Happy Sunday, Everyone! For this week’s issue, I want to dust off a slide - and a concept - I started writing about in 2016, then shared at events over the next 3 years: From this slide alone, it’s obvious that neither pithy titles nor graphic design were my calling. I’ve secured professional assistance, and this is the current version: The data used to generate this slide came from millions of website visits across hundreds of accounts – all of which surface a substantially-similar pattern –...
about 2 months ago • 10 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! I hope you’re all having a wonderful last few weeks of August - whether that’s a much-awaited vacation, some well-earned R&R, getting ready for the start of football season, doing back-to-school shopping, or (my personal favorite) getting a jump on Q4/BFCM planning. As crazy as it sounds, Q4 is right around the corner. And - thanks to a “perfect storm” of factors, this year’s Q4 is going to be radically different from what any of us have seen in the past decade-plus....
2 months ago • 18 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! I hope you’re all enjoying the last few weeks of summer - it’s difficult to believe that Q4 is just 50 days away, but calendars don’t lie (I cannot speak to the people using calendars, however). Over the past few weeks, I’ve written extensively about my philosophy vis-a-vis creative – specifically, that creative performance exhibits the fundamental characteristics of a power law game, and, all other things being equal, more creative production = better ad account...
2 months ago • 13 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! I hope you’re all enjoying the first weekend in August – it’s difficult to believe that summer is winding down and Q4 is less than 60 days away, but alas, that’s where we find ourselves. Since asking about topics to cover, seven readers have responded with questions about brand-agency engagements – what to look for in an agency, red flags to avoid, etc. In an effort to be both responsive and efficient, I’ve tried to answer each reader's question, while also providing a...
3 months ago • 15 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! After my last two issues, I’ve received over a dozen emails from readers asking for advice / lessons learned over my career. It’s probably also the most common question I get on panels/podcasts – but I’ve never actually written them down. So, for this week, here’s my first pass at “Sam’s Hard-Won Advertising Wisdom”: Lesson #1: Clear Beats Clever - All Day, Every Day One of the biggest creative time-sucks is “clever” – at best, it’s a vain attempt to demonstrate our...
3 months ago • 13 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! Before diving into this week’s issue, I wanted to thank all of you for reading, sharing + supporting this newsletter. It’s difficult to believe the Digital Download is 500 days old with 75 issues already in the books, and just shy of 5,000 subscribers. At the end of last week’s edition, I asked all of you for topics you’d like to see in future issues – and over a dozen people responded. Three of those individuals asked specifically about how to execute the tactics I’ve...
3 months ago • 8 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! It’s difficult to believe that we’re officially closer to 2025 than we are to 2023, but here we are. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to speak at length with a handful of long-time readers of the newsletter - all of whom are in C-suite positions, up to their eyeballs in 2025 planning, and asking the same question: how should we be thinking about our budgets + investments going into next year? This is made all the more interesting because these...
3 months ago • 10 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! If you’re in the US, I hope you enjoyed a pleasant, relaxing 4th of July weekend! As this has been a shorter week for us, I wanted to make this issue a shorter one – so let’s get right to it. Over the past few months - and especially in June - we’ve consistently seen conversion rates falling. This has been echoed by a number of prominent brand marketers + agency leaders across Twitter + LinkedIn. And while there are many hypotheses for why this is happening - from...
4 months ago • 12 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! This week’s issue is focused on the intersection of three of my favorite topics: investing, poker & advertising. While the relationships between them are probably non-apparent at the outset, under the surface, there’s a lot in common: Non-Ergodicity Proper Allocation Power Laws In fact, I’d go as far as to say that a true, intuitive understanding of each of these concepts is a necessary condition for success in digital advertising. Most people running ads don’t...
4 months ago • 11 min read