Services
The practice
Four services defined by what they produce, and the one thing we are asked for most often and always decline.
1 — Media planning and buying
Channel selection, inventory selection, budget allocation, bidding, and the weekly decisions that follow from the placement report.
What it produces: spend that can be accounted for at the property level, and an exclusion list that is actually maintained.
2 — Creative production
Assets built for the placement they will run in. A vertical video is not a horizontal one cropped; a native unit is not a display banner with the border removed. Producing for the format is most of the performance difference between two otherwise identical buys.
What it produces: a set of variations structured so that what works can be identified, rather than one asset whose performance cannot be attributed to anything.
3 — Placement and brand safety management
Weekly review of where impressions landed, at property level. Exclusions applied, inclusion lists built where the category warrants it, and the report shown to you rather than summarised.
What it produces: a shrinking share of spend on inventory nobody would have chosen — and a defensible answer when someone asks where the advertisements ran.
4 — Measurement
Reconciling platform-reported outcomes against the client's ledger, establishing a baseline, and running holdout tests where the budget justifies the cost.
What it produces: one number that marketing and finance both accept, with its known error stated.
The thing we decline
A guaranteed cost per result. It is the most requested commitment in media buying and the least honest one.
The arithmetic only works one of two ways: by narrowing the definition of the result until it is cheap to produce, or by absorbing the loss on volume the client did not actually want. Both deliver against the number and against the business.
The alternative we do offer is a stated assumption set: here is what we expect, here is what has to be true for it to hold, and here is the point at which we will tell you it is not working. That is a weaker promise and a considerably more useful one, because it can be checked while there is still budget left.
Last reviewed: 11 September 2026