Primary research, published here.
Full-length papers with their own method, a scored vendor field and a corrections ledger of the first-pass claims that did not survive review. Published on this site rather than through an outlet, so the data behind every figure stays one click away.
- papers
- 9
- vendors scored
- 163
- corrections logged
- 1,961
Papers
- Commerce and ai agents October 2026
Who Does the Shopping?
From mobile and social discovery to AI-assisted and delegated buying
Which shopping tasks have moved to software, under whose authority, and with what verifiable value for merchants. Twelve buying routes across ChatGPT, Google, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, Amazon, Walmart, TikTok and Meta; the ACP, UCP and AP2 specifications read at pinned commits; a sandbox study of an AI agent shopping a test store; and a merchant contribution worksheet with displacement. Assistance is widespread, approval-based checkout is documented in a few assistants, and documented delegation is narrow and platform-bound.
- Data collaboration October 2026
What Can Leave the Room?
What buyers can receive, keep, use again and rebuild from nine data-collaboration products
What a buyer can actually receive, keep, reuse and rebuild from nine data-collaboration products: Snowflake, Databricks, AWS Clean Rooms, Ads Data Hub, BigQuery clean rooms, InfoSum, LiveRamp, Amazon Marketing Cloud and Meta Advanced Analytics. Every product lets something leave; none documents a way to take the whole workflow elsewhere. Thirteen tests to run before signing.
- Holding companies October 2026
The Evolution of Holding Companies
Control, client value and three paths for marketing work
Where value moves as software takes on more marketing work: who sets goals, controls actions, proves growth, earns the fee, carries risk and keeps the learning. Twenty years of holding-company history read as a contest over control, three conditional paths for running the work, and a task-cost model a CMO can test.
- Attention measurement October 2026
Paying Attention
The State of Attention Measurement in 2026
What attention metrics measure, which hold accreditation, whether they predict memory, brand or sales beyond time in view, and how attention is traded, bought and carried into agentic buying. 20 media and creative attention products are scored on the Focus Quotient within two cohorts, from 985 sources and 584 verified claims.
- Gaming advertising October 2026
The State of Gaming Advertising in 2026
Who sells brand advertising in games, what the standards cover, and how much of the pitch the public record supports
Gaming advertising is several markets sold under one name. The only public US dollar series found counts ads placed in games, mostly on mobile, and EMARKETER says developers buy most of the ads served in games; MRC's record on 29 September 2026 listed no accredited intrinsic in-game metric; and every published field result found for a live brand campaign comes from a party with a stake in it. The paper scores in-game networks, platform and publisher ad products, and game-adjacent media within separate cohorts.
- Audio advertising September 2026
Counted, Not Heard
The State of Audio Advertising in 2026
An audit of the public proof behind US audio advertising. The certified metrics count downloads and ad deliveries, not listening; most attribution products that document a method match IP addresses, households or pixels; none of the attention or in-game retention claims this review coded has independent support.
- Native advertising September 2026
Borrowed Trust
The State of Native Advertising in 2026
Open-web native, as the recommendation and in-feed networks sell it, is a supply-rights business sold as a performance product. What can and cannot be sized, what the causal evidence shows, and what a buyer should test. A scored vendor field, the Native Quotient, and every correction from the review rounds are published with it.
- Mobile app growth September 2026
What the Machines Can See
The State of Mobile App Growth in 2026
What the app-growth engines optimize, what attribution can and cannot show, and what durable growth depends on: the counterfactual, the store's cut and value after a year. A scored field of eleven app-growth platforms, the App Quotient, and every correction from three review rounds are published with it.
- Contextual advertising August 2026
Proof and Story
The State of Contextual Advertising in 2026
How meaning, emotion and narrative are derived from content, who can actually do it, and the two capabilities the entire vendor field is missing. The interests declared and every first-pass claim the verifier rejected are published with it.