Verified, says who?

Fair season started on 29 September: Amsterdam first, then Marbella.¹

You’ll hear the word verified at every second stand. Verified traffic, verified installs, verified partners. Ask the person saying it what the word means. Watch what happens.

We run on reported numbers, same as you. Which market to open, which channel to scale, which partner gets next quarter’s budget. Every one of those calls depends on a number somebody reported. When the words around the numbers go soft, the decisions follow.

01How the word went soft

Media gets resold through chains so long that no one in the chain can name the final placement. Reporting arrives as a summary, with the detail averaged away.

And definitions float. One vendor’s “active user” is another’s “install”, and a third one counts clicks that didn’t bounce.

No one has to lie for this to happen. It’s enough that no one asks precise questions. Verified survives because it sounds like an answer while promising nothing.

02The 5 questions

They work in any meeting, with any vendor. Us included.

1. What exactly does this number count?
Every real metric has a definition: what’s in, what’s out, over which period. If the person quoting the number can’t state it without checking, you’re looking at decoration. Ask for the definition in writing. Real ones survive writing.

2. Can I see the placement list?
The full list. Every placement the campaign ran on, named, with volumes. A partner who controls their supply has this, because they need it themselves. “That’s proprietary” means no.

3. Can I open the source behind this figure?
Logs and exports, raw enough that your own team could recompute the headline number. If the only source is a slide, that tells you enough.

4. Who outside the vendor can confirm it?
An independent monitor. A client who takes your call. A public registry entry.² Ask for one reference who’ll spend 15 minutes on the phone with you. A logo wall can’t answer questions.

5. When was this last true?
Numbers age. Markets close and partners churn. A claim without a date is a claim from whenever it looked best. Ask when it was last re-checked, and what happens when it stops being true.

03Why there are no statistics in this article

Articles like this usually open with an ad fraud percentage. We checked the ones in circulation and couldn’t trace most of them to a source that passes the 5 questions. So we left them out.

That’s the rule, applied to ourselves. A number we can’t source doesn’t get published.

04What it costs

Verification is slow and it isn’t free.

It means publishing smaller numbers than your competitors, later than your competitors. It means keeping a register of every public claim with its definition, source and review date,³ and letting that register veto your marketing.

We think the trade wins because subscription growth compounds. A wrong number in month 1 becomes a board problem in month 9. Slightly slower this quarter, considerably straighter across the year.

A number we can’t source doesn’t get published.

05Ask us the same questions

Every number we publish has a definition, a source and a date. Our reporting is built so you can check a claim yourself instead of taking our word for it.

Don’t take this paragraph’s word for it either. Bring the 5 questions to every partner you’re evaluating, and bring them to us first. 30 minutes, live reporting, your questions.

Growth you can verify is a test. We like our chances.