# What we’ve learned managing $250M+. > Performance marketing frameworks, attribution thinking, and operator notes from the team at Pivotal Consulting Group. New writing most weeks. Canonical: https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights Frameworks, attribution thinking, platform changes worth a CMO’s attention, and the occasional argument with conventional wisdom. ## All insights - [Your CPC Is Supposed to Go Up](https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights/your-cpc-is-supposed-to-go-up) — Move Google Ads bidding from a button click to closed revenue and the cost per click rises within weeks. Auction theory predicts it, field experiments explain it, and our client accounts show it. Here is why the higher price is the healthy sign, and where it stops being one. _(Practitioner's Take, 11 min read, published 2026-08-25)_ - [The Ad Platform Is Smarter Than You. Your Job Is to Feed It What It Can't See.](https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights/feed-the-algorithm-what-it-cant-see) — Google, Meta, and LinkedIn already beat you at the auction. The accounts that win stop fighting the bidding system and feed it the one thing it's blind to: information it doesn't have. Here is the hierarchy that actually moves performance. _(Strategy, 6 min read, published 2026-06-04)_ - [LLMs Ate the Middle of Your Funnel](https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights/llms-ate-the-middle-funnel) — Your demand gen team is optimizing for a stage that doesn't exist anymore. 94% of B2B buyers now use LLMs during the buying process, but total vendor interactions haven't changed. Here's what actually happened to the middle of your funnel. _(Strategy, 7 min read, published 2026-04-09)_ - [Google Ads for SaaS: What $250M in B2B Ad Spend Actually Taught Us](https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights/google-ads-for-saas) — Most SaaS Google Ads guides skip the hard part: connecting spend to pipeline. Here's what $250M in managed B2B ad spend taught us about what actually works. _(Practitioner's Take, 9 min read, published 2026-03-04)_ - [Power Law Marketing](https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights/power-law-marketing) — Why marketing outcomes follow power laws, and what it means for budget allocation, channel strategy, and performance optimization. _(Strategy, 12 min read, published 2026-02-03)_ - [Google Ads for Long Sales Cycles: The B2B Playbook for 6-18 Month Deals](https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights/google-ads-long-sales-cycles) — Google Ads was built for e-commerce. Same-session conversions, clear attribution, fast feedback loops. B2B sales cycles stretch 6-12 months, and the platform's own constraints work against you. Below: how to make it work anyway. _(Practitioner's Take, 8 min read, published 2026-01-03)_ - [Google Ads AI Max: A Practitioner's Take on What's Actually Working](https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights/google-ads-ai-max-practitioners-take) — Google's AI Max for Search launched globally in September 2025 with bold claims: [14% more conversions at similar costs](https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/google-ai-max-for-search-campaigns/). Four months in, the picture is more nuanced, especially for B2B advertisers. What we're actually seeing in client accounts, why results vary so much, and the strategic reason you might enable it regardless. _(Practitioner's Take, 5 min read, published 2025-12-14)_ - [Marketing Mix Modeling: The Portfolio View Your CFO Is Already Asking For](https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights/marketing-mix-modeling-roi) — MMM is not a measurement upgrade. It's the tool that moves the conversation from campaign-level optimization to portfolio-level allocation, and that's a different conversation entirely. _(Strategy, 9 min read, published 2024-04-01)_ - [Incrementality Testing: The Only Measurement That Actually Proves Causation](https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights/incrementality-testing-fundamentals) — Every other measurement tool tells you what correlated with a conversion. Incrementality testing tells you what caused it. That distinction is worth a lot of money. _(Testing, 7 min read, published 2024-03-15)_ - [Multi-Touch Attribution: What Platform Credit Gets Wrong](https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights/attribution-modeling-guide) — Platform-reported attribution is not neutral. It systematically over-credits the channel that owns the reporting interface. Here's how to build a model that corrects for that. _(Attribution, 6 min read, published 2024-02-28)_ - [The PCG Way](https://www.pivotal-consulting-group.com/insights/the-pcg-way) — The three measurement tools we run on every engagement: Incrementality Experiments, Multi-Touch Attribution, and Marketing Mix Modeling. Each answers a question the others can't. _(Methodology, 8 min read, published 2024-01-15)_ --- **Pivotal Consulting Group** — founder-led performance marketing. 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