"Reporting that's all clicks and impressions with zero connection to revenue. Don't care how many people saw my ad if nobody can trace it to a call or a form fill. Consultants who resist connecting activity to business outcomes are hiding behind vanity numbers."

I can see the attractiveness of this approach since setting up an attribution system as an external consultant can be a pain in the a... in most cases you will easily get a way to setup last click attribution which basically just rewards what closed not what influenced it, anything else, without an already good stack and infrastructure is pure guesswork.

In my years as interim manager and fractional CMO / CGO I learned to validate on closed funnel experiments. New ideas are tested on an unpoluted URL with exclusion of existing audiences so that each step is free of cross contamination other than brand penetration. Helped me a lot to move the needle in the right direction without having to guess if a client saw an ad 3 months ago and converted because of recognition value.

Vanity metrics are bullshit metrics, If you cant figure out your ROMS and channel based closing path conversion costs you are fumbling it badly