Advertising, a form of art or science?

As we are living the era of data, everything is soon becoming measurable. We tend to measure more and more matters from business into quality of sleep and the number of steps per day. There is soon a number for everything.

Data and numbers are an important factor when it comes to understanding how things are and how they could be. At best they are tools for us to understand where to focus in order to create an effect we want. But it is also worth noticing that numbers and facts can also blind us from things that matter. They can provide us false sense of control and correlation can be understood wrongly when it comes to causality.

Because as humans we tend to exaggerate things that are easy to measure and downplay things that are hard to measure.

If you work in the field of digital advertising and sales you are most likely very familiar with the theme. One measurement that still is prioritised in almost all digital ad campaigns is of course the infamous CTR, Click Through Rate.

The one KPI almost all of us are willing to testify against in any keynote speak and tell how it plays little role in our thinking, but in reality it is often still there in the highlighted row of many excels. We all know the caveats of the KPI in question but still, it is easy to measure, easy to understand and easy to report. What is easy to report is often exaggerated when it comes to actual impact.

I sometimes think what would someone who came totally outside our industry say when we report that an ad worked well when 0,3% of people (or worse impressions) clicked the ad in question. We are actively valuating the digital advertising by what 0,3% of people did and overlooking the 99,7% of people who exposed to the ad but did not click. Many of them most likely brought the advertised product later from the store but that is value often not seen in the reports that justify digital spend. No wonder the value of a single ad impression in digital is peanuts.

I spend a lot of time in digital devices and when I spot that there is an extra big jackpot on the lottery over the weekend, I purchase the ticket from my next door shop. As always. I just need to see the ad in some surface to remind me from time to time and spark me into action. I don’t need to click the screen or kick the OOH ad. I remember.

Measuring possibilites in digital advertising have definitely more positives than negatives and different kind of attention measurements and econometric models are closing the loop between offline and online behaviour. But still personally I think we also secretly still from time to time like the CTR. We know its not a good KPI in many cases but it is just so easy. You get what you measure.

On a final note, easy for me to state the obvious as I have not fully been on the other side of the table, looking into the whole complexity of measuring marketing outcomes. I also have been and are guilty in selling the clicks.

In the heart I am a branding man. My reason to join the ad industry was partly lead by a Mad Men sort of scenery where I saw myself shooting one liners for brands while sipping single malt and listenting to blues. Well, it has not been any of that :)
But still I believe that advertising should be also understood partly as an art form. It will never settle fully to be a measurable form of science. Forcing it to an excel will put pressure on creativity and eventually lead into a perspective where a lot of the value is not been seen. Because often the things that mean the most are things that are not easily measured.

I end to a quote from an American merchant John Wanamaker from early 20th century:

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.”