If you ask any marketer the big advantages that digital advertising has over traditional, analog channels, “more measurable” has been toward the top of the list for years. Even now, digital earns nicknames like “the nirvana of quantifiable marketing” from industry leaders.

But your digital advertising metrics aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. 

Don’t get me wrong: Digital is leaps and bounds more trackable and quantifiable than a print ad, offering both more and more concrete data. But for all of its advantages, digital reporting isn’t perfectly accurate.

 Once you recognize the shortcomings that ad measurement sometimes comes with, you can better analyze your data and take countermeasures to compensate for the gaps and skews. Here are a few reasons why your metrics may not be giving you a true view of your digital advertising.

We all have different definitions

The first problem is that the same metric can mean different things to different companies. There’s inconsistency between what a metric is actually measuring depending on the situation. For example, there’s still no standard definition of “viewability” across different types of businesses in the industry.

There may be some agreement among different groups—like publishers, vendors and advertisers—but no one standard for the whole industry. eMarketer found that while more than 70 percent of publishers use the viewability standard set by the Media Rating Council, less than one-half of brand and agency professionals do so, instead either setting their own guidelines or using none at all.

If you ask any marketer the big advantages that digital advertising has over traditional, analog channels, “more measurable” has been toward the top of the list for years. Even now, digital earns nicknames like “the nirvana of quantifiable marketing” from industry leaders.

But your digital advertising metrics aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Don’t get me wrong: Digital is leaps and bounds more trackable and quantifiable than a print ad, offering both more and more concrete data. But for all of its advantages, digital reporting isn’t perfectly accurate.

Once you recognize the shortcomings that ad measurement sometimes comes with, you can better analyze your data and take countermeasures to compensate for the gaps and skews. Here are a few reasons why your metrics may not be giving you a true view of your digital advertising.

We all have different definitions

The first problem is that the same metric can mean different things to different companies. There’s inconsistency between what a metric is actually measuring depending on the situation. For example, there’s still no standard definition of “viewability” across different types of businesses in the industry.

There may be some agreement among different groups—like publishers, vendors and advertisers—but no one standard for the whole industry. eMarketer found that while more than 70 percent of publishers use the viewability standard set by the Media Rating Council, less than one-half of brand and agency professionals do so, instead either setting their own guidelines or using none at all.