Traditional "waterfall" ad serving asks networks for bids sequentially, devaluing inventory. Mediavine's early success came from building a header bidding system that asks all partners for their best bid simultaneously, creating a true auction and dramatically increasing publisher revenue.

During the initial 14-21 day learning phase on an ad platform, marketers must resist the urge to constantly adjust bidding, budget, or targeting. "Fiddling with the knobs" resets the algorithm's learning process, dooming the test before it can gather sufficient data to optimize effectively.

Extend your automation beyond the inbox. When a user joins your email list, automatically add them to a custom ad audience for educational or retargeting campaigns to stay top-of-mind. Simultaneously, add them to an exclusion list for top-of-funnel acquisition campaigns to avoid wasting ad spend on existing contacts.

Jay Schwedelson argues Send Time Optimization (STO) is 'garbage' because it creates confirmation bias. By sending your email when a user typically opens messages (e.g., 8 a.m. Monday), the feature ensures your email arrives alongside many others, increasing competition in the inbox and hurting your performance.

Unlike traditional media, social platforms are financially incentivized to maximize user engagement and retention. This will likely lead them to programmatically stop running, or even reject, ad spend for low-performing creative that causes users to leave their platforms, protecting the overall user experience.

Hyper-targeted ABM ads shown to tiny audiences face rapid creative fatigue, as contacts see the same ad constantly. To counter this, Hightouch's program mandates a complete creative refresh at least every two or three weeks to keep messaging engaging and avoid creating negative brand sentiment.

ChatGPT's ad platform launched with a simple CPM model and limited targeting, similar to Netflix's. This isn't a sign of weakness but a strategic necessity. To build a sophisticated, conversion-optimized ad system, a platform must first launch a "primitive MVP" to bootstrap the very conversion data required for advanced targeting.

Extend your automation strategy beyond the inbox by funneling your email lists into advertising platforms. Use these lists to create custom audiences for educational "air cover" ads to stay top-of-mind, and simultaneously as exclusion lists for other campaigns to improve ad spend efficiency.

Don't blame 'shadow banning' for declining reach. It's a function of supply and demand. As platforms mature, content supply explodes and ad spend increases, all competing for finite user attention. Your reach isn't being punished; it's being outbid in an increasingly crowded attention marketplace.