{"meta":{"name":"CribThis! open research API","license":"https://cribthis.com/methodology","count":120,"verticals":[{"id":"geo","title":"Generative Engine Optimization"},{"id":"b2b","title":"B2B Go-To-Market & Demand Science"},{"id":"ecommerce","title":"DTC, Retail & Pricing Science"},{"id":"brand","title":"Brand & Creative Effectiveness"},{"id":"retention","title":"Retention & Lifecycle"},{"id":"paid-media","title":"Paid Media & Measurement"},{"id":"social","title":"Social & Community"}],"generated_at":"2026-09-21T11:46:08.654Z"},"cribs":[{"slug":"only-5-percent-of-buyers-are-in-market","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/only-5-percent-of-buyers-are-in-market","vertical":"b2b","category":"Demand","group":"95:5 Rule","myth":"Your entire B2B budget should chase in-market buyers.","crib":"At any moment only ~5% of business buyers are in-market; the other 95% are future buyers who must be reached now to be remembered later.","nuance":"The 5% figure is a directional average across categories with long purchase cycles, not a universal constant.","scores":{"impact":9.5,"consensus":8.6,"evidence_strength":88},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["brand","paid","content"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The 95-5 Rule: How advertising works","authors":"John Dawes, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute / LinkedIn B2B Institute","url":"https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/b2b-research/trends/95-5-rule","tier":"Academic","year":2021}},{"slug":"rewriting-competitor-content-is-enough","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/rewriting-competitor-content-is-enough","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Entity & E-E-A-T","myth":"Rewriting competitor content is enough.","crib":"For AI Overviews, mostly true: cited pages were statistically indistinguishable from uncited ranking pages on originality (medians 52 vs 55.5, p=.07) across 793 measured AI citations - AIO citation rides on Google rank, not information gain.","nuance":"The exception is legal content, where cited pages were markedly more original than uncited ones.","scores":{"impact":9.4,"consensus":8.4,"evidence_strength":80},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["aio","chatgpt","perplexity"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Do AI Assistants Cite Original Content? 793 AI Citations Measured","authors":"On-Page.ai","url":"https://api.on-page.ai/research/ai-citation-study","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2026}},{"slug":"60-40-brand-activation","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/60-40-brand-activation","vertical":"brand","category":"Budget","group":"Budget Allocation","myth":"Performance marketing should get the majority of budget.","crib":"Across hundreds of IPA case studies, roughly 60% brand / 40% activation maximises long-term profit growth in consumer categories.","nuance":"The ratio is a category-level average; growth-stage and subscription businesses skew more activation.","scores":{"impact":9.4,"consensus":8.6,"evidence_strength":88},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["brand","paid"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Long and the Short of It","authors":"Les Binet & Peter Field, IPA","url":"https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/the-long-and-the-short-of-it","tier":"Primary Research","year":2013}},{"slug":"roi-confidence-intervals-span-100-points","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/roi-confidence-intervals-span-100-points","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"The Validity Gap","myth":"A big enough A/B test or attribution platform can pin down each campaign's ROI.","crib":"Across 25 large field experiments with major U.S. retailers and brokerages, the median confidence interval on ad ROI was over 100 percentage points wide; individual-level sales are so volatile (coefficient of variation ~10) that an informative test often needs 10M+ person-weeks.","nuance":"This is about measuring marginal ROI precisely, not about whether to experiment: the same paper argues RCTs still inject unbiased information, while targeted advertising makes selection bias crippling for observational attribution.","scores":{"impact":9.4,"consensus":8.8,"evidence_strength":95},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["paid","measurement"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Unfavorable Economics of Measuring the Returns to Advertising","authors":"Randall A. Lewis & Justin M. Rao, Quarterly Journal of Economics","url":"https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjv023","tier":"Academic","year":2015}},{"slug":"last-click-overstates-search-value","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/last-click-overstates-search-value","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"Attribution","myth":"Last-click attribution is a fair scorecard.","crib":"Large-scale field experiments show branded search and retargeting capture credit for conversions that would have happened anyway; last-click can overstate paid value by an order of magnitude.","nuance":"Incrementality varies by brand strength: weak brands see genuinely incremental branded search.","scores":{"impact":9.3,"consensus":8.4,"evidence_strength":90},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["paid","search","analytics"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large Scale Field Experiment","authors":"Blake, Nosko & Tadelis (eBay), Econometrica","url":"https://www.nber.org/papers/w20171","tier":"Academic","year":2015}},{"slug":"most-tv-spend-unprofitable-at-the-margin","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/most-tv-spend-unprofitable-at-the-margin","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Budget Allocation","group":"The Validity Gap","myth":"TV's ROI estimates justify current spend levels.","crib":"Estimating elasticities and ROI across 288 brands, Shapiro, Hitsch & Tuchman find ad elasticities far smaller than the published literature suggests, negative ROI at the margin for more than 80% of brands, and positive overall ROI for only about a third.","nuance":"Marginal, not average: most brands could keep TV profitably at lower weight. The finding argues for cutting spend to the point where marginal ROI clears hurdle, not for abandoning the channel.","scores":{"impact":9.3,"consensus":8.2,"evidence_strength":93},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["tv","paid"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"TV Advertising Effectiveness and Profitability: Generalizable Results From 288 Brands","authors":"Bradley T. Shapiro, Gunter J. Hitsch & Anna E. Tuchman, Econometrica","url":"https://doi.org/10.3982/ecta17674","tier":"Academic","year":2021}},{"slug":"light-buyers-drive-growth","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/light-buyers-drive-growth","vertical":"brand","category":"Growth","group":"Penetration","myth":"Loyal heavy buyers are the growth engine.","crib":"Brand growth comes overwhelmingly from increasing penetration among light and non-buyers, not from deepening loyalty.","nuance":"Loyalty programmes still defend margin; they just rarely create growth.","scores":{"impact":9.2,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":85},"effort":"high","volume":"medium","channels":["brand","paid","retail"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"How Brands Grow","authors":"Byron Sharp, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute","url":"https://www.oup.com.au/books/higher-education/management-and-marketing/9780195573565-how-brands-grow","tier":"Academic","year":2010}},{"slug":"advertising-elasticity-small-but-compounding","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/advertising-elasticity-small-but-compounding","vertical":"brand","category":"Time Horizons","group":"How Advertising Works","myth":"If ads don't move this week's sales, they didn't work.","crib":"Across 751 short-term and 402 long-term elasticities from 56 studies (1960-2008), the average short-term advertising elasticity is 0.12 - but the mean long-term elasticity is 0.24, double the short-term, through carryover.","nuance":"Elasticities have declined over time and run higher for durables, early-lifecycle products, and when measured in GRPs rather than spend; prior meta-analytic means (0.22 / 0.41) were overstated.","scores":{"impact":9.2,"consensus":8.8,"evidence_strength":90},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["paid","brand"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"How Well Does Advertising Work? Generalizations from Meta-Analysis of Brand Advertising Elasticities","authors":"Raj Sethuraman, Gerard J. Tellis & Richard A. Briesch, Journal of Marketing Research","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1509/jmkr.48.3.457","tier":"Academic","year":2011}},{"slug":"brand-activation-split-46-54","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/brand-activation-split-46-54","vertical":"b2b","category":"Budget","group":"Budget Allocation","myth":"B2B should spend almost everything on lead gen.","crib":"Long-run profit is maximised near a 46% brand / 54% activation split in B2B, versus 60/40 in B2C.","nuance":"Optimal split shifts with category growth, contract value and sales-cycle length.","scores":{"impact":9.2,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":85},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["brand","paid"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The B2B Effectiveness Code","authors":"Les Binet & Peter Field, LinkedIn B2B Institute","url":"https://business.linkedin.com/advertise/resources/b2b-institute/the-b2b-effectiveness-code","tier":"Primary Research","year":2021}},{"slug":"aggregated-round-ups-can-rank-in-ai-answers","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/aggregated-round-ups-can-rank-in-ai-answers","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Structure & Schema","myth":"Aggregated round-ups can rank in AI answers.","crib":"In most consumer verticals they dominate: 80% of CPG/retail AI answers cite at least one neutral reviewer or aggregator (Foglift 2026 benchmark - 375 buyer-intent responses, 25 verticals, 5 engines). The exception is tech SaaS, where vendor first-party content is cited 92.7% of the time.","nuance":"If you sell consumer products, the roundup is the battlefield; in SaaS, your own docs still win.","scores":{"impact":9.1,"consensus":8.1,"evidence_strength":81},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["chatgpt","claude","perplexity","aio"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"When AI Engines Cite the Reviewer vs. the Brand: A 25-Vertical Split","authors":"Foglift","url":"https://foglift.io/research/ai-search-aggregators-vs-vendors-2026","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2026}},{"slug":"creative-is-the-largest-controllable-variable","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/creative-is-the-largest-controllable-variable","vertical":"brand","category":"Creative","group":"Creative Effectiveness","myth":"Targeting and media buying determine campaign outcomes.","crib":"Creative quality accounts for roughly half of advertising-driven sales variance — a larger share than any single media variable.","nuance":"Creative and media interact: strong creative in weak reach still underdelivers.","scores":{"impact":9.1,"consensus":8.4,"evidence_strength":86},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["brand","paid","tv"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"When It Comes to Advertising Effectiveness, What Is Key?","authors":"Nielsen Catalina Solutions","url":"https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2017/when-it-comes-to-advertising-effectiveness-what-is-key/","tier":"Primary Research","year":2017}},{"slug":"statistics-and-citations-beat-keyword-placement-geo-bench","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/statistics-and-citations-beat-keyword-placement-geo-bench","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Structure & Schema","myth":"Traditional SEO keyword placement is sufficient for AI engines.","crib":"Adding numeric statistics, authoritative quotes and fluent structural edits boosts visibility in generative engines by up to 40%.","nuance":"Gains are strongest on debate-style and comparison queries; keyword placement still governs the retrieval step that feeds the generator.","scores":{"impact":9,"consensus":9,"evidence_strength":92},"effort":"medium","volume":"low","channels":["chatgpt","perplexity","gemini","aio"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Statistics, quotes and citations lift generative visibility up to 40%","authors":"Aggarwal et al. (Princeton / IIT Delhi / Georgia Tech / AI2)","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735","tier":"Primary Research","year":2024}},{"slug":"checkout-fields-drive-abandonment","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/checkout-fields-drive-abandonment","vertical":"ecommerce","category":"Conversion","group":"Checkout","myth":"Long checkouts are fine if the product is good.","crib":"Average large-site checkouts ask for far more fields than necessary; trimming to the minimum viable set is one of the highest-yield conversion changes available.","nuance":"Field count is a proxy: perceived effort and error handling matter as much as raw count.","scores":{"impact":9,"consensus":8.8,"evidence_strength":90},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["web","ecommerce"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Checkout Usability Research","authors":"Baymard Institute","url":"https://baymard.com/research/checkout-usability","tier":"Primary Research","year":2024}},{"slug":"emotional-campaigns-outperform-rational","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/emotional-campaigns-outperform-rational","vertical":"brand","category":"Creative","group":"Creative Effectiveness","myth":"Rational product messaging drives the strongest results.","crib":"Emotionally led campaigns produce roughly twice the long-term business effects of rational ones, and the gap widens with campaign duration.","nuance":"Rational messaging still wins for immediate activation and complex considered purchases.","scores":{"impact":9,"consensus":8.2,"evidence_strength":84},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["brand","tv","social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Long and the Short of It","authors":"Les Binet & Peter Field, IPA","url":"https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/the-long-and-the-short-of-it","tier":"Primary Research","year":2013}},{"slug":"linkedin-link-in-comments","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/linkedin-link-in-comments","vertical":"social","category":"Link in comments on LinkedIn","group":"Distribution mechanics","myth":"\"Link in comments\" is a busted hack — LinkedIn stopped penalising outbound links.","crib":"Outbound links in the post body still suppress reach. Algorithm InSights (1.8M posts) puts the body-link penalty near 50% of organic reach, and controlled A/B tests show first-comment placement recovering most of it: GrowthRocks measured 2.9x reach for link-in-comment in round one and 1.8x in round two — with more clicks, not fewer.","nuance":"The recovery is not free. Post-body links win on click-through per impression, so if the KPI is immediate conversions on a small warm audience, body links can still be the right call. Deliver the full argument in the post either way: a naked \"link in comments\" with no standalone value gets read as traffic-bridging and capped.","scores":{"impact":9,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":82},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["linkedin","organic-social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"LinkedIn Experiment: Link in Post vs Link in Comment","authors":"GrowthRocks (A/B test) · Richard van der Blom, Algorithm InSights (1.8M posts)","url":"https://growthrocks.com/blog/linkedin-abtest-link-in-comment/","tier":"Primary Research","year":2021}},{"slug":"linkedin-dwell-time","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/linkedin-dwell-time","vertical":"social","category":"Dwell time beats reactions","group":"Engagement signals","myth":"Likes are the signal that drives distribution.","crib":"LinkedIn's own ranking model uses a dwell-time prediction weighted independently of — and more heavily than — likes, with no fixed second threshold. Content that gets read all the way through outranks content that gets tapped and skipped.","nuance":"There is no published dwell-time target; it varies by format and context. Optimise the first two lines (expand rate) and the scannability of the body, and treat \"engagement bait\" shortcuts as a downranking risk.","scores":{"impact":9,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":76},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["linkedin","organic-social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"LinkedIn Algorithm Explained 2026: Dwell Time, Comments & Reach","authors":"Meet Lea (citing LinkedIn engineering disclosures)","url":"https://meet-lea.com/en/blog/linkedin-algorithm-explained","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2026}},{"slug":"heavier-media-weight-rarely-lifts-established-brands","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/heavier-media-weight-rarely-lifts-established-brands","vertical":"brand","category":"Budget Allocation","group":"How Advertising Works","myth":"Outspending competitors on media weight lifts sales.","crib":"Across 389 BehaviorScan split-cable TV experiments, increasing budget relative to competitors did not increase sales in general - changing brand, copy, or media strategy did. Standard recall and persuasion pretests did not predict which ads would move sales.","nuance":"Packaged goods in the TV era, but it remains the largest set of true ad-weight experiments ever run; its null on raw weight is why 'strategy and copy over budget' became canon.","scores":{"impact":9,"consensus":8.5,"evidence_strength":92},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["tv","paid","creative"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"How T.V. Advertising Works: A Meta-Analysis of 389 Real World Split Cable T.V. Advertising Experiments","authors":"Leonard M. Lodish et al., Journal of Marketing Research","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002224379503200201","tier":"Academic","year":1995}},{"slug":"earned-media-outweighs-owned-domain-authority","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/earned-media-outweighs-owned-domain-authority","vertical":"geo","category":"Authority","group":"Entity & E-E-A-T","myth":"Owned brand domain authority is enough to secure top placement in AI answers.","crib":"Generative engines systematically favor earned media and authoritative third-party coverage over brand-owned and social assets.","nuance":"Owned content still anchors the entity; it just rarely wins the citation slot on commercial comparison queries.","scores":{"impact":9,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":68},"effort":"high","volume":"medium","channels":["chatgpt","perplexity","gemini","aio"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Generative Engine Optimization: How to Dominate AI Search","authors":"Chen & Wang","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08919","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2025}},{"slug":"long-term-campaigns-outperform","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/long-term-campaigns-outperform","vertical":"b2b","category":"Measurement","group":"Time Horizons","myth":"Quarterly performance reporting captures campaign value.","crib":"Brand effects accumulate over 6+ months; measurement windows shorter than two quarters systematically undervalue brand and overvalue activation.","nuance":"Short windows are fine for pure activation tactics with immediate conversion paths.","scores":{"impact":8.9,"consensus":8.2,"evidence_strength":84},"effort":"high","volume":"medium","channels":["paid","brand"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Long and the Short of It","authors":"Les Binet & Peter Field, IPA","url":"https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/the-long-and-the-short-of-it","tier":"Primary Research","year":2013}},{"slug":"geo-holdout-is-the-practical-gold-standard","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/geo-holdout-is-the-practical-gold-standard","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"Incrementality","myth":"Platform-reported ROAS is sufficient evidence.","crib":"Geo-based holdout experiments give unbiased incrementality estimates without user-level tracking and are the most practical causal method for most advertisers.","nuance":"Geo tests need adequate market count and spend separation to reach usable power.","scores":{"impact":8.9,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":84},"effort":"high","volume":"medium","channels":["paid","analytics"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Estimating Ad Effectiveness using Geo Experiments","authors":"Vaver & Koehler, Google Research","url":"https://research.google/pubs/pub38355/","tier":"Primary Research","year":2011}},{"slug":"reach-beats-frequency","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/reach-beats-frequency","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Planning","group":"Reach","myth":"High frequency against a narrow audience maximises impact.","crib":"Broad reach with modest frequency consistently outperforms narrow high-frequency plans; marginal response per additional exposure declines quickly.","nuance":"Complex or new propositions justify higher frequency than established ones.","scores":{"impact":8.8,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":80},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["paid","tv","social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"How Brands Grow","authors":"Byron Sharp, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute","url":"https://www.oup.com.au/books/higher-education/management-and-marketing/9780195573565-how-brands-grow","tier":"Academic","year":2010}},{"slug":"online-ads-move-mostly-offline-sales","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/online-ads-move-mostly-offline-sales","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Attribution","group":"The Validity Gap","myth":"Display ad ROI shows up in online conversions.","crib":"A randomized experiment with 1.6 million Yahoo! users found display ads profitably lifted a major retailer's purchases by 5% - but 93% of the increase happened in brick-and-mortar stores, and 78% came from customers who never clicked the ads.","nuance":"One large retailer, so magnitudes don't transfer; the structural lesson does: click-based and online-only measurement miss nearly all of the causal effect.","scores":{"impact":8.8,"consensus":8.4,"evidence_strength":92},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["paid","measurement"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Online Ads and Offline Sales: Measuring the Effect of Retail Advertising via a Controlled Experiment on Yahoo!","authors":"Randall A. Lewis & David H. Reiley, Quantitative Marketing and Economics","url":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11129-014-9146-6","tier":"Academic","year":2014}},{"slug":"creativity-has-lost-its-effectiveness-edge","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/creativity-has-lost-its-effectiveness-edge","vertical":"brand","category":"Creative","group":"Creative Effectiveness","myth":"Award-winning creativity is automatically more effective.","crib":"Across nearly 600 IPA Effectiveness Award case studies (1996-2018), creatively awarded campaigns have fallen to their lowest effectiveness in 24 years of analysis and are now no more effective than non-awarded campaigns; short-termism is the main driver.","nuance":"The same databank shows the decline is avoidable: creatively awarded work still outperforms when given long timeframes and real media support.","scores":{"impact":8.8,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":80},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["creative","brand"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Crisis in Creative Effectiveness","authors":"Peter Field, IPA","url":"https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/the-crisis-in-creative-effectiveness","tier":"Primary Research","year":2019}},{"slug":"guest-checkout-required","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/guest-checkout-required","vertical":"ecommerce","category":"Conversion","group":"Checkout","myth":"Forcing account creation builds your CRM.","crib":"Mandatory account creation is a top-cited abandonment driver; guest checkout with a post-purchase account offer captures both revenue and the record.","nuance":"Subscription and B2B carts are the legitimate exception.","scores":{"impact":8.8,"consensus":8.9,"evidence_strength":88},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["ecommerce","web"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Guest Checkout Usability","authors":"Baymard Institute","url":"https://baymard.com/blog/make-guest-checkout-prominent","tier":"Primary Research","year":2024}},{"slug":"ai-models-prefer-short-simple-pages","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/ai-models-prefer-short-simple-pages","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Structure & Schema","myth":"AI models prefer short, simple pages.","crib":"Pages with high quote density and numeric stats are cited 2-3x more often than thin content.","nuance":"Density beats length. Bloat without primary data does not help.","scores":{"impact":8.8,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":74},"effort":"high","volume":"medium","channels":["chatgpt","claude","perplexity"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"From Retrieved to Cited: How Commercial Content Earns Citations in AI Search","authors":"AirOps","url":"https://www.airops.com/report/from-retrieved-to-cited-how-commercial-content-earns-citations-in-ai-search","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2026}},{"slug":"mental-availability-beats-targeting","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/mental-availability-beats-targeting","vertical":"b2b","category":"Demand","group":"95:5 Rule","myth":"Hyper-targeting a small ICP list is more efficient than broad reach.","crib":"Category-entry-point memory built through broad reach predicts future buying better than narrow retargeting of today's list.","nuance":"Broad still means category-relevant: reach the buying group, not the entire internet.","scores":{"impact":8.8,"consensus":7.6,"evidence_strength":80},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["brand","paid"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"How Brands Grow Part 2","authors":"Jenni Romaniuk & Byron Sharp, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute","url":"https://marketingscience.info/learn-with-us/books","tier":"Academic","year":2015}},{"slug":"recession-share-of-voice-pays","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/recession-share-of-voice-pays","vertical":"brand","category":"Budget","group":"Downturn Playbook","myth":"Cut ad spend first when a downturn hits.","crib":"The IPA's recession evidence review finds brands that maintain share of voice through a downturn recover faster and gain share over cutters - cutting spend mortgages the recovery.","nuance":"Directional evidence, not a license to keep every line item: cut waste, keep presence.","scores":{"impact":8.8,"consensus":8.4,"evidence_strength":80},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["brand","planning","paid"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Advertising in Recession (EffWorks evidence review)","authors":"IPA","url":"https://ipa.co.uk/initiatives/effworks/effworks-ft-reports/advertising-in-recession","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2026}},{"slug":"observational-attribution-cant-recover-lift","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/observational-attribution-cant-recover-lift","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"The Validity Gap","myth":"With enough user-level data, models can recover causal lift without experiments.","crib":"Across 663 Facebook RCTs described by 5,000+ features, state-of-the-art observational methods (double/debiased ML, propensity matching) miss the experimental lift by a median 62-115% depending on funnel stage - larger than the median lift itself.","nuance":"The authors map where the methods do comparatively better, but conclude observational attribution cannot substitute for experiments until platforms log auction-level features.","scores":{"impact":8.8,"consensus":8.2,"evidence_strength":90},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["paid","measurement","analytics"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Close Enough? A Large-Scale Exploration of Non-Experimental Approaches to Advertising Measurement","authors":"Brett R. Gordon, Robert Moakler & Florian Zettelmeyer, Marketing Science","url":"https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2022.1413","tier":"Academic","year":2023}},{"slug":"statistical-significance-is-not-a-deployment-rule","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/statistical-significance-is-not-a-deployment-rule","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"Experimentation","myth":"A statistically significant lift tells you whether to ship the treatment.","crib":"A significance test answers whether the experimental means differ, not whether deployment will pay off under future uncertainty. Across 552 advertising experiments, a distribution-aware decision rule substantially reduced regret versus conventional hypothesis testing.","nuance":"This is a September 2026 preprint evaluated on one anonymous platform archive. The decision rule also needs an explicit parameter for how much the firm trusts the experiment as a guide to deployment.","scores":{"impact":8.8,"consensus":7.2,"evidence_strength":82},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["paid","experimentation","measurement"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"Robust A/B Decisions","authors":"Max H. Farrell, Malika Korganbekova & Sanjog Misra, arXiv","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.07633","tier":"Academic","year":2026}},{"slug":"share-of-voice-drives-share-growth","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/share-of-voice-drives-share-growth","vertical":"b2b","category":"Measurement","group":"eSOV","myth":"Market share grows from product superiority alone.","crib":"Excess share of voice above share of market predicts subsequent share growth; roughly every 10 points of eSOV maps to about 0.5-1 point of annual share gain.","nuance":"The coefficient varies widely by category; treat it as a planning heuristic, not a forecast.","scores":{"impact":8.7,"consensus":7.4,"evidence_strength":76},"effort":"high","volume":"medium","channels":["paid","brand"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Media in Focus","authors":"Les Binet & Peter Field, IPA","url":"https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/media-in-focus-marketing-effectiveness-in-the-digital-era","tier":"Primary Research","year":2017}},{"slug":"onboarding-window-determines-churn","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/onboarding-window-determines-churn","vertical":"retention","category":"Lifecycle","group":"Onboarding","myth":"Churn is a late-lifecycle problem.","crib":"Most avoidable churn is set in the first sessions: users who reach a core activation action early retain at multiples of those who do not.","nuance":"Correlation with activation is strong, but activation events must be validated causally with holdouts.","scores":{"impact":8.7,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":76},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["product","email","lifecycle"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Growth research on activation and retention curves","authors":"Reforge / Andrew Chen","url":"https://andrewchen.com/retention-is-king/","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2019}},{"slug":"creative-quality-outweighs-targeting-precision","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/creative-quality-outweighs-targeting-precision","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Creative","group":"Creative","myth":"Better targeting compensates for average creative.","crib":"In platform meta-analyses creative explains far more outcome variance than incremental targeting precision, especially in auction environments that already optimise delivery.","nuance":"Targeting still matters for genuinely narrow addressable markets.","scores":{"impact":8.7,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":78},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["paid","social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"When It Comes to Advertising Effectiveness, What Is Key?","authors":"Nielsen Catalina Solutions","url":"https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2017/when-it-comes-to-advertising-effectiveness-what-is-key/","tier":"Primary Research","year":2017}},{"slug":"ghost-ads-cheapest-valid-control","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/ghost-ads-cheapest-valid-control","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"The Validity Gap","myth":"Valid lift measurement requires expensive PSA control ads or full platform blackouts.","crib":"Ghost ads - logging the impression a control user would have been served, without serving or paying for it - reproduce RCT-grade measurement at a fraction of the cost of PSA controls, and are precise enough to have become standard practice at Google and for brands like Duracell and Nissan.","nuance":"Ghost ads need platform support to log would-have-served impressions; where a platform won't cooperate, PSA controls remain the fallback.","scores":{"impact":8.7,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":90},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["paid","measurement"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Ghost Ads: Improving the Economics of Measuring Online Ad Effectiveness","authors":"Garrett A. Johnson, Randall A. Lewis & Elmar I. Nubbemeyer, Journal of Marketing Research","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jmr.15.0297","tier":"Academic","year":2017}},{"slug":"category-entry-points-win-b2b-shortlists","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/category-entry-points-win-b2b-shortlists","vertical":"b2b","category":"Demand","group":"Mental Availability","myth":"B2B growth comes from persuading buyers with superior messaging.","crib":"Ehrenberg-Bass research shows B2B buyers start from a mental shortlist built from category entry points - the cues (motives, situations, occasions) that retrieve brands from memory. Brands grow by linking themselves to more CEPs, not by winning rational arguments.","nuance":"CEP coverage correlates with brand choice; the real work is researching the category's actual CEPs and building associations over years, then tracking them as mental availability metrics.","scores":{"impact":8.7,"consensus":7.6,"evidence_strength":74},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["brand","content"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Category Entry Points in a Business-to-Business (B2B) World","authors":"Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science (Jenni Romaniuk)","url":"https://ebims.emdev.au/category-entry-points-in-a-business-to-business-b2b-world/","tier":"Primary Research","year":null}},{"slug":"buying-groups-not-single-leads","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/buying-groups-not-single-leads","vertical":"b2b","category":"Sales","group":"Buying Committee","myth":"One MQL equals one opportunity.","crib":"Typical enterprise purchases involve 6-11 stakeholders; single-contact scoring systematically misreads deal readiness.","nuance":"Group size scales with deal value and risk, not with company size alone.","scores":{"impact":8.6,"consensus":8.4,"evidence_strength":82},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["sales","content","email"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Challenger Customer","authors":"Gartner / CEB","url":"https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2019}},{"slug":"retention-beats-acquisition-economics","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/retention-beats-acquisition-economics","vertical":"retention","category":"Economics","group":"Unit Economics","myth":"Growth is an acquisition problem.","crib":"Modest retention improvements compound through the customer base and typically move profit more than equivalent acquisition spend, because retained revenue carries no CAC.","nuance":"The classic '5% retention = 25-95% profit' figure is a 1990 consulting estimate, not a measured law.","scores":{"impact":8.6,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["email","product","lifecycle"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"Zero Defections: Quality Comes to Services","authors":"Reichheld & Sasser, Harvard Business Review","url":"https://hbr.org/1990/09/zero-defections-quality-comes-to-services","tier":"Academic","year":1990}},{"slug":"mmm-and-experiments-are-complementary","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/mmm-and-experiments-are-complementary","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"MMM","myth":"Marketing mix modelling replaces experiments.","crib":"MMM and experiments are complements: experiments calibrate priors, MMM allocates across the whole mix. Neither alone is sufficient.","nuance":"Uncalibrated MMM is highly sensitive to specification choices.","scores":{"impact":8.6,"consensus":8.2,"evidence_strength":82},"effort":"high","volume":"medium","channels":["paid","analytics"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Bayesian Methods for Media Mix Modeling with Carryover and Shape Effects","authors":"Jin et al., Google Research","url":"https://research.google/pubs/pub46001/","tier":"Primary Research","year":2017}},{"slug":"creative-commitment-multiplies-effects","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/creative-commitment-multiplies-effects","vertical":"brand","category":"Creative","group":"Creative Effectiveness","myth":"Creative quality alone determines effectiveness.","crib":"Comparing 4,863 effectiveness award cases (2011-2019), the largest business effects came from 'creatively committed' campaigns: more media spend, more channels, and longer durations behind one creative platform - captured in the Creative Effectiveness Ladder.","nuance":"The Ladder is aspirational framing, but the underlying pattern - commitment amplifies creativity - is consistent across the case base.","scores":{"impact":8.6,"consensus":7.5,"evidence_strength":78},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["creative","paid"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Effectiveness Code","authors":"James Hurman & Peter Field, WARC / Cannes Lions","url":"https://www.warc.com/en/article/the-effectiveness-code-63d75d4dfc3547f4b8a84f6f4d1bf6e2","tier":"Primary Research","year":2020}},{"slug":"retail-media-iroas-is-methodology-sensitive","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/retail-media-iroas-is-methodology-sensitive","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"Retail Media","myth":"Retail media ROAS proves the channel works.","crib":"Most retail-media ROAS counts sales that would have happened anyway; even incremental ROAS is so methodology-sensitive that Ovative, Albertsons Media Collective and Kellogg faculty built a framework just to standardize it.","nuance":"Ask any retail media network for the method behind its incrementality claim - the number is only as good as the counterfactual.","scores":{"impact":8.6,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["paid","measurement","retail"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Retail Media iROAS Demystified","authors":"Ovative Group with Albertsons Media Collective & Northwestern Kellogg faculty","url":"https://ovative.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Retail-Media-iROAS-Demystified.pdf","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2026}},{"slug":"free-shipping-threshold-beats-discount","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/free-shipping-threshold-beats-discount","vertical":"ecommerce","category":"Pricing","group":"Pricing Psychology","myth":"A percentage discount converts better than free shipping.","crib":"Shipping cost is the single most cited reason for abandonment; a free-shipping threshold typically outperforms an equivalent-margin discount and lifts average order value.","nuance":"Thresholds must sit modestly above current AOV to move basket size without killing conversion.","scores":{"impact":8.5,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":80},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["ecommerce","email"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Reasons for Abandonments During Checkout","authors":"Baymard Institute","url":"https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2024}},{"slug":"loyal-customers-arent-automatically-profitable","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/loyal-customers-arent-automatically-profitable","vertical":"retention","category":"Loyalty","group":"Loyalty Economics","myth":"Loyal customers cost less to serve, pay more, and evangelize for free.","crib":"Studying four companies over 16 months, Reinartz & Kumar found only a modest correlation between customer longevity and profitability: long-tenure customers expected discounts, were no cheaper to serve, and were not reliably the best word-of-mouth sources.","nuance":"Some loyal customers are very profitable - the error is treating tenure as the signal. Segment on profitability and tenure together.","scores":{"impact":8.5,"consensus":8.2,"evidence_strength":75},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["crm","retention"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Mismanagement of Customer Loyalty","authors":"Werner Reinartz & V. Kumar, Harvard Business Review","url":"https://hbr.org/2002/07/the-mismanagement-of-customer-loyalty","tier":"Primary Research","year":2002}},{"slug":"retargeting-incrementality-is-low","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/retargeting-incrementality-is-low","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Channels","group":"Retargeting","myth":"Retargeting is the most efficient spend available.","crib":"Controlled experiments repeatedly find retargeting incrementality far below reported ROAS, because it reaches users already on a purchase path.","nuance":"Retargeting to long-lapsed or cart-abandon audiences retains more genuine incremental value.","scores":{"impact":8.5,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":82},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["paid","ecommerce"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"A Comparison of Approaches to Advertising Measurement: Evidence from Big Field Experiments at Facebook","authors":"Brett R. Gordon, Florian Zettelmeyer, Neha Bhargava & Dan Chapsky, Marketing Science","url":"https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mksc.2018.1135","tier":"Academic","year":2019}},{"slug":"aio-is-additive-traffic-on-top-of-blue-link-serps","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/aio-is-additive-traffic-on-top-of-blue-link-serps","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Freshness & Velocity","myth":"AIO is additive traffic on top of blue-link SERPs.","crib":"When an AI Overview appears, the top-ranking page's CTR drops ~34.5% on informational queries (Ahrefs, 300K keywords); Pew found clicks on traditional results roughly halve when an AI summary is present.","nuance":"Plan for cannibalization — high-funnel content is most exposed.","scores":{"impact":8.5,"consensus":7.5,"evidence_strength":82},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["aio"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5%","authors":"Ahrefs","url":"https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks/","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2025}},{"slug":"tv-roi-negative-at-margin","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/tv-roi-negative-at-margin","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"The Validity Gap","myth":"More GRPs fix weak TV performance.","crib":"Across 288 brands in many categories, TV ad elasticities come out far smaller than the published literature suggests, and marginal ROI is negative for more than 80% of brands.","nuance":"The finding is about marginal dollars at observed spend levels, not that TV never works; effects vary by brand and category, and the result is robust to functional form, power, and measurement-error checks.","scores":{"impact":8.5,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":92},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["paid","measurement"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"TV Advertising Effectiveness and Profitability: Generalizable Results From 288 Brands","authors":"Bradley T. Shapiro, Gunter J. Hitsch & Anna E. Tuchman, Econometrica","url":"https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA17674","tier":"Academic","year":2021}},{"slug":"distinctive-assets-beat-differentiation","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/distinctive-assets-beat-differentiation","vertical":"b2b","category":"Brand","group":"Distinctiveness","myth":"B2B brands win on rational differentiation.","crib":"Consistent distinctive assets (logo, colour, character, tagline) drive recognition and recall far more reliably than claimed product differentiation.","nuance":"Assets need years of consistency; rebrands reset the accumulated memory.","scores":{"impact":8.4,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":78},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["brand","paid","social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Building Distinctive Brand Assets","authors":"Jenni Romaniuk, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute","url":"http://www.jenniromaniuk.com/books","tier":"Academic","year":2018}},{"slug":"double-jeopardy-law","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/double-jeopardy-law","vertical":"brand","category":"Growth","group":"Penetration","myth":"Small brands can win by being unusually loyal.","crib":"Double jeopardy: smaller brands have both fewer buyers and slightly lower loyalty — an empirical law observed across categories and decades.","nuance":"Rare exceptions exist in geographically or subscription-locked categories.","scores":{"impact":8.4,"consensus":8.8,"evidence_strength":90},"effort":"low","volume":"low","channels":["brand"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"How Brands Grow","authors":"Byron Sharp, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute","url":"https://www.oup.com.au/books/higher-education/management-and-marketing/9780195573565-how-brands-grow","tier":"Academic","year":2010}},{"slug":"viewability-fraud-and-supply-path","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/viewability-fraud-and-supply-path","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Operations","group":"Supply Path","myth":"The programmatic supply chain is basically efficient.","crib":"Independent audits find a substantial share of programmatic spend disappears into unattributable fees and low-quality inventory before reaching a working impression.","nuance":"Direct and curated supply paths recover a meaningful portion of that leakage.","scores":{"impact":8.4,"consensus":7.6,"evidence_strength":80},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["paid","programmatic"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Study","authors":"ISBA / PwC","url":"https://www.isba.org.uk/knowledge/programmatic-supply-chain-transparency-study","tier":"Primary Research","year":2020}},{"slug":"mmm-is-now-free","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/mmm-is-now-free","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"The Validity Gap","myth":"Media mix modeling is a six-figure enterprise tool.","crib":"Google open-sourced its MMM (Meridian, January 2025) with Bayesian calibration from experiments built in, and Meta's Robyn is also free - credible MMM now costs analyst time, not a vendor contract.","nuance":"Free code is not free insight: priors and calibration still decide whether the model tells the truth.","scores":{"impact":8.4,"consensus":8.2,"evidence_strength":80},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["measurement","paid"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Meridian is now available to everyone","authors":"Google","url":"https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/meridian-marketing-mix-model-open-to-everyone/","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2025}},{"slug":"creative-wearout-is-rarer-than-assumed","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/creative-wearout-is-rarer-than-assumed","vertical":"brand","category":"Creative","group":"Wear-Out","myth":"Rotate creative constantly - ads wear out fast.","crib":"The ARF's evidence review finds true creative wear-out is less common than assumed: repeated exposure more often builds memory (wear-in) than fatigue, and marketers tire of their ads long before consumers do.","nuance":"Wear-out is real at extreme frequency and in direct response - the mistake is rotating brand creative on a calendar.","scores":{"impact":8.4,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":78},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["creative","brand","paid"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Do Ads Really Wear Out? Evidence and Implications for Media","authors":"ARF Knowledge at Hand","url":"https://thearf.org/category/ua_resource/do-ads-really-wear-out-evidence-and-implications-for-media/","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":null}},{"slug":"attention-not-viewability","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/attention-not-viewability","vertical":"brand","category":"Measurement","group":"Attention","myth":"Viewability equals attention.","crib":"Viewability is a necessary floor, not a measure of attention; attention-time metrics predict brand outcomes far better than viewable-impression counts.","nuance":"Attention vendors differ methodologically; compare within a vendor, not across.","scores":{"impact":8.3,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":68},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["paid","brand"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"The Attention Economy research programme","authors":"Karen Nelson-Field, Amplified Intelligence","url":"https://www.amplifiedintelligence.com.au/research/","tier":"Primary Research","year":2020}},{"slug":"privacy-rules-cut-banner-ad-effectiveness","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/privacy-rules-cut-banner-ad-effectiveness","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Targeting","group":"The Validity Gap","myth":"Losing tracking data only hurts measurement, not performance.","crib":"Using 3.3 million survey responses across 9,596 display campaigns, Goldfarb & Tucker found display ads became far less effective at shifting purchase intent after the EU Privacy Directive restricted data-driven targeting - with the biggest losses on general-content sites and for small, static formats.","nuance":"The outcome is stated purchase intent, not sales; but it remains the cleanest natural experiment on what targeting data is actually worth to performance.","scores":{"impact":8.3,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":88},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["paid","targeting"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Privacy Regulation and Online Advertising","authors":"Avi Goldfarb & Catherine E. Tucker, Management Science","url":"https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.1100.1246","tier":"Academic","year":2011}},{"slug":"discount-depth-erodes-base-price","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/discount-depth-erodes-base-price","vertical":"ecommerce","category":"Pricing","group":"Promotions","myth":"Deep discounts are a harmless volume lever.","crib":"Frequent deep promotions retrain reference prices and depress baseline sales between promotions, so measured promo ROI overstates true incrementality.","nuance":"Short, unpredictable promotions damage reference price less than recurring calendar sales.","scores":{"impact":8.3,"consensus":7.6,"evidence_strength":74},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["ecommerce","pricing","paid"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Long-Term Impact of Promotion and Advertising on Consumer Brand Choice","authors":"Carl F. Mela, Sunil Gupta & Donald R. Lehmann, Journal of Marketing Research","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002224379703400205","tier":"Academic","year":1997}},{"slug":"you-need-more-listicles-to-rank-in-ai-search","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/you-need-more-listicles-to-rank-in-ai-search","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Structure & Schema","myth":"You need more listicles to rank in AI search.","crib":"Listicles genuinely earn AI citations: Wix's AI Search Lab found them the #2 cited format for informational intent after articles (~45%), across ChatGPT, AI Mode and Perplexity. Format fit beats format volume.","nuance":"Research content (articles + listicles) dominates citation; conversion pages rarely get cited - build both ecosystems.","scores":{"impact":8.2,"consensus":7.2,"evidence_strength":65},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["chatgpt","claude","perplexity","aio"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Content Types Most Cited by LLMs","authors":"Wix AI Search Lab","url":"https://www.wix.com/studio/ai-search-lab/research/content-types-most-cited-by-llms","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":null}},{"slug":"right-brain-creative-builds-long-term","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/right-brain-creative-builds-long-term","vertical":"brand","category":"Creative","group":"Creative Effectiveness","myth":"Tight, information-dense ads are the efficient choice.","crib":"Broad, character-led, 'right-brain' creative correlates with far larger long-term effects than narrow message-dense executions.","nuance":"Left-brain executions remain better at short-term response and price messaging.","scores":{"impact":8.2,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["brand","tv"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Look Out: Creative Effectiveness","authors":"Orlando Wood, System1 / IPA","url":"https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/look-out","tier":"Primary Research","year":2019}},{"slug":"dull-ads-need-far-more-media-to-match","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/dull-ads-need-far-more-media-to-match","vertical":"brand","category":"Creative","group":"Creative Effectiveness","myth":"A safe, neutral ad just works a little less hard.","crib":"Modelling IPA cases with System1 emotional-response data, 'dull' low-emotion TV ads need far more media to match effective creative: roughly 10m pounds extra per UK campaign, scaling to an estimated $228bn of extra spend across US TV to match the market-share growth of the most impactful spots.","nuance":"Modelled estimates, not experiments, and published by an ad-testing vendor - direction is solid, the exact billions are assumption-driven. Label accordingly.","scores":{"impact":8.2,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":68},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["creative","tv"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Extraordinary Cost of Dull","authors":"Adam Morgan, Peter Field & System1","url":"https://system1group.com/the-extraordinary-cost-of-dull","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2024}},{"slug":"b2b-personal-value-beats-business-value","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/b2b-personal-value-beats-business-value","vertical":"b2b","category":"Messaging","group":"B2B Emotion","myth":"B2B buyers decide on business value: ROI, specs, risk.","crib":"In Google/CEB/Motista research, B2B purchasers were almost 50% more likely to buy when they saw personal value (career advancement, confidence, pride) in the decision and 8x more likely to pay a premium; only 14% would pay a premium for perceived business-value differences.","nuance":"Vendor survey research from 2013 - treat magnitudes as directional, the ordering (personal > business value) as the durable finding. B2B buyers also showed deeper emotional connection to vendors than consumers do to B2C brands.","scores":{"impact":8.2,"consensus":6.8,"evidence_strength":62},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["brand","content"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"From Promotion to Emotion: Connecting B2B Customers to Brands","authors":"Google / CEB Marketing Leadership Council / Motista","url":"https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/_qs/documents/131/promotion-emotion-b2b_articles.pdf","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2013}},{"slug":"site-speed-revenue-link","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/site-speed-revenue-link","vertical":"ecommerce","category":"Technical","group":"Performance","myth":"Site speed is a technical nice-to-have.","crib":"Field studies across large retailers repeatedly tie sub-second load improvements to measurable conversion and revenue gains, with mobile most sensitive.","nuance":"Gains concentrate on slow pages; optimising already-fast pages returns little.","scores":{"impact":8.2,"consensus":8.4,"evidence_strength":82},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["web","ecommerce"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Milliseconds Make Millions","authors":"Deloitte Digital / Google","url":"https://web.dev/case-studies/milliseconds-make-millions","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2020}},{"slug":"ctv-streaming-ads-hold-attention","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/ctv-streaming-ads-hold-attention","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Attention","group":"Attention Economy","myth":"CTV attention is no better than feed scrolling.","crib":"In the first industry-endorsed attention study, streaming video ads held almost 80% attentive viewing with minimal drop-off over time - 123% more attentive viewing than scrollable social (Amplified x Video Futures Collective, 2025).","nuance":"Attention is not sales lift - but it breaks the lazy equivalence between CTV and cheap feed reach.","scores":{"impact":8.2,"consensus":7.6,"evidence_strength":74},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["tv","ctv","paid"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Streaming video delivers 123% more attentive viewing than scrollable social","authors":"Amplified & Video Futures Collective","url":"https://www.amplified.co/insight/streaming-video-vfc-research","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2025}},{"slug":"maximum-ai-personalization-backfires","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/maximum-ai-personalization-backfires","vertical":"brand","category":"Creative","group":"Personalization","myth":"The more personal an AI-generated ad looks, the better it will work.","crib":"In a 100-person within-subject study across four products, moderately personalized AI imagery earned the best ad and product attitudes. At high personalization, rising creepiness outweighed the relevance benefit and neutralized gains across ad attitude, product attitude, and purchase intent.","nuance":"This September 2026 preprint measures stated attitudes and purchase intent, not market sales. It also mixes the privacy reaction with visible limits of current image generation, so the exact optimum will move as creative quality improves.","scores":{"impact":8.2,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":76},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["creative","personalization","ai"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"Enabling and Understanding Personalization in AI-Generated Advertising Imagery","authors":"Victor Kolominsky-Rabas, Leopold Müller, Claudius Budcke, Claas Christian Germelmann & Niklas Kühl, arXiv","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12697","tier":"Academic","year":2026}},{"slug":"share-of-search-predicts-share","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/share-of-search-predicts-share","vertical":"brand","category":"Measurement","group":"Leading Indicators","myth":"Brand tracking surveys are the only forward indicator.","crib":"Share of search leads market share by several months in many categories, giving a cheap, high-frequency brand-health proxy.","nuance":"The lead time varies by purchase cycle; validate per category before trusting it.","scores":{"impact":8.1,"consensus":7.2,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["brand","search"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Share of Search as a Predictive Measure","authors":"Les Binet, IPA / EffWorks","url":"https://ipa.co.uk/effworks/effworksglobal-2020/share-of-search-as-a-predictive-measure/","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2020}},{"slug":"perplexity-cites-only-the-top-ranked-page","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/perplexity-cites-only-the-top-ranked-page","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Entity & E-E-A-T","myth":"Perplexity cites only the top-ranked page.","crib":"Perplexity answers synthesize multiple sources rather than a single top-ranked page; Profound's 10-month cross-platform analysis (Aug 2024-Jun 2025) maps how differently each engine picks them.","nuance":"Being one of many co-cited sources is the winnable game — not being the single top link.","scores":{"impact":8.1,"consensus":7.1,"evidence_strength":78},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["perplexity"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"AI Platform Citation Patterns: How ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity Source Information","authors":"Nick Lafferty, Profound","url":"https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/ai-platform-citation-patterns","tier":"Primary Research","year":2025}},{"slug":"structure-not-just-semantics-drives-citation-geo-sfe","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/structure-not-just-semantics-drives-citation-geo-sfe","vertical":"geo","category":"Technical","group":"Structure & Schema","myth":"Semantic meaning is all LLMs care about when pulling citations.","crib":"Structural feature engineering — heading hierarchy, information chunking and visual formatting — independently raises citation rates by 17.3%.","nuance":"Measured across six models. Macro architecture mattered most; micro formatting helped least but was never negative.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":78},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["chatgpt","claude","perplexity","gemini","aio"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Structural feature engineering raises citation rates 17.3%","authors":"Yu et al.","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.29979","tier":"Primary Research","year":2026}},{"slug":"email-remains-highest-roi-owned-channel","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/email-remains-highest-roi-owned-channel","vertical":"ecommerce","category":"Retention","group":"Owned Channels","myth":"Email is a dying channel for commerce.","crib":"Triggered commerce email (browse, cart, post-purchase) continues to produce the strongest measured revenue per send of any owned channel.","nuance":"Reported blended email ROI figures from vendors are inflated by last-click attribution.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":7.2,"evidence_strength":66},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["email","ecommerce"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"Marketer Email Tracker","authors":"Data & Marketing Association (DMA UK)","url":"https://dma.org.uk/research/marketer-email-tracker-2021","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2021}},{"slug":"fluent-devices-outperform-new-creative","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/fluent-devices-outperform-new-creative","vertical":"brand","category":"Creative","group":"Distinctiveness","myth":"Every campaign needs a fresh creative idea.","crib":"Recurring fluent devices and consistent assets build recognition faster and cheaper than continually restarting creative platforms.","nuance":"Devices decay if the underlying idea stops being entertaining.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":7.6,"evidence_strength":74},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["brand","tv","social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Building Distinctive Brand Assets","authors":"Jenni Romaniuk, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute","url":"http://www.jenniromaniuk.com/books","tier":"Academic","year":2018}},{"slug":"cltv-models-overfit-early-data","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/cltv-models-overfit-early-data","vertical":"retention","category":"Measurement","group":"LTV","myth":"Early cohort LTV projections are reliable planning inputs.","crib":"LTV curves flatten unpredictably; projections built on the first weeks of a cohort routinely overstate long-run value.","nuance":"Buy-till-you-die models with sufficient history are far more stable than linear extrapolation.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":7.2,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"high","volume":"medium","channels":["analytics","lifecycle"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Counting Your Customers the Easy Way","authors":"Fader, Hardie & Lee, Marketing Science","url":"https://www.brucehardie.com/papers/018/fader_et_al_mksc_05.pdf","tier":"Academic","year":2005}},{"slug":"platform-lift-studies-are-not-neutral","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/platform-lift-studies-are-not-neutral","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"Attribution","myth":"Platform-run lift studies are objective evidence.","crib":"Platform-run studies use marketer-invisible control construction and frequently disagree with independent geo holdouts, biasing toward the platform.","nuance":"They are still useful directionally when design details are disclosed.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":7.4,"evidence_strength":74},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["paid","analytics"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"A Comparison of Approaches to Advertising Measurement","authors":"Gordon, Zettelmeyer, Bhargava & Chapsky, Marketing Science","url":"https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mksc.2018.1135","tier":"Academic","year":2019}},{"slug":"linkedin-comments-vs-likes","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/linkedin-comments-vs-likes","vertical":"social","category":"Comment weighting vs likes","group":"Engagement signals","myth":"A comment is worth 15x a like — every creator says so.","crib":"The 15x multiplier has no traceable primary source. AuthoredUp's analysis of 621,833 posts puts a comment at roughly 2x a like, a save at roughly 2x a meaningful comment, and threaded replies at up to 2.4x more reach. Comments still beat likes — just not by an order of magnitude.","nuance":"Optimise for threaded conversation and saves rather than raw comment count. Long, substantive replies carry more weight than one-word \"Great post!\" chains.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":78},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["linkedin","organic-social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"LinkedIn Algorithm Explained 2026: Dwell Time, Comments & Reach","authors":"Meet Lea (citing AuthoredUp, 621,833 posts)","url":"https://meet-lea.com/en/blog/linkedin-algorithm-explained","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2026}},{"slug":"linkedin-organic-reach-decline","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/linkedin-organic-reach-decline","vertical":"social","category":"Organic reach decline","group":"Benchmarks","myth":"Your reach dropped because you stopped posting enough.","crib":"Algorithm InSights (1.8M posts) documents organic reach falling by nearly 50% as LinkedIn shifted from a social graph to an interest graph. Baseline reach is structurally lower; the model now rewards demonstrated expertise signals over reach-chasing volume.","nuance":"Rebaseline your reporting to the post-shift period before declaring a content strategy broken. Volume without topical consistency makes the interest-graph problem worse, not better.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":80},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["linkedin","organic-social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"LinkedIn Algorithm 2025: What Changed","authors":"Agorapulse (citing Richard van der Blom, Algorithm InSights 2025)","url":"https://www.agorapulse.com/blog/linkedin/linkedin-algorithm-2025/","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2025}},{"slug":"social-link-penalty-cross-platform","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/social-link-penalty-cross-platform","vertical":"social","category":"Outbound-link penalty across platforms","group":"Distribution mechanics","myth":"The link penalty is a LinkedIn-only quirk.","crib":"It replicates across networks. Sprout Social's LinkedIn test recorded 8,136 impressions for link-in-comment posts vs 3,309 with the link in the body (261 vs 141 engagements). Socialinsider's analysis of 51,054,216 Facebook posts found body links roughly halve engagement potential, and Hootsuite's linkless-tweet experiment found 56% of its top-engaging tweets contained no link.","nuance":"These are platform-run and vendor experiments, not randomised trials — high-performing link-in-comment posts also tend to be written \"social first\" with the takeaway in the caption, so execution is confounded with placement.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":68},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["linkedin","facebook","x","organic-social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Are external links in the comments of social media posts worth it?","authors":"Axia Public Relations (summarising Sprout Social, Socialinsider & Hootsuite experiments)","url":"https://www.axiapr.com/blog/are-external-links-in-the-comments-of-social-media-posts-worth-it","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2023}},{"slug":"over-specific-retargeting-backfires","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/over-specific-retargeting-backfires","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Retargeting","group":"The Validity Gap","myth":"The more personalized the retargeted ad, the better it performs.","crib":"In a field experiment with an online travel firm, dynamic ads showing the exact product browsed were on average LESS effective than generic brand ads; specificity only wins once browsing behavior shows preferences have narrowed (e.g. the shopper has started visiting review sites).","nuance":"Early-funnel browsers construe preferences at a high level, so exact-product ads mismatch; match ad specificity to funnel stage, not to the last click.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":7.6,"evidence_strength":85},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["paid","retargeting"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"When Does Retargeting Work? Information Specificity in Online Advertising","authors":"Anja Lambrecht & Catherine E. Tucker, Journal of Marketing Research","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jmr.11.0503","tier":"Academic","year":2013}},{"slug":"word-of-mouth-outlasts-traditional-marketing","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/word-of-mouth-outlasts-traditional-marketing","vertical":"social","category":"Word of Mouth","group":"WOM Economics","myth":"Word of mouth is a soft bonus next to paid media.","crib":"Vector-autoregression modelling of a social network's growth shows WOM referrals have substantially longer carryover effects and substantially higher response elasticities than traditional marketing actions - and a referral's value can be monetized from the downstream ad revenue a new member generates.","nuance":"One platform's growth data; but WOM was tracked from actual invitations, giving unusual causal precision for the category.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":85},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["social","referral"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Effects of Word-of-Mouth Versus Traditional Marketing: Findings from an Internet Social Networking Site","authors":"Michael Trusov, Randolph E. Bucklin & Koen Pauwels, Journal of Marketing","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jmkg.73.5.90","tier":"Academic","year":2009}},{"slug":"answer-first-placement-first-30-percent-rule","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/answer-first-placement-first-30-percent-rule","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Structure & Schema","myth":"It doesn't matter where in the page the answer lives — the model reads everything.","crib":"44.2% of LLM citations originate in the first 30% of a document's body text. Lead with the answer.","nuance":"Retrieval often works on the top chunks of a page. Burying the payoff below a long preamble costs you the extraction.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":6,"evidence_strength":62},"effort":"low","volume":"medium","channels":["chatgpt","perplexity","gemini","aio"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"44% of ChatGPT citations come from the first third of content","authors":"Search Engine Land","url":"https://searchengineland.com/chatgpt-citations-content-study-469483","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2025}},{"slug":"unlinked-mentions-outperform-backlinks-for-citation","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/unlinked-mentions-outperform-backlinks-for-citation","vertical":"geo","category":"Distribution","group":"Entity & E-E-A-T","myth":"Backlinks are the off-site signal that drives AI citation.","crib":"Branded web mentions are the strongest correlate of AI Overview brand visibility (r~0.39), well above backlinks (r~0.22), across Ahrefs' 75K-brand analysis.","nuance":"Correlation, not proof of causation - but it reframes link building as mention building across G2, Reddit and press.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":6,"evidence_strength":60},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["chatgpt","perplexity","gemini"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands)","authors":"Ahrefs","url":"https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2025}},{"slug":"left-digit-effect-moves-demand","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/left-digit-effect-moves-demand","vertical":"ecommerce","category":"Pricing","group":"Pricing Psychology","myth":"A cent is a rounding error.","crib":"Consumers encode prices left to right, so $2.99 vs $3.00 shifts demand far more than one cent warrants - the left-digit effect, shown across lab and field evidence (Thomas & Morwitz, JCR 2005).","nuance":"Charm pricing works when the left digit changes; it is not a universal lift.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":8.6,"evidence_strength":88},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["pricing","conversion"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Penny Wise and Pound Foolish: The Left-Digit Effect in Price Cognition","authors":"Manoj Thomas & Vicki Morwitz, Journal of Consumer Research","url":"https://doi.org/10.1086/429600","tier":"Academic","year":2005}},{"slug":"raw-ai-mentions-are-not-business-impact","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/raw-ai-mentions-are-not-business-impact","vertical":"geo","category":"Measurement","group":"GEO Measurement","myth":"Counting how often an AI answer mentions you measures GEO business impact.","crib":"A new causal GEO measurement framework shows why raw mentions are only one input: business impact also depends on query volume, each engine's share of use, whether people notice the mention, and the response under alternative treatment sequences.","nuance":"This September 2026 preprint establishes identification conditions and tests the method on simulated English and Japanese product-recommendation answers. It is a measurement blueprint, not field validation or proof that GEO causes sales.","scores":{"impact":8,"consensus":6.2,"evidence_strength":68},"effort":"high","volume":"medium","channels":["geo","measurement","analytics"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"Generative Marketing Mix Modeling: A Causal Inference Framework Linking GEO and GEM to Business Impact","authors":"Masahiro Kato, Daiki Honma & Taka Kato, arXiv","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11915","tier":"Academic","year":2026}},{"slug":"short-flights-underdeliver","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/short-flights-underdeliver","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Planning","group":"Flighting","myth":"Concentrated burst campaigns are the efficient pattern.","crib":"Continuous or near-continuous presence generally beats short heavy bursts for established brands, because buying occurs continuously across the category.","nuance":"Bursts remain right for genuine events: launches, seasonality, retail moments.","scores":{"impact":7.9,"consensus":7.4,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["paid","tv"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Media in Focus","authors":"Les Binet & Peter Field, IPA","url":"https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/media-in-focus-marketing-effectiveness-in-the-digital-era","tier":"Primary Research","year":2017}},{"slug":"ewom-volume-and-valence-both-move-sales","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/ewom-volume-and-valence-both-move-sales","vertical":"social","category":"Reviews","group":"WOM Economics","myth":"Star rating is the only review metric that matters.","crib":"Meta-analysis of 51 studies (339 volume and 271 valence elasticities): eWOM volume elasticity is 0.236 and valence elasticity 0.417 - with stronger effects on independent review sites and for durable, privately consumed, low-trialability products.","nuance":"Valence hits harder than volume, but volume is easier to move; platform trustworthiness moderates both.","scores":{"impact":7.9,"consensus":8.4,"evidence_strength":88},"effort":"low","volume":"medium","channels":["social","reviews"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"A Meta-Analysis of Electronic Word-of-Mouth Elasticity","authors":"Ya You, Gautham G. Vadakkepatt & Amit M. Joshi, Journal of Marketing","url":"https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.14.0169","tier":"Academic","year":2015}},{"slug":"reviews-lift-conversion-with-diminishing-returns","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/reviews-lift-conversion-with-diminishing-returns","vertical":"ecommerce","category":"Social Proof","group":"Reviews","myth":"More reviews always mean more sales.","crib":"Conversion gains from review volume rise steeply from zero to a few dozen reviews, then flatten; recency and response quality matter more after that.","nuance":"Perfect 5.0 ratings underperform ratings in the 4.2-4.7 range on purchase intent.","scores":{"impact":7.9,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":76},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["ecommerce","web"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"How Online Reviews Influence Sales","authors":"Spiegel Research Center, Northwestern","url":"https://spiegel.medill.northwestern.edu/how-online-reviews-influence-sales/","tier":"Primary Research","year":2017}},{"slug":"loyalty-programs-rarely-create-loyalty","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/loyalty-programs-rarely-create-loyalty","vertical":"retention","category":"Programs","group":"Loyalty","myth":"A points programme will increase loyalty.","crib":"Most loyalty programmes reward behaviour that would have happened anyway; measured incremental effects are small and skew to already-heavy buyers.","nuance":"Programmes can still pay for themselves as data assets and margin-protection tools.","scores":{"impact":7.9,"consensus":7.6,"evidence_strength":74},"effort":"high","volume":"medium","channels":["lifecycle","email","retail"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"How Brands Grow Part 2","authors":"Jenni Romaniuk & Byron Sharp, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute","url":"https://marketingscience.info/learn-with-us/books","tier":"Academic","year":2015}},{"slug":"domain-authority-still-dominates-aio-ranking","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/domain-authority-still-dominates-aio-ranking","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Freshness & Velocity","myth":"Domain authority still dominates AIO ranking.","crib":"LLM citations carry a strong content-recency bias, strongest in AI Overviews; fresh content wins time-sensitive inclusion over older evergreen pages.","nuance":"Recency is not the whole story: a 2M-citation SHAP analysis (Discovered Labs) found AI-perceived domain authority outweighs every page-level factor - refresh cadence matters, but authority still gates.","scores":{"impact":7.9,"consensus":6.9,"evidence_strength":76},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["aio"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Study: AI Brand Visibility and Content Recency","authors":"Seer Interactive (citation data via Peec.ai)","url":"https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/study-ai-brand-visibility-and-content-recency","tier":"Primary Research","year":null}},{"slug":"cart-abandonment-baseline","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/cart-abandonment-baseline","vertical":"ecommerce","category":"Conversion","group":"Checkout","myth":"A 70% cart abandonment rate means your site is broken.","crib":"Documented average cart abandonment sits around 70% across dozens of studies; most of it is browsing behaviour, and only a minority is fixable friction.","nuance":"Segment abandonment by intent before treating it as a UX defect.","scores":{"impact":7.8,"consensus":9,"evidence_strength":92},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["web","ecommerce","email"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics","authors":"Baymard Institute","url":"https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2024}},{"slug":"customer-experience-is-the-whole-journey","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/customer-experience-is-the-whole-journey","vertical":"retention","category":"CX","group":"Loyalty Economics","myth":"CX improves by optimizing the touchpoints you control, one at a time.","crib":"The field's anchor framework shows customer experience is cumulative across the entire journey - including social, environmental and competitor touchpoints the firm doesn't control - so single-touchpoint optimization misses the real drivers of satisfaction and loyalty.","nuance":"A conceptual synthesis, not an experiment; its citation count (top of Journal of Marketing's CX special issue) reflects how thoroughly later empirical work has built on it.","scores":{"impact":7.8,"consensus":8.6,"evidence_strength":82},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["cx","retention"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Understanding Customer Experience Throughout the Customer Journey","authors":"Katherine N. Lemon & Peter C. Verhoef, Journal of Marketing","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jm.15.0420","tier":"Academic","year":2016}},{"slug":"gated-content-suppresses-reach","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/gated-content-suppresses-reach","vertical":"b2b","category":"Content","group":"Content Strategy","myth":"Gate the whitepaper to capture demand.","crib":"Gating trades most of a piece's reach and memory-building for a small list of low-intent form-fills; ungated distribution plus a light capture path usually wins on pipeline.","nuance":"Gating still works for genuinely scarce assets like proprietary benchmarks or tooling.","scores":{"impact":7.8,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["content","email","social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The B2B Effectiveness Code","authors":"Les Binet & Peter Field, LinkedIn B2B Institute","url":"https://business.linkedin.com/advertise/resources/b2b-institute/the-b2b-effectiveness-code","tier":"Primary Research","year":2021}},{"slug":"ai-inboxes-mediate-email","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/ai-inboxes-mediate-email","vertical":"retention","category":"Channels","group":"Lifecycle Reality","myth":"AI inboxes are killing email marketing.","crib":"The DMA's 2026 Marketer Email Tracker (250 marketers) finds email still central - valued for reach, reliability and measurable impact - but AI-powered inbox prioritization and summarization now mediate what gets seen.","nuance":"Relevance and engagement signals decide AI-inbox placement; batch-and-blast loses twice.","scores":{"impact":7.8,"consensus":7.4,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"low","volume":"medium","channels":["email","lifecycle"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Marketer Email Tracker 2026","authors":"DMA, sponsored by ActionRocket","url":"https://www.dma.org.uk/resources/report/marketer-email-tracker-2026","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2026}},{"slug":"your-ads-lift-competitors-too","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/your-ads-lift-competitors-too","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"Incrementality","myth":"Your ad spend only builds demand for you.","crib":"Randomized field experiments on a restaurant-search platform show ads also lift sales for non-advertised competitors; spillovers concentrate on same-cuisine, highly rated rivals and are largest when ad intensity is low.","nuance":"Category-expanding creative subsidizes close substitutes. Differentiation and higher share of voice limit the leak; measured returns that ignore spillovers overstate your net effect.","scores":{"impact":7.8,"consensus":7.2,"evidence_strength":82},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["paid","measurement"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Advertising Spillovers: Evidence from Online Field Experiments and Implications for Returns on Advertising","authors":"Navdeep S. Sahni, Journal of Marketing Research","url":"https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.14.0274","tier":"Academic","year":2016}},{"slug":"ai-pretest-ads-match-real-ads","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/ai-pretest-ads-match-real-ads","vertical":"brand","category":"Creative","group":"Creative Effectiveness","myth":"AI-generated ads are too crude to tell you anything about the real spot.","crib":"In a peer-reviewed proof-of-concept, AI-generated static and video pretest ads scored statistically indistinguishable from the real finished ads they were based on - recall, recognition, brand choice, brand attitude, ad liking.","nuance":"One study under specific conditions; pretesting validity is not production quality. Use AI pretests to kill weak concepts early, not to ship.","scores":{"impact":7.8,"consensus":6,"evidence_strength":78},"effort":"low","volume":"medium","channels":["brand","measurement"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Pretesting with AI-generated static and video ads","authors":"Scientific Reports (Nature Portfolio)","url":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-67219-0","tier":"Academic","year":2026}},{"slug":"brand-consistency-beats-frequency-resets","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/brand-consistency-beats-frequency-resets","vertical":"brand","category":"Creative","group":"Distinctiveness","myth":"Refresh the brand identity every few years to stay modern.","crib":"Identity resets discard accumulated distinctive-asset memory; evolution beats revolution unless the brand carries active negative equity.","nuance":"Genuine repositioning after a business-model change is the legitimate exception.","scores":{"impact":7.8,"consensus":7.4,"evidence_strength":68},"effort":"medium","volume":"low","channels":["brand"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Building Distinctive Brand Assets","authors":"Jenni Romaniuk, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute","url":"http://www.jenniromaniuk.com/books","tier":"Academic","year":2018}},{"slug":"win-back-cheaper-than-new","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/win-back-cheaper-than-new","vertical":"retention","category":"Lifecycle","group":"Win-back","myth":"Lapsed customers are gone; chase new ones.","crib":"Previously-purchased customers convert on reactivation at materially higher rates and lower cost than cold prospects.","nuance":"Win-back economics collapse once lapse duration exceeds the category purchase cycle by a wide margin.","scores":{"impact":7.7,"consensus":7.4,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"low","volume":"medium","channels":["email","lifecycle","paid"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Customer Win-Back research","authors":"V. Kumar et al., Journal of Marketing","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jm.14.0107","tier":"Academic","year":2015}},{"slug":"susceptibility-matters-as-much-as-influence","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/susceptibility-matters-as-much-as-influence","vertical":"social","category":"Influencers","group":"WOM Economics","myth":"Seed your campaign with the most influential people and it spreads.","crib":"A 1.4-million-user randomized experiment on Facebook shows influence and susceptibility are separate, measurable traits - jointly targeting influential AND susceptible users outperforms chasing 'influentials' alone, and influence is demographic- and context-specific rather than a general property of people.","nuance":"Peer influence estimates on social platforms are inflated by homophily; the RCT design is what makes these estimates credible.","scores":{"impact":7.7,"consensus":8,"evidence_strength":90},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["social","influencer"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Identifying Influential and Susceptible Members of Social Networks","authors":"Sinan Aral & Dylan Walker, Science","url":"https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1215842","tier":"Academic","year":2012}},{"slug":"claude-behaves-like-chatgpt-for-citations","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/claude-behaves-like-chatgpt-for-citations","vertical":"geo","category":"Authority","group":"Entity & E-E-A-T","myth":"Claude behaves like ChatGPT for citations.","crib":"Claude and ChatGPT cite from nearly disjoint pools: only ~13% of cited domains overlap (Otterly, 379K citations). Claude skews to company/product domains (64% of citations); Wikipedia is 2.1% and social just 0.9%.","nuance":"What earns a ChatGPT citation does not transfer - engine-specific strategy is mandatory.","scores":{"impact":7.6,"consensus":6.6,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["claude"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Claude AI Citations Study: How to Get Cited in 2026","authors":"Otterly.ai","url":"https://otterly.ai/blog/claude-ai-citation-study/","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2026}},{"slug":"lead-response-speed-compounds","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/lead-response-speed-compounds","vertical":"b2b","category":"Sales","group":"Speed to Lead","myth":"Following up within a day is fast enough.","crib":"Contact odds fall off sharply within the first hour of an inbound enquiry; response inside five minutes materially outperforms same-day follow-up.","nuance":"Applies to inbound requests, not cold outbound sequences.","scores":{"impact":7.6,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":74},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["sales","email"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Short Life of Online Sales Leads","authors":"James Oldroyd et al., Harvard Business Review","url":"https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads","tier":"Academic","year":2011}},{"slug":"email-frequency-has-a-revenue-optimum","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/email-frequency-has-a-revenue-optimum","vertical":"retention","category":"Lifecycle","group":"Email Cadence","myth":"Sending more email always makes more money.","crib":"Revenue per additional send declines and list fatigue raises unsubscribe and spam-complaint rates; there is a measurable frequency optimum per segment.","nuance":"The optimum differs sharply between engaged and dormant segments.","scores":{"impact":7.6,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["email","lifecycle"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Email frequency and deliverability research","authors":"Litmus / DMA","url":"https://www.litmus.com/resources/state-of-email","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2023}},{"slug":"arousal-not-positivity-drives-sharing","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/arousal-not-positivity-drives-sharing","vertical":"social","category":"Content","group":"What Spreads","myth":"Make it positive and it will spread.","crib":"Analyzing every New York Times article emailed over three months plus follow-up experiments: positive content is shared more than negative, but the deeper driver is physiological arousal - awe, anger and anxiety spread, sadness suppresses - with surprise, interest and practical usefulness adding independent lift.","nuance":"The experiments show the emotion effect is causal, driven by activation level, and holds controlling for prominence and usefulness.","scores":{"impact":7.6,"consensus":8.4,"evidence_strength":86},"effort":"low","volume":"medium","channels":["content","social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"What Makes Online Content Viral?","authors":"Jonah Berger & Katherine L. Milkman, Journal of Marketing Research","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jmr.10.0353","tier":"Academic","year":2012}},{"slug":"concentrate-spend-on-highest-equity-driver","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/concentrate-spend-on-highest-equity-driver","vertical":"retention","category":"Budget Allocation","group":"Loyalty Economics","myth":"Spread the marketing budget across every driver of satisfaction.","crib":"Modelling customer equity directly, Rust, Lemon & Zeithaml show reallocating spend to the highest-leverage driver of customer equity beats across-the-board investment - in their airline application, the concentrated strategy maximized return on marketing.","nuance":"Model-based on one airline case; the generalizable point is to allocate by marginal customer-equity impact, not by last year's budget lines.","scores":{"impact":7.6,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":78},"effort":"high","volume":"medium","channels":["crm","retention","measurement"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Return on Marketing: Using Customer Equity to Focus Marketing Strategy","authors":"Roland T. Rust, Katherine N. Lemon & Valarie A. Zeithaml, Journal of Marketing","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jmkg.68.1.109.24030","tier":"Academic","year":2004}},{"slug":"nps-is-a-weak-growth-predictor","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/nps-is-a-weak-growth-predictor","vertical":"retention","category":"Measurement","group":"Survey Metrics","myth":"NPS is the single best predictor of growth.","crib":"Independent replications find NPS predicts growth no better than ordinary satisfaction measures, and often worse.","nuance":"NPS remains a serviceable internal tracking metric when used consistently.","scores":{"impact":7.5,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":78},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["research","lifecycle"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"A Longitudinal Examination of Net Promoter and Firm Revenue Growth","authors":"Keiningham et al., Journal of Marketing","url":"https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.71.3.039","tier":"Academic","year":2007}},{"slug":"tv-ads-drive-immediate-online-response","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/tv-ads-drive-immediate-online-response","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"Incrementality","myth":"TV is unmeasurable brand-building with no short-term effect to capture.","crib":"In two-minute windows around 1,224 commercials across 20 brands and $3.4B in spend, TV ads produce immediate, measurable lifts in site traffic and transactions.","nuance":"The spike is real but short-lived, and media multitasking shapes who responds; measurement that only credits long-run brand effects misses the direct response TV already drives.","scores":{"impact":7.5,"consensus":7.5,"evidence_strength":85},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["paid","measurement"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Television Advertising and Online Shopping","authors":"Jura Liaukonyte, Thales Teixeira & Kenneth C. Wilbur, Marketing Science","url":"https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2014.0899","tier":"Academic","year":2015}},{"slug":"geo-experiments-calibrate-mmm-structurally","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/geo-experiments-calibrate-mmm-structurally","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"MMM","myth":"Geo-experiments and MMM answer different questions and cannot be fused.","crib":"A structural estimation approach recovers the complete MMM parameter set - adstock decay and saturation - directly from geo-experiments, giving the model causal calibration instead of observational guesswork.","nuance":"arXiv preprint (Aug 2026), not yet peer-reviewed; it formalizes what Google's calibration work assumes. Pairs with the calibrate-mmm-with-experiment-priors crib.","scores":{"impact":7.5,"consensus":6.5,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"high","volume":"low","channels":["paid","measurement","analytics"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"Structural Estimation of Marketing Mix Model Parameters from Geo-Experiments","authors":"Niklas Heusch et al., arXiv","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.21128","tier":"Academic","year":2026}},{"slug":"buyers-are-70-percent-through-is-overstated","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/buyers-are-70-percent-through-is-overstated","vertical":"b2b","category":"Sales","group":"Buying Committee","myth":"Buyers are 70% through the journey before contacting sales.","crib":"Buying is looping, not linear: buyers revisit the same jobs repeatedly and contact suppliers throughout, so the single 70% number is misleading.","nuance":"The claim originated from a narrow CEB dataset and has been over-generalised by vendors.","scores":{"impact":7.4,"consensus":6.8,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["sales","content"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"The B2B Buying Journey","authors":"Gartner","url":"https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2020}},{"slug":"subscription-price-increases-and-churn","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/subscription-price-increases-and-churn","vertical":"retention","category":"Pricing","group":"Pricing","myth":"Any price rise triggers mass churn.","crib":"Well-communicated, value-anchored increases typically churn a small single-digit share of subscribers while lifting net revenue.","nuance":"Grandfathering and notice period drive most of the variance in outcome.","scores":{"impact":7.4,"consensus":6.8,"evidence_strength":64},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["pricing","email","lifecycle"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"Monetization and pricing research","authors":"Price Intelligently / ProfitWell","url":"https://www.paddle.com/resources/pricing-strategy","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2021}},{"slug":"brand-safety-blocklists-cost-more-than-they-save","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/brand-safety-blocklists-cost-more-than-they-save","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Operations","group":"Brand Safety","myth":"Aggressive keyword blocklists protect the brand at no cost.","crib":"Broad blocklists defund quality journalism inventory and shrink reach with little measured brand-safety benefit; contextual controls perform better.","nuance":"Category-specific exclusions in genuinely sensitive verticals remain justified.","scores":{"impact":7.4,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"low","volume":"medium","channels":["paid","programmatic"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"Brand Safety and News Blocklisting research","authors":"Stack Adapt / Newsworks","url":"https://www.newsworks.org.uk/research/","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2021}},{"slug":"viral-video-cannot-replace-planned-reach","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/viral-video-cannot-replace-planned-reach","vertical":"social","category":"Video","group":"What Spreads","myth":"A viral brand video can substitute for paid reach.","crib":"Analysis of branded video sharing shows high-arousal emotional content is what gets shared, yet sharing rates stay low even for strong creative - so earned views are a bonus on top of planned reach, not a channel.","nuance":"Complements Berger & Milkman: arousal drives sharing; Nelson-Field's data adds that brand videos rarely achieve escape velocity regardless.","scores":{"impact":7.4,"consensus":7.8,"evidence_strength":78},"effort":"low","volume":"medium","channels":["social","video","creative"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Emotions that Drive Viral Video","authors":"Karen Nelson-Field, Erica Riebe & Kellie Newstead, Australasian Marketing Journal","url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ausmj.2013.07.003","tier":"Academic","year":2013}},{"slug":"churn-surveys-mislabel-causes","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/churn-surveys-mislabel-causes","vertical":"retention","category":"Measurement","group":"Churn Analysis","myth":"Exit surveys tell you why customers left.","crib":"Stated churn reasons skew heavily toward price because it is socially easy to say; behavioural data usually shows usage decay preceded the cancellation by weeks.","nuance":"Pair stated reasons with pre-churn usage traces before acting.","scores":{"impact":7.3,"consensus":7.2,"evidence_strength":66},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["analytics","lifecycle","product"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Behavioural churn analysis literature","authors":"Journal of Marketing Analytics","url":"https://link.springer.com/journal/41270","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2020}},{"slug":"product-page-imagery-count","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/product-page-imagery-count","vertical":"ecommerce","category":"Content","group":"Merchandising","myth":"One hero image and a spec table is enough.","crib":"Shoppers rely on image sets to answer objection questions; scale, in-use and detail shots reduce returns as well as lifting conversion.","nuance":"Image quantity without variety adds page weight and no comprehension.","scores":{"impact":7.2,"consensus":7.4,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"medium","volume":"high","channels":["ecommerce","web"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Product Page Usability Research","authors":"Baymard Institute","url":"https://baymard.com/research/product-page","tier":"Primary Research","year":2023}},{"slug":"brand-keyword-ads-are-defensive","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/brand-keyword-ads-are-defensive","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"Incrementality","myth":"Bidding on your own brand name is always wasted money.","crib":"Bing field experiments across thousands of brands show brand ads add a small but real 1-4% click lift when no competitor bids, and become defensive when rivals bid to siphon the traffic.","nuance":"Pairs with the eBay result: pause when uncontested, defend when contested. The right answer is auction-specific, not ideological.","scores":{"impact":7.2,"consensus":7.5,"evidence_strength":84},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["paid","search","measurement"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Competition and Crowd-Out for Brand Keywords in Sponsored Search","authors":"Andrey Simonov, Chris Nosko & Justin M. Rao, Marketing Science","url":"https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2017.1065","tier":"Academic","year":2018}},{"slug":"ads-shift-beliefs-not-just-visibility","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/ads-shift-beliefs-not-just-visibility","vertical":"brand","category":"Budget Allocation","group":"How Advertising Works","myth":"Ads only work when the copy states product facts.","crib":"In an incentivized experiment with randomized exposure, content, and price, display ads shifted beliefs about price and quality even when the copy revealed neither - and those belief shifts causally drove search and purchase.","nuance":"Visibility explains most of the effect, but belief updating is statistically and economically significant; the authors show advertisers may even optimally conceal favorable information. Simulated-store experiment, so treat magnitudes as directional.","scores":{"impact":7.2,"consensus":6.5,"evidence_strength":74},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["brand","paid"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"The Effects of Ads on Beliefs and Implications for Consumer Search","authors":"Jean-Pierre Dube, Ilya Morozov, Franklin She & Anna Tuchman, NBER Working Paper 35596","url":"https://www.nber.org/papers/w35596","tier":"Academic","year":2026}},{"slug":"feature-optimization-beats-token-rewriting-featgeo","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/feature-optimization-beats-token-rewriting-featgeo","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Structure & Schema","myth":"Token-level text editing is the best way to rewrite content for AI crawlers.","crib":"Optimizing high-level features — structural, content and linguistic properties — outperforms token rewriting for citation lift and preserves readability.","nuance":"Practical read: fix the shape of the page before you fuss over phrasing. Token-level rewriting also risks flattening voice.","scores":{"impact":7,"consensus":6,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["chatgpt","claude","perplexity","gemini"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Feature-level optimization beats token-level rewriting","authors":"Liu et al.","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.19113","tier":"Primary Research","year":2026}},{"slug":"llm-as-a-judge-quality-rubrics-gate-citations","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/llm-as-a-judge-quality-rubrics-gate-citations","vertical":"geo","category":"Authority","group":"Entity & E-E-A-T","myth":"If a page is retrieved, it will get cited.","crib":"Platforms run LLM-as-a-Judge rubrics — helpfulness, reliability, cross-source corroboration — and drop retrieved sources that fail before synthesizing an answer.","nuance":"Corroboration is the actionable part: a claim no other credible source supports is far likelier to be dropped.","scores":{"impact":7,"consensus":6,"evidence_strength":58},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["chatgpt","claude","gemini","aio"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"LLM-as-a-Judge: How to Become a Preferred Content Source for AI Answers","authors":"Lumar","url":"https://www.lumar.io/blog/best-practice/aeo-geo-content-quality-how-ai-chooses-sources-llm-as-a-judge/","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2026}},{"slug":"linkedin-engagement-bait","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/linkedin-engagement-bait","vertical":"social","category":"Engagement bait CTAs","group":"Distribution mechanics","myth":"\"Comment LINK and I'll send it\" is the highest-performing CTA on LinkedIn.","crib":"Post-quality classification flags explicit engagement bait (\"Comment YES if you agree\") for downranking, and heavy traffic-bridging behaviour attracts minor reach caps. The tactic can still work for lead capture — it converts a smaller distribution into qualified DMs.","nuance":"Treat bait CTAs as a conversion tool for high-value assets (webinars, templates, reports), not as a reach strategy. Never make it the default format.","scores":{"impact":7,"consensus":6,"evidence_strength":62},"effort":"low","volume":"medium","channels":["linkedin","organic-social"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"LinkedIn Algorithm Explained 2026: Dwell Time, Comments & Reach","authors":"Meet Lea (LinkedIn content-quality guidance)","url":"https://meet-lea.com/en/blog/linkedin-algorithm-explained","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2026}},{"slug":"linkedin-engagement-benchmark","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/linkedin-engagement-benchmark","vertical":"social","category":"What a good engagement rate is","group":"Benchmarks","myth":"A 1% engagement rate is fine on LinkedIn — it's a slow platform.","crib":"Socialinsider's benchmark data puts the average LinkedIn engagement rate at 3.85%, up 44% year over year, calculated per impression rather than per follower. Anything at or above ~4% is a defensible target.","nuance":"Because LinkedIn's denominator is impressions, a reach collapse can inflate your engagement rate. Always report engagement rate alongside absolute impressions.","scores":{"impact":7,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["linkedin","organic-social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"LinkedIn Engagement Rate Benchmarks","authors":"Socialinsider","url":"https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/linkedin-engagement-rate/","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2026}},{"slug":"calibrate-mmm-with-experiment-priors","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/calibrate-mmm-with-experiment-priors","vertical":"paid-media","category":"Measurement","group":"MMM","myth":"MMM and lift tests are competing truth sources you reconcile by gut.","crib":"Google Research lays out how lift-test results should enter a Bayesian MMM as calibrated priors, with an explicit method for choosing which priors to tune; experiments become the model's anchor, not a parallel scorecard.","nuance":"Vendor-authored (Google Research) but inspectable methodology that ships in open-source Meridian; the principle is tool-agnostic.","scores":{"impact":7,"consensus":6.8,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["paid","measurement","analytics"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Media Mix Model Calibration With Bayesian Priors","authors":"Mike Wurm, Brenda Price & Ying Liu, Google Research","url":"https://research.google/pubs/media-mix-model-calibration-with-bayesian-priors/","tier":"Primary Research","year":2024}},{"slug":"service-recovery-paradox-is-fragile","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/service-recovery-paradox-is-fragile","vertical":"retention","category":"Service","group":"Service Recovery","myth":"Fixing a complaint well makes customers more loyal than never failing.","crib":"The service-recovery paradox appears only under narrow conditions — first failure, low severity, fast fix — and does not generalise.","nuance":"Repeated failures reverse the effect sharply.","scores":{"impact":6.8,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":72},"effort":"low","volume":"low","channels":["service","lifecycle"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"The Service Recovery Paradox: Justifiable Theory or Smoldering Myth?","authors":"Vincent P. Magnini, John B. Ford, Edward P. Markowski & Earl D. Honeycutt Jr., Journal of Services Marketing","url":"https://doi.org/10.1108/08876040710746561","tier":"Academic","year":2007}},{"slug":"price-endings-effect-is-real-but-small","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/price-endings-effect-is-real-but-small","vertical":"ecommerce","category":"Pricing","group":"Pricing Psychology","myth":"Charm pricing (.99) reliably boosts sales.","crib":"Nine-ending prices produce measurable demand lifts in field experiments, but the effect is modest and can invert for premium positioning.","nuance":"Effect is context-dependent: luxury and B2B categories often see round numbers perform better.","scores":{"impact":6.4,"consensus":6.6,"evidence_strength":68},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["ecommerce","pricing"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"Effects of $9 Price Endings on Retail Sales","authors":"Anderson & Simester, Quantitative Marketing and Economics","url":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1023581927405","tier":"Academic","year":2003}},{"slug":"anonymous-seo-content-works-fine-for-ai-citation","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/anonymous-seo-content-works-fine-for-ai-citation","vertical":"geo","category":"Authority","group":"Entity & E-E-A-T","myth":"Anonymous SEO content works fine for AI citation.","crib":"In Seer's controlled 123-page test, adding detailed author bylines roughly doubled Bing AI citations period-over-period (vs +34% on control pages); AI Overviews showed no significant lift.","nuance":"Effects vary by engine: E-E-A-T bylines are a cheap intervention that pays on some surfaces and is neutral on others.","scores":{"impact":6.4,"consensus":5.4,"evidence_strength":66},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["claude","chatgpt"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Do Author Bylines Influence AI Visibility? Testing EEAT Elements in GEO","authors":"Seer Interactive","url":"https://www.seerinteractive.com/work/case-studies/author-bylines","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2026}},{"slug":"linkedin-hashtags-no-lift","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/linkedin-hashtags-no-lift","vertical":"social","category":"Hashtags on LinkedIn","group":"Distribution mechanics","myth":"Three to five hashtags expand your reach.","crib":"AuthoredUp found no measurable reach impact from hashtags across an eight-month study. Hashtags are now a topical/discovery affordance, not a distribution lever — the interest-graph model classifies the post text itself.","nuance":"Hashtags still help humans navigate branded campaign content and event feeds. Just stop budgeting reach against them.","scores":{"impact":6,"consensus":7,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["linkedin","organic-social"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"How the LinkedIn Algorithm Works (analysis of 621,833 posts)","authors":"AuthoredUp","url":"https://authoredup.com/blog/linkedin-algorithm","tier":"Primary Research","year":2026}},{"slug":"raw-markdown-downloads-md-under-watch","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/raw-markdown-downloads-md-under-watch","vertical":"geo","category":"Technical","group":"Machine & Agent Access","myth":"Serving a `.md` version of every page gets you cited more by Claude and custom GPTs.","crib":"Some assistants (Claude with fetched URLs, Custom GPTs, MCP clients) parse markdown more cleanly than HTML, and .md endpoints reduce token cost when an agent retrieves your page. Direct citation lift is unproven in independent tests.","nuance":"Highest value where an agent is instructed to fetch a specific URL. For general web ranking in AIO/Perplexity there is no evidence of preference over well-structured HTML.","scores":{"impact":4,"consensus":4,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"medium","volume":"medium","channels":["claude","chatgpt"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"GEO Cheat Sheet research ledger","authors":"GEO Cheat Sheet","url":"https://geocheatsheet.com/","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":null}},{"slug":"question-style-h2s-aeo-boost-llm-answer-inclusion","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/question-style-h2s-aeo-boost-llm-answer-inclusion","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Structure & Schema","myth":"Question-style H2s (AEO) boost LLM answer inclusion.","crib":"They help, as multipliers: in a 2M-citation statistical analysis, structured headings, FAQ sections and TLDR/BLUF blocks showed consistent positive effects on citation - on top of content alignment and authority, not as substitutes.","nuance":"Headings will not rescue a weak page: AI-perceived domain authority was ~6x more influential than the strongest page-level feature.","scores":{"impact":3.5,"consensus":2.5,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"low","volume":"medium","channels":["chatgpt","claude","perplexity"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"What Actually Drives AI Citations: A Statistical Analysis of 2M AI Citations","authors":"Discovered Labs","url":"https://discoveredlabs.com/research/what-drives-ai-citations","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2026}},{"slug":"llms-txt-file-under-watch","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/llms-txt-file-under-watch","vertical":"geo","category":"Technical","group":"Machine & Agent Access","myth":"Publishing llms.txt is required to be discoverable by AI assistants.","crib":"No major generative engine has publicly confirmed reading llms.txt for retrieval or citation as of mid-2026. It is a proposed convention (llmstxt.org), not an announced ranking or ingestion signal.","nuance":"Cheap to ship (a static file); useful as a machine-readable index for MCP clients and custom GPTs pointed at your site. Treat as inventory, not as SEO.","scores":{"impact":3,"consensus":3,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["chatgpt","claude","perplexity"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"GEO Cheat Sheet research ledger","authors":"GEO Cheat Sheet","url":"https://geocheatsheet.com/","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":null}},{"slug":"adding-faq-howto-schema-is-a-geo-shortcut","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/adding-faq-howto-schema-is-a-geo-shortcut","vertical":"geo","category":"Technical","group":"Structure & Schema","myth":"Adding FAQ / HowTo schema is a GEO shortcut.","crib":"Schema markup has minimal impact on generative citation across major engines.","nuance":"Keep schema for SERP features. Do not treat it as a GEO lever.","scores":{"impact":2.8,"consensus":1.8,"evidence_strength":68},"effort":"low","volume":"high","channels":["chatgpt","claude","perplexity","aio"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"We Tracked 1,885 Pages Adding Schema. AI Citations Didn't Move","authors":"Ahrefs","url":"https://ahrefs.com/blog/schema-ai-citations/","tier":"Vendor Benchmark","year":2026}},{"slug":"shadow-web-agent-feeds-under-watch","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/shadow-web-agent-feeds-under-watch","vertical":"geo","category":"Technical","group":"Machine & Agent Access","myth":"Serving a hidden machine-only feed to AI crawlers boosts your citation share.","crib":"Cloaking content specifically for AI crawlers — showing bots material the human page does not contain — risks the same spam classification as classic SEO cloaking. Neither Google nor OpenAI has endorsed the practice.","nuance":"Structured public feeds (RSS, JSON, sitemap.xml, /api/*.json) served to everyone are fine and often useful. The risk is bot-only content divergence.","scores":{"impact":2,"consensus":2,"evidence_strength":70},"effort":"high","volume":"high","channels":["chatgpt","claude","perplexity","gemini","aio"],"under_watch":true,"source":{"title":"GEO Cheat Sheet research ledger","authors":"GEO Cheat Sheet","url":"https://geocheatsheet.com/","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":null}},{"slug":"publishing-an-llms-txt-file-makes-your-site-discoverable-to","url":"https://cribthis.com/crib/publishing-an-llms-txt-file-makes-your-site-discoverable-to","vertical":"geo","category":"Content","group":"Machine & Agent Access","myth":"Publishing an llms.txt file makes your site discoverable to LLMs.","crib":"No major LLM crawler reads llms.txt. It is a signaling gesture, not a technical requirement.","nuance":"Harmless to publish; do not expect measurable citation lift.","scores":{"impact":1.5,"consensus":0.5,"evidence_strength":85},"effort":"low","volume":"medium","channels":["chatgpt","claude","perplexity","gemini"],"under_watch":false,"source":{"title":"Google says llms.txt files won't harm or help your search rankings","authors":"Search Engine Land","url":"https://searchengineland.com/google-says-llms-txt-files-wont-harm-or-help-your-search-rankings-480264","tier":"Independent Analysis","year":2026}}]}