Field notes on AI ads.
Original research, opinions, and tactics on AI in paid advertising — from the team building AdControlCenter.
Running Paid Ads Across Google, Meta, Reddit, and TikTok as a Solo Founder
A 90-minute weekly routine for running multi-channel paid ads alone, without an agency, without burning out, and without lighting your budget on fire.
The Complete Guide to Reddit Ads in 2026
Reddit is the most underused paid channel for niche B2B and creator-economy businesses. Here's how to run it without lighting your budget on fire.
Reddit ad image guidelines from 42 real high-performing ads
We pulled 42 Reddit ads with the highest CTRs from our corpus and reverse-engineered what they have in common. The pattern is clear, contrarian, and most advertisers ignore it.
Budget splits for $500 / $1k / $2k / $5k monthly
The platform you add second matters more than the total you spend — here's exactly how to split your ad budget at every stage from $500 to $5k/mo.
Generative Engine Optimization: the 2026 founder's checklist
Most founders still don't have llms.txt live—here's the exact 12-item checklist to make your site visible to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and every other AI system that's replacing Google search.
AI agents for PPC: what they can and can't do in 2026
AI agents can already run bid loops and flag broken creative — but the founders who handed them full autonomy last year are quietly taking back the wheel.
Product fidelity in AI ads: catching when the model swaps your product
AI image models will silently replace your actual product with a plausible-looking substitute — here's exactly how to detect and prevent it.
Why your Reddit ad isn't getting impressions — a debug guide
Zero impressions on Reddit ads almost never means Reddit isn't working — it means one of five specific, fixable things is broken in your setup.
The G.E.M framework, but for static ads
The G.E.M framework was built for AI video—but its Generate / Extract / Multiply logic turns out to be exactly what broken static ad workflows need.
Subreddit research that actually works (vs the lazy way)
Most Reddit advertisers pick subreddits by typing their category into the search bar and clicking the first five results — here's why that reliably burns budget, and what to do instead.
51 Reddit ads, labeled: what visual pattern actually wins
We hand-labeled 51 real Reddit ads good/fair/bad, then cross-checked against our image-generation pipeline — here's the exact visual pattern that separates the top 15 from everything else.
JSON prompts vs prose prompts: a 50-ad side-by-side test
We ran 50 ad image prompts through Ideogram v3 in both prose and JSON formats — the format that wins depends entirely on the category, and the loser surprised us.
llms.txt: what to put in yours (with a real example)
The two-minute file that tells ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude exactly what your product does — and why most sites are getting it wrong.