Everyone’s favorite food and drink gift guide is back with all-new picks! Same same, but different. It’s the 5th anniversary of this gift guide. Same rules apply: This time, we have a few recommendations that you can buy on Amazon or your local grocery or big box store because we realize this may be most
If your audience’s sources of influence and your marketing budget don’t align, you’re gonna have a bad time
By Yes, this is a rant. It’s a rant about where leadership teams allocate their marketing budget vs. where their potential customers actually pay attention. For most, that’s heavily in digital performance ads (Meta, Google, Apple, and if you’re in e-commerce, Amazon/Pinterest), a healthy amount in social media/brand ads (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, maybe Reddit), and then
Snackbar Studio Raised $2.15M Using SparkToro’s Funding Model (and we’re open sourcing the docs)
By Since SparkToro’s founding in 2018, I’ve been been passionately loud about our unique funding model (becase it’s a really good idea.) The model focuses on chill work, sustainability over growth-at-any-cost, and offers investors and founders a lower-risk way to benefit from long-term, profitable operation. Several companies and funds have used our structure to raise money
NEW: Topics, Interests, and Content Ideas Now Live in SparkToro V2
By Starting today, SparkToro V2 has an entirely new capability—The Topics Section—that adds massive value for content strategy, content creation, and/or audience research applications. In fact, this new data is what our customers told us (in a September survey) was the most valuable missing piece in the product: Let me show you what it can do,
SparkToro V2 Is Now Available in the UK and Canada
By For the past 9 months, our devoted CTO, Casey Henry, has been working day and night to get support for the United Kingdom and Canada into SparkToro V2. Today, it’s finally here. Whether you’re a free user of SparkToro or a paid subscriber, access to data in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada is
The Chill Work Guide to Hiring and Managing Agencies
By We recently hosted our first in-person SparkTogether event. It was a smashing success without any mishaps. I got a ton of compliments on the execution, but I got too much credit. It’s really all thanks to CKE, our event planning agency. Charlene and her team delivered on an unforgettable couple of days, and we only
How Can My Brand Appear in Answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Other AI/LLM Tools?
By It’s no surprise that marketers, founders, and business owners are starting to ask how their brands can be returned in the answers given by AI/LLM tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. But it’s downright shocking how difficult it is to find high-quality, accurate information about how to do this. Granted, you could just ask ChatGPT
Stop Making Your Team Own Tasks. Let Them Own Programs Instead.
By In a given week, I would write product descriptions, digital ad copy, pithy social media posts, a couple blog posts, and the abandoned cart email campaign. I loved having a variety of writing responsibilities. But there was a big problem: if I took a sick day, it would slow down the rest of my team.
Is Google Losing Search Market Share?
By A recent Wall Street Journal made the top of feeds in the digital marketing world, claiming that Google is on the precipice of losing the lead in the search advertising wars. Supposedly, in 2025, for the first time, Google may fall under 50% of market share in search advertising (according to an eMarketer report the
How to Fight Back Against a Traffic-Less Web
By Surveys, studies, analytics… they all show the same thing: getting traffic on the web is harder than ever and it’s getting worse much faster in the last 2 years than the decade before. Site owners are faced with two options: compete for the scraps Google and the other platforms provide, or play the game differently