Only 34% of Target-CPA campaigns land within 10% of the target the platform promised. Yet the dashboards keep telling advertisers everything is optimized. Igor Ivitskiy, PhD — ranked #6 in the Top 50 Most Influential PPC Experts of 2026 — on why experienced marketers overtrust AI, and the one habit that actually works.

87% of your customers said they'd buy your new feature. 4% actually did. Here's why customer research systematically lies to you and how to fix it.

And why customers pay 3× more for the same product. Two watches sit next to each other on a jeweler's counter. Both keep time within a few seconds a day. Both use similar internal mechanisms. Both are made from stainless steel with sapphire crystal faces. Look at them side by side with the logos hidden, and even a watch collector would struggle to tell you which is the €400 one and which is the €12,000 one. One is a Seiko. The other is a Rolex Submariner. The mechanical diffe

Why customers can't cancel, even when they want to. You signed up for a free trial three months ago. Two weeks in, you knew you didn't need it. The dashboard sat unopened for weeks. Notifications piled up. You even Googled "how to cancel" once. But you didn't cancel. Instead, when the trial ended, you were charged. €19. Then the next month. Then the next. Now you have a subscription you don't use, don't want, and can't quite bring yourself to end. If you're a customer, this i

Why every serious SaaS company has three pricing tiers and how to build yours. Look at the pricing page of almost any successful software company. Notion. Slack. Figma. Zapier. You'll see the same pattern: three tiers. A cheap one. A mid one. A premium one. Most people assume this is about giving customers options. It isn't. The middle tier is what they want you to buy. The premium tier exists to make the middle tier feel reasonable. The cheap tier exists to catch price-sensi

But what if it was never worth $400? You're walking through a store, no plan, no shopping list. Just looking. Then you see it. A dress or jacket. Clean cut, dark color, exactly your style. You glance at the tag. $400. Crossed out in red. Below it: $199. Something clicks in your brain. That's basically half price. That's a great deal. You take it off the rack. You try it on. You buy it. You walk out feeling good about yourself like you just won something. But here's the questi

You walked into a Supermarket to look around. You didn't plan to buy anything. Twenty minutes later you're at the cash register with Products you didn't need, a snack you weren't looking for, and a vague feeling that you got a good deal. What happened? It wasn't weakness. It wasn't bad luck. It was psychology and it was working on you long before you picked up that jacket. The Invisible Hand in Every Store Every time you shop, online or in person, you are being steered. Not p