Move beyond vanity metrics. Relevance measures if an impression truly mattered: right ad, right place, right moment
Digital advertising has long leaned on familiar metrics. Click-through rates, viewability, and more recently attention, have all been held up as proof that a campaign is working. Yet for many brands, those numbers tell a story that doesn’t quite line up with true business outcomes.
Campaigns “perform” on paper while sales stagnate. Publishers see ads “viewed” but audiences are disengaged. And users are left frustrated by irrelevant messages clogging their feeds.
The problem isn’t measurement itself - it’s that we’re measuring the wrong things.
The legacy of vanity metrics
CTR became the industry’s comfort blanket: quick to track, easy to optimise, and universally understood. But as users, how often do we actually click an ad? Viewability followed, giving advertisers confidence that ads were at least “seen.” Attention is the latest attempt to capture value, yet still often divorced from outcomes.
Each of these has merit, but none reflects whether an ad is truly relevant; in the right place, at the right moment, with the right creative.
Outcomes over outputs
Relevance reframes the conversation. Instead of asking “Did someone see this?” we ask “Did this impression matter?”
That might mean driving brand uplift, conversions, or engagement. It might mean supporting publisher environments where users linger longer. Whatever the measure, it’s about aligning media activity with actual business goals, not chasing numbers that look good on a dashboard.
A new framework for success
Relevance combines three dimensions:
- Context: where the ad appears and how it complements content.
- Creative fit: whether the message resonates with the moment.
- Outcome alignment: the impact on the advertiser’s objectives.
Together, these create a richer, outcome-driven view of value.
The call to reset
2025 should be the year we let go of outdated metrics and embrace relevance as our north star. Because if advertising is meant to connect, then only relevance tells us whether that connection was real.
Posted on: Friday 10 October 2025