There’s a lot of fuzziness in the supposed certainty of digital stats. Just look at college football fans fighting over when the clock reached 00:00 during last weekend’s Michigan-Western Michigan game.
If you missed it: Western Michigan, a nearly four-touchdown underdog, led 12-7 when Michigan’s Hail Mary sailed through the back of the end zone and the clock hit zeros. The Broncos celebrated. Then officials put one second back on the clock. Michigan threw one more Hail Mary, completed it for a 47-yard touchdown, and won 13-12.
Here’s the part that matters for anyone who sells or buys advertising. Nobody was really arguing about what happened on the field; they were arguing about which clock to believe. Viewers at home watched the broadcast clock hit zero before the ball touched a defender. The replay officials used a separate camera shot of the stadium clock, which showed one second left. The Mid-American Conference now says the replay protocol required the clock embedded in the TV feed (the one viewers saw), and by that clock, Western Michigan wins.
Every clock was counting, but they didn’t sync up.
Within days, the NCAA issued new guidance spelling out exactly which clock replay officials must use. The rule got clarified after the game that exposed it.
If that sounds familiar, you’ve probably sat through a digital campaign recap.
Two scorekeepers, one campaign
Similarly in digital, numbers mean both everything and nothing. Ask the AE who had to reconcile a “successful” Google search report with the client’s Google Analytics showing a less-than-stellar performance. Or the salesperson frantically explaining why the client hasn’t gotten a surge of sales off his 200,000-impression campaign.I’ve been that person. I’ve come to many client recaps with a great report showing lots of clicks and even tons of phone calls to the client’s number, only to have the client say the Google dashboard was inaccurate and they hadn’t had one new customer.
The unconforable truth is that often, both of us were right. Like the clocks in Ann Arbor, the report and the client were measuring different things.
Google Ads counts clicks. Google Analytics counts visits, and it can undercount people whose browsers block tracking or who decline cookies. A “phone call” in an ad report can be a longtime customer checking store hours, or someone who fat-thumbed the Google ad. Or maybe the call went to voicemail. Or an assistant took the call and didn’t tell the boss. The variables are endless.
Google Ads credits a conversion to the day of the click; Analytics credits it to the day it happened. None of that makes the report wrong. It makes it incomplete without someone to explain it.
Reconciling with the client’s view requires a delicate balance, just like when an on-air ad campaign flops. A renewal isn’t always guaranteed, but many times it can be salvaged with the right hypothesis and explanation (plus the assurance that you’re on the client’s side and not just pushing an agenda to get a sale).
“Is that good?”
The number of different numbers required to create a comprehensive media campaign doesn’t make the numbers game easier for AEs to master, especially when a client asks, “Is that good?” Impressions. Reach. Frequency. CPM. eCPM. Click-through rate. Video completion rate. Sessions. Conversions. Cost per lead. Return on ad spend. Each one is a real measurement. Each one answers a different question. And no single one tells a business owner whether the phone is going to ring.
The honest answer to “Is that good?” is almost always another question: compared to what? Compared to last month? To the industry average? To what the client expected when they signed? That last one makes or breaks the renewal, and it’s the one we set (or fail to set) before the campaign ever launches.
Moving goalposts
Just when we’ve mastered numbers, their meaning changes. Last month, YouTube changed how it counts a view. For years, a public view on a regular YouTube video required someone to actually watch for a while (the commonly cited figure was 30 seconds). As of August 24, a view counts the moment the video starts playing, an autoplay is started, or a thumbnail preview plays on mouse-over. No minimum. The change is raising eyebrows in the creator economy. How is a brand supposed to value an influencer’s YouTube views when some of them last a fraction of a second? For media sellers, the good news is that YouTube’s paid video views still run on their own thresholds, and creator monetization still depends on deeper engagement measures. So on one platform, the word “view” now means at least three different things.
Just as the NCAA had to spell out which clock is official after the fact, the platforms rewrite their definitions all the time. Sometimes it’s planned, but sometimes you find out when a client asks why the numbers jumped. That isn’t a reason to distrust digital. It’s a reason to never let a number walk into a client meeting without an explanation attached.
Everyone needs a replay booth
College football moved replay decisions to remote command centers so someone with every camera angle and the rulebook in hand can make the call. Although they don’t eliminate ambiguity (clearly), they do ensure someone who knows the rules is accountable for the call, and can explain it.
Clients need their own support system to call on to ensure their campaigns work. Be that a digital sales manager back at the station or an expert on the corporate team who has put in their 10,000 hours in the minutiae of digital campaigns: the attribution windows, the tracking tags, the platform changes that land without warning. Someone who knows a thing or two because they’ve seen a thing or two, as the Farmers Insurance ads say. That person’s job isn’t to make the numbers look good. It’s to tell the client which clock is official, and why.
You don’t have to love the math
For many reps, the subordinate digital numbers are math distractions that get in the way of everything else that’s enjoyable about media ad sales, like relationships with clients and community VIPs, the thrill of the hunt, the joys of renewals, and the satisfaction of a commission check. That’s OK. AEs don’t have to be the replay official, but they do have to know who to call. And everyone from the client to the sales rep to the tech team has to set reasonable expectations before kickoff, not after the final whistle. That means agreeing up front on:
- What success looks like for their business, in their words
- Which numbers you’ll report, and what each one does and doesn’t prove
- How long it realistically takes to see results
- How you’ll connect the campaign to actual customers (a tracking number, a promo code, or simply asking “How did you hear about us?”)
When those expectations are set, a disappointing recap becomes a conversation about adjustments and not a referendum on whether digital “works.”
The scoreboard
Just like the scoreboard at 00:00, in sales there’s one number that matters most: the boldface number with a dollar sign at the bottom of the contract. Everything else above that is a variable that increases or decreases that number, its profit, and commission earned from it. For the client, the scoreboard is the increase in sales from the campaign.
However many clocks were running last Saturday, the final score stands. In digital sales, we have more control, and none of this is something to fear. AEs must set expectations, ensure campaigns are optimized mid-flight, and never let a number walk into a client meeting without an explanation attached.
Along with his duties at Jacobs Media, Chris develops revenue opportunities for jācapps’ mobile apps clients.
- One Second Left: What Michigan’s Clock Controversy Teaches Us About Digital Ad Stats - September 14, 2026
- What’s In a Number? - September 11, 2026
- What’s On Your Digital Keycard? - August 10, 2026
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