On Metrics.
Measurement is a weapon.
The decline in advertising is at least in part due to the impact of meaningful metrics. Comparing Nielsen TV ratings to clickthrough information and demographic breakdowns for online advertising is like comparing a StarTAC with an iPhone. All this information has done, in my opinion, is expose an inconvenient truth - most advertising is not as impactful as anyone would like. When all you know is eyeballs, it’s a lot easier to pat yourself on the back than knowing that 98% of those eyeballs moved on in less than a second.
My personal pet peeve is media impressions as a measurement of PR effectiveness. I understand we need something, but impressions are generally a stack of assumptions that willfully ignore the reality of how people interact with information. For example a commuter paper would argue that it has a circulation of X, and Y readers per copy (or pass-along). Multiplying these numbers would give you the assumed impressions for an article in said paper. This ignores that not every reader reads the entire paper, or finishes articles they start, or actually gets to reading the thing at all. And it has no concept of driving action due to the article.
Metrics are important, but let’s not ignore the truth - the attention industries have been using bullshit metrics for years, as a false measure of success. As we enter a time when actual, valid and valuable measurement is becoming more and more common (online, through digital cable and streaming tv, etc), it makes perfect sense that we’d be seeing a decline in ad revenue. We’ve all been lying about how much it was worth for far too long.
