Marketers are Addicted to Bad Data

This feels relevant to software, not just marketing. We are addicted to (bad) data:

We've got click rates, impressions, conversion rates, open rates, ROAS, pageviews, bounces rates, ROI, CPM, CPC, impression share, average position, sessions, channels, landing pages, KPI after never ending KPI.

That'd be fine if all this shit meant something and we knew how to interpret it. But it doesn't and we don't.

How did we get here?

I get it. Having tangible data allows us to demonstrate that we're doing our job and we're trying to measure and improve what we're doing...

The numbers are often all we have to prove our case, to get more budget and in extreme cases, to continue to stay employed. We'll remain in this mess until we can separate [the work] from short sighted and poorly informed decision making. Until leaders can lead on the strength of their conviction and experience instead of second guessing themselves and their staff based on the inadequacy of data.

Preach! I feel this so much.

Reminds me of my thread of similar thoughts on twitter:

If a tree falls in the woods, and its fall was not measured, did it really happen?

If someone visits your website, but you don’t have analytics in place, did they really visit?

If your spouse loves you, but you don’t measure it, is that love real?

Then this comment on the article:

Tech’s contempt for human expertise is bizarre, given that it’s what we do all day.