[kibwen]

What on Earth has given so many people in this thread the confidence to assert that marketing departments actually have any real way to gauge the effectiveness of a given ad campaign? It's effectively impossible to adjust for all the confounding variables in such a chaotic system, so ad spend is instead determined by internal politicking, pseudoscientific voodoo, and the deftness of the marketing department's ability to kiss executive ass. This ain't science, it's perversely-incentivized emotion.

[dotancohen]

The fact that sales go up in correlation to when marketing campaigns are run.

[kibwen]

As opposed to, say, the million other reasons sales could be going up or down? This is the post-hoc rationalization of a random walk.

[dotancohen]

Every time the marketing guy does a campaign, sales go up.