Oh Look, The Ad Industry Finally Admits It Doesn’t Know What It’s Measuring

Pesach Lattin (ADOTAT)
July 24, 2025

Daniel Tjondronegoro at Beatgrid just dropped a piece in AdExchanger that—shockingly—admits the obvious: the way we measure media, especially during tentpole moments like Coachella, is broken.

Not just cracked.

Shattered into little glittery pieces like the overpriced branded sunglasses your intern lost on day one of activation weekend.

And I agree with him. Completely.

But let’s get one thing straight: this isn’t a breakthrough.

This is the part of the movie where the clueless supporting character finally figures out the plot everyone else has known since act one.

This is not thought leadership.

This is catch-up.

I’ve been yelling about this for years in ADOTAT. Before it was cool. Before LinkedIn thought pieces started quoting MMM like it was some kind of fresh Kool-Aid. Before CMOs realized their "47 million people reached" across livestreams, pre-rolls, and sweaty influencers in branded bucket hats meant they hit the same 600K humans with twelve different tactics and a fifth of their annual budget.

Let me jog your memory:

🧠 In “What Are We Even Measuring Anymore?” I called out the fantasy math:

“Measurement Inflation… someone at a holding company will declare a video campaign successful because a 17‑year‑old in Tulsa accidentally tapped a TikTok ad.”
Read it here: https://new.adotat.com/p/adotat-sunday-edition-what-are-we-even-measuring-anymore

📉 In “The Right Way to Measure Media,” I said MTA is often just correlation cosplay:

“MTA solutions are not incremental and thus inflate the performance of media.”
Read it here: https://www.adotat.com/2023/07/the-right-way-to-measure-media

🔮 In “Marketing Mix Modeling: The Ghost of Measurement Past Returns—Again,” I told you that stitching together 15 vendors doesn’t create insight—it creates chaos.

“MMM is the corporate version of a fortune teller reading tea leaves… it tells you what worked months ago but gives no insight what to do now.”
That one’s here: https://new.adotat.com/p/marketing-mix-modeling-the-ghost-of-measurement-past-returns-again

So yes, I agree with Daniel—his piece is smart, pointed, and long overdue. But let’s not pretend the industry is having an epiphany.

What we’re witnessing is the PR version of waking up in the middle of the night, realizing the stove’s been on for hours, and acting like you just invented fire safety.

The reach is fake.

The attribution is junk.

The lift studies are nostalgia.

And the dashboards are designed more for job security than business outcomes.

What Daniel describes isn’t progress. It’s recognition—finally—that the emperor has no CPM.

Glad we're having the conversation now. Just remember who started it.

Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

Oh Look, The Ad Industry Finally Admits It Doesn’t Know What It’s Measuring

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