Not that long ago, it wasn’t uncommon to start an article with a sentence that set up the context for the reader. And, since context can be layered, that first sentence would also end up being long and winding. Like a scenic route through a forgotten neighbourhood. Then things changed.
Sentences got shorter. Context came later. Holding attention became the key. Grammar be damned! Just like this paragraph.
This shift didn’t happen by accident. It happened because readability started getting measured not by what you understood, but by how much time you spent on the write-up. By whether or not you clicked ‘Read More’. That click became the thing that writing had to deliver. In our quest to measure digital reading, we fundamentally rewired digital writing.
We see the same pattern elsewhere too. Short-form video didn't just happen; it was an answer to what video engagement metrics looked for. Audio changed as much as video did, if not more. Songs grew shorter, front-loading the “hook” to survive the skip button. We didn’t just change the format; we designed everything around what our success was measured by.
It seems that in digital advertising and media planning, we have fallen into a similar trap. We optimise for what we can measure and because we can measure so much now, we assume we see everything, but we don’t have the mental energy to evaluate if we are on the right path (look up ‘Cognitive Overload’ when you have the time).
Better metrics facilitate better decision-making. And better decisions in a business ultimately lead to happier customers and bigger margins for the brand.
Step away from your job life for a minute. Think about how you see people and how you trust people or their advice. You post photos with friends on your social handles. So, you assume that others do the same. Over time, when you see a bunch of people together in a picture, you assume that they must be friends. And that is how some people ‘hack’ their influence on social platforms - by being seen with known faces that you trust.
Cognitively, when something works for a while, you define it as your success mantra. Slowly, that mantra turns into a bias. Eventually, that bias becomes a blindspot!
Let's bring that back to what we were talking about earlier. Consider the possibility that the ability to measure specific user actions is now creating a massive strategic vacuum. We measure ‘engagement’ on a platform, but those metrics are defined by the platform, for the platform, and rarely comparable to anything else. We are looking at the world through the tint of the sunglasses - the shades they defined for themselves and for you.
In real life, we are all consumers first and digital professionals later. You don’t live your life ‘on a platform’, you live it across many platforms. You “bump” into the same ads while thumbing through content on your way to work, while watching videos in the breaks or while watching podcasts on your commute back home.
Yet, for all the metrics you already have, there seems to be no credible way to establish deduplicated reach and frequency across multiple digital platforms today. We are counting the same person three times, across three platforms and calling it user growth. It’s the digital equivalent of a waiter asking you how your meal is every thirty seconds and recording each polite nod as a separate 5-star rating on their app.
So, if this is the game we are playing, what are we supposed to do?
Perhaps, the first thing to do is realise our situation. We could use the Attention (Awareness), Interest, Desire, and Action (AIDA) model for ourselves, the one we use so consistently in our strategy decks. We could probably start by being aware that despite all that we see, we still don't have some critical inputs and, hence, we are not taking the decisions we should be obsessing over.
For example, if you knew the amount of duplicated reach, you would want to tweak your budgets. If you knew how many digital natives are overdosing on your ad frequency, you would write a fresh creative brief. Or, for a change, even try a shorter-term creative strategy. If you saw how quickly users are exposed to your advertising, you could correlate that to your sales and change pricing for a change. Or make small adjustments to the packaging. Or even the target group you were focused on.
Better metrics facilitate better decision-making. And better decisions in a business ultimately lead to happier customers and bigger margins for the brand. So, maybe, it's time to ponder about what we are measuring and what it is leading us to - richer stories with better context or just shorter sentences that leave out more than they describe!
The author is a growth advisory consultant, focused on strategic, industry-level solutions that can unlock disproportionate growth. Views expressed are personal.