Taye Shobajo, Author at The Gradient Group | Page 6 of 102


Top of the Ticker: By the look of it, the news wheel format popularized by the defunct linear channel CNN Headline News is slowly making its way to CNN’s free ad-supported streaming channel, CNN Headlines.

The network, according to Axios, quietly relaunched the FAST service with live and original programming, including two hours of a new, live original show called “CNN Headline Express” at 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. ET.

CNN has also hired Brad Smith as an Atlanta-based anchor for CNN Headlines. The network says his appointment is part of CNN’s wider investment in its FAST programming, complementing its existing linear, digital, mobile, and podcast offerings and soon-to-launch streaming service and other standalone products. 

The network also says new advertisers are latching on to its FAST products and developing new commercial product innovations to maximize monetization through advertising and sponsorship directly or through FAST platform partnerships.

Bipartisan Event: NewsNation and its sister digital publication The Hill are teaming up for a daylong bipartisan event featuring Speaker of the U.S. House Mike Johnson in the inaugural Hill Nation Summit ​​on Wednesday, July 16, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET in Washington, D.C. In addition to Johnson, there will be a powerhouse lineup of one-on-one interviews and panel discussions examining the progress and promises of the first six months of President Donald Trump’s second term in office. The entire summit will be livestreamed on TheHill.com and available on The Hill TV’s Fast Channel.

Speaker Mike Johnson and a lineup of political heavyweights will discuss key issues at the inaugural “Hill Nation Summit” on July 16.

The event will be livestreamed, offering special coverage on @NewsNation and The Hill.

Apply to attend using the QR code in the video below. pic.twitter.com/p7aaBglZM0

— The Hill (@thehill) July 10, 2025

Heading to trial: Former CNN anchor Don Lemon’s lawsuit against Elon Musk and X, formerly Twitter, will be going to trial at a yet-to-be-determined date. Lemon had sued Musk after his content deal with the social platform was abruptly cancelled in August 2024. 

Sports Acquisition: Fox News’ streaming service, Fox Nation, enters the live sports arena with a partnership with the Professional Bull Riders. The streamer will be the exclusive Friday night broadcast partner for the PBR Camping World Team Series, beginning August 8, continuing weekly till the league’s championship opener on October 24 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. In the lead-up, Fox Nation will release season two of Last Cowboy Standing, a series where eight amateur bull riders compete for the opportunity to join a PBR team, starting Friday, July 11.

8 riders. 0 guarantees. 1 shot at the @PBR.
Season 2 of #LastCowboyStanding drops FRIDAY. Only on Fox Nation. https://t.co/H17P98A7mS pic.twitter.com/PHo48v4gEj

— Fox Nation (@foxnation) July 8, 2025

Worthy Recognition: CBS Sunday Morning host Jane Pauley will be the recipient of the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism on Saturday, November 15, in Tampa, Florida. The recognition will take place during Poynter’s Bowtie Ball, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Poynter Institute. Pauley is being recognized for building a “deep and meaningful relationship with the American viewing public, who have invited her into their homes as a trusted source of news and information for decades,” said Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute. 

📣 At this year’s Bowtie Ball, Jane Pauley will receive the 2025 Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism 🎉 Dean Baquet & G.B. “Garry” Trudeau will earn Distinguished Service to Journalism Awards. www.poynter.org/news-release…
[image or embed]

— The Poynter Institute (@poynterinstitute.bsky.social) July 8, 2025 at 9:48 AM





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What does it take to make a zine? Four dedicated technicians (and one or two moody ones), a few too many discussions about bleed and binding, and three (or four) reprints. That’s what it took me to get a final draft of my zine.

Once I’d overcome all those stumbling blocks (and learned all there is to learn about different types of printing), I knew I’d made both a piece of art and a product that I hoped would be able to compete with some of the best indie magazines out there. More importantly, I knew the stumbling blocks had left me equipped with lessons that would speed up the process next time.

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Google has updated its structured data documentation to clarify how merchants should implement markup for return policies and loyalty programs.

The updates aim to reduce confusion and ensure compatibility with Google Search features.

Key Changes In Return Policy Markup

The updated documentation clarifies that only a limited subset of return policy data is supported at the product level.

Google now explicitly states that comprehensive return policies must be defined using the MerchantReturnPolicy type under the Organization markup. This ensures a consistent policy across the full catalog.

In contrast, product-level return policies, defined underOffer, should be used only for exceptions and support fewer properties.

Google explains in its return policy documentation:

“Product-level return policies support only a subset of the properties available for merchant-level return policies.”

Loyalty Program Markup Must Be Separate

For loyalty programs, Google now emphasizes that the MemberProgram structured data must be defined under the Organization markup, either on a separate page or in Merchant Center.

While loyalty benefits like member pricing and points can still be referenced at the product level via UnitPriceSpecification, the program structure itself must be maintained separately.

Google notes in the loyalty program documentation:

“To specify the loyalty benefits… separately add UnitPriceSpecification markup under your Offer structured data markup.”

What’s Not Supported

Google’s documentation now states that shipping discounts and extended return windows offered as loyalty perks aren’t supported in structured data.

While merchants may still offer these benefits, they won’t be eligible for enhanced display in Google Search results.

This is particularly relevant for businesses that advertise such benefits prominently within loyalty programs.

Why It Matters

The changes don’t introduce new capabilities, but they clarify implementation rules that have been inconsistently followed or interpreted.

Merchants relying on offer-level markup for return policies or embedding loyalty programs directly in product offers may need to restructure their data.

Here are some next steps to consider:

Staying compliant with these updated guidelines ensures eligibility for structured data features in Google Search and Shopping.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock



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Amplitude, a leading company in behavior-tracking software and digital analytics, announced it acquired Kraftful, a startup that uses AI to understand customer feedback. Amplitude hopes to now give marketers and product teams a complete picture of their customers, ultimately helping them create better products and digital experiences.

While businesses are skilled at tracking users’ actions in their digital products, understanding why has been a bigger challenge.

“Today, Amplitude customers can easily see what users are doing, but not always why,” Spenser Skates, CEO and co-founder of Amplitude, said in a statement. “Kraftful helps us close that gap. We’re excited to bring Kraftful’s capabilities into Amplitude to power more comprehensive insights, faster feedback loops, and smarter AI agents.”

Founded in 2019, Kraftful developed a product research and insights platform designed to help teams understand and act on user feedback on a large scale.

The company made a name for itself by centralizing user feedback from various sources, like app store reviews and social media, making it easily searchable and reducing manual data sifting. Its AI-powered platform organizes insights and identifies trends, complaints and feature requests. A “hallucination detection” feature improves reliability. Beyond analyzing existing feedback, Kraftful also collects insights through AI-generated surveys and live conversational interviews that personalize questions to uncover deeper user needs.

Amplitude plans to integrate Kraftful’s capabilities directly into its platform. Ultimately, this acquisition is expected to help Amplitude customers achieve better outcomes, such as higher customer satisfaction scores, improved customer retention, and stronger adoption of new features.

Dig deeper: Amplitude brings product and marketing teams tgether in one platform

MarTech is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.



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Garrett Davis, a graphic designer and artist based in southeast USA, isn’t trying to illustrate what dreams look like, but rather what they feel like. In his absurdist illustrations, dream logic is unhinged, lawless and alive – they’re mixed media playgrounds where characters are made out of anything, from worms to ghosts to television boxes. “Sometimes the stories don’t fully make sense, and I’m okay with that,” says Garrett. His computer is filled with unfinished works where he doesn’t force completion, but allows them to cultivate naturally over time. Combining physical and digital tools, he draws scenes with paint and crayons, scans them into editing software and transforms them into compositions, then repeats the process of printing out and scanning again to capture natural grains and textile elements. The results are immensely satisfying to look at, combining the strangeness of postmodern art and graphic design that deserves to be framed in your living room.

Drawing from the golden age of comic books, David Lynch and information in his day-to-day living, Garrett peels back human psychology through multi-layered symbology and their almost random explosions of data. “A lot of my work revolves around the human body and brain,” says Garrett. “I think those two things hold endless potential for meaningful storytelling.” Through floating heads and dream-like technological devices, the viewer is asked to remix these elements in their own mind, attempting to solve an innate puzzle that lies in all of us, and Garrett himself.



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Google’s Search Off The Record podcast discussed when a business should hire an SEO consultant and what metrics of success should look like. They also talked about a red flag to watch for when considering a search marketer.

Hire An SEO When It Becomes Time Consuming

Martin Splitt started the conversation off by asking at what point a business should hire an SEO:

“…I know people are hiring agencies and SEO experts. When is the point where you think an expert or an agency should come in? What’s the bits and pieces that are not as easy to do while I do my business that I should have an expert for?”

John replied that there is no one criteria or line to cross at which point a business should hire a consultant. He did however point out that there comes a certain point where doing SEO is time consuming and takes a business person away from the tasks that are directly related to running their business. That’s a point at which hiring an SEO consultant makes sense.

He said:

“Yeah, I don’t know if there’s a one-size-fits-all answer there because it’s a bit like asking, when should I get help for marketing, especially for a small business.

You do everything yourself. At some point, you’re like, ‘Oh, I really hate bookkeeping. I’m going to hire a bookkeeper.’ At that point where you’re like, ‘Well, I don’t appreciate doing all of this work or I don’t have time for it, but I know it has to be done.’ That’s probably the point where you say, ‘Well, okay, I will hire someone for this.’ “

SEO Should Have Measurable Results?

The next factor they discussed is the measurability of results. Over more than twenty-five years of working in SEO, one of the ways that low-quality SEOs have consistently measured their results is by the number of queries a client site is ranking for. Low-quality SEOs charge a monthly retainer and generate a report of all queries the site has ranked for in the previous months, including garbage nonsense queries.

A common metric SEOs use to gauge success is ranking positions and traffic. Those metrics are a little better, and most SEOs agree that they make sense as solid metrics.

But those metrics don’t capture the true success of SEO because those ranking positions could be for low-quality search queries that don’t result in the kind of traffic that converts to leads, sales, affiliate earnings or ad clicks.

Arguably, the most important metric any business should use to gauge the effect of what was done for SEO is how much more revenue is being generated. Keyword rankings and traffic are important metrics to measure, but the most important metric is ultimately the business goal.

Google’s John Mueller appears to agree, as he cites revenue and the business result as key measures of whether the SEO is working.

He explained:

“I think, for in SEO, it kind of makes sense when you realize there’s concrete value in working on SEO for your website, where there’s some business result that comes out of it where you can actually measurably say, ‘When I started doing SEO for my website, I made so much more money’ or whatever it is that goal is that you care about, and ‘I’m happy to invest a portion of that into hiring someone to do SEO.’

That’s one way I would look at it, where if you can measure in one way or another the effects of the SEO work, then it’s easier to say, ‘Well, I will invest this much into having someone else do that for me.’”

There is a bit of a problem with measuring the effects of SEO. The effects on sales or leads from organic SEO cannot always be directly attributed. People who are obsessed with data-driven decisions will be disappointed because it’s not always possible to directly attribute a lead from an organic search. For one thing, Google hides referral data from the search results. Unlike PPC, where you can track a lead from an ad click to the sale, you can’t do that with organic search.

So if you’re using increased sales or leads as a metric, you’ll have to be able to at least separate attributable paid search from earnings, then guesstimate the rest. Not everything can be data-driven.

Hire Someone With Experience

Another thing Mueller and Splitt recommended was to hire someone who has actual experience with SEO. There are many qualifying factors that can be added, including experience monetizing their own websites, ability to interpret HTML code (which is helpful for identifying technical reasons for ranking problems), endorsements and testimonials. A red flag, in my opinion, is hiring someone from a cold call.

John Mueller observed:

“Someone else, ideally, would be someone who has more experience doing SEO. Because, as a small business owner, you have like 500 hats to wear, and you probably can figure out a little bit about each of these things, but understanding all of the details, that’s sometimes challenging.”

Martin agreed:

“Okay. So there’s no one-size-fits-all answer for this one, but you have to find that spot for yourself whenever it makes sense. All right okay. Fair.”

Red Flag About Some SEOs

Up to this point, both Mueller and Splitt avoided cautioning about red flags to watch for when hiring an SEO. Here, they segued into the topic of what to avoid, advising caution about search marketers who guarantee results.

The reason to avoid these kinds of search marketers is that search rankings depend on a wide range of factors that are not under an SEO’s control. The most an SEO can do is align a site to best practices and promote the site. After that, there are external factors, such as competitors, that cannot be influenced. Most importantly, Google is a black box system: you can see what goes in, you can observe what comes out (the search results), but what happens in between is hidden. All search ranking factors, like external signals of trustworthiness, have an unclear influence on the search results.

Here’s what Mueller said:

“One of the things I would watch out for is, if an SEO makes any promises with regards to ranking or traffic from Search, that’s usually a red flag, because a lot of things around SEO you can’t promise ahead of time. And, if someone says, “I’m an expert. I promise you will rank first for these five words.” They can’t do that. They can’t manually go into Google’s systems and tweak the dials and change the rankings.”

Listen to Google’s Search Off The Record podcast here:

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Peshkova



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Slavi Samardzija is exiting Omnicom’s Media Group’s Annalect in September, with sources interpreting the CEO’s exit as indicative of pending changes within the holding company’s technology and analytics division. 

Separate sources familiar with the developments, all of whom requested anonymity to maintain their relationships with the holding company, told Digiday that news of Samardzija’s exit first surfaced during the opening week of July. He will be replaced by Adam Gitlin, who has served as Annalect president under Samadzija since 2016.

An Omnicom Media Group spokesperson confirmed Samardzija’s departure from the holding company, although it remains unclear if the CEO’s exit was part of a broader restructuring. The spokesperson declined to say where Samadzija is going once his time at OMG is finished.

“Under Slavi’s leadership, Annalect expanded into a global powerhouse for data and analytics innovation,” said Florian Adamski, global CEO of Omnicom Media Group, in an email that also confirmed Gitlin as his replacement. “One of his key strengths has always been building exceptional leader-practioner teams  –  which is why we have every confidence that his successor, Adam Gitlin, will keep Annalect at the forefront of exploration, innovation and transformation.” 

Adamski credited Gitlin with playing “a key role in the development of the Omni marketing orchestration platform, and has brought to markets services, capabilities and products that powered transformative business outcomes for our clients.”

One source interpreted Samardzija’s departure as a likely precursor to a strategic restructuring at the holding company and presaged that more high-profile exits could follow, especially as the company prepares for a merger/takeover of Interpublic Group, pending final regulatory approval.  

For example, recent moves, such as unifying employees’ email address formats (regardless of the unit they work for), suggest that Omnicom may look to centralize its structure in favor of disparate brands under the OMG umbrella — a move that would mirror that of rival WPP Media.

In late June, Omnicom received (qualified) approval for its proposed $13.5 billion takeover of IPG, a move that would create the industry’s largest holding company, from the Federal Trade Commission. For some, this move means the union of the two is all but a fait accompli, meaning leadership of the holding company will look to realize $750 million in annual cost savings.

Meanwhile, a separate source, who hasn’t had contact with Samardzija since his decision to depart, felt that leadership would have wanted to retain such an influential executive, with all three sources noting his role in shaping Omnicom’s current commercial proposition.

Samardzija first joined Annalect in mid-2014 as its analytics chief, eventually rising to the role of CEO within three years when he helmed the launch of Omni, the companywide operating system and orchestration platform, in 2018. 

“As I start my next chapter, I couldn’t be more proud of what we have accomplished, more grateful for the opportunity of working with this team, or more confident in the continued success of Annalect under the leadership of Adam Gitlin,” wrote Samardzija in an emailed response.   

Omni’s launch is widely regarded as a transformative development at Omnicom, with one source informing Digiday that the Omni platform represented the holding company’s media and creative agencies aligning under a single data strategy. In particular, many credit this strategy as instrumental in Omnicom winning Amazon’s $6 billion Americas’ media business, following a six-month competitive pitch.   

“He was the guy in the new business pitches talking about the data strategy,” said one source, who also noted how Samardzija, despite leading a team of thousands at Annalect that redefined how holding companies operationalize data, would often avoid the public spotlight, choosing instead to highlight his team members.

“Annalect is where all the strategic things were happening,” added the source, “everyone at the [OMG] media agencies, even though they might not have reported into him, would follow Slavi [Samardzija]’s lead… and with the Omni platform, that set the blueprint for everybody else.”  

His departure comes at a time when it’s widely expected that IPG’s Acxiom data unit will become a key ingredient in Omni, whose open-source structure enables it to take in data from any number of sources. Still, the two units have operated under different management. Given that Annalect has been instrumental in building Omni – and Samardzija has been instrumental in running Annalect – it would seem an inopportune time to lose his experience and expertise. 

Another source, who once worked at Annalect, noted that Gitlin would likely provide leadership continuity.

“There’s never been a more exciting time –  in the industry or within Omnicom Media Group –  to lead a team that has been purpose- built for innovation,” said Gitlin in a prepared statement. “Together we will lead our clients into the next era of data driving opportunity.”    

Omnicom is scheduled to disclose its Q2 earnings on July 15, with IPG on course to do likewise on July 22.



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The Amazon Prime Day 2025 sale is in its final throes, bringing an end to an epic four days of tech bargains, that’s seen great portable SSD deals and Apple deals. That means there are just hours left to save big on what we rate to be hands down the best value monitor for creative work that exists right now (and perhaps ever).

The Dell 27 Plus 4K USB-C Monitor is reduced from $349.99 to $265.99 at Amazon. That’s a saving of $84 on a monitor that we gave a rare five-star review just one month ago. It’s not without its faults, but for this price, we’ve not seen any other display that delivers so much.

Today’s best monitor deals



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Return on ad spend (ROAS) is a common metric or key performance indicator for paid search campaigns. PPC managers and digital marketing executives have been using it for a long time.

In fact, it isn’t even novel to just digital marketing.

While calculating and connecting the dots with attribution for full end-to-end digital marketing is ideal, using ROAS within PPC and SEM specifically can be powerful as a quality metric that scales.

ROAS is a pretty straightforward equation to calculate on the surface.

Return on ad spend = total revenue generated by ads, divided by the cost of ad spend

However, it seems that no metric, KPI, or outcome is as easy to configure and measure nowadays, given the volume of changes in Google Ads, reporting software, and measurement platforms alone.

Beyond that, there’s no one-size-fits-all benchmark or result you’re looking for. A “good” ROAS is different for every business, and what defines good or successful is up to the business to determine.

Whether you’re confident calculating ROAS, need help with knowing how to use it, or fall somewhere in between, I encourage you to dive into the ways to use it in your own PPC efforts.

7 Ways To Use ROAS In PPC

  1. 1. Setting Expectations
  2. 2. Budgeting
  3. 3. Bid Decisions
  4. 4. Ecommerce
  5. 5. Lead Generation
  6. 6. Awareness & Other Campaigns
  7. 7. Beyond ROAS

1. Setting Expectations

PPC is a great channel for getting quick results and to impact a business.

However, even with the best research on the front end, it can often lead to missed expectations.

PPC expectations can vary wildly and be subjective. ROAS provides the opportunity to set a benchmark for what success looks like.

An effective PPC manager can pull different levers to drive more traffic, spend more budget, or try to find a sweet spot in between.

By establishing a ROAS goal tied to profitability, the PPC team can utilize that metric as a key in their decisions and performance overall.

And, profitability needs to factor in the cost of software, people, and things that go beyond just the cost of an ad or media budget – but that’s for another article.

2. Budgeting

ROAS can serve as a great tool in factoring budget decisions.

Like setting expectations, ROAS can serve as a benchmark, helping teams go beyond just looking at bid, budget, click, and conversion ceilings. It is a quality metric.

Use ROAS to determine where the law of diminishing returns applies and ensure it is included in projections. When looking at real past performance, it can be used to help determine ideal budgets and ranges that are acceptable.

In most cases, I have found clients are okay with not capping the budget and looking at the ROAS number solely to determine how much to spend.

If the spend can be increased and still exceed the target ROAS, then keep spending all day, every day, as we know we’re in profitable territory, assuming we’re not creating inventory, fulfillment, sales capacity, or other operational issues.

I love this type of thinking and decision-making, as it is linked to ROI versus budget or a mindset that marketing and ad dollars are an “expense.”

3. Bid Decisions

Getting more granular, bid decisions can also be made based on ROAS.

The ROAS can be calculated at a detailed level and not just at a high level for aggregate or total spend.

When we break down our campaigns into categories like campaign, ad group, ad type, topic, etc., we can get more granular control and insight.

For example, If we’re running Google Shopping Ads which appear on Google Shopping search results pages, we can treat those as a distinct advertising format. This allows us to measure their performance separately and calculate the return on ad spend (ROAS) they generate.

Going even deeper, we can drill down to the individual product level to see how different products produce ROAS.

By knowing what the ROAS is at different levels, we can advise and optimize our bid strategies and have more control over what is driving the overall ROAS and positively impact the whole.

The ability to roll up performance drill down to the product detail level allows for measuring toward broader business goals while also providing an opportunity to test and get things dialed in over time when launching and optimizing new campaigns and ads within an account.

4. Ecommerce

One of the first types of businesses that comes to mind when thinking about ROAS and its use is ecommerce.

With a lot of the great tools and integrations available, many shopping cart platforms automatically feed revenue data back into Google Ads and Google Analytics.

By using these metrics, we can quickly arrive at our ROAS by taking total revenue divided by total spend.

Note that getting ROAS is likely the easiest part. Determining what an acceptable ROAS overall takes more time and work.

That part includes determining profit margins for products, calculating overhead, and determining the full aspect of ROI to back out what the ROAS needs to be.

5. Lead Generation

A trickier business goal type for calculating ROAS is lead generation. ROAS might be tougher to back out and measure itself.

However, in most cases, lead generation campaigns have more attention to detail on the ROI side of things and know their sales cycles and overhead.

This makes arriving at ROAS goals easier, while ROAS itself might take more time to calculate based on the length of time from conversion to final sale, if that’s how ROAS is truly calculated.

When you want to look at ROAS as a meaningful metric for lead generation, you need to have a solid definition of what a lead is.

By default, if a conversion action in Google Ads (or other platforms) is what you use to calculate this metric, you might end up off-track from what your sales team or broader effort cares about.

ROAS matters, but if the “lead” isn’t right or something you can track, you can run into trouble with the definitions of “return,” “leads,” and your overall attribution.

In most cases, the deepest you can track and attribute a lead to a sale and actual revenue is best. If you can’t get that deep, ask questions and probe. The dots should be connected from impression to customer/client.

6. Awareness & Other Campaigns

ROAS can be measured in other business goals and applications as well.

Whether it is awareness generation, page views, or other secondary goals, it can still apply.

Although, it might take more work to define the return for awareness campaigns and would need measurement through attribution modeling. But, it can still be achieved with the right work to back out the sales metric.

As a note, in B2B lead gen, attribution windows can be long, and offline conversion tracking is needed for accuracy.

An example of ROAS for an awareness campaign can look very different from one for ecommerce or lead generation.

If your goal is to create awareness for a topic, brand, or other subject matter, then you’re not as focused on direct sales or leads. You may want to cast as wide of a net as possible for your target or potential audience (even if the broader general public).

In that sense, you have to find a key metric to tie ROI to. You have the most open-ended challenge here – you have to determine the ROI for your organization. What does awareness contribute directly to ROI? How do you define it, measure it, and attribute it?

7. Beyond ROAS

While ROAS is a great benchmark and quality guide for paid media, it isn’t the end of the story. In some cases, it is just the start.

With customer retention, recency, frequency, monetary value (RFM), and lifetime value metrics that are known in businesses, we can take it even further.

Tying ROAS to other metrics beyond the sale can lead to incredible insights for use outside of media spend management.

Getting More From ROAS

Again, I know that ROAS might seem like a basic metric and be something reported on by default in so many dashboards and reports.

While in some cases, it may be simple to calculate, but using it as a metric takes more work.

Getting the foundation right, knowing what a good target ROAS is, how it scales, and that the “return” you’re getting is profitable, is the key to seeing it be a key benchmark and goal-focused KPI in your set of digital marketing metrics that ultimately map out to your business outcome results.

More Resources:

Featured Image: voronaman/Shutterstock



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Dexter Morgan is resurrected from the dead… literally.

Showtime’s sequel series Dexter: Resurrection takes place a few weeks after the events of Dexter: New Blood, which aired from 2021 to 2022. This time, Dexter runs off to New York City after surviving a near-fatal gunshot wound, chasing down his son.

The sequel series premieres with two episodes on July 11 on streaming and on-demand for the Paramount+ Premium plan and airs on broadcast on July 13, with the rest of the season premiering weekly.

While the cast features Michael C. Hall reprising his role as the titular character, it also stars returning actors like Jack Alcott, David Zayas, and James Remar. But there’s also new talent being added to the main lineup, including Uma Thurman and Peter Dinklage.

To get fans excited about the new series, the Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios marketing, social, and communications team launched an extensive 360 marketing campaign across different cities like London, Mexico City, and New York City with various creative elements.

“The campaign feels multidimensional, so you can experience the Dexter universe in so many different ways,” Amy Campbell, chief marketing officer, Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios & Paramount Media Networks, told ADWEEK. “I’m fortunate to work with some team members who have been working on Dexter for many seasons, and it’s so exciting because we are also fans. It’s exciting to be able to put so much energy into it.”

An immersive multi-room activation debuted in London from July 8 to July 13, where fans had the opportunity to walk into various rooms inspired by the show. In Mexico City, a Dexter: Resurrection takeover took place at Comic Con, where the trailer was shown to fans during a panel featuring Michael C. Hall and other cast members. A separate immersive experience will launch at San Diego Comic-Con later this month.

In New York City, sports fans and theatergoers alike were met with custom sponsorships of the Mets-Yankees Subway Series and Shakespeare in the Park. 

On the day of the world premiere on July 11, the Empire State Building was lit up in red in honor of the show’s bloody theme. The premiere itself was also sprinkled with various interactive elements, including a choir, which was brought onto the red carpet before and after the screening of the first episode.

Meanwhile, Showtime debuted custom audio spots in various cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, which were narrated by Hall in Dexter’s first-person monologue style, dynamically targeted with custom messaging that changes based on a user’s location, time of day, and current weather.

Showtime also partnered with Amazon during Prime Week for custom, limited edition boxes that feature the show’s branding.

Though the campaign officially kicked off in April, Campbell said the seeds for the campaign were planted nearly two years ago, when the Dexter social media team reactivated the franchise’s social channels, while also debuting new TikTok and YouTube accounts and gaining 2.2 million new followers. Cumulatively, the franchise’s social footprint has surpassed 14 million followers across platforms, which, according to Showtime, is the largest among any of the network’s intellectual properties.

Showtime previously reported that the last season of Dexter: Original Sin drove 343 million social views and 16 million engagements, while the series finale delivered a 27% increase in audience over its premiere episode. Meanwhile, the recent trailer for Dexter: Resurrection brought in 52.7 million views in its first week and reached No. 4 on YouTube Trending within 24 hours.

“We’ve been seeding their desires with content, compilations, and fan edits, and that’s been our strategy along the way,” Campbell said. “We have these fandoms we create around the franchises, whether it’s Dexter, the Yellowstone universe, or Yellowjackets, where we really super serve them with content everywhere that they are, and social is an important part of that.”

Campbell also said that Hall himself and executive producer Clyde Phillips partnered closely with her teams through plenty of strategy, planning, and creative sessions to ensure the campaign was reflective and celebratory of the show.

“They’re so engaged, grateful, and wonderful to work with, and it just makes it a pleasure,” Campbell said. “It is such a gem of a show because it’s so well-loved. The cast is incredible. The executive producers are amazing, and my teams are really in lockstep around every single thing that we’re doing.”

Going forward, the campaign for Dexter: Resurrection will be extended on social with platform-intentional videos, episodic publishing, compilations, and user-submitted fan edits. Additionally, every episode will be supplemented with an official YouTube after-show, Dexter: Final Cut.

Campbell said that, at the end of the day, it really ties back to the Dexter fandom and how loyal they are to the show after all these years. She added that they even worked closely with Paramount’s research team on the campaign to understand what’s driving fans.

“People love Dexter,” Campbell said. “Dexter has fans of different generations, and I think the one thing they all love is Michael C. Hall. He’s just so iconic to those fans, and keeping them at the heart of what we’ve been doing has been exciting.”



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