Where every click is a journey and every impression counts.
The industry-wide hallucination of 2017 where every publisher fired their writers to make videos nobody asked for. It was based on Facebook video metrics that turned out to be inflated by up to 900%, making it the Fyre Festival of content strategy.
A problem that a customer or employee has, rebranded as something clinical so you can charge money to fix it. Every pain point is someone's job security -- if the pain goes away, so does the consulting contract.
A fictional character representing your ideal customer, complete with a stock photo name and backstory more detailed than most Netflix characters. Marketing teams create them to feel like they understand their audience, then ignore them completely when making actual decisions.
An advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked, commonly used in search engine marketing. Abbreviated PPC, it's a system where you literally pay for attention one click at a time.
Using robots to buy and sell ad space in milliseconds, removing the human element from advertising so brands can accidentally appear next to conspiracy theory videos at the speed of light. It's efficient, opaque, and occasionally terrifying.
Any marketing channel where you pay for placement or exposure, from Google ads to billboards. It's the straightforward 'give us money and we'll show your stuff' approach that makes traditional advertising feel honest by comparison.
The gradual decline in organic reach and user experience as social platforms prioritize paid content and algorithmic feeds over chronological ones. The inevitable enshittification of your favorite channel.
Tailoring content, offers, and experiences to individual users based on their behavior, preferences, and data. It's the art of making customers feel special while using algorithms.
The art of getting people to pay attention to something through media coverage, press releases, and strategic information drops, ideally without having to pay for advertising. It's what happens when your brand does something newsworthy enough that journalists actually care to write about it. Unlike advertising, publicity is theoretically "earned," though publicists would argue they work pretty hard to make it look effortless.
Fraudulent ad clicks generated by bots, click farms, or accidental touches that will never convert. Basically paying for robots to pretend they care about your products.
An invitation-only programmatic auction where premium publishers offer inventory to selected buyers at negotiated floors. The velvet rope section of the ad exchange nightclub.
A professional spin doctor whose job is making their clients look good in the media, managing reputations, and turning mundane announcements into newsworthy events. They're the buffer between celebrities, brands, or politicians and the press, crafting carefully worded statements and begging journalists to cover their client's latest project. Basically a professional hype person with a Rolodex and crisis management training.
A rich media format where a page corner appears to curl, revealing an ad when users hover over it. Peak 2000s internet design that somehow still exists like a digital cockroach.
Advertising where you only pay when a specific action occurs—clicks, leads, sales—rather than just hoping brand awareness somehow translates to revenue. It's marketing for people who believe in accountability, or at least pretend to.
Comprehensive, authoritative content pieces that serve as the foundation for your content strategy, with smaller related pieces linking back like remoras on a shark. It's the content equivalent of load-bearing walls.
A product or campaign so remarkable and unique that it stands out in a sea of mediocrity and naturally attracts attention. Based on the principle that ordinary brown cows are boring.
Video advertisements that play before desired content, testing viewer patience since the dawn of online video. The digital descendant of unskippable movie theater ads, except you're in your underwear.
An advertising model where advertisers pay each time someone clicks their ad, rather than for impressions or placement. It's the 'you only pay for actual interest' model, assuming clicks indicate interest rather than accidental taps.
Dividing audiences based on psychological attributes like values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles rather than just demographics. It's the difference between targeting '35-year-old males' and 'anxiety-ridden millennials seeking validation through consumer choices.'
Research conducted after a campaign runs to measure effectiveness and extract learnings. The marketing equivalent of an autopsy, but hopefully with better news.
A internal document declaring who you are, who you serve, and why anyone should care—that almost nobody outside your marketing team will ever see. It's the North Star that guides messaging, assuming anyone reads it.
The universally despised website element that appears uninvited like a digital door-to-door salesman, blocking content you actually want to see with newsletters you'll never read. Marketing teams swear they increase conversions while users develop involuntary muscle memory for locating tiny X buttons. The internet's most successful experiment in training an entire generation to have lightning-fast reflexes.
A tiny piece of tracking code embedded on websites that monitors user behavior and enables retargeting. The invisible spy that follows you around the internet suggesting you buy those shoes.
The strategic art of defining how a product, brand, or service occupies space in the consumer's mind relative to competitors—essentially, it's competitive mind-gaming. In marketing, it's about carving out your unique spot in an overcrowded marketplace by convincing people your mediocre product is somehow different. Good positioning makes people willing to pay $8 for coffee that costs 30 cents to make.