Reporting principles

Every report follows the same rules, whether it is the weekly, a campaign readout or the post-campaign read.

The rules

1. Every number has a source. Each figure is labelled Moonbrush or ad platform.
2. Two populations, never divided. Impressions, clicks and spend come from the ad platform. Sent, came through and did it come from Moonbrush. They sit side by side and are never divided into each other, because they count different things.
3. A zero says why. A zero is never left bare. It states its reason: a tag that stopped, a campaign not yet live, a window not yet closed.
4. Small counts are protected. Very small counts are not printed exactly. Research on re-identification shows why small counts matter (Sweeney, 2000).
5. Ratios need a base. A ratio is withheld when its denominator is too small to mean anything; rates on small bases swing widely by chance (Wainer, 2007).
6. Response, not lift. Results are response among the people reached. No report prints a lift figure or says a campaign caused a result. See Held-back groups.
7. Words of record. Reports use the product’s words of record. See Core concepts.

Example weekly line

An illustrative line from a weekly report, with invented values.

Source	Measure	Week
Ad platform	Impressions	412,300
Ad platform	Clicks	3,940
Moonbrush	Came through	3,112
Moonbrush	Did it from our ads	118
Moonbrush	Did it on their site	342

The ad-platform rows and the Moonbrush rows are not divided into each other. Clicks and “came through” differ because they count different events in different systems.