I read an article the other day claiming that Cadbury’s digital agency are reporting £3.00 sales generated for every £1.00 invested in digital advertising.

On the one hand, I thought, brilliant, well done for measuring the return, but on the other hand I couldn’t help feeling that someone was being a little bit smug in declaring a 3:1 return.

£3.00 ‘sales’ I noticed, not £3.00 ‘profit’ – so unless Cadbury generates an impressive 33% net profit on sales (which of course they may do) – then the claims of significant success are a tad less impressive.

The other thing the article didn’t tell us was whether the £3.00 sales were incremental.

So fair do’s in trying to measure success, but let’s make sure we apply a degree of robustness before declaring our brilliant effectiveness.