— signals
What we're seeing.
Articles, conversations, and film from the studio. The market, read out loud.
Featured signalGen Z doesn't want your ad. They want your presence.
You cannot broadcast your way into a generation that grew up skipping ads. You have to show up where they already are — and earn the right to be in the room.
24 May 20263 min read
PerspectivesLinkedIn now punishes the exact content most agencies sell
LinkedIn rebuilt its algorithm around topic authority and human voice — and it actively demotes the generic, AI-flavoured 'thought leadership' that filled the feed for years. We're writing this on LinkedIn on purpose.
26 May 20264 min read
PerformanceMeta just passed Google in ad revenue. The channel map you're using is out of date.
For the first time, Meta is on track to out-earn Google in global digital ad revenue. The headline is the milestone. The real story is what it does to how you should split a budget.
26 May 20264 min read
StrategyGoogle AI Mode just hit a billion users. The click you've been optimising for is dying.
A billion people now use Google's AI Mode. When the answer appears in the search result itself, ranking number one stops meaning what it used to. Here is what to optimise for instead.
26 May 20264 min read
PerspectivesEveryone is selling you an AI agent. Almost nobody mentions why it won't work yet.
Agentic AI moved from concept to live marketing workflows in 2026. But the single biggest thing blocking it is the least exciting thing in your business: your data is a mess.
26 May 20264 min read
StrategyTikTok Shop is heading for $23B. Having an account isn't the same as selling on it.
Social commerce on TikTok is on track for 23 billion dollars in US sales this year. Most brands have a presence on these platforms. Far fewer have a funnel that actually closes there.
26 May 20264 min read
StrategyPublicis just paid $2.5B for a data company. Small brands should read that as a warning.
The biggest agency holding companies are spending billions to build first-party data moats. If your brand rents its entire audience from platforms, you're on the wrong side of that trend.
26 May 20264 min read
PerspectivesAI watermarking is coming for every image you publish. Get ahead of it.
Google's SynthID provenance system is being adopted across the industry to invisibly flag AI-generated content. If your brand uses AI imagery — and most now do — labelling is about to become visible to your audience.
26 May 20264 min read
PerspectivesAI stopped suggesting and started making. That changes the job of a creative team.
The shift in 2026 is subtle but real: AI is becoming the execution layer, not just the recommendation layer. When the tool makes the thing instead of advising on it, the value of a creative team moves somewhere new.
26 May 20264 min read
PerspectivesA number that moves is the only creative brief that matters
Creative that wins awards but moves nothing is decoration. The discipline that changes how a team works is deciding, before anything is made, which number this is supposed to move.
24 May 20263 min read
StrategyYour customers aren't on one platform. Stop planning like they are.
Most media plans still treat channels as separate budgets fighting each other. The brands that win plan the handoffs between channels — because that is where customers actually move.
24 May 20264 min read
PerformanceWe told a client to only pay us when the account got funded
Most agencies get paid for activity. We took a deal where we only got paid for outcomes — verified, funded demat accounts. Here is what that taught us about accountability.
24 May 20264 min read
StrategyFor a premium brand entering India, digital is the launchpad — not a channel
When a global brand enters India at twice the price of local competitors with no shelf access, digital stops being one line in the plan. It becomes the entire plan. Lessons from launching Clorox.
24 May 20265 min read