We spend other people's money as if it were ours.

Search is the only channel where people tell you what they want before you spend a penny.

On social, targeting is largely solved and creative is the variable.

Programmatic is where budget disappears quietly.

SEO takes months to pay back, which is exactly why so much of it is sold on activity rather than outcome.

Affiliate is the most misunderstood line in most media plans — treated as free money and then quietly cannibalising channels that were already converting.

Most companies spend the majority of their marketing budget replacing customers they already had.

Targeting has largely been automated away.

Almost every attribution problem we are asked to solve turns out to be a tracking problem underneath.

Twelve years of accumulated campaign structure. Budget allocated by history rather than by intent, and a long tail of queries absorbing spend nobody had reviewed since launch.

Four separate reporting layers disagreed with each other. Platform-reported conversions were double-counting across channels, and four years of ad-hoc tagging meant nobody could say which number was right.

The majority of marketing budget was going to replace customers the business had already acquired. No segmentation beyond product held, and no onboarding or win-back journeys at all.

Commission was being paid on a large volume of conversions the platform appeared to be winning anyway. Terms had not been revisited since launch and partner mix had drifted toward coupon and brand-bidding traffic.