Great post Jason. I was chatting with a colleague about this and he used to work for a small-ish NYC-based mailing list that focused on high-income young professionals.
He mentioned that the metrics advertisers were sold on (subscribers, CTRs, bounce rate, etc) were largely embellished and misrepresented. It seems like these numbers would be easy to fudge and that advertisers would rarely ask for further documentation (even analytic screenshots can be misrepresented). Are people finding this a concern among advertisers?
So the media kit #s were fudged (not the selling prices)? Most media kits on the site are out-dated, but you should obviously have an updated one for distribution.
I'm sure people do this. Kind of scummy, but if I were an advertiser I'd want to see something valid. If I were running a list or considering creating a startup like Dailycandy, thrillist, ideal bite,etc. I'd build a great system for advertisers that somehow ensured my numbers were legit. (there's a hint somewhere in this comment).
There have been some attempts at setting up an auditing system (as there is for newspapers), but they never took off, and I don't think that's really the issue.
Ultimately, advertisers can tell if there ads are working because they get more hits, more leads, and more sales. For most clients, if ads are generating sales, it doesn't really matter what the CTR is.
It's like any business. Sure, you can lie to make a sale, but don't expect many repeat customers.
And most advertisers (and all ad agency clients) also do their own tracking on click-throughs. Many also track image loads.
(Open rate is the other big metric. If you're doing a branding campaign, you want to know how many people saw your ad, not necessarily how many clicked on it.)
He mentioned that the metrics advertisers were sold on (subscribers, CTRs, bounce rate, etc) were largely embellished and misrepresented. It seems like these numbers would be easy to fudge and that advertisers would rarely ask for further documentation (even analytic screenshots can be misrepresented). Are people finding this a concern among advertisers?