Patrick Gilbert

Amazon has dropped the price on the “Join or Die” paperback by nearly 20%! Referred to as a Digital Advertising Masterclass and a must read for #PPC professionals Get a copy today! #digitalmarketing #googleads #marketing amazon.com/Join-Die-Digit…

Are you still manually reporting…? The trap of "how it’s always been done" keeps many marketers stuck in manual silos. The businesses that win fix their data foundation first so they can use AI as a focused analytical assistant, as noted by Dana DiTomaso, Founder of @kickpointinc. Shift from defensive to offensive investing to reclaim data-backed confidence, as outlined by @PatrickJGilbert, CEO of @AdVenturePPC: 🔄 Break the manual cycle: Trade fragmented spreadsheets for a unified decisioning engine. 📈 Shift your mindset: Stop using dashboards to simply justify past results. When you view marketing as a growth engine, you can proactively invest in future growth. 🎯 Optimize for profit: Your "north star" should always be bottom-line profit, followed by new customer acquisition and top-line revenue growth. Use tools like BigQuery to get your data into a warehouse that auto-refreshes, eliminating the need to build reports from scratch every morning. By using Data Manager as your single source of truth and connecting Google Ads to Google Analytics, you can drive real results – a potential +23% increase in conversions and a -10% reduction in cost-per-conversion. What’s one manual reporting task you’re ready to leave behind? *Source: Google Internal Data, Oct 2023

For the record: Em dashes have always been a valuable ally for effective communicators. They’re all over my book, “Join or Die,” (published 2020), with the first one appearing on the second page of the book’s introduction. LLMs definitely overuse them. But they do so because user feedback proves it’s more helpful for understanding context than traditional punctuation. We PREFER reading text that is broken up by em dashes. We need to stop the em dash shame—it’s not always AI slop.

Huge miss by @TheRewatchables not covering Happy Gilmore this week. @BillSimmons claiming he didn’t like the sequel… but he’s not the target demo. During slow content summer months when millions of people are desperate for a new podcast, particularly a fun one to listen to with others during a road trip, how did you not see this opportunity??

My favorite part of 2025 thus far is the number of times these three dots have appeared and disappeared over the last ten minutes, as my innocent boomer father grapples with this unfathomable response

Oh happy day!

From a recent @DigitalSamIAm newsletter—the desire for rational, clearly outlined outcomes often keeps marketers from making better decisions. In my experience, the companies who pound their chest about being “a data driven company” are often optimizing their campaigns into the ground.

Hi @Disney and @Google, why are you dragging your feet with multi-view options on ESPN and YouTubeTV? Do you not see the value in doubling or quadrupling your viewable ad impressions for sports fans eager to consume multiple events (or views) at once? What’s the holdup here?

I've spent much of my career yelling at people to use automated (AI-driven) bidding in ad campaigns. Today, I often find myself outlining the exceptions to my "Join or Die" principles and the risks associated with AI tech when your business or ad account lacks the proper infrastructure. Here's an updated framework for understanding my never-always-never-never approach to AI bidding: adventureppc.com/blog/maximizin…

Great WSJ article today about @Starbucks’ with leadership transitions, operational issues, etc. … but not one mention of the idea that, maybe, US consumers aren’t ready for “Olive Oil Coffee” and “Lavender Lattes.” Consumers can get strong, overpriced coffee anywhere. For the last 15 years, the brand has won in two categories: customer experience and product innovation. Specifically, they were the most reliable option for black coffee drinkers and delicious status symbol for sweet flavor seekers. For a long time, Starbucks was an easy choice for black coffee drinkers, who likely favor convenience and consistency. Their mobile ordering was best-in-class, and their loyalty program offered a ton of perks. Fast, hot, consistent, and justifiable when 10% of visits were comped. Now, even the smallest coffee shop has an order-ahead function and the Starbucks loyalty program is a shell of its former self. On flavor, Starbucks long dominated the fall and holiday flavors, and provided innovative summertime cold-drink options. They normalized the PSL, cold foam, the brown sugar shaken espresso, and other options you can now get at Dunkin or even your bagel store. But this year, after a stellar holiday season, they introduced olive oil coffee, lavender lattes, and some sort of hot and spicy iced tea? I’d rather die, but thank you for offering. Starbucks’ operational issues are real concerns, but they seem to be making progress. This should help win back some of the convenience-first (black coffee) customers. But their latest attempts at product innovation have been a miss. They should cut their losses and find a new way to package and sell customers vanilla, chocolate, and cinnamon flavors.

Hey @DocuSign we love the new logo, but it looks a little familiar 🤔 (ahem, adventureppc.com )

So pumped to be in Brooklyn for the @AdVenturePPC Dolah Conference! First up, @PatrickJGilbert (of Join or Die book fame) with the opening keynote. I’ll be chatting a little later on a forum about PPC careers and the future of PPC management. 🤘 Any other #ppcchat people here? Already ran into @timothyjjensen!

Hey marketing people! Join us in NYC on April 17th at our next DOLAH event! It’s part conference, part networking event where we share our latest frameworks and case studies for driving success … and how AI fits into every aspect of our work. Awesome venue, great people, copious laughs, awkward commentary, gluttonous food and drink, and marketing content/insights you won’t find anywhere else. Four weeks from today! In Brooklyn! Be there! adventureppc.com/day-of-learnin…

(4/4) Set boundaries with clients and internal team members that Red Tasks (or requests) don’t belong in Slack. I prefer email… or it can be added to an agenda to discuss on the meeting… or some other method. I often respond to my team with “Red Task, please email.”

(3/4) Slack is great for Blue task management: “Can you send me that report?” “When does the promotion start?” “Do we have your approval to launch these ads?” “Does Tuesday at 2 work for you?” “Can you send me a high-res copy of your logo?” “What’s your developer’s email?”

(1/4) @CJSlattery, here’s the solution: Separate “Red” tasks from “Blue” tasks. Blue tasks are great for to-do lists. They are linear and have a defined start/end—Send a report, write an agenda, install GTM, prepare a PB&J sandwich … all things that are somewhat routine.

I found immense value from watching the DOLAH videos last year, so when @PatrickJGilbert offered me a ticket the year I was overjoyed to be able to attend in person!! I have tons of respect for Isaac, Patrick, Nechama, and the rest of the AdVenture team and can't wait to go sit under them for their upcoming event in April. Hope to see you all in Brooklyn in April, sign up below! adventureppc.com/day-of-learnin…

“We often forget that the main reason people choose brands is so that they DON’T have to think. Brands offer mental shortcuts that make purchase decisions easier and quicker.” - @BinetLes & Sarah Carter, “How Not To Plan”

Sharing this at the risk of being canceled for contributing to Hustle-Culture... I thought this was pretty cool. It was indeed a productive week, and I now feel slightly vindicated. Thanks, @Grammarly! And for what it's worth, my writing was 5% less formal and 5% more inspirational ... I'd consider that a vacation.

Happy back to work to everyone especially the LLMs that progressively got more lazy as we approached the holidays!