What actually works in paid ads.
Original research, opinions, and tactics on AI in paid advertising — from the team building AdControlCenter.
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.
Mobile traffic on Reddit: a documented budget leak
Reddit mobile placements quietly drain budgets at higher CPCs and lower conversion rates than desktop — here's exactly what to do about it.
Cross-platform ad attribution without Looker
You don't need a $40k/year BI tool to know which ad dollars are working—here's the exact minimum stack that gets you 90% of the answer.
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.
Reddit Ads cost benchmarks, Q2 2026
Real CPC, CPM, and CTR numbers for Reddit Ads by category, subreddit size, and format — so you know whether your campaign is expensive or just Reddit.
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.
Direct Response advertorial images: a working 6-step example
How to go from a blank canvas to a conversion-ready advertorial image for supplements—using ChatGPT, Gemini, and one spy tool—without touching Photoshop.
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.
The 2-edit rule: why your AI ad gets worse the more you tweak it
Every additional edit you make to an AI-generated ad image compounds the model's errors — here's the exact mechanism, and what to do instead.