Digital Peax Field notes on growth, measured.
What we learn running data-driven campaigns: attribution, channel economics, the new search, and the occasional strong opinion. No fluff, no listicles.
Search Console now shows your AI impressions, still not a single click or query
The generative AI performance report reached far more properties on August 11, reporting impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode with no clicks and no queries. The same day, Shopify put numbers on how AI-referred traffic converts. What you can now defensibly report, and what you still cannot.
ChatGPT Ads went live across Europe, and the launch terms are the story
Ads started serving in 31 European markets on August 24, on the Free and Go tiers only, picked from the conversation rather than from anything OpenAI knows about the user. What you can buy, what the targeting really is, and the one-day view-through number that will flatter every test.
AI Max lands on September 1, and the two migration paths are not the same
Google confirmed the auto-upgrade runs September 1 to 30, and creating new broad match or auto-created asset setups has been blocked since August 3. The two cohorts land on different defaults, and only one of them gets a system rewriting ad copy every 48 hours. Where to spend your audit time.
Google is enforcing your CPA targets now, and your best campaigns are the exposed ones
Since August 17, budget-limited campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS deliver toward the target instead of beating it. Google will not adjust anything for you. How to build the at-risk list, and how to choose between locking in efficiency and buying volume.
Two volatility spikes in six days, and Google has confirmed nothing
August opened with two rounds of heavy ranking movement, both unconfirmed, in the same week Google denied Reddit gets any ranking preference. Why an unconfirmed update changes your response, and the diagnostic that separates ranking loss from click loss.
Google is auto-upgrading Search campaigns to AI Max on September 1
Any Search campaign running automatically created assets or campaign-level broad match gets upgraded to AI Max on September 1, whether you asked or not. Which campaigns are in scope, what changes per trigger, and the audit to run before the date.
ChatGPT Ads turns on hashed form matching by default on August 17
OpenAI shipped oCPC bidding, product carousels, and a pixel change with a deadline: automatic advanced matching goes live on existing pixels on August 17 unless you opt out. What it sends to OpenAI, who carries the consent risk, and the ten-minute check to do now.
Did ChatGPT send that lead? Measuring AI-search traffic
AI answers send real visitors and almost no referrer. How we separate AI-assistant traffic in GA4, watch for the branded-search lift that follows a citation, and stop crediting “direct” for what ChatGPT and AI Overviews actually did.
The first-party data setup for a cookieless web
Third-party cookies are leaving and the modeled gaps are widening. A practical build for first-party data: consent done right, Customer Match and the Conversions API, and the server-side plumbing that feeds platforms data they will actually trust.
Running Performance Max and Advantage+ without losing control
AI now handles targeting, bidding, and placements across Google and Meta. That does not make the marketer redundant; it moves the job to feeding the machine better inputs and fencing in where it can spend. How we keep agentic campaigns honest.
A social media strategy that survives a budget review
Which campaign objectives to run at each stage of the funnel, the three metrics that matter per stage, and the vanity numbers to ignore. The social playbook we build for businesses, from first impression to tracked conversion.
Cross-channel remarketing: the sequence that converts leads
A lead rarely converts on the platform that first found them. The Meta → Google → TikTok remarketing sequence we run, how we split audiences by intent, and how to measure it without counting the same conversion three times.
Why your ROAS is lying to you, and how to fix attribution
Last-click quietly misallocates your budget. A practical walk through multi-touch attribution and incrementality, with the holdout tests we use to find what spend is actually driving growth.
ChatGPT Ads: an early field report
What we learned spending real budget on one of the newest ad surfaces: how you buy it, what OpenAI will and will not show you, and whether it pays yet.
GEO 101: how to get cited by ChatGPT and AI Overviews
The structured data, entities, and content patterns that make answer engines quote you, not your competitor, with what Google and the research actually say.
Server-side tracking: what it fixes and what it does not
A clear-eyed look at server-side GTM: the durability and data control it genuinely buys you, the consent and cost realities it does not change, and when it is worth the overhead.
Consent Mode v2 without nuking your data
The four consent signals, basic versus advanced, and the behavioral modeling that recovers what a denied banner would otherwise cost you. A compliant EU setup that keeps measurement intact.
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