Paid Social Teams Blend Brand Lift, MMM, and Pixels Over Last-Touch Attribution
With paid social at 32.6% of U.S. digital ad spend, per eMarketer, agencies say deterministic tracking cannot follow a fragmented consumer journey anymore.
Trends
New formats and behaviors assessed practically: who the shift reaches, how long it lasts, what production it demands, and whether skipping it is safe.
Paid, Earned, Owned: Why the Lines Blur and How Marketers Should Draw Them
The paid-earned-owned model still describes money and control, but creator marketing, platform algorithms and retail media have blurred every boundary it assumed.
Podcast Clips as a Social Format: Distribution, Measurement and Practice
Clips have become the primary acquisition funnel for podcast audiences, powered by creators and platform video pushes that audio-first publishers did not lead.
How Analysts Estimate the Dark Social Share: Methods, Gaps and Disagreements
Estimates of dark social's share of sharing range from about half to nearly all of it, and the spread is explained almost entirely by methodology, not by behavior.
Authenticity Formats After BeReal: What Survived the Hype Cycle
BeReal's dedicated app faded while its core mechanic, unfiltered simultaneous snaps and lo-fi candor, was absorbed by every major platform and by creator norms.
Brand Migration to Niche Platforms: Motives, Evidence and Hard Limits
Discontent with mega-platform algorithms pushed brands to test Discord, Reddit, Mastodon, Bluesky and Substack, but documented success stays confined to community-heavy strategies with patient payback.