.
PR & Communications
An editor decides in eight seconds. What decides it is whether there is a story, and most releases do not contain one.
PR & Communications
Bought distribution lists produce nothing. Thirty names you researched yourself produce coverage, and the research takes an afternoon.
PR & Communications
The pitch is one paragraph and it is about their readers, not your company. Everything else in the relationship follows from getting that right once.
Disclosure, unfair competition, GDPR, health claims and price indication.
Advertising Law
The commercial purpose of a communication must be recognisable. That single principle explains almost every labelling rule in advertising.
Advertising Law
The rules are settled and routinely breached. The exposure sits with the brand as much as the creator, and the contract is where it is managed.
Advertising Law
A claim does not have to be false to be misleading. It only has to create an impression that does not correspond to reality.