Most teams reach for a social listening tool first. The tool is the last thing that matters, and starting there is why most listening in Pakistan quietly fails. Key takeaways What social listening is, and what it is not Social listening is the practice of reading, in aggregate, what people already say in public about…

A restaurant chain I worked with in 2023 already held every number it needed to grow. What it did not have was anyone asking those numbers a useful question. Most conversations about restaurant data start in the wrong place. The first thing an owner is usually sold is a monthly summary: this item sold the most…

Type a question into Google in Pakistan today and there’s a fair chance you will never click a result. The answer sits at the top, written by AI, and the search ends there. By 2026, by Similarweb’s measure, close to two-thirds of Google searches end without a click, and Semrush puts that figure near 93%…

A few years ago, running an ad meant choosing your audience by hand: age, location, interests, behaviour. The big platforms have largely taken that job away. Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max now ask for a budget, some creative, and a goal — then decide for themselves who sees the ad. The pitch is seductive:…

Meta just put its apps behind a paywall and started testing paid distribution for businesses. Here’s what’s real, what’s still a test, and what it means if you sell, serve, or campaign on Facebook and Instagram. In 2014, Facebook opened Business Manager to advertisers outside the United States. I set one up almost immediately. I…

After managing more than $100,000 in Meta ad spend across hospitals, e-commerce, restaurants, tourism, real estate, and nonprofits, I can tell you the campaigns that struggled almost never struggled because of money. Most ad conversations start in the wrong place. The first question is usually “how much should we spend?” or “which creative won?” Reasonable…

In digital communications, many organizations discuss distribution before they discuss substance. Budgets are allocated. Platforms are selected. Ads are optimized. But one strategic question is often ignored: Would this story still matter if nobody paid to distribute it? Over the years, I have worked on both sides of this equation: inside newsrooms and inside communications…