So if you’re buying or even just evaluating performance ads without considering the bigger picture you might come to erroneous conclusions.

Take the Lego Movie example from the article. The $65 million movie is no doubt an awareness play. Could you make the case that you should also increase your performance budget to help capture more of the demand you just generated with the movie? Or should you just hope that people go from the movie theater to buy Lego unprompted? Is it worth it for Lego to advertise to people who walk out of the theater and search for “Lego Batman set” or whatever? I think so, even though evaluating such branded search campaigns individually might make them seem inefficient.

It seems very easy to dismiss the performance advertising as a scam when you evaluate it in a vacuum. As noted in the article it’s important (and very difficult) to understand the incremental outcome of any channel or campaign. That incrementality includes awareness campaigns.

After more than a decade in advertising and marketing I am now more than ever unwilling to accept simple or definitive answers to highly complicated questions. At best I hope that we can unwind some of the overall complexity so we can have a chance to trust some of those definitive answers.

One day, after working diligently on the job for a few months, I pitched my editor an idea for an online-only story with some interesting multimedia elements. He told me I could definitely work on that story “on my own time.” I was an hourly employee so I asked him to clarify if he wanted me to schedule the work around the other stories I was working on at the time. He laughed and told me that he couldn’t justify paying me for any project meant only for the website. I was welcome to work on the story and publish it on my own time of course.

I decided to leave the publication and the overall newspaper industry that day. I still miss the feeling of working in a buzzing newsroom, there’s just nothing like it. Similar to the author, I’m nostalgic for the days when the news cycle was limited by time and column inches.

I don’t think we’re ever going back to anything resembling the heyday of newspaper publishing. If you’re lucky enough to live in an area where halfway decent reporting happens then maybe subscribing to the print edition makes sense. Unfortunately I am not so lucky. I read magazines for my “news” and try not to check the headlines too often on my phone.

I grew up with a morning and afternoon daily. I never knew how good I had it. Two comics sections! News stories with same day updates! Imagine such a wonder…

I definitely would if there was actual value to it beyond reprinting AP articles I already read online two days ago because the local Newspaper itself is actually owned by a national media entity and contains maybe a page of news that actually feels locally informative-as was the case living in SmallTown USA.

Now, living in one of the US’ largest cities (Chicago), online community ‘zines’ tend to be more relevant to my block, whereas the city paper is pretty much only good for “the mayor upset a percentage of their constituency, and the Bears are still trying to figure out football”.

Every now and then there will be something truly informative for me as a citizen, but independent local reporting when done well and with care and vigor will always replace a physical paper from the traditional local entity for my consumption habits.

(That said newspaper crosswords are still for completely random and absolutely nonsensical reasons a magically anachronistic experience)

I could see that having a short "letter from the editor" section that might grow ...

Good call out

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38315

Either way congrats on starting your own agency! I was an early employee at an agency (not focused on politics but likely similar to yours in other ways) and when I started out there were fewer than 5 employees including two founders. It was very top-led in the beginning, but as we grew to 20 people or so that became unsustainable.

At that point it became about building a system instead of trying to get everyone up to the same skill level. At a basic level we decided that we were really working with clients to set expectations and then meeting (and hopefully sometimes exceeding) those expectations. We too had issues with last minute changes, until we changed our contract and statement of work language to specify the framework for making decisions (usually budget/spend/creative related etc) and how those decisions/changes would be implemented. Same thing with mistakes: part of the expectation from both sides was built in time for QA to catch mistakes before they happened. The more you can set up the framework for success early on in the sales/pitch/onboarding the better. And clients will probably like you more for setting up reasonable guardrails in the beginning.

The framework also allowed for some influence/involvement from the top, which was helpful in filling those inevitable skill gaps. We used some version of the framework until we got to about 45 employees, and then it had to change significantly again to fix some of the bottlenecks that were coming from the top down. It also opened up more time for people at the top to work on business development and sales.

I left out a lot of details but overall it took a “systems thinking” mindset to fix issues once we got to a level where the top-down approach was no longer feasible. The system was set up from top down, but once implemented it could basically run itself with a few tweaks throughout the years. Maybe you can focus on setting up those systems instead of trying to level up every employee to be a mirror of you and your partner.

Hiring/firing when there is a strong system in place also seemed easier: look for people who can grasp/appreciate the system and their place in it, give them agency and opportunity to grow within the system, and evaluate them based on the system and the expectations it sets. We almost never lost talent to other agencies and we rarely had to fire anyone. Maybe we were just lucky, or maybe the system did its job!

My two cents on growth/profitability for an agency: The existence of other agencies, however inferior they may be, means there is a limit to how much of a premium your agency can charge. At some point someone with control over the budget is going to balk at your price and go with the competitor who is also saying they can do everything you can do. Which means at some point you will need to grow your client (and employee) roster or be satisfied with stagnating profits.

YES. That's the exact same struggle we have! making that transition from partner lead, partners doing the work, to having a more distributed 'assembly line' delegation of work to more employees.

that's good advice on client expectations. It's a struggle politics is crazy - very hard to explain just how crazy until you've worked there which is a problem unto itself. democrats really lack technical skill (at the level HN knows) because even most startups don't seem as chaotic and they pay way better. candidates themselves at the Congressional level can be the worst in causing this crazyness.

another good frame that you mentioned is thinking more in an engineering mindset of systems design might help me thank you! micro-services haha.

UGH yes pricing is the worst. That lower margin, higher volume growth is what we're trying, but I'm not sure it might be better to stay small with higher profit margin. We made slightly less profit this cycle despite having over 2x the retainers. I'm money driven so always want more so it's a big decision for us. We're going to try again this cycle - it's not like I'm struggling here, I still am doing well!

Sounds like your experience is similar on pricing. there are so many people who want to do good, come in and start a digital agency and charge no joke $2k or $3k a month for a LOT of work. And candidates and campaigns are super super cheap but in a really dumb way. Especially Democrats. Republicans will pay a flat % of what you raise, in that case the free market really does work - though sometimes too much bad incentive lots of gross (fraudulent) tactics; read the recent Trump/RNC pieces on their fundraising pages.

An example differentiator that is hard to sell or explain is we use an ESP that I don't think any other political shop use because the political features / tooling doesn't exist. I built that on top to make it fit political needs - and some other cool things like real time data for wayyy quicker reporting. I see the value, clients usually don't but most still trust us.

That switch alone usually gives a 4+% open rate bump which usually equals more than the difference in cost.

We tend to fit best & win more work with clients where there is an existing human relationship of good work or from the parent committees where our work and reputation is good, rather than just cold pitching on price to someone we don't know - much harder to win an account cold.

One good sign that we're doing some things right I actually just saw a report comparing digital firms congressional ad revenue and was surprised to see much bigger companies didn't actually have much higher Congressional ad revenue than us. But those big guys have bigger non-profit clients.

So that's a key goal for us to get more advertising. which in itself is hard; TV firms fight to keep their 'primary general consultant' monopoly even if they have no digital experience. It's gross we sometimes have to do commission splits have to give a % to tv firms just to do the digital buying (they don't do anything we do the work.. they say it's because they made the TV spot, but after charging the campaign $40k in production you'd think the campaign owns it...) sucks. but tv guys are the top historically that's who steers the ship right or wrong.

Plus Democrats barely spends on digital. It's ridiculous like PG, Coke whoever gets it and follows eyeballs and $ quickly. Dems are SO far behind despite seeing campaigns that spend more on digital ads tend to win more!

And again thanks for your input and just sharing your story, it helps I think just to connect and know we're not alone.

I’d love to see a “tell all” type of story from an insider at an auction house etc but I suspect the gains to be had from publishing are much less attractive than selling art, especially at these astronomical prices.

1. Buy ebooks and read them at the same rate as I do now 2. Use the proceeds from reading to buy physical copies of the “best” books I want to have a hard copy of for rereading, reference, or gifting

In looking at my read books from 2020 I probably would have purchased hard copies of about 40 out of the 131 books I finished.

So using the example in the post I would get $131 for my reading (assuming I finish 100% of the books I buy). The post doesn’t say anything about the cost of physical books but I could see them priced at 2x the cost of the digital version for $10. That price would put me at $400 for the physical copies, for a net of $269 for the publisher.

That’s obviously less than the publisher would get if I bought all the books outright. However my current book buying strategy is to wait until digital books go on sale to buy, and the physical copies I purchase are 95% second hand from local book shops. So the publisher might actually stand to make more from me with the Kevin Kelly method.

It’s definitely interesting to think about even though I think this scenario is highly unlikely to become a reality.

However, I have promised myself to slow down this year and dive deep into few topics and read a lot less.

Goodreads reported 14 books so far (via Kindle), which means I might have crossed 20+ books. 1 in 5 of my reading is usually physical books. This year, I will read more physical books. I still love physical books more.

In my anecdotal experience, a lot of such people don't really read 100+ books; they go over the letters of 100+ books.

I'm not here to judge though, do whatever floats your boat. Personally, I feel a lot of the "100+ books a year" appeal is in the social aspect of "look at me, I am smart."

Well, I might have done a lot more other things than boasting around on social media about the number of books I read. We were discussing books here, and I was just delighted that I stumble on others reading more than me.

[Redacted] Sigh!

Maybe just that what you consider bitter I consider quite matter of fact. This is a cultural difference; if you work with Europeans, you'll encounter it a lot more.

What it adds to the discussion is raising the question "why would you want to read 1000+ books a year?"

Finally, I'm not sure why I would delete the comment. If it makes you uncomfortable, I'm afraid that's on you...

See below for some recommendations based on my 2020 reading.

Fiction recommendations:

- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. This book absolutely wrecked me emotionally (in a good way) for weeks after reading it

- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. I enjoyed this even more than the Underground Railroad, which was also great. Both also won a Pulitzer for what it’s worth.

- The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea. This book gave me a glimpse into what it’s like for Mexicans who immigrate to the US, and the storytelling was just wonderful.

Non-fiction recommendations:

- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Mix together equal parts science, indigenous knowledge and myth, botany, and wonderful writing and you get this book. I love Kimmerer’s voice (both in terms of her writing and her performance of the audiobook) and I read Gathering Moss by her this year as well because she’s just that good.

- American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. In my opinion is the definitive book about the atomic bomb and Oppenheimer. I also read The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman and I think that was a pretty good follow up about the arms race and Cold War that came after.

- Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. I knew nothing and cared little about surfing before this book. I couldn’t put it down after I picked it up though. I’ve heard the audiobook is great so I might just read it again in that format because it was that good.

Good luck with your reading!

The article is long-ish but you can skim real fast https://brajeshwar.com/2020/books-of-2020/

No, this was the "racist" incident when Weijia Jiang asked Trump why he was insisting on bringing up the fact that the U.S. was doing better than (several European countries, including UK, Italy, Spain, and France at the time) other countries.

And he said, "They're losing their lives everywhere in the world. And maybe that's a question you should ask China. Don't ask me, ask China that question, OK?" because at the time, China was claiming they had basically solved Covid-19 with lockdowns and that the virus was no longer spreading in their country. And she said, "Sir, why are you saying that to me specifically?" implying it was due to her race (she being of Chinese heritage). And Trump, in standard form, said "I'm saying it to anybody who would ask a nasty question like that."

Every time Trump would be his ordinary self, you know, he always punches back at underhanded questions. The questions are a set up in the first place, to create a negative connotation. The coronavirus was a situation where nobody won, by the way, but the press certainly was going to do everything to make as much if it be Trump's fault as possible.

Weirdly, some, who feared Trump being a true Hitler-like fascist 2-3 years ago, were upset that Trump wasn't being fascist enough and shutting the whole country down and overruling state governors on local policies.

None of it was productive. None of it was healthy: on either side. None of it enlightened the population. None of it did any favors for democracy. It just inflamed already tense relations between conservatives and liberals. And note, there's no way in hell the media will ever be as hard on a democrat in office. They are 95% democrats themselves, and they have a bias. They soft balled Biden as it is, when he wasn't hiding in his basement.

Was his treatment of that reporter in particular bad? No, not really. I don't believe he brought up China because she was Chinese.

But I don't think "he always throws temper tantrums" or "he always finds a scapegoat" or "he's always badmouthing China even when he knows there's been a spike in hate crimes against Chinese people" are terribly good excuses. Premeditation and a pattern of behavior make his actions worse, not better.

> because at the time, China was claiming they had basically solved Covid-19 with lockdowns and that the virus was no longer spreading in their country.

You are putting words in his mouth. We don't know what he meant because he refused to answer the question. Immediately after that exchange, he cut the briefing short and left the room.

Did he answer the question? Or did he look at an Asian woman and immediately start attacking China?

And this is just ridiculous:

"Weirdly, some, who feared Trump being a true Hitler-like fascist 2-3 years ago, were upset that Trump wasn't being fascist enough and shutting the whole country down and overruling state governors on local policies."

There's nothing fascist about instituting a national healthcare policy during a national healthcare crisis. That's not what the word means. Fascism is far-right authoritarianism.

Marshalling private militias to attack people is fascism, however, and it's a practice Trump shares with both Hitler and Mussolini.

All that said, if we can make our way past the obvious consequences of limiting speech we might get to a more interesting place. In particular I’m more interested in how social media moderation might change our opinions and laws about speech itself. Does everyone’s speech deserve to be treated the same way by the algorithms that decide what gets traction and what doesn’t? Should the algorithms or platforms themselves be restricted in their “speech” in some way? How do we square our desire to allow corporations to develop algorithms to increase commerce when those same algorithms also necessarily foment rage and violence?

I don’t think it’s worth arguing whether free speech is worth protecting (it is, despite the evils you also have to protect) but I do think it’s worth considering how we think about what constitutes speech when commerce, social media platforms, and algorithms come into play.

Are there any other examples of funding at a relatively low dollar amount that have resulted in outsize successes, in this space or others? A $1k grant is great but to me it doesn’t seem like that would be the barrier to getting an idea going. Maybe I’m speaking from a place of privilege and not considering other knock-on effects though so I’d love to know of any other successful examples of small grants like these.

In the meantime I’m going to think of some $1k sized ideas to see if I can come up with anything worth submitting!

We could tell people: Decide to bike and save money. Decide to bike and save health. Decide to bike and save the environment.

We can tell people those reasons now but there is still a huge hurdle, and it has nothing to do with the bikes or technology. What if all bike companies (and component manufacturers like Shimano) spent all their R&D budgets on education and lobbying instead of better technology? That might work. Is any one company big enough to make a difference if it went at it alone? Probably not.

I don’t look forward to environmental catastrophe but I do think it could help move cycling into more of a mainstream solution. Then perhaps we could have the will to tackle some of the infrastructure and norm issues that keep cycling a hobby at best.

> What if all bike companies (and component manufacturers like Shimano) spent all their R&D budgets on education and lobbying instead of better technology?

The R&D budget of the entire bike industry is not going to move this needle.

What has moved this needle is the fact that automotive infrastructure has become a huge obstacle to growth in big cities. Most big cities cannot increase road infrastructure to support growth so they are more or less forced to support denser forms of transportation like cycling or stop growing.

The other big thing is eBikes.

My old bike commute in the Bay Area involved stupid shit like this:

https://i.imgur.com/YajWMoY.png

Having to constantly switch between pushing along sidewalk and waiting ages for pedestrian lights, dealing with broken road sensors where I had to wait for a car to come behind me and "rescue" me so the light to turn green, having to go back and forth in zig zag patterns while cars got a nice direct road (not fair) -- all that made be not want to bike, especially in the heat or rain.

Seriously, get rid of ALL parking on El Camino Real. It's mind-bogglingly stupid to have parking on a major road. Turn the remaining space into a separated bike lane.

Or just mark off 1 out of the 3 lanes on El Camino Real as a wide bike lane. Our governments are just too chicken to do that.

At my current job I'd have to go through a very loud car tunnel without enough space for bikes. I've tried it a few times - just not workable. You have to ask - is this commitment worth dying over? Having your lungs filled with crap from being in an enclosed space with cars? Having your hearing killed.

So making the environment support biking would be great.

The truth is, even somewhere considered reasonably bike friendly like Germany, bikes are still clear second class citizens compared to cars, in terms of transportation investment. In terms of quality of infrastructure and amount of space allocated in cities, there's just no contest there.

And in the US, it's downright pathetic. The general attitude of city governments when it comes to bike numbers amounts to, "we've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas!" Pointing to the clear success story of Vancouver BC actually putting forth a serious effort and getting results will get you nowhere, they'll keep on muddling through and feigning confusion as to why nobody wants to use their fragmented, dangerous bike network composed mostly of door zone bike lanes that suddenly end whenever it was inconvenient to continue dropping paint on the road.

I've lost track of all the painted bike lanes that suddenly disappear and then show up again 50m later because cars needed a dedicated turn lane right there, or the times the bike lane curves and yeets itself into the sidewalk with no warning. Even a quick glance at Google Maps with the bike lane layer on makes it immediately clear how badly bike networks are almost always implemented there.

A sign doesn't do anything to turn a four lane boulevard into a road people drive 20 on. The enforcement needed to back up the sign is not the kind of thing people put up with in the western world (a few pockets of Europe notwithstanding). You need to actually design the road to make 20mph a reasonable speed.

We recently instituted a 20mph limit across our town (I’m the chair of the town council and also a keen cyclist). We do regular speed surveys.

Not everyone sticks to 20mph. But no one drives above 30mph any more. When we had a 30mph limit, we’d regularly get people driving up to 40mph.

So it’s not perfect, but it does make a difference, here at least.

- On quieter roads in retail areas they added painted white lines, but most importantly they've enforced them so delivery drivers don't park over the cycle lane.

- On roads in busier areas that had street parking they've shifted the street parking inwards a couple of meters, and put a cycle lane between the street parking and pavement. This means the driving part of the road is narrower, so people drive slower.

- On other streets that were too small for a cycle lane and street parking, they have removed street parking and put up a cycle lane separated with small bollards (a few cm high, so can be driven over). These are usually in areas where you would have only driven at 20km/h. We have a lot of cobbled streets and they aren't (I'm wondering if it's intentional) very well maintained, so most are very uneven. The only issue with these is that delivery drivers do park over them, because now there is nowhere else for them to park. Of course people complained about the reduction in street parking, but that issue was quickly forgotten.

- They changed a lot of road directions (bikes are exempt) so that you cannot drive through the city center to get across the city. This did increase traffic a little in other routes (this happened at the start of this year, so hard to tell because of covid), but it means that as a cyclist you can easily cycle through the city center which has much less car traffic. Of course people complained, but again it was quickly forgotten.

- A few streets that were popular for commuters were tested being pedestrian only in the summer (case numbers here were fairly low then, so traffic levels were maybe 75% of normal). Again people complained, but the issues were quickly forgotten.

- Proliferation of food delivery services have meant there are much more bikes on the road, so drivers are more cautious.

A policeman in a car pulled up alongside my friend on his bike, said do you know you clocked 45mph though that 30 zone.

"Er I'm sorry officer..."

"Don't worry, legally that limit only applies to motor vehicles. I wanted to say well done."

Re: showers at work. I've been wondering what is going to happen to cycling to the office once people start going back en masse.

For example, the shower unit at our office has only been available to people who work in the clean room environment since March, and I just can't see how we go back to common use in the foreseeable future.

And frankly, if people start going back to full-time without showers I'd probably like to see cycling use drop(or at least for people like me who tend to arrive lycra'd up on a road bike).

¹ Ridiculously that seems to include lights, computers, Garmin Varia, gears, etc at this point.