Paid Ads Cheat Sheet

Auctions, bids, impressions, clicks, conversions: the economic primitives.

The original intent channel: bidding on what people Google.

Interest-based reach at scale, plus the world's best lookalike audiences.

Why a lower bid can win, and how to lower your CPCs by being relevant.

Manual CPC, tCPA, tROAS, Max Conversions: when each makes sense.

PAS, AIDA, the 4 Us: copy that earns the click.

Why creative is now the #1 lever, and how to test it systematically.

Closing the loop on visitors who didn't convert.

DSPs, SSPs, RTB: the automated auction system behind most display advertising.

Outbrain, Taboola, sponsored content: ads that match the look and feel of the platform.

Feed-driven commerce and Google's AI-blended campaign type.

Video at scale: skippable, non-skippable, bumper, in-feed.

The most expensive ad platform, and where B2B works.

Creative-first paid social and the rise of the Spark Ad.

SKAdNetwork, CAPI, modeled conversions, and why your dashboard is lying to you.

When to trust marketing mix modeling vs. multi-touch attribution.

App Store ads: the only place to buy intent on iOS, plus the privacy advantages.

Netflix, Hulu, YouTube CTV: buying TV at the price of digital.

The most contextual, niche-targeted ad platform: when it works and when it doesn't.

Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Instacart Ads: selling where people already buy.

Podcast ads, Spotify, streaming audio: buying ears in the audio-first era.

Bidding algorithms, signal inputs, and visual creative testing in an era of automated, AI-driven media buying.

The successor to Discovery Ads: YouTube, Gmail, Discover placements for mid-funnel intent targeting.

Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, DSP: the #3 ad platform with the highest purchase intent traffic on earth.

Use your own data to improve paid ad targeting and recover signal lost to iOS and cookie deprecation.

User-generated content (UGC) and creator-shot ads deliver 2–4x higher click-through rates than studio creative. Learn when to use UGC vs influencer marketing, how to source content at scale, and how to build a testing framework that works.

Master two underrated ad platforms with lower costs, younger audiences, and intent-driven users ready to buy.

In 2025, Google shifted from keyword-level control to AI-driven intent matching. AI Max campaigns, Smart Bidding, and broad match fundamentally changed how search works. Learn the new structure, how to avoid common pitfalls, and when to use AI Max vs traditional Search.

GIVT vs SIVT, bot traffic, spoofed apps: how much of your spend is fraud, how to detect it, and the red flags to watch for.

Why CTR and CPA degrade as the same audience sees your ad again, the fatigue curve by platform, and a practical creative-refresh cadence.

Why your ad's promise and your landing page's headline need to say the exact same thing, and what it costs you when they do not.

How to spend a budget evenly across a flight, and why touching it mid-campaign can reset the algorithm's learning.

When AI can make 50 ad variants in an hour, testing methodology and quality control matter more, not less.