Profitable advertising, in plain English.
Advertising is worth what it adds to profit, not what the platforms report. These guides, calculators and data are written from the advertiser's side of the table, for the marketing director who has to defend the budget and the finance director who has to sign it off: what to ask, how to test what is real, and how to read the numbers.
Is it making money?
The questions a finance director asks before signing off the budget, and how to test the answers.
Is your advertising profitable?
The questions a CFO or marketing director should ask before signing off ad spend.
Incrementality testing
How to find out whether advertising causes sales, or only claims them.
Questions to ask a PPC agency
What to ask any agency or consultant before you sign, and what a good answer sounds like.
Which is right for you?
Consultant vs agency
Who actually does the work, what you pay for, and when each is the right call.
Google Ads vs Meta Ads
Search intent or scroll attention: which to start with, and when to run both.
Keep these to hand.
Conversion tracking checklist
The checks that decide whether your ad platforms are optimising on real enquiries.
Measured, not estimated.
Website AI readiness statistics 2026
45 checks across 2,295 websites, counted one by one.
llms.txt adoption 2026
Which industries publish the file, and which do not.
AI crawler blocking 2026
robots.txt, the edge, and the sites that turned the scanner away.
UK Google Ads costs 2026
Top-of-page bid ranges for 62 common searches, from Google's Keyword Planner.
Every Crane Index™ benchmark
Industry by industry, every organisation named and scored.
Want a straight answer on your own advertising?
Every engagement starts with a read of what is actually there: the accounts, the tracking and the margin behind them.
The senior read,
once a week.
Most marketing newsletters are noise on a schedule. This is not that. Once a week I send a short, considered read on the shifts that actually change what you should do, across the AI shift, PPC, technical SEO and analytics. Filtered, weighted and signed off by me before it goes out. The judgement is mine, and now you can hear every edition in my own voice.
Nic CraneFounder, The Crane Consultancy
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