Blueprint | The Gradient

Featured Stories

The GRADIENT

The GRADIENT: Why Taste Is the New Moat

Why the PESO Model© is Right For High-Velocity Industries

When comms teams are constantly reacting, they miss opportunities. Christopher Barger shares how the PESO Model® creates structure without slowing things down. The post Why the PESO Model© is Right For High-Velocity Industries first appeared on Spin Sucks.

Total Budgets Expand, Direct Offers, & Shopping Promotions

Welcome to this week’s PPC Pulse. This week’s news centers around quite a few Google updates. Google rolled out campaign total budgets in open beta, introduced a new Direct Offers pilot inside AI Mode, and confirmed several Shopping promotion policy updates taking effect in early 2026. The updates affect how advertisers manage fixed promotional spend,

John Gentry, OpenX CEO and Adtech Pioneer, Dies After Battle With Cancer

John Gentry, a longtime advertising executive and the chief executive officer of supply-side platform OpenX, died Wednesday evening after a long battle with cancer. He was 58. A post to Gentry’s LinkedIn profile Thursday evening read: “If you are reading this, it means that I’m no longer around and lost my fight with cancer. While

Figma’s Push It campaign focuses on the hand in handcrafted

The product has what Damien refers to as this “almost magic button” that takes a static image or prompt and makes it come to life, which was a major starting point for the campaign concept. Meanwhile, one of the things Damien and his team were conscious of in relation to AI sentiment in the creative

How the PESO Model© Helps You Work Smarter, Not Harder

In How to Train Your Dragon, Astrid worked harder, Hiccup worked smarter. Which are you? Gini Dietrich details how the PESO Model© helps you shift to working smarter. The post How the PESO Model© Helps You Work Smarter, Not Harder first appeared on Spin Sucks.

UCP Debate, Trends Gets Gemini, Health AIO Concerns

Welcome to this week’s Pulse. Google is laying more groundwork for agent-led shopping, Google Trends is getting a Gemini helper inside Explore, and Google appears to have responded to a report we covered last week on AI Overviews health queries. Here’s what matters for you and your work. Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) Brings Agent Checkout

How to tell if you have too many tools in your stack

Every week, there’s a new AI-powered marketing tool promising to revolutionize your workflow. It’s tempting to try them all. But here’s what’s actually happening: marketing stacks are more cluttered than ever, teams are overwhelmed, and most tools are sitting unused while the bills keep coming. The real problem isn’t that you don’t have enough tools.

The Denon AH-D5200s: They should have been a classic!

Why you can trust Creative Bloq Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test. Denon haven’t made things easy for themselves with the AH-D5200s. After using them for around four months, I really, really like them, but

Why the PESO Model© Still Wins in the Age of Zero Click and Zero Share

In the age of zero-click and zero-share, presence matters more than visits. Gini Dietrich describes how the PESO Model© helps you stay seen and trusted. The post Why the PESO Model© Still Wins in the Age of Zero Click and Zero Share first appeared on Spin Sucks.

ChatGPT To Begin Testing Ads In The United States

Just today, OpenAI confirmed it will begin testing advertising in the United States for ChatGPT Free and ChatGPT Go users in the coming weeks, marking the first time ads will appear inside the ChatGPT experience. The test coincides with the U.S. launch of ChatGPT Go, a low-cost subscription tier priced at $8 per month that

The power of consistency and removing silos: Your Marketing Week

Nuts and bolts Nut butter brand Pip & Nut is a real success story. From a relative unknown a decade ago, it is now the market leader in the UK. And for good reason. It tapped into a market looking for a peanut butter without added sugar, palm oil, or other nasties, and that tasted

Feng Yitong illustrates the surreality of living between cities

Feng Yitong is an Berlin-based illustrator from Xi’an, China whose comic and hand-drawn imagery addresses migration, cultural shifts and embodied experiences in heavy, tactile forms of oil pastels. Using skills learned from her bachelors and masters degrees in illustration at the Berlin University of the Arts, she sketches her emotive scenes, then scans before using

The Five Moments of Need (From Wine Newbie to… Slightly Less Newbie)

Most people don’t learn the PESO Model© all at once. Shelly Verkamp explores how real understanding happens in five moments of need. The post The Five Moments of Need (From Wine Newbie to… Slightly Less Newbie) first appeared on Spin Sucks.

10 Remarketing Lists To Boost PPC Performance

Remarketing lists continue to be one of the more dependable tools inside PPC accounts, especially for search campaigns. They give advertisers clearer control over who sees ads, how bids are adjusted, and how messaging aligns with prior brand interaction. As tracking becomes more constrained and audience signals less granular, first-party data carries more weight in

Mythbuster: What AI is not about to do in advertising

As the hype around AI thins into something closer to reality, the ad industry is quietly drawing a line between what the tech can do and what it will not be trusted to touch. Here are the myths, and the reality underneath them. Myth: AI is about to replace media buyers Continue reading this article

Obey the Insect God taps into ’90s FMV nostalgia with modern indie design

There was a weird, brief design trend in late ’90s gaming for digitised sprites, as every developer raced to get a piece of Mortal Kombat’s success. There was a chaotic charm to FMV games like Pit-Fighter and Primal Rage, and it’s a style Obey the Insect God is aiming to bring back; a retro game-inspired

Your content isn’t broken. The system is. In Part 1 of our new series, Gini Dietrich explores how to build trust and traction with the PESO Model© when clicks and shares disappear. The post Implementing the PESO Model© in a Zero-Click, Zero-Share World first appeared on Spin Sucks.

Google Health AI Overviews Cite YouTube More Than Any Hospital Site

Google’s AI Overviews may be relying on YouTube more than official medical sources when answering health questions, according to new research from SEO platform SE Ranking. The study analyzed 50,807 German-language health prompts and keywords, captured in a one-time snapshot from December using searches run from Berlin. The report lands amid renewed scrutiny of health-related

EDO Found Liable for Contract Breach as Jury Awards iSpot $18.3M in Damages

A jury on Thursday found TV measurement firm EDO, co-founded by actor Ed Norton, liable for breaching its contract with iSpot, both companies confirmed, awarding iSpot $18.3 million in damages. ISpot was seeking up to $47 million. The jury, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, found that EDO breached its

Tickets now available for February’s Nicer Tuesdays!

Roll up! Join us on 3 February at EartH Hackney for our first Nicer Tuesdays of 2026 with yet another selection of brilliant creatives. At next month’s event, you can expect talks from Liang-Jung Chen, a London-based artist interested in material culture as they work across several mediums. After going viral with their UK indefinite

Join Our Newsletter

For more professional opportunities join our newsletter.