Metrics are emphasized despite weak business relevance.
Likes, impressions, and reach feel good to report — but they don't pay the bills. Measurement that doesn't connect to revenue, pipeline, or behavior is decoration masquerading as analysis.
Hopkins: advertising "is not for general effect. It is not to keep your name before the people." On marketers chasing reach: "They forget they are salesmen and try to be performers. Instead of sales, they seek applause." Ogilvy: "We sell — or else."
• Reporting likes, impressions, clicks, reach, opens — but not micro or macro conversions
Owned — Pageviews celebrated, conversions ignored.
Earned — Impressions valued over influence.
Paid — CTR celebrated without downstream impact.
Analytics — Revenue disconnected from reports.
AI — AI judged on speed, not quality or outcome.
• Tie metrics to revenue or behavior
Share of search is a brand's organic search volume as a share of all brand searches in its category, built from free Google Trends data. Les Binet presented the work to the IPA in 2020, testing it in automotive, energy and mobile phones, and found it correlated with market share in all three and moved ahead of it. The lead time tracks purchase involvement: about three months in energy, up to six in mobile, and as long as twelve in new cars. Binet was clear about its limits: price and conversion factors still intervene, and not all search interest is favorable.
What it means for this rule: Measuring by business outcomes is often met with the objection that revenue is a lagging number. Share of search answers that objection. The test for an in-between metric is not whether it sits upstream of revenue but whether it has been shown to predict revenue, and share of search is one of the few brand-health measures that has passed.
Sources: IPA: Binet presents a fast, cheap, predictive share of search metric · WARC: share of search can predict market share
