2 + 2 = Internet Math
You’re probably thinking that 2 + 2 = 4, right?
Maybe.
This is internet math so the answers are not always clear. Everyone who sells or buys internet advertising (I do both) appreciates the comprehensive data that can be captured, tabulated and analyzed. Never before in marketing history have we had access to so much data on who, what, where, when, how, how long and even sometimes why consumers interact with specific media content. It’s the online goldmine of consumer research and the holy grail of marketing.
But wait.
It is estimated that 30% of internet users delete their cookies from 1-4 times per month. Without even getting into a complex mathematical formula, the result of this from a media planning perspective using just the base 30% is the following:
Maybe.
This is internet math so the answers are not always clear. Everyone who sells or buys internet advertising (I do both) appreciates the comprehensive data that can be captured, tabulated and analyzed. Never before in marketing history have we had access to so much data on who, what, where, when, how, how long and even sometimes why consumers interact with specific media content. It’s the online goldmine of consumer research and the holy grail of marketing.
But wait.
It is estimated that 30% of internet users delete their cookies from 1-4 times per month. Without even getting into a complex mathematical formula, the result of this from a media planning perspective using just the base 30% is the following:
An overstatement of unique visitors. 100,000 reported actually = 70,000 uniques.
An understatement of frequency in the server logs. 500,000 total impressions for a reported frequency of 5 actually = 7.14 frequency.
2 + 2 = ? The answer in this case is not 4.
What it adds up to is that you get a very different online advertising campaign from what you planned and from what the numbers actually reveal.
Not everything that can be measured matters and, often, what matters cannot be measured. Of all the numbers that we deal with in business, the numbers that matter the most always have this very important symbol preceding them: $
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