The Thrive Performance Marketing Blog

Learn about all things performance marketing and paid digital with the Thrive blog.
October 6, 2025
How to spot bad marketing reports

TL;DR Many marketing reports are fluff disguised as research. The biggest red flag? Headline numbers showing spectacular results without providing methodology, data sources, or context. This is especially true when basic averages are used without indicators of the spread of the data. Averages don't mean typical, especially in marketing where data is rarely normally distributed, or in reports with small or specific samples. Before trusting any report, demand transparency: methodology, sample details, data spread, and discussion of limitations. Use multiple sources to identify patterns, but never substitute benchmarks for your own testing. Stay skeptical, ask better questions, and build strategies on solid ground rather than marketing spin.

4 minute read
Eric Sloan
October 1, 2025
Deep diving into e-commerce measurement

TL;DR E-commerce success isn't just about ROAS. Smart marketers look beyond surface metrics to understand customer lifetime value, profitability, and the full customer journey. This means balancing short-term acquisition costs with long-term customer value, especially during high-stakes periods like Black Friday. Performance marketers often get tunnel vision on return on ad spend, but the reality is messier. The most successful e-commerce businesses understand that profitable growth trumps vanity metrics every time.

4 minute read
Santana Blanchette
September 24, 2025
Your 2025 guide to Black Friday/Cyber Monday performance marketing

TL;DR

7 minute read
Chris Erickson
September 16, 2025
What e-commerce marketing leaders should do in their first 90 days

TL;DR New e-commerce marketing leaders face intense pressure to deliver results quickly, but the most successful ones resist the urge to make immediate changes. Instead, they spend their first 90 days listening, learning, and building relationships. The key priorities: understand your market and customers deeply, learn the business economics from finance, evaluate existing teams and partnerships fairly, and establish clear communication systems. Only after this discovery phase should you start making strategic changes.

5 minute read
Santana Blanchette
August 13, 2025
What makes a good marketing audit?

TL;DR A proper audit has two components: performance marketing (finding wasted spend and scaling opportunities) and analytics foundation (ensuring your tracking setup is accurate). Focus on immediate wins like pausing zero-conversion keywords, implementing server-side tracking, and setting up automated alerts. Expect 5-15% variance between platforms—anything higher signals broken tracking. Document everything, audit quarterly, and prioritize fixes by ROI impact.

4 minute read
Gemma Philpott
July 30, 2025
Beyond attribution: understanding the incremental impact of your marketing

Originally published September 2023, updated July 2025 for relevancy TL;DR The world of marketing measurement is complex and traditional attribution methods often fail to share the whole story. We believe that incrementality is a more reliable determiner of revenue outcomes than many attribution models. Incrementality is all about measuring the real impact of our ads – the stuff that wouldn't have happened without them. We measure incrementality in two ways: experiments and testing media mix modeling To get started, we suggest running small experiments and begin building an understanding of how different media channels contribute to top-line revenue.

9 minute read
Eric Sloan
July 3, 2025
What is AI doing to SEO and paid media performance?

TL;DR: AI is changing SEO and PPC, not killing them. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Intelligence Optimization (GIO) are key. SEO and PPC teams must work together. Use PPC insights to inform SEO (landing pages, schema, mobile design, keywords, negatives, site structure, content). Unified strategies reduce waste and improve results.

7 minute read
Rhys Lizotte
March 5, 2025
Ad targeting: is it really that precise?

Ad targeting is one of the biggest selling points of digital marketing, but how accurate is it really? In this episode, we challenge the assumption that ad targeting is as precise as marketers believe. We discuss the pitfalls of audience segmentation, the over-reliance on machine learning, and the growing importance of creative in a world where targeting is becoming less effective.

3 minute read
Santana Blanchette
February 5, 2025
Answering your biggest performance marketing questions

Performance marketing is constantly evolving, and we know you have questions. In this special Q&A episode, we took your questions about performance marketing, from AI’s impact to reporting best practices and answered them in this wide-spanning conversation.

3 minute read
Santana Blanchette