With recent revelations, we need to ask more questions about performance.

Do you trust your analytics and KPIs?

We all agree we should be able to trust the numbers given to us by either the agency we work with, and the platform on which our content and creatives run.

Lately, there have been revelations that cast a shadow on the numbers and results some agencies and platforms give out to their clients.

Just last week, Facebook revealed that one of its key metrics in video performance might have exaggerated results by 60 to 80%. Yes, you read that right, SIXTY to EIGHTY percent!

The metric impacted is the average time people spend watching video ads on on Facebook. This is often key in calculating ROI and performance for a video campaign. Facebook has since patched the calculation of the metric, but it raises the question as to how much we can trust analytics numbers.

This year was also the year where some media agencies came under the spotlight for overbilling clients for ads, or getting rebates they did not tell their clients about.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we should start having doubts whenever we see campaign or content performance results, but we should ask more questions.

We, Toast, as an agency, should ask more questions to the platforms that report to us, and you, as brands and marketers, should not hesitate to ask us more questions. 

We’ve always said that traditional media wasn’t as good as digital because it wasn’t measurable, well we should step up and make sure that digital is measured as precisely as we’ve been advocating for years.

I invite you to read a Wall Street Journal article on the situation with Facebook, Dentsu and others, as to how this is impacting the advertising industry, and reflect on how we can act so that it does not affect the digital content industry.