mack grenfell

everything else

A collection of articles I've written on various digital topics. Many of them explore ideas around design, privacy, and political advertising.

Building Long-Tail Keyword Lists for Programmatic SEO

With advances in language models, programmatic SEO is becoming increasingly accessible to marketers. It all starts with building a keyword list.

Conversion Lift Tests are Dead; Transitioning to Geo-Experiments

With the deprecation of conversion lift testing post-iOS 14.5, how do you measure incrementality? Geo-experiments provide a way out.

Building 2,000 Unique SEO Pages with GPT-3

How I built 2,000 tailored landing pages for Causal, with GPT-3 and Webflow.

Dear Facebook Advertisers, Stop Running Traffic Campaigns

"Run traffic campaigns to warm your pixel up" is the worst advice that routinely gets offered to new Facebook advertisers, but why exactly is this?

How did Uber waste so much ad money?

There's been a litany of articles over the past year about Uber supposedly wasting $100 million a year on ads, so it's worth asking how this kind of stuff happens.

Facebook's Ad Targeting is Inaccurate - Does It Matter?

Internal emails between staff working on Facebook Ads show concern that the platform's audiences are "crap" and "abysmal", but does it matter if they are?

What can we expect from Trump's 2020 Facebook Ads?

With the election imminent, what sort of tactics can we expect to see on the ad front? What shady strategies might come to light after the election? These are a couple of possibilities.

What if the advertising world were more competitive?

As pressure mounts on Facebook & Google over the lack of competition in the digital advertising landscape, it's worth asking 'what would life be like if there were more competition?'

If You Want to Design Effective Ads, Learn to Play Battleships

For a game that seemingly has nothing to do with marketing, Battleships can teach us a whole lot.

15 Graphs Which Show How Coronavirus Is Changing What We Search For

With the rapid rise in Covid-19 cases throughout the Western world, it's no surprise that many of us are turning to Google for information. But we're not just researching the virus itself; Covid-19 is changing how we search for travel, entertainment, financial information, and more.

Fixing Dark Patterns: Making Google Search Ads Visible Again

If you didn’t notice the changes Google have been making to search ads, you’re not alone. Google is making ads harder and harder to spot.

Black Hat PPC: How Does Referral Code Fraud Work?

Explore the tricks behind how advertisers exploit refer-a-friend schemes, and avoid detection while doing so.

What will political advertising look like in the 2020 election?

Digital ads played a huge role in the 2016 US election, but ad technology has come a long way since then. With the changes that have come since 2016, what can we expect from the 2020 election?

Banning Micro-Targeting Won’t Solve Facebook’s Political Ads Dilemma

Facebook has faced calls to ban micro-targeted political ads for the upcoming US & UK elections, but this won’t hurt political advertisers the way it's intended to.

Facebook Scraping, Still a Privacy Disaster

Despite the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it’s as easy as it’s ever been to scrape sensitive user data from Facebook.

TikTok, and the Evolution of Meme Culture

Big tech thinks that TikTok is just another video platform, but this misses why the platform has become the world’s fastest growing app.

Battle of the Bots: How Market Makers Fight It Out on Crypto Exchanges

What I learnt from executing $50 million worth of Bitcoin market making trades.

digital stuff

A collection of articles I've written on various digital topics. Many of them explore ideas around design, privacy, and political advertising.

Building Long-Tail Keyword Lists for Programmatic SEO

With advances in language models, programmatic SEO is becoming increasingly accessible to marketers. It all starts with building a keyword list.

Conversion Lift Tests are Dead; Transitioning to Geo-Experiments

With the deprecation of conversion lift testing post-iOS 14.5, how do you measure incrementality? Geo-experiments provide a way out.

Building 2,000 Unique SEO Pages with GPT-3

How I built 2,000 tailored landing pages for Causal, with GPT-3 and Webflow.

Dear Facebook Advertisers, Stop Running Traffic Campaigns

"Run traffic campaigns to warm your pixel up" is the worst advice that routinely gets offered to new Facebook advertisers, but why exactly is this?

How did Uber waste so much ad money?

There's been a litany of articles over the past year about Uber supposedly wasting $100 million a year on ads, so it's worth asking how this kind of stuff happens.

Facebook's Ad Targeting is Inaccurate - Does It Matter?

Internal emails between staff working on Facebook Ads show concern that the platform's audiences are "crap" and "abysmal", but does it matter if they are?

What can we expect from Trump's 2020 Facebook Ads?

With the election imminent, what sort of tactics can we expect to see on the ad front? What shady strategies might come to light after the election? These are a couple of possibilities.

What if the advertising world were more competitive?

As pressure mounts on Facebook & Google over the lack of competition in the digital advertising landscape, it's worth asking 'what would life be like if there were more competition?'

If You Want to Design Effective Ads, Learn to Play Battleships

For a game that seemingly has nothing to do with marketing, Battleships can teach us a whole lot.

15 Graphs Which Show How Coronavirus Is Changing What We Search For

With the rapid rise in Covid-19 cases throughout the Western world, it's no surprise that many of us are turning to Google for information. But we're not just researching the virus itself; Covid-19 is changing how we search for travel, entertainment, financial information, and more.

Fixing Dark Patterns: Making Google Search Ads Visible Again

If you didn’t notice the changes Google have been making to search ads, you’re not alone. Google is making ads harder and harder to spot.

Black Hat PPC: How Does Referral Code Fraud Work?

Explore the tricks behind how advertisers exploit refer-a-friend schemes, and avoid detection while doing so.

What will political advertising look like in the 2020 election?

Digital ads played a huge role in the 2016 US election, but ad technology has come a long way since then. With the changes that have come since 2016, what can we expect from the 2020 election?

Banning Micro-Targeting Won’t Solve Facebook’s Political Ads Dilemma

Facebook has faced calls to ban micro-targeted political ads for the upcoming US & UK elections, but this won’t hurt political advertisers the way it's intended to.

Facebook Scraping, Still a Privacy Disaster

Despite the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it’s as easy as it’s ever been to scrape sensitive user data from Facebook.

TikTok, and the Evolution of Meme Culture

Big tech thinks that TikTok is just another video platform, but this misses why the platform has become the world’s fastest growing app.

Battle of the Bots: How Market Makers Fight It Out on Crypto Exchanges

What I learnt from executing $50 million worth of Bitcoin market making trades.