# Citations & Originality Review
**Document reviewed:** *The CMO's Field Guide to System and Cohort Dynamics* (attached PDF)
**Review date:** July 2, 2026 · Method: claim-by-claim web verification of every distinctive statistic and named concept.

## Summary verdict

- **Plagiarism risk: LOW.** No passage in the guide matched a published source near-verbatim. The signature passages ("Identity has thus become the ultimate infrastructure…", "belief lives in culture and trust lives in experience") return **no indexed matches** anywhere on the web; they appear to be original writing.
- **Citation risk: MODERATE.** Several headline statistics are outdated, unsourced, or conflate two different studies. Corrected figures below are the ones used in the launch deck and social posts.
- **Attribution needed:** two borrowed frameworks (Disillusionomics, the 70,000-years belief framing) should credit their originators.

---

## Claim-by-claim findings

### 1. "$1.08 trillion global ad spend in 2026"
**Verdict: OUTDATED. Understates the market.**
WARC's December 2025 forecast puts 2026 global ad spend at **$1.30 trillion** (+9.1% YoY), rising to $1.40T in 2027. Dentsu's Dec 2025 forecast is ~$1.0T+ (+5.1%) on a narrower base. The $1.08T figure resembles ~2024-era spend levels.
**Use instead:** "$1.3 trillion" · *Source: [WARC · Global ad forecasts upgraded but growth concentrated within Big Tech, Dec 2025](https://www.warc.com/en/article/warc-global-ad-forecasts-upgraded-but-growth-concentrated-within-big-tech-9ed8089870e64fbe84b6bf2b1f8d6442).*

### 2. "50,000 daily ad impressions today vs 2,000 historically"
**Verdict: UNSUPPORTED. No credible source for 50,000.**
The traceable lineage: **~500–1,600 ads/day in the 1970s** → **up to ~5,000/day by 2006–07** (Yankelovich, per president Jay Walker-Smith) → **~4,000–10,000/day today** (widely cited industry estimates; no official census). Even the 10,000 figure is contested as an extrapolation. The "2,000 historic" figure does appear in some retellings of the Yankelovich data as an upper bound for the earlier era.
**Use instead:** "up to 10,000 ads a day, vs ~500 in the 1970s" · *Source: [CBS News · "Cutting Through Advertising Clutter" (Yankelovich / Jay Walker-Smith, 2006)](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cutting-through-advertising-clutter/); modern estimates via industry syntheses.*

### 3. "Attention span fell from 12 seconds to 2.5 seconds"
**Verdict: CONFLATION OF TWO DIFFERENT CLAIMS. The 12s baseline is a debunked myth.**
The "12 seconds in 2000 → 8 seconds" framing traces to a 2015 Microsoft Canada infographic whose underlying numbers Microsoft never produced, and it has been repeatedly debunked (BBC, Temple Law AER, others). The **2.5 seconds** figure is real but measures something different: **average active (eyes-on) attention to a digital ad**, from Dentsu's Attention Economy program with Lumen Research eye tracking (typical display range ~1.5–2.5s).
**Use instead:** "the average digital ad earns ~2.5 seconds of active attention", and drop the 12-second baseline entirely. · *Source: [Dentsu · The Attention Economy](https://www.dentsu.com/us/en/attention-economy) (with [Lumen Research](https://lumen-research.com/) eye-tracking benchmarks).*

### 4. "75.2% of South Africans are online"
**Verdict: SLIGHTLY OFF / STALE.**
DataReportal *Digital 2024: South Africa* reported **74.7%** penetration (45.34M users, Jan 2024); *Digital 2025* reports **78.9%** (50.8M users, Jan 2025). 75.2% matches neither exactly.
**Use instead:** "78.9% of South Africans are online" · *Source: [DataReportal · Digital 2025: South Africa](https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2025-south-africa).*

### 5. "Digital is 40% of South African ad spend"
**Verdict: UNDERSTATED.**
Digital has accounted for **more than half** of SA ad spend since 2020. IAB South Africa's Internet Advertising Revenue Report shows digital revenue of **R17.7bn in 2023, +21.5% YoY** (more than double the prior year's growth rate).
**Use instead:** "digital is now the majority (>50%) of SA ad spend, growing 21.5% YoY" · *Sources: [IAB South Africa · 2024 IAB SA/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report](https://iabsa.net/iab-news/2024-iab-sa-pwc-internet-advertising-revenue-report-shows-growth-in-business-oriented-trends/); [PwC · Africa Entertainment & Media Outlook 2025–2029](https://www.pwc.co.za/en/publications/entertainment-and-media-outlook.html).*

### 6. "70% of marketing budgets go to acquisition"
**Verdict: NO CREDIBLE PRIMARY SOURCE. Widely repeated blog statistic.**
Verified alternatives: **44% of companies focus more on acquisition vs 16% on retention** (Econsultancy); **~82% of companies spend less on retention than acquisition** (industry surveys); only 40% of companies have an equal acquisition/retention focus.
**Use instead:** "companies focusing on acquisition outnumber retention-focused ones nearly 3-to-1 (44% vs 16%)" · *Source: [Econsultancy · Companies more focused on acquisition than retention](https://econsultancy.com/blog/63321-companies-more-focused-on-acquisition-than-retention-stats).*

### 7. Digitas "CRM Pulse" and "Networked Experiences"
**Verdict: CRM PULSE VERIFIED; "NETWORKED EXPERIENCES" NOT FOUND AS A NAMED REPORT.**
**CRM Pulse** is a real, current Digitas AI-enabled CRM performance-intelligence offering built around the "Connection Gap" concept ([Digitas · CRM Pulse](https://www.digitas.com/en-anz/crm-pulse)). No Digitas study titled "Networked Experiences" is indexed; the closest verified body of work is Digitas's multi-year **Connected Commerce** international study series. Recommend renaming the reference or describing it generically ("Digitas's connected-experience research").

### 8. FRO examples (carbon-removal infrastructure, tabletop RNA sequencing)
**Verdict: VERIFIED.**
Focused Research Organizations are a real model (coined via Convergent Research / Federation of American Scientists) building scientific public goods that are "neither profitable nor publishable." The guide's example categories align with the publicly listed FRO portfolio. *Sources: [Convergent Research · About FROs](https://www.convergentresearch.org/about-fros); [Federation of American Scientists · Focused Research Organizations: A New Model for Scientific Research](https://fas.org/publication/focused-research-organizations-a-new-model-for-scientific-research/).*

### 9. 70,000-years belief framing
**Verdict: BORROWED FRAMEWORK. ATTRIBUTE.**
This is Yuval Noah Harari's Cognitive Revolution thesis from *Sapiens* (~70,000 years ago, cooperation through shared myths/imagined orders). The guide's framing is a paraphrase, not a copy, but should credit Harari when used publicly.

### 10. "Disillusionomics"
**Verdict: BORROWED TERM. ATTRIBUTE.**
Coined by **Alice Lassman** (British economist / Gen Z researcher), popularized via [Fortune (Jan 2026)](https://fortune.com/2026/01/10/gen-z-disillusionomics-rebelling-against-economy-life-hacking-income-streams-debt-dupe-culture/): Gen Z's response to "late-stage commodification of anything." Related but distinct from "economic nihilism" (Demetri Kofinas / Kyla Scanlon). Public-facing use should credit Lassman.

### 11. Signature identity passage
**Verdict: ORIGINAL. SAFE TO FEATURE.**
"Identity has thus become the ultimate infrastructure… persistent identity is the connective tissue required to bridge the two." Exact-phrase and fragment searches return **zero indexed matches**. The idea space (identity resolution as marketing infrastructure) is common in vendor literature (LiveRamp, Epsilon, The Trade Desk), but this articulation appears original. Cleared for use as the deck's centerpiece quote.

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## Corrections applied to the launch assets

| Guide figure | Launch assets use | Source |
|---|---|---|
| $1.08T ad spend 2026 | **$1.3T** | [WARC, Dec 2025](https://www.warc.com/en/article/warc-global-ad-forecasts-upgraded-but-growth-concentrated-within-big-tech-9ed8089870e64fbe84b6bf2b1f8d6442) |
| 50,000 ads/day vs 2,000 | **up to 10,000/day vs ~500 (1970s)** | [CBS News / Yankelovich](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cutting-through-advertising-clutter/) + industry estimates |
| 12s → 2.5s attention span | **~2.5s active ad attention** (no 12s baseline) | [Dentsu](https://www.dentsu.com/us/en/attention-economy) / [Lumen Research](https://lumen-research.com/) |
| 75.2% SA online | **78.9%** | [DataReportal Digital 2025](https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2025-south-africa) |
| 40% digital share (SA) | **>50% share, +21.5% YoY** | [IAB SA](https://iabsa.net/iab-news/2024-iab-sa-pwc-internet-advertising-revenue-report-shows-growth-in-business-oriented-trends/) / [PwC](https://www.pwc.co.za/en/publications/entertainment-and-media-outlook.html) |
| 70% budgets on acquisition | **44% vs 16% acquisition-vs-retention focus** | [Econsultancy](https://econsultancy.com/blog/63321-companies-more-focused-on-acquisition-than-retention-stats) |
