Smith Jones

Background

I have worked on the buying side of performance media since the mid-2010s, moving from mainstream display into the categories that mainstream platforms restrict. Most of that work has been in three verticals — dating, iGaming and subscription products — bought across Tier 1 markets and in cheaper emerging GEOs where volume is available but quality varies sharply.

The formats I buy are push, in-page push, popunder, native and video, and I buy them self-serve rather than through managed service. That distinction shapes what I write about here. A managed buyer never sees source-level data; a self-serve buyer spends the day deciding which traffic source IDs to cut and which to bid up, which is where most of what I know comes from.

What I focus on

Traffic quality auditing

Separating real users from automated volume in push, pop and native inventory. In a category where a conversion is an email typed into a form, invalid traffic is cheap to manufacture and expensive to detect after the fact. The practical work is source-level analysis: which IDs convert, which produce clicks that never become leads, and which controls a network exposes before a click bills rather than after.

Advertising policy compliance

Reading what Google, Meta and TikTok actually publish about restricted categories, rather than what the industry repeats about them. Since 2024 all three have formalised gates in front of dating, and the details — which certification, which markets, which creative elements — decide whether a campaign can run at all. This is the layer most media plans skip until a rejection forces the question.

Entry economics for affiliate campaigns

The gap between a network's minimum deposit and the budget a valid test actually needs. Most first campaigns are underfunded because the two numbers get confused, and the arithmetic connecting payout, conversion rate and CPC is rarely spelled out anywhere a new buyer would find it.

What I publish here

Every page on this site carries my name and my verification. The current work is the comparison of networks and platform policy on dating ads traffic, covering seven self-serve networks, the certification requirements at three mainstream platforms, format fit by payout model and the source-level controls that limit exposure to invalid traffic.

I document the method rather than assert it: how we check data sets out the source hierarchy, the eight-step process and two worked cases — including one where my own initial conclusion about a network was wrong and had to be corrected. The standards I hold myself to on authorship, independence and corrections are in the editorial policy.

How I work

Three habits shape what appears on these pages. I read the company's own documentation instead of directory listings, because directories copy from each other and a superseded figure can circulate for years. I write the pages I verified myself, since handing research to a separate writer is the reliable way to introduce a plausible sentence where a fact should be. And I keep research and testing distinct in the text: describing what a document says is honest work, claiming a campaign test I did not run is not.

That last habit sets a real limit on this site, and I would rather state it than hide it. Document verification establishes what a company publishes. It does not establish how a moderator treats a borderline creative or how quickly a payout actually lands. Where those questions matter, I say the answer needs operational testing instead of implying my research already covered it.

Contact

You can reach me on LinkedIn, and corrections to any published figure go to [email protected] — the fastest signal I get that something has moved since a page was last verified. General enquiries and press requests are routed through the contact page. More about the site itself, including how it is funded, is on the about page.