How Advertising Works — A Plain-English Guide
How businesses pay for advertising, how platforms target audiences, and how results are measured — explained without jargon for UK business owners.
Where to start
Guides, tools and reference pages, grouped by what you are actually trying to work out.
UK Advertising Rules — What the ASA Requires
What the ASA and CAP Code require before you run an ad in the UK — substantiation, health claims, comparisons, and endorsements explained plainly.
How Digital Ad Auctions Work
How Google, Meta, and programmatic platforms price ad inventory through real-time auctions — explained for UK advertisers who want to understand what they are bidding on.
Advertising on a Small Budget in the UK
How to advertise a UK business on £500–£2,000 a month — which channels work, what to expect, and where not to waste money.
How Your Data Is Used in Advertising
How platforms collect, match, and use personal data to target ads — explained plainly for UK business owners and the consumers seeing those ads.
Understanding A/B Test Significance Calculator
A practical guide to A/B Test Significance Calculator: what it means, how it works, and how to use the interactive a/b test significance calculator.
Understanding Ad Budget Calculator
A practical guide to Ad Budget Calculator: what it means, how it works, and how to use the interactive ad budget calculator.
Understanding CPM / CPC Benchmark Comparator
A practical guide to CPM / CPC Benchmark Comparator: what it means, how it works, and how to use the interactive cpm / cpc benchmark comparator.
Tools and guides to plan with
A working set of calculators, guides and reference pages for anyone budgeting, buying or checking the rules on UK advertising.
Work out what to spend
A calculator that turns your goals and market into a starting budget across the main channels, based on the figures you give it.
Calculate your budget →Compare CPM and CPC benchmarks
See how UK cost-per-thousand and cost-per-click figures stack up across channels before you agree a media plan.
Compare benchmarks →Read the practical guides
Step-by-step guides covering channel choice, auction mechanics and budgeting, written for someone running their own campaigns.
Explore the guides →Know what the ASA requires
A plain-English look at the CAP Code and where UK ad rules most often catch small advertisers out.
Read the rules →Find where UK ads are placed
A directory of UK advertising channels, from paid social to out-of-home, to help you see where budget could go.
Browse the directory →Look up the terminology
Short, consistent definitions of the terms that come up in media plans and agency briefs, from CPM to programmatic.
Check the glossary →UK advertising news
What's changing in ad rules, platform pricing and media spend, tracked as it happens.
Is that uplift in your ad results real, or just noise?
The calculator checks whether the difference between two versions of an ad is large enough to trust, using the numbers you already have from a live campaign. It can only work with what you put in, so a small sample will still come back uncertain, whatever the answer says.