Send us your work

Write for State of Ads, or research with us.

This programme exists to put evidence about this industry into the open. It only works if the people writing are not all on our payroll.

Writing

We publish work from researchers, practitioners, creators and technologists who have something specific to say about how this industry works and how it should.

We want: evidence-led analysis, original research summarised for practitioners, well-argued dissent, and honest accounts of practice from inside agencies, brands, platforms and creator businesses.

We do not want: vendor content, thought leadership that is really a pitch, or anything you would not defend in a room full of people who disagree with you.

Guidelines. Original and unpublished elsewhere. 800–2,000 words. Claims supported, sources named. We edit for clarity and length and do not change your conclusions. Your name, your ownership, your argument.

Research

We collaborate on empirical work in attention and wellbeing, privacy engineering, fairness and value distribution, gamification mechanics, and measurement.

What we commit to: you keep authorship, independence and your conclusions. We do not approve findings, we do not ask you to soften one, and future collaboration is never conditional on a result. Research is published whatever it says, including when it is inconvenient for Blowtrumpet — and we declare that funding on every output.

[Submit a research proposal] · [Join the research network]

Events and sessions

Propose a roundtable topic, offer to speak, or tell us which room is missing. Closed sessions run under the Chatham House Rule, and we will always tell you which basis you are in before you walk in.

Before you send anything — the two routes

Invited work — an accepted article, a commissioned piece, a research collaboration — is covered by a written agreement setting out scope, authorship, credit, confidentiality, data handling and payment. Research agreements protect your independence explicitly.

Anything else is unsolicited and is received on a non-confidential basis under our Unsolicited Idea Submission Policy. The licence described there is non-exclusive, so a research direction or idea you send us remains entirely yours to pursue, publish or fund elsewhere.

Unpublished research is exactly the thing to talk to us about first. Write to research@stateofads.com before sending anything you have not published, and we will put an agreement in place. We would rather protect your priority than inherit a dispute about it.

[Read the Unsolicited Idea Submission Policy]

Get in touch

Contributions: contribute@stateofads.com

Research: research@stateofads.comProgrammes and events: programmes@stateofads.com