Paid ads that are judged on sales, not screenshots

There is a version of this business where I offer eight channels, put a logo grid on the homepage and hire juniors to keep up. It pays better in the short run and it produces worse work, because paid advertising rewards depth rather than breadth.

Meta and Google account for the overwhelming majority of where money is actually made in paid acquisition for the kind of businesses I work with. Knowing two platforms properly, including their policy edges, their measurement quirks and how they behave in twenty different markets, is worth more to you than a shallow presence on eight.

The two do genuinely different jobs. Google captures demand that already exists: somebody types what you sell, and your job is to be there and be relevant. It is usually the faster route to revenue and it has a hard ceiling, because you cannot capture more demand than exists. Meta creates demand among people who were not looking. It is slower to prove and it is the only realistic way past what search volume can supply.

Run as rivals, they undermine each other. Judge both on last-click attribution and you will systematically defund the channel that creates the demand the other one harvests, then wonder why search volume for your brand keeps shrinking. Run as one budget judged on one number, the arguments about credit mostly disappear.

Everything below is organised so you can find your specific situation: your market, your sector, or both together. The costs, the seasonal calendars, the privacy rules and the local habits all differ, and pretending otherwise is how national campaigns quietly overpay in half the places they run.