Insights
Notes on data engineering.
Field notes on APIs, warehouses, automation, dashboards, marketing data, and reliable reporting systems.
Ads Data Hub: How User-Provided Data Matching (UPDM) Actually Works
A technical reference for Ads Data Hub user-provided data matching. Hashing requirements, match table architecture, match rate calculation using is_updm_eligible, privacy thresholds, EEA consent, and practical tips for improving match rates - sourced from Google's official documentation.
DV360 Reporting and BigQuery: Understanding the Three Data Paths
How Display & Video 360 data actually reaches BigQuery. The BigQuery API Connector, Reporting Data Transfer, and Bid Manager API serve different purposes - here is what each gives you and how to use them together.
Freelance Data Engineer vs Data Engineering Agency: What Marketing Teams Should Know
An honest comparison of hiring a freelance data engineer versus a data engineering agency for pipeline, warehouse, and reporting projects. When each makes sense.
Building a Multi-Agent Marketing AI System with LangGraph and Gemini
How to architect a LangGraph system that routes 40+ marketing performance rules across parallel AI domain workflows using a 3-tier classifier and Gemini.
Dataform vs dbt for Marketing Analytics: Differences That Actually Matter
A practical comparison of Dataform and dbt for marketing analytics warehouses on BigQuery. When to choose each, what the real differences are, and what does not matter as much as the articles say.
Why We Used a Deterministic State Machine Instead of an LLM for Issue Tracking
How to design a reliable issue lifecycle system for AI-detected marketing problems - and why the state transitions must not be LLM decisions.
Ad Creative Clustering with Embeddings, Ward Hierarchical, and HDBSCAN
How to group ad creatives into meaningful approach clusters using vector embeddings, hierarchical clustering, HDBSCAN, and approach ID lineage across periods.
How to Connect Google Ads and Meta Ads Data to BigQuery
A practical guide to moving Google Ads, Meta Ads, GA4, LinkedIn Ads, and DV360 data into BigQuery for marketing analytics. What each connection looks like and what breaks.
How a 6-Phase AI Pipeline Generates Creative Briefs from Ad Performance Data
Architecture of a production pipeline that turns BigQuery marketing performance signals into structured creative briefs through 6 sequential AI and deterministic phases.
What a Marketing Data Pipeline Project Costs
An honest breakdown of what marketing data pipeline projects cost, what drives the price up or down, and how to scope a project before asking for a quote.
Multi-Platform Ads Reporting to Google Sheets: What Breaks and How to Fix It
How to automate Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Bing Ads reporting into Google Sheets. Platform-specific challenges, rerun safety, and when Sheets stops being enough.
Prompt Guardrails: When the Data Model Is the Real Fix
How rewriting a prompt fails when the root cause is an ambiguous data model - and the pattern for using structured evidence and deterministic post-processing to keep LLM outputs accurate.
Why Marketing Dashboards Break When Spend Is Modeled at the Wrong Grain
A practical note on campaign, ad, creative, order, and CRM grain problems in marketing warehouses, and how I model them before they reach dashboards.
What a Creative and Campaign Intelligence Data Platform Needs Before AI
A field note on the ingestion, warehouse, validation, and prompt-traceability layers I look for before adding AI analysis to campaign and creative data.
When Google Sheets Automation Is Enough, and When You Need a Warehouse
How I decide whether a reporting workflow should stay in Google Sheets and Apps Script or move into BigQuery, a database, or a custom dashboard.
Building a Custom Amazon Seller Analytics Dashboard: What Generic BI Tools Miss
Why Amazon vendor and seller reporting workflows often need a custom dashboard. How email-based report ingestion, MySQL storage, and a Next.js reporting app solves what Seller Central and generic BI tools cannot.
Normalizing Affiliate Network Data: Awin, Rakuten, and TradeTracker
How to normalize affiliate network transaction data from Awin, Rakuten, TradeTracker, and similar networks into one reporting-ready dataset. The schema differences, status lifecycles, and validation checks that matter.
Building a Reliable DV360 and Ads Data Hub Pipeline with BigQuery, Cloud Run, and AWS SQS
Engineering lessons from building a reliable marketing data pipeline with DV360, Ads Data Hub, BigQuery, Cloud Run, Cloud Tasks, and AWS SQS.
Data Engineering & Automation: A Complete Guide for Growth Teams
Learn how data engineering and automation can transform your business operations. Expert insights from Ahmad Humayun on building scalable data solutions.
Building a Multi-Platform Ads Data Platform with Medallion Architecture
How I built a comprehensive data platform that ingests Meta and TikTok marketing data into BigQuery with automated signals, benchmarking, and Slack reporting.