Meta Ads in 2026 looks almost nothing like Facebook Ads in 2022. The platform has gone through a complete structural shift: AI automation now controls targeting by default, server-side tracking via the Conversions API has become a practical necessity (pixel-only setups now miss over half of actual conversions), Reels accounts for more than 50% of Instagram's ad inventory, and Threads has opened as a new placement with favorable early CPMs. If you're still running Meta campaig

PPC keyword research is the process of finding the search terms your potential customers type into Google before they buy, and deciding which of those terms are worth paying to show up for. Get this right and your entire campaign runs on a foundation that produces actual customers. Get it wrong and you're paying Google for traffic that was never going to convert in the first place. This is the full process we use at CRP Marketing when building Google Ads campaigns for small b

Meta lookalike audiences let you find new customers who resemble your best existing ones: buyers, email subscribers, high-value accounts. For most of the platform's history, they were the primary prospecting tool for Facebook and Instagram advertisers. In 2026, that's no longer true for most accounts. Meta has shifted heavily toward Advantage+ Audiences, an AI-driven system that effectively replaces manual lookalike targeting for the majority of campaigns. That doesn't mean l

Google Ads and Meta Ads are the two largest paid media platforms for most businesses, and they work in fundamentally different ways. Google Ads captures demand: it reaches people who are already searching for what you sell. Meta Ads creates demand: it puts your offer in front of people who match your ideal customer profile, whether or not they're shopping right now. Choosing between them, or figuring out how to split budget across both, is one of the most consequential decisi

Scaling Google Shopping ads revenue comes down to four things: a clean product feed, the right campaign structure for your account's maturity, a bidding strategy that matches your margin goals, and first-party data feeding the algorithm. Most ecommerce brands have one or two of these right and the others quietly bleeding budget. This guide covers the full playbook: feed optimization through Merchant Center Next, the honest Performance Max vs. Standard Shopping debate, Smart B

The answer to "should I run Google Ads or Meta Ads?" isn't the same for every business. It depends on whether demand for what you sell already exists, where your customers are in their buying journey, and how much budget you have to work with. Here's the short version: Google Ads wins when people are already searching for what you sell. Meta Ads wins when you need to create that awareness before the search happens. And for most businesses spending $3,000 or more per month on

Negative keywords in Google Ads are the terms you explicitly exclude from your campaigns: searches you never want your ads to appear for. Every click Google sends you costs money whether the person was ever going to buy from you or not. Negative keywords are how you stop paying for the ones who weren't. This has always been true. But right now, in 2026, it matters more than it ever has. Here's why: broad match is now the default keyword type in most campaign structures, Smart

Google Ads Smart Mode and Expert Mode are two fundamentally different ways to run the same platform. Smart Mode is Google's simplified, automated interface: every campaign runs as a Smart campaign, Google makes most of the decisions, and your visibility into what's happening is limited. Expert Mode is the full platform: every campaign type, every bidding strategy, every reporting dimension. For most businesses spending real money on ads, Expert Mode is the right choice. Smart

Most PPC campaigns fail before the first real optimization decision gets made. Not because the ads are bad, or the platform is broken, or the industry is too competitive. They fail because the foundation is wrong: the tracking is incomplete, the math was never run, or the campaign was built to generate clicks instead of customers. If you've tried PPC and walked away with nothing to show for the spend, this post is for you. We'll cover the real reasons campaigns don't work and

A high-converting landing page for paid ads is a standalone page (no navigation, no distractions) built to turn a single type of paid traffic into one specific action. It must mirror the promise of the ad, load in under three seconds, and give visitors exactly one thing to do next. Most businesses spend 90% of their budget on ads and almost nothing on the page that receives the clicks. That's where campaigns lose money. This guide covers how to build a paid media landing page