The Big Questions
Twenty-seven questions this platform is tracking, three in each of its nine books. Each one carries a stated position, the case each way with its evidence grade, what would change the answer, and the sources it rests on.
Programmatic
How automated media buying actually works. The request, the auction, the supply chain, identity, and where the money goes.
- When the firm checking your advertising is owned by somebody with a position in what it checks, how do you audit the marking?InferredReal disagreement
- When the company running the auction also sells into it, can you audit the price you paid?UnknowableBroad agreement
- How much of the money you commit buys an impression a person could have seen?UnknowableBroad agreement
Connected Search
Search is not a channel. It is something a person does, now in at least nine places, and they are one system rather than five.
- When the answer replaces the click, how do you prove search still produces sales?UnknowableBroad agreement
- Is search demand falling, or moving to places that publish no query data?ContestedReal disagreement
- When the platform chooses the query, the copy and the landing page, is the growth incremental?UnknowableReal disagreement
Connected Social
Somebody decides who sees your advertising, and it is almost never you. Everything here is a trade: what you handed over, and what you are allowed to find out.
- What is a creator worth when you are buying content, rights and trust rather than followers?UnknowableBroad agreement
- When the platform can write the ad and choose who sees it, what stays human?DocumentedReal disagreement
- When the platform hosts the sale, is it creating demand or claiming credit for it?InferredReal disagreement
Connected Retail Media
A retail media network is a profit line inside a shop rather than a media owner. Follow one dollar to the report it ends up on, and name who owns each step.
- Did retail media cause the sale, or claim one that was going to happen anyway?ContestedReal disagreement
- When a machine picks the product, does paid retail media still buy visibility?UnknowableNobody has taken a position
- Does the retail media auction price competition, or your dependence on the shelf?ContestedReal disagreement
Connected Local
Four ways of advertising in one place. They disagree about where the place ends, and they cannot all move at the same speed.
- When local channels count audiences differently, which number is good enough to move budget?UnknowableBroad agreement
- Can you prove a store visit without location data nobody can show consent for?UnknowableBroad agreement
- How do you hold local reach when protected political money takes the inventory?ContestedReal disagreement
TV and Video
One product sold through many doors. The doors are not interchangeable, each counts what it sold in a unit it chose, and nobody will pay against the total.
- How much of your video reach is the same person counted twice?UnknowableBroad agreement
- When a streaming impression is bought in an auction, can you prove where it ran?UnknowableBroad agreement
- Can you show that someone paid attention, and that the advertising changed what they did?ContestedReal disagreement
Connected Evidence
Five ways of working out whether the advertising did anything. All five need something to have moved, and they disagree because they are built on different movement.
- When a platform reports a sale, how much of it did the media cause?InferredBroad agreement
- Can you measure people across platforms without letting each platform define the answer?UnknowableBroad agreement
- When attribution, experiments and mix models disagree, which one moves the money?InferredReal disagreement
Strategy and Planning
Every document in advertising records what was decided. None of them has a field for why, and the reasoning is the half that decides whether the plan was any good.
- How fixed should a plan be when automated systems re-decide its split after signing?InferredReal disagreement
- Are you buying efficient ratios, or enough reach for long enough to grow profit?ContestedReal disagreement
- Does every line on the plan have a stated job, or is the channel name doing the work?UnknowableReal disagreement
AI and Automation
Everything you will be told about this is true at a size, and it is almost never your size. The numbers are measured on markets and on surveys of executives. The decisions are made about one team, one budget line and one piece of work.
- What may an agent decide with your money, and who answers for what it bought?InferredNobody has taken a position
- When a machine makes thousands of ads, who answers for whether each one is true?DocumentedReal disagreement
- What must you own before you hand marketing work to an AI vendor?UnknowableBroad agreement