thoughts.xavierdecarvalho.com

Ideas that matter. Insights to help you stay ahead.

  • DMA-CPA: a proposed margin-based acquisition budget heuristic

    The DMA-CPA approach is a proposed budgeting heuristic: estimate the contribution available from a customer, reserve part of it, and use the remainder as an acquisition-spend ceiling. I find that more useful than chasing the lowest possible CPA without asking what a customer is worth. It is not a validated forecasting model or a guarantee…

  • Brand Impact Index: a proposed brand measurement framework

    The Brand Impact Index (BII) framework presented here organises brand measurement into three connected areas: brand tracking, customer experience and business impact. Its purpose is to help a team decide what to measure and how findings should inform action. It is a proposed framework, not a validated industry index or a demonstrated predictor of growth.…

  • Using GPT-3-era tools at work: useful tasks and verification limits

    This article concerns the GPT-3 and early ChatGPT period. It is a historical perspective, not a guide to the features or model lineup available today. My interest remains practical: where can a language tool save useful effort, and what must we check before acting on its output? GPT-3 and ChatGPT are different kinds of names…

  • Quantum Social: a metaphor for more participatory communities

    I have been thinking about the difference between being connected online and feeling part of something. A feed can be full of people and still feel like a place where we mostly watch from the sidelines. That question led me to an idea I have been calling Quantum Social. I use quantum language here as…

  • How digital tools change what we remember

    Do you ever reach for your phone before trying to remember something? A name, a route, a fact you looked up last week? I find the question behind that habit interesting: when a tool remembers something for us, what changes about the work we do ourselves? I am exploring that question as an interested reader,…

  • Measuring social media ROI with experiments and modelling

    Social media measurement works better when the question comes before the dashboard. Are we trying to establish whether a campaign increased purchases, whether a message changed brand perceptions, or whether the programme produced a financial return? Those questions need related but different evidence. Substantively reviewed and updated: 22 October 2026. This article replaces fixed holdout…

  • What marketing mix modelling can and cannot measure

    Marketing mix modelling (MMM) estimates how marketing activity and other factors contribute to an aggregate business outcome, such as sales. It can help answer questions about channel contribution, diminishing returns and budget allocation. It does not recreate individual customer journeys or automatically tell an advertiser which person, interest group or creative asset to target. Substantively…

  • Planning a marketing mix modelling project: data, checks and decisions

    A useful marketing mix modelling project starts with a decision, not a promise to recover every conversion lost to tracking restrictions. MMM uses aggregate data to estimate how marketing and other factors relate to a business outcome. The practical work is deciding what the data can support, checking the assumptions and turning uncertain estimates into…

  • GANs in advertising: image generation, limits and responsible use

    My original article explored an exciting possibility: using generative systems to make advertising creative. It also overstated what realistic synthetic output could prove. A convincing image is not evidence that a product works, and a synthetic speaker is not a customer testimonial. What a GAN actually does A generative adversarial network trains two models together.…

  • The spatial web: location data, 3D experiences and their limits

    The phrase “spatial web” can cover several ideas. Some concern information tied to a place: maps, nearby services and navigation. Others describe richer connections between physical spaces, digital objects and shared 3D environments. It helps to say which meaning we intend before announcing a new stage of the internet. Location services are an established starting…

Progress lies in the footsteps of the curious.