Disclaimer

What this site is

This site describes how evidence in digital marketing disputes is analyzed. It sets out what records advertising platforms, analytics systems, marketplaces and the parties themselves generate; who holds each record; how long each survives; how one record is reconciled against another; and what a competent analysis of them can and cannot support.

It is a general reference written for attorneys evaluating whether an expert is needed and what to ask for. It is not a treatise, it is not exhaustive, and it is not a substitute for reading the primary sources it points to.

It is not legal advice

Nothing published here is legal advice, and it should not be relied on as advice about any claim, defense, procedural decision or discovery strategy. The publisher is not an attorney and does not practice law. Whether a duty existed, whether it was breached, whether a statement was material, what a claim is worth, and how a matter should be litigated are questions for counsel admitted in the relevant jurisdiction.

Where a page names a rule of procedure or evidence, it does so to describe the framework the work is performed in, not to advise anyone on how the rule applies to their facts. Rules are amended, courts differ, and local rules and standing orders frequently displace defaults.

It is not an expert opinion in anyone’s matter

No page on this site is an expert opinion. An opinion in this practice is formed only on the record of a specific matter, after a conflict check has cleared, under a written engagement, and it is delivered in a memorandum to counsel or in a signed report — never in a page written for a general audience.

Nothing here has been prepared with any pending or contemplated dispute in mind, and nothing here should be quoted as though it expressed a view about the facts of one. A general statement that a certain record usually exists, or that a certain comparison is usually informative, says nothing whatever about whether that is true in a particular matter, and the honest answer in many matters is that the record does not exist at all.

Reading this creates no engagement

Reading these pages, sending a message through the form, or exchanging email creates no engagement and no relationship of confidence. An engagement begins only when a conflict check has cleared and a written engagement letter has been agreed.

Because of that, material sent before those two things have happened cannot be treated as confidential. A first message should identify the parties, counsel and the entities likely to appear in the matter, and should contain nothing privileged. This is repeated on the contact page and in the terms of use for the same reason it appears here: the order in which information moves is the part a reader can get wrong at real cost.

No outcome is predicted, and none is promised

Nothing on this site says that a claim will succeed, that a defense will hold, that evidence will be admitted, or that an analysis will produce a particular finding. Evidence supports a conclusion, is consistent with one, or permits an inference; it does not deliver certainty, and an expert who says otherwise is describing something other than this field.

Every substantive page here names at least one thing the available evidence does not settle, and those passages are not hedging. They are the accurate part. Records show conduct rather than intent; platform-side filtering shows what a system rejected rather than what it missed; a reconciliation establishes arithmetic rather than wrongdoing; and expired data does not return.

The record changes, and so do the rules

This subject moves faster than most areas an expert writes about. Advertising platforms change what a metric counts, rename fields, alter retention windows, and rewrite their documentation without notice or a change log. Regulatory positions develop, and enforcement in the privacy and advertising space in particular has moved substantially in recent years. Rules of procedure and evidence are amended, and a decision described here may be appealed, superseded, distinguished, or unpublished and therefore not precedential in the forum that matters.

Anything on this site should be verified against its primary source and against the law of the relevant jurisdiction before it is relied on. Where a page states a date, that date is the point at which the underlying source said what the page says it said.

How to read the figures and studies cited here

Industry statistics in digital marketing are frequently produced by parties with a position. A trade body’s survey of its own members measures reported perception among a self-selected group, not audited fact. A verification vendor’s estimate of fraud is evidence that its detection systems flagged something, on a methodology the vendor defines and may not publish in full. A platform’s own report of its own performance is a party statement about its own product.

Where this site uses such a figure, it names who produced it, when, and what the methodology was, and it says what the figure does not establish. That is not a criticism of the sources; it is how a number has to be handled if an expert is going to be asked about it under oath.

No clients, no matters, and no case studies

This site names no client, no adverse party, and no matter, and it contains no case study. Nothing here describes a distinctive fact pattern that could identify an engagement, and no example on this site is drawn from one. Where a dispute type is described, it is described as a type.

Engagements in this practice are confidential, and obligations under protective orders and engagement letters continue after a matter ends. The absence of case studies is not an absence of experience; it is the consequence of those obligations.

Subjects deliberately covered elsewhere

Several adjacent subjects are handled by separate practice sites rather than here, and the boundary is deliberate. Search engine optimization as a discipline, and the admissibility framework governing expert testimony, are covered at length elsewhere. Domain name disputes, registrar conduct and cybersquatting are covered by a different practice. Internet matters generally, including online defamation, sit elsewhere again. Search marketing consulting — as opposed to litigation work — is a separate business entirely and takes no part in any matter this practice is retained on.

If a page here touches one of those subjects briefly, it does so only far enough to point at the place that covers it properly.

Questions

Questions about anything published here, including a request for the source behind a specific statement, go to the address published on the contact page. A statement that cannot be traced to a source should not be on this site, and if one is found that cannot be, it will be corrected or removed.